On this rug I just inherited.
Looks Persian to me.
Don’t they use the same alphabet? How can you tell (not being snarky, I’m just curious)?
Do you have a smartphone? You could try a photo translator app on it.
Persian is based on Arabic, with added “letters”. It might actually be something else, like Pashto or Kurdish. The dead giveaway though is that the characters are not connected. Arabic is nearly always written in cursive, with the letters connected to each other. Persian, Pashto, and other Arabic-based language alphabets often write the letters separately, as depicted in your rug. Another indicator are the over/under dots. Extra ones show up in Persian and Pashto. I’m definitely no expert, though. I just know what looks familiar to me from a short period living in Iran.
Aha. Thank you.
They are connected. There are certain letters in Arabic that are never connected. What you are seeing is spaces between words.
Again, I’m not claiming to be an expert, but I see what looks to me to be a lot of unconnected characters. I’m sure we have an actual Arabic speaker on the board who will settle the question sooner or later.