If one goes through the Turk ve  Islami Museum in Istanbul and views the Seljuk period material housed there, it is apparent there are two types of weavings there, one of which seems very Turkmen inspired (or rather, an aesthetic which inspired later Turkmen weavers) and the other is one where the weavings appear to bear an affinity with Baluch weavings, mostly those from Khorassan or NE Persia but colourful aesthetic of Seistan and w. Afghanstan is reflected as well.

The reasons for this apparent phenomenon may remain obscured in histories that are not fully documented or fully understood, but the ethnogenesis of the Baluch weavers is a convoluted one and one which may be traced back to the earliest tribal name which is used t in rug studies, the  Saka  or (Scythians).  The Scythians were an Indo-European group located in Central Asia, a group which was eventually moved out through confrontations with the Turko/Mongol hordes of the region.  Inevitably in the course of these military confrontations, some of the Sakas were left behind, conquered, incorporated into the Turko-Mongol culture.

“The result of a great battle was that many of the women passed over to new masters; the captive youths became warriors , usuallyunder their own chiefs, but subject to the supreme control of the conqueror;....  Slave and master lived very much in the same way, the only difference being that one did the menial work whilst the other enjoyed himself; meanwhile the women, habituated to the idea of passing from one man to the other,

But the majority of them moved along, westward, flowing south through Khorassan province in Persia into the Seistan region of today.  At one point, this area was called “Saka-stan” (place of the Sakas), but at the time of the Arab invasion in the 7-8th century, the name was changed to Sidjistan, and from that was adapted the present name of Seistan.

The Baluch of Seistan are a Brahui speaking people of mainly highland Baluchistan, parts of Sind, Khorassan and W. Afghanistan (& Turkestan), who are of Aryo-Scythian origin.  I

The predominant weavers of Seistan are the Sharakhi and Sarabandi tribes, descendents of the original Saka hordes.  Believed to be related to the Sakas of Sarmatian and Alan origins from the Sakas of southern Russia. “Herodotus reported that the Sarmatians were said to be the offsprings of Scythians  who had mated with Amazons and that their female descendants "have continued from that day to the present to observe their ancient [Amazon] customs, frequently hunting on horseback with their husbands; in war taking the field; and wearing the very same dress as the men" Moreover, said Herodotus, "No girl shall wed till she has killed a man in battle."

Timur, who conquered most of the Jagatai Khanate in the 14th century, and founded a new empire, claimed descent from Genghiz Khan, as did Babur, who in the 16th century founded the Mughal (i.e., Mongol) empire in India. The Mongols were completely expelled from China by 1382 and soon thereafter lapsed into relative poltical obscurity but their cultural legacy and customs persisted among the scattered peoples who formerly comprised the tribal core..

The origins of the Turkmen, too, include familiar names, Sarmatian, Alani, Massa Gettae and Parthians and apparently the earliest reference to the Turkmen may be as early as the 6-7th century.     

But Turkmen history begins in the minds of most rug people with the emergence of the Oghuz horde and the establishment of Seljuk domination.  The Oghuz were composed of 24 constituent tribes, some of which bore names with which we are familiar today, including Salor.

In the last decade of the 10th century, the Seljuq family embraced Islam, and then turned to raiding against the pagan Turks. (Some Russian scholars have expressed an opinion that the Seljuq family accepted Islam through Christianity, because of the Biblical names of his sons, Mikail, Musa and Israil). Over the next decades, Musa, Mikail and Arslan Israil, the three sons of Seljuq moved southwards for pasture.. Soon afterwards, Mikail's two sons, Chaghri Beg and Tughril Beg occupied Khorassan in 1040AD, and extended their influence in Iran, and founded rule of the Great Seljuqs with aid of armies composed of Turkmen nomads. They defeated the Ghaznavids in the Battle of Dandanqan (1040) and won control of Khorassan before moving west to take the regions of Rayy (1042) and Isfahan (1051).

The borders of the state covered an area from the Marmara Sea to the Balkhash Lake in Central Asia and from the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea to the borders of India and Yemen.

The Seljuks tried to establish a unified empire by adopting a central administration along Persian lines and creating slave armies that would reduce their dependence on the unruly Turkmen nomads who had conquered the empire, a strategy notably employed in Khorassan.  Some of these ‘slave armies’ inevitably included vassal tribes who swore allegiance to the Seljuk rulers, incorporating themselves into the lifestyle of the rulers, a typical practice in these early times.

Which now leaves us with the rugs.  Often to assume connections of an uninterrupted flow of design and aesthetics perpetuated over such a long period of time has been considered debateable at best, and presumptuous as well as irresponsible and undocumented at worst.  I have always been

one to engage in the speculative as to ignore what is truly the physical evidence of the relevant, extant 19th century weavings somehow seems inappropriate.  “Reading” the rugs is sometimes more revealing than studying histories and textual verbiage out of context.