Early Anatolian animal carpets  Anatolian animal carpets represent a special type of pile-woven carpet, woven in the geographical region of Anatolia during the Seljuq and early Ottoman period, corresponding to the 14th–16th century. Very few animal-style carpets still exist today, and most of them are in a fragmentary state. Animal carpets were frequently depicted by Western European painters of the 14th–16th century. By comparison of the few surviving carpets with their painted counterparts, these paintings helped to establish a timeline of their production, and support our knowledge about the early Turkish carpet. A traditional Chinese motif, the fight between the fenghuang, or Chinese phoenix, and the dragon, is seen in an Anatolian carpet at the Pergamon Museum, Berlin. Radiocarbon dating confirmed that the "Dragon and Phoenix" carpet was woven in the mid 15th century, during the early Ottoman Empire. It is knotted with symmetric knots. The Chinese motif was probably introduced into Islamic art by the Mongols, or artists working for them, during the thirteenth century. The Dragon and Phoenix carpet lacks his original borders, and seems to be cut off at the right side. Its field is parted into two rectangular sections, each containing a yellow-ground octagon in which a Chinese dragon and a phoenix are opposed to each other in combat. Both animals are stylized in geometrical form. Their blue colours, outlined in red, contrasts well with the yellow ground of the octagon. The design of the upper octagon appears to be somewhat more compressed than the lower. The corners between the octagon and the rectangular field are filled in with red triangles and rows of white hooks on red ground, creating a reciprocal hook design. The rectangular fields are surrounded by a small guardian border showing a row of pearls in different colours. The main border has red floral tendrils composed of identical, S-like ornaments on a brown ground. The Phoenix and Dragon carpet was first described in 1881 by Julius Lessing, and Wilhelm von Bode in 1895. Since then the Dragon and Phoenix carpet has been referred to in many books on Oriental carpets. A similar fragment was discovered in Fustat, with dragon and phoenix depicted in combat on a yellow field. The animals in this fragment are depicted in red, and outlined in blue. The minor border shows a variant of the "kufic" borders known from other Seljuq period carpets.