Atlas

ATLAS/ATLASBOFI is one of kinds of silk and semi-silk tissue. Women’s dresses are mainly made from silk atlas, and kurpa, kurpacha, and other things of life are made from semi-silk one. The atlases of Khujand, Samarqand, Konibodom, and Andizhan were famous in the past. Atlas of higher quality and colorful kind was called khonatlas. It was produced in special textile equipment. Its traditional kinds were the atlases under the names: shohsabz, bargi karam, and atlasi siyoh.

Two kinds of textile atlas were more famous – chorpopushal and hashtpopushal.

Since the XX century, in Dushanbe, Khujand, Shahrinav, and Kurgonteppa, the firms of Tajikatlas net have been producing more than 25 kinds of atlas with the following names: Bahori Tojikiston (Spring of Tajikistan), Tovus (Peacock), Javon (Youth), Tuhva (Gift), Tayona (Wedding), Muhabbat (Love), Dilorom, and others. Atlas dress is favorite clothes of Tajik women and girls.

For thousand years, Tajiks were famous with their silk in the Silk Road. The samples of sughd silk are kept in many museums of Europe, Asia, and America. Refine-colorful Tajik tissues were popular in the bazaars of the East and West.

For many-centuries-old developing way of weaving craft, Tajiks have been achieving higher levels in weaving the tissues abra/avra.

In the second half of the XIX century, in a historical Tajikistan (Bukhara, Samarqand, and Margilan) and a today’s one (Khujand, Hissar, Konibodom, and Kurgonteppa), more than 25 kinds of colorful varieties, particularly, atlas, khonatlas, adras, and silk bedspreads were produced by way of traditional method of weaving, the tradition that originated in a deep antiquity.

The tissue term abra/avra exists among Tajiks, especially among the districts with Tajik-speaking dwellers of Bulhara, Samarqand, Margilan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, particularly in Khujand, Istaravshan, Isfara, Hissar, Dushanbe, Shahrinav, Regar, Kurgonteppa (Levaqand), overall in Vakhsh valey.

The tissues abra/avra were considered as the tissues, from which different of cloths were sewn.

As the technology of weaving, abra is divided into two groups: garnituri and atlasi. The group atlasi includes the smooth tissue with special glance, mainly, silk atlases chorgula, khonatlas – hashtgula or duvozdahgula, semi-silk tissues – yakroya. The beauty and glance of atlas depends on the quantity and location of gula in weaving.