Yatagan or ??

[kino]

I'm adding, to the abundance of yatagan photos and questions on this forum lately.
I'm not really sure if this is considered a yatagan. Does the blade, hilt, or both make a yatagan? The blade shape doesn't possess the profile, yet it has the lobed pommel.The hilt is of elephant ivory.
It's on the small side, measuring at 20.25", with a blade length of 14.75".
Is it a yatagan or not?
Thanks.

[Atlantia]

Hi Kino,

I think that one may well be a Bichaq.
I believe to qualify as a yataghan it would need to have the 'recurved' blade.

Looks like a good piece!
Any chance of pattern welding hidden in the blade?

Regards
Gene

[Battara]

Well, I have also seen "yataghans" of this size and style that were considered naval yataghans.

[kino]

Hi Kino,

I think that one may well be a Bichaq.
I believe to qualify as a yataghan it would need to have the 'recurved' blade.

Looks like a good piece!
Any chance of pattern welding hidden in the blade?

Regards
Gene

Thanks Gene.
Haven't played with it much, I'll do a quick hot water etch to see in any patterns pop up.

Well, I have also seen "yataghans" of this size and style that were considered naval yataghans.

Well, I'll have to do a search to just to see what a Naval Yatagan & a Bichaq looks like.

[ariel]

Yataghan-like daggers, similar to that one, were called "yataghan bichaq".
Their blades were often ( almost always) straight.

[TVV]

Bichaq is simply the Turkish word for knife, so it could mean a variety of things. It can certainly be applied here.

In another thread I believe Eftihis showed a similar dagger, which if I recall correctly was made from a shortened Portuguese sword. Here it is:
http://vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=12253

The naval attribution on a similarly hilted dagger, with a reworked smallsword blade came from Rsword in this thread:
http://vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=6263&highlight=smallsword+ottoman

Regards,
Teodor

[kino]

Thanks for the additional info guys.

[Atlantia]

Good info chaps. I had thought that Yataghans had to have the recurved blade.
:)

[Battara]

There are large straight yats I have seen.........

[Atlantia]

There are large straight yats I have seen.........


Hi Battara,

I always thought the occasional Yats with straight blades were just semi-atypical anomalies.
What would make this knife/dagger specifically a Yataghan, and not something else?
I'm not disagreeing with you, just curious and wanting to extend my own knowledge :)

Best
Gene

[TVV]

Hi Battara,

I always thought the occasional Yats with straight blades were just semi-atypical anomalies.
What would make this knife/dagger specifically a Yataghan, and not something else?
I'm not disagreeing with you, just curious and wanting to extend my own knowledge :)

Best
Gene

As to what makes a yataghan, that is a good question and hard to answer, precisely because of the variety of hilts and blade shapes. Also, there are swords with recurved blades (say, from Southern India), which are not yataghans, just like not every dagger with a flamboyant blade is a keris (and there are straight keris as well).

That being said, there are plenty of straight yataghans, which appear to have been popular in the North-Western Balkans, judging on the abundance of such specimens in the Croatian History Museum catalogue, as opposed to the Askeri Museum catalogue, where there are only two.

It would appear that just like with keris, the blade and mountings of yataghans were dictated by regional preferences. However, the yataghan never really had the same cultural significance as the keris, and therefore there are not any features that need to be present on a dagger to qualify it is a yataghan. As a result pretty much any eared pommel dagger of Balkan and/or Turkish origins of significant proportion could be classified as a yataghan.

If you feel this is not very helpful and quite confusing, you would be correct - welcome to my world.

Regards,
Teodor

[Battara]

I will say that most yats have a recurved blade. Most have some kind of "ears" whether large (often Balkan) or small (often Turkish).

[Emanuel]

Would it be safer to define the object based on a general range of typological features and geographic characteristics?
So instead of "a recurved blade with eared pommel", we might define it as a "short sword or long knife with slab hilt construction and lobed pommel, generally produced and found in areas of Ottoman influence". This would cover Turkey proper, the Balkans, as well as the Maghreb and the Caucasus.

Apparently with all ethnographic weapons we have a fairly broad range of features to consider, with legitimalte examples at the extremes as well as the centre. The example in this thread may not represent the standard yataghan, but its features still fall in the range commonly defined as a yataghan.

Just my thoughts.
Emanuel