Analysis and Assessment of the Visual Elements of A Prayer Rug from Safavid Period by Gerard Genette's Theory

Prayer rugs are a large and important collection of Persian rugs that were produced in the Safavid era and attracted society’s interest. Since the prayer rug has been seriously considered and reproduced at some point in history, and the elements and designs used in these rugs were previously available in other Iranian rugs, it is necessary to be studied analytically. In these types of carpets which are categorized in different types, there are different artistic texts from different types of Persian carpets that come together to create a unified text known as the prayer rug. These carpets have different names depending on the designs and the texts which have been used in them, each of which testifies to the importance of a particular text or set of texts in the design of these special carpets. When faced with a literary or artistic work, a diverse collection of literary, artistic texts can be distinguished, and it is possible to reach and receive hidden meaning through reading and understanding that collection and the relationships among its members. It is clear that through such an analysis, one can be guided by how a set of pre-existing motives in a new structure creates content and meaning that is met with the general favour of the place of their creation. Combining a set of texts and achieving a unified text is a process that is and has always been done by the human mind to create new texts. The study of how meaning is formed in texts through the coexistence of earlier texts is possible in the context of various methods of intertextual criticism. One of the methods, which provides understanding of the hidden meaning in a text based on a set of constituent pre-texts and the relationships between them, is the Gérard Genette’s intertextuality theory. In this research, which aimed to study the texts of a Safavid prayer rug as well as their composition and relationship to formation of hidden meaning of the carpet, Gérard Genette's method showed its ability to reach the hidden meaning of the work. The main question that helped this research achieve its purpose is how intertextual relationships were used in shaping the meaning of the rug studied in this article. This research was a descriptive and analytical study based on Gérard Genette’s Intertextuality Theory and its information was gathered through library research and citation of primary sources. The data analysis of this study was performed using Gérard Genette’s Intertextuality theory and its trend was that after identifying the constituents of effect, the mechanism of their effect on shaping the final text was determined. The results of this study indicate that in the design of this rug, pre-texts have been expressed in two types: explicit and implicit. Since this work has an advertising function for Islam and Shi'a religion, it must, therefore, take an action that best represents its function. The way of presentation of pre-texts in this work attests to the fact that the artist has created both the formal and the content-related sections. In the formal section, he explicitly provided texts that are in harmony with religion and advertising, but in the content-related section, he implicitly extracts texts with dual pre-texts from both ancient and Islamic Iranian cultures and attempts to present them in a single format to show the compatibility of these two cultures. The way of presentation of these pre-texts, as mentioned, is in the form of citing and referencing. Since the basic premise of any promotional action is based on a completely explicit and verbal form, inscriptions have been quoted for this purpose, as Genette himself introduces this form in the most explicit and literal form of the relationship between the two texts, and again in the context of the more important source citation. That is, it is evident that the artist is referring to texts with dual pre-texts to confront the audience with the reference of the texts, thereby leading to thinking and ultimately adopting the implicit form of bringing texts into both ancient and modern Iranian systems. Islam is meaningful and this research seeks to make the audience aware of the compatibility of these two cultures.