Deadly Utility: Indo-Persian Scissors

[CharlesS]

I had seen pictures of Indo Persian scissors before, and often admired their elegance...and their quite lethal dual purpose...but I have not had a chance to purchase one til recently, and I like this example. The scissors are just over 8.5in. with its blades being 4.5in. Closed they have every bit the look of a dagger, note even the reinforcing rib to each outer blade. As utility cutters they are almost every bit as sharp as they ever were and will cut paper and common cloth with ease. RSWORD and I tried to figure out if they are wootz steel. You can't see it in my poor pics, but the inside and outside of the blades are two very different colors, so we wondered if perhaps the outside was a wootz veneer.

The decoration to the scissors at the rivet screw is chiseled and overlaid with silver, while the area of the finger holes is entirely silver(top 2.25in.)

Just a very neat and interesting conversation piece for the ethnographic blade collector! :)

[kronckew]

cool,

wonder how that fits into the concealed carry laws. i can see it now...

but officer, i was just going to my girlfriends house to clip coupons when i was accosted by those two now dead thieves who demanded all my money...

NEWSFLASH: Demon Barber of Fleet street punctures two with silver scissors of doom. news at 11:00.

[CharlesS]

cool, but to be cruel it's dual, not duel :)

Kronckew, that's not cruel, it's correct, and thanks for pointing out the oversight. I have made the correction. :)

[kronckew]

:) - i blame browser/text message spell checkers. ;)

anyway, neat instrument. wonder if it was for the female of the species for innocuous self protection.

[Oliver Pinchot]

Nice acquisition, Charles!
This is Ottoman work from the first half of the 19th century.
It was typically carried as part of a calligrapher or scribe's kit.
Since many were itinerant, travelling from village to village to
ply their craft, such a combination of utility and protection makes
perfect sense.

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

For a quick insight into Ottoman Arabian and Persian calligraphy equipment see http://calligraphyqalam.com/process/tools.html :shrug:

We seldom hear of paper and its role in Islamic Caligraphy... I noted Quote" Paper making technologies are believed to have been introduced to the Islamic world through Turkish and Chinese papermakers captured at the Battle of Talas in 751. Instead of using bark from the mulberry tree, however, papermakers in the Islamic world resorted to pressing linen rags (Johannes Pedersen, The Arabic Book, trans. Geoffrey French, [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984], 60-64). Unlike parchment (cured sheep or goat skin), paper could be made cheaply and in industrial quantities particularly after 794, when the first paper mill was established in Baghdad (Jonathan Bloom, Paper Before Print: the History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001], 29 and 48). Also see Helen Loveday, Islamic Paper: A Study of the Ancient Craft (London: Archetype Publications, 2001)"Unquote.

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

I wonder did scissors influence the design of the scissor style of Kattar Dagger?

[CharlesS]

Oliver, thanks for your input.

Ibrahim, I was just about to ask Oliver if he had a picture reference to a calligrapher's kit, but you already have shown us a splendid one!

Thanks for adding so much to this thread guys!

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Thank you Charles S. Certainly among the world experts in his field and particularly the Islamic sphere Oliver is the man to ask. I'm just a novice. Here below more scissors and a very nice Calligraphers box.

[Battara]

Fascinating!

[Oliver Pinchot]

La tahqur nafsak, ya Ibrahim! Your contributions to this forum are far more numerous than my own.
This compact variety of scissor with the loops wrought inline is often kept inside the qalamdan or pen box, together with reed pens, a pen knife and a small inkwell.

[CharlesS]

Isn't it interesting that something we take so for granted as a common household utility item was, in its own time and place. a painstaking work of art.

Thanks again for the input guys.

[benny.lee]

This is how exquisite！

[VANDOO]

I HAVE ALWAYS LIKED THESE BUT NEVER OWNED ANY, THEY WERE ALWAYS REFERRED TO AS PERSIAN SCISSOR DAGGERS. INTERESTING TO LEARN OF THE CALLIGRAPHY ASSOCIATION. I SEEM TO REMEMBER A GIRL ASSASSIN WITH AN EYE PATCH USING TWO OF THESE TO GOOD EFFECT IN THE MOVIE BARBARELLA. :)