The Iranians want to concentrate on the high quality end of the carpet and rug market, because there are so many cheap copies of Persian rugs floating around these days. This sounds like the sort of high quality rug that your children will be glad you bought, but if you think that’s just what you want, you’re going to have to wait your turn.

Traditionally, mosques don’t have chairs inside, though these days there are probably a few at the side for the elderly. Worshippers take off their shoes before going in, then usually they sit or kneel on a rug to say their prayers, chat or eat their packed lunch. On a hot day in Damascus the interior of the Omayyid mosque, one of the oldest in the world, is a place to read holy books, or to pray, or just to take the weight off your feet and feed the baby. Comfort comes from the rugs spread all over the floor. In the Omayyid mosque some of them are very old, and others new gifts of worshippers, but all are in traditional patterns and blend into a pleasant whole.

Now remember that the people who are building mosques now are as enthusiastic as the European Cathedral builders of old, and you won’t be surprised to hear that mosques are getting bigger and fancier wherever it is affordable. One of the ways of improving on old designs is to have a specially woven, and very large, rug to replace the random gifts of rugs, to give a unity of design.

The largest rug in the world up to now has been that in the Sultan Quaboos Mosque in Muscat, on the Persian Gulf. It is 4,400 square metres, and is now being overtaken by a new rug for the Sheikh Zayed Mosque of Abu Dhabi. This will be nearly 6,000 square metres and will take 2,000 weavers around 14 months to weave. It will weigh 35 tons when finished, so can you imagine how they are going to deliver it? It is also going to be something of a specialist job unrolling it – no question of ‘a bit of a tweak to the right and it will be straight’!