Another great assessment Jim.
Harry, I too would place this in the first 20-30years of the 20th century, they were made well after this too I am sure.
There are two schools of thought with these, one is they were never before 1900, the other is that they were...evidence does show these, as Jim referenced, that they appear well before 1900...but back to yours.
The overall designs and material to me, point to the early 20th century. To compare horses to horses, I too have one remaining in my collections, that if you saw it at face value, you'd say 19th century for sure as it is a superb quality for the type and has a wootz blade... but, it is named and dated as Lofty helpfully translated, dated to 1901 in our calendar. One could certainly argue both sides of the fence for it saying the inscription came later and wootz much be earlier, but equally, wootz blades were still being forged in to the early 20th century within Central Asia.
Gav
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