At Broxburn, just to the west of Edinburgh and only 35 miles from Glasgow, you can find Caroline Allan and a magnificent collection of Persian rugs and carpets. The Persian carpet, the best of oriental rugs, is as much a product of the Iranian landscape as the clay walled villages and the wide expanses of plain with mountain ranges on the horizon. Iran (traditionally called Persia) has been continuously occupied for four thousand years; in that time, it has been repeatedly invaded, looted, settled and resettled. But the changes in rulers and regimes have little affected the lives of the ordinary people of the land: the nomads, the settled farmers and craftsmen, who continue the way of life of their ancestors. However, successive waves of influence - Turkish, far Eastern, Afghan, Indian, European - are reflected in the carpets produced in Iran today. No country's history has been as eventful as Iran's, and none of the other rug producing countries of the Middle-East can begin to approach the range, variety and creativity of the rugs hand woven in Iran.