Ethnographic Arms & Armour

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Jim McDougall 12th October 2019 08:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kubur
Looks like markings on Yemeni sword...
Of course doesn't mean that the blade is Yemeni...
But deep crude engravings or stampings don't look European to me...



I'm with you Kubur, I have seen these kinds of groupings (the stars in V configuration and usually a 'comet' or moon as seen here, on blades in Arab context, often the 'Zanzibar' type nimchas.......used in Yemen.
It is hard to say where these markings were applied, but it does not seem they were European work, but seemingly copied. It has been suggested that some of the entrepots receiving blades for trade networks were duplicating various markings they had seen in the volumes of imports that came through.

These 'stars' are more like asterisks rather than the 'cogwheel' which is a disc with points surround. The cogwheel represents, as previously noted, a machinery element from the mills which produced blades.
The 'star' was an element of cosmological groupings.

Jens Nordlunde 8th December 2019 02:34 PM

When it comes to markings, I just found a funny quote in Sultans of the South. MET, 2008. Swords in the Deccan in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: Their Manufacture and the Influence of European Imports. On p. 224 Robert Elgood writes, 'English swordsmiths followed the custom of their Solingen contemporaries and struck whatever mark on the blade seemed likely to impress a potential buyer.'


So it was not only the Indian swordsmiths who copied the European maks, the Europeans copied each others marks as well.

kronckew 8th December 2019 04:56 PM

I also see the "Man in the Moon" in profile. :)


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