Tabriz , the large Persian city, it is recorded that there were important carpet-factories at work even when the Genoese were active in Persia. But we have no specimens of Tabriz carpets of this period, though the Ardebil Carpet in the Victoria and Albert Museum is not much later in date. If carpets made in Tabriz about the middle of the nineteenth century be compared with the Ardebil Carpet, a definite relationship is to be noted in spite of the great difference of period; the relationship is visible not only in the even and close-cut pile-for one finds this in the products of other places-but above all in a certain dullness and dryness of the yarn which in the case of the Ardebil Carpet has not, in the course of the centuries.