The town of Senneh or Sannandaj is situated in a hollow in the hills; 170 kilometres Northwest of Hamedan.
Senneh became the capital of Persian Kurdistan some 250 years ago. Before that it was little more than a village and the seat of Government was in a castle situated eight kilometres farther west. The inhabitants are Gurami Kurds. They are kinsmen of the great Gurami Tribe whose territories lie farther south in the direction of Kermanshah.
Senneh is a clear town, prettily situated in a narrow valley planted with orchards and vine yards. Senneh carpets are unique in style colour and design. For about 250 years they have been weaving in their own way.
Two centuries ago Senneh, a small village at the time, suddenly became the capital of the province of Kurdistan. New prosperity by way of new government buildings and residences came with this. The hypothesis is that these buildings had to be carpeted and since the weaving in the area was coarse and clumsy the officials that had come from Tehran set up looms in the town and brought in weavers from nearby tribes and ordered carpets to be made to specially fit their floors. They ordered double the number of warp strings to the carpets that the nomdas were weaving and for stability and strength, cotton for warp and weft.
These weavers wove a single wefted fabric with the Turkish Knot as they knew. But they realised in order to obtain a quality that was the same number of knots each way they had to use a very thin weft indeed. Also the officials wanted a carpet that would show up the detail of the design so the carpet had to be clipped very thin. Thus the Senneh weave exclusive to Sannandaj was born. Three or four designs were woven. However the quality was so good that made Senneh carpets very famous. Around the 1920s only the Herati design was being woven and hardly any or non at all of the old designs and only in smaller sizes. The other pattern that they started weaving at that time was the Gol-farang or the rose design which was mainly woven in Bijar. The quality of the wool and dyes are very good in this area.
