TEHRAN (Trade Arabia) – More than 1,200 village women have started weaving a giant carpet worth $8.5 million that Iranian experts say would be the world's largest hand-woven floor covering. It was commissioned for a mosque in Abu Dhabi.

Jalaledin Bassam, director of the government-owned Iran Carpet Company, said weaving the carpet --6,000 square metres and weighing about 48 tons -- will take at most 14 months for villagers who will work two shifts daily.

“The carpet will be a symbol of Iranian handicraft industry,” Bassam was quoted as saying in an Associated Press report.

“It is decorated with traditional Persian designs and natural colors and is made of 2.2 billion knots.”

The weaving began last month in Baghshan, a village 800 km northeast of Tehran, and two nearby villages.

The weavers are all women between ages of 15 and 60, supervised by 50 men acting as technical experts who will travel to Abu Dhabi to join the pieces at the mosque once the carpet is completed.

The project has revived carpet economy in northeastern Iran at a time when carpet prices have plummeted.

Until this carpet was commissioned, the world's largest was in a mosque in Muscat, Oman. It also was the work of Iranian carpet weavers and shipped to Oman in 2000. That carpet had a surface of 5,000 square meters, weighed 22 tons and was valued at $5.2 million, said the report.