Company Background & Information

Objective - History - Awards - Customers - Workshop Photos

The central drive behind Pak Persian Rugs online is to provide customers all over the world with an option to purchase fine handmade carpets at wholesale prices by shipping them directly from the source, thereby cutting out the costs associated with retail selling. The objective of Pak Persian Rugs is to provide a new, reliable, and trustworthy avenue for customers to view and purchase handmade rugs, from the comfort of their homes.

Pak Persian Rugs online has its roots in Pak Persian Carpets, Islamabad, the oldest and most respected carpet showroom in Pakistan's capital city. Pak Persian Carpets has its production facilities based in Lahore and contracted looms in various locations throughout Pakistan.

The history of Pak Persian Carpets goes back four generations, well before the partition of India and Pakistan. A young Kashmiri man, Ghulam Rasul Butt joined A. Tallery & Sons, a handmade carpet producer in the subcontinent with European management, as a partner. Ghulam Rasul's particular expertise lay in wool dyes, and as this is such a crucial process in the production of hand knotted rugs, he was an invaluable part of the company.

Ghulam Rasul worked with A. Tallery & Sons all his life. Eventually, his nephew, Abdul Latif Butt joined and learned the carpet business. After some time, Abdul Latif and his son, Abdul Rashid, formed their own carpet production company in Amritsar, and sold their carpets to A. Tallery & Sons and other large carpet production houses for export to Europe and other regions in Asia.

By the time of partition between Pakistan and India in 1947, Abdul Rashid Butt was in charge of the company and made the decision to immigrate to Lahore with his wife and 11 children. Amritsar was no longer safe, as violence erupted between the three major ethnic groups of Amritsar: the Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus. Rashid Carpet Factory was thus begun in Lahore, and was among the first handmade carpet production companies to begin producing rugs again after the tumultuous partition of Pakistan and India.

Of Rashid's children, 8 were sons, and they all joined the family business. By the 1970s, the business had expanded to larger scale manufacturing and export to Europe and the US. Pak Persian Carpets became the new name of the company, and retail outlets were established in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad and in various cities overseas.

The Islamabad showroom was established by Abdul Rashid's son, Zulfiqar, in the early 70s. Zulfiqar had returned to join the family business after a stint of several years in the UK, where he met and married his New Zealand wife, a music specialist. After a few years working in the business in Lahore, Zulfiqar and Lynley moved to Islamabad, where Zulfiqar opened a showroom in the new planned capital city and Lynley began teaching music and producing and acting in theatrical productions. Among the first carpet showrooms in Islamabad, the outlet had immediate success and was immensely popular for its quality, prices, and service among locals and the diplomatic community.

Zulfiqar and Lynley had four children, three sons and a daughter. Aaron, the eldest son, went on to become a famous pop singer in Pakistan, and Laila, the youngest by 10 years, has just recently graduated from university in the UK. The other two sons, however, Ben and Da'oud, both Honors graduates from Otago University in New Zealand in Management and Information Systems respectively, joined the business in the late 90s and started Pak Persian Rugs online in 2000 (developed fully in-house) with the aim of making high quality rugs available at reasonable prices to customers worldwide. Ben currently resides in Brisbane, Australia where he opened a retail store in 2005 and Da'oud, the family's IT expert, currently resides in England. Both are fully active in the running and maintenance of Pak Persian Rugs online, along with Zulfiqar who continues to reside with Lynley in Islamabad and oversee additional support operations.

Click here to view photos of our Lahore production facility.

Today, Pak Persian Carpets exports handmade carpets to the USA, Europe, Far East Asia, and the Middle East, and has won numerous awards for quality, including:

Excellence Award Presented by the former President of Pakistan, Mohammad Rafiq Tarar

Best Export Performance Presented by The Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry

The International Golden Circle Award for Best Quality

Excellence Award Presented by The Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry

Aside from individual retail customers, some of our wholesale customers include the Pakistan Foreign Office and various carpet dealers in London, San Francisco, Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Brussels, and various cities in and around Pakistan.