I am serving in Kabul right now and purchased this the other week. The store says it was made in Bamiyan, Afghan but I started looking around and found it to look like Oushak? But I know that is in Turkey. Someone from this site in an email offered that it was probably made here and then taken to Peshwar and prepped for sale. Then I guess it came back here to Bamiyan? where it was purchased by the store through one of their people.

It's 7'7" wide and 10'3" long. I count 5 distinct colors on it and the wool feels extremely smooth and silky if you move your hand in the direction of the "grain" for lack of an experienced term... I don't have any quarters around here as they just hand out paper pogs for change but I put a triage ruler up to it for kpsi count; have it around 90.

The store owner said it is about 3-5 years old. Does anyone know for sure if his story about being Bamiyan is legit? What do you think the value of it is? I'd be interested to see because he was HIGHLY recommended to me by several people as the guy to buy from because he gives outstanding deals according to everyone. He said he would fill out a certificate for me with age, origin, etc. but I want to make sure I get in the ballpark so I know what to insure it for if that is what we decide to do. Also, I don't want to sell it but it would be nice to pass on to our kids with a certificate so they know the story behind it.

Thanks for any and all help!

KAD, thanks for all the great info! I appreciate it. I'm not sure exactly what I paid because I had another rug in the deal but he started at $950 and I feel between the two, I got him down to about $750-$700. But I feel good about that because I LOVE the rug, and ultimately, that's that's why we should buy them, right? So I don't have pictures of the other one but I will get them soon and post. But with this rug, I had seen plenty at the bazaars that look like this but didn't have the same feel, although they were in the same KPSI count but they didn't move or "flow" like this one and they definitely weren't "silky" to the touch like this one is on the front and the back. I, with my untrained eye could tell that they were cheaper carpets and they were going for the same asking price, between $800 and $1000, but of course everything here is up for negotiation.

My wife and I love the "antiqued" look of rugs and this is going to go in our formal dining room so it won't be a high traffic area. 30 years of use would be perfect, anything more would be fantastic.

Since you brought up the vegetable vs. chemical dye issue, is there a quick way for me to tell while I'm shopping?

Kandahar is a completely different animal than Kabul. But I'm pretty sure they have vendors on base at all times (except Friday which is their day off) and one day a week, they will bring venders from outside on the base and have a bazaar for 4 or 5 hours. Tons of rug vendors show up. You just have to be careful what they are looking at and understand that they only have 4 or so hours to sell as much as possible!

So in one way, it's good because you can get good prices after working them down - toward the end they just want sales, and; negatively because EVERYTHING is natrual dyed (come to find out from KAD here that it's not always the case) and authentic this that and the other. Make sure he stays away from the rifles and pistols (made to look antique), they are made locally and stamped to look real but are all POS. People buy them up like crazy but they are pretty ugly and have no real parts on them. But given your enthusiasm for rugs, I'm sure he's in good hands to get through the muck and into the good deals.

But as I said, Kandahar is crazy different, almost like a separate war than what I'm experiencing here in Kabul. I don't know that they would trust 50 or so locals coming on base every week, like clockwork, with the threat to the forces due to TB numbers in the region. But they may very well do so.

As with everyone over here, I wish him the best of luck. Since he's civilian, he may be able to hop a flight to Kabul for a day or so and go and shop for rugs. In the Green Zone, it's Fridays for the bazaars most often and then there is a rug store which is where I go and that's there every day.