What is an Oriental Rug?
"Oriental rug" is an umbrella term that covers a huge variety of handmade rugs from across the Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa. This technically includes Persian rugs as well. In practice, however, people talking about Oriental rugs typically are referring to handmade rugs from outside of Iran.
It’s a common misconception that Persian rugs exclusively use Persian knots, or that Persian knots are only found in Persian rugs. Actually, both Turkish and Persian knots are used throughout the rug-making world.