Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post - Review of "Arms and Armour from Iran" by M. Khorasani

Rivkin · 18th November 2006, 09:54 PM

1. I did offer someone to coauthor the review, but we had a much too violent disagreement on whether "iron" is a variation of "iran" (as he believes), or, as per Abaev, Oranevsky :") and others one must consider an autochtonous origin. However, I did email prior to the publication a copy of this review to some forumite, mostly those who liked the book.

2. I have been interested in the subject for a while, so I did collect some references. I am however not a specialist (sorry for repeating), so I did expect that for example Dr. Feuerbach, who actually _did_ work with alanic weapons would find some error in my statements.

3. Actually one of the biggest challenges of working with weapons is that most of the publications, outside of some very old weapons for which one should check the archeology publications, occur often in God forsaken journals. Actually it is very hard to get good information, and I actually have far better references, but I did not include them in the review since they are virtually unobtainable (for example, there is a very good Ph.D. thesis by Nakov) and my use of them for reviewing purpose would be unethical.

4. Concerning weapons in general, we know too little right now. Iranian shamshirs as a type where made virtually in the whole middle east and attributing them can be hard to impossible, I have seen 2-6 pages full of references dedicated to a _single_ controversial sword, simply citing different opinions - what area is this "rumi" style is most characteristic for, what kind of koftgari technique is used (for example in Dagestan they like the koftgari to be elevated with respect to the sword's surface, i.e. the gold writing sticks out of plane). There are a lot of weapons that we know from textual information, but don't know how they look like - for example there is a lot of evidence that in 1600-1730's Karabagh (Azerbaijan/Armenia) was a huge center of arms production of swords and guns by local armenians, something like 3000 muskets per year. The weapons made where distinctive types of shamshirs and straight broadswords (as described by Ivan Karapet and others). Now do we know how these weapons look like, i.e. which of current "iranian shamshirs" come from this area ? Or, for example, can one make some sort of a conclusion from the statement that wide appearance of stamped marks on blades made in Tbilisi, practise quite characteristic of Northern Iran/Azaerbaijan coincides with a start of a massive migration of Armenians from Northern Iran to Tbilisi ?
Or, for example, Arakel Davrizhezi writes that in the time of Abbas II the sharpest and biggest shamshirs were designed to chop lamb's head with a single stroke, and was used by jewish butchers, and therefore if it was discovered in a house of a muslim, such person would be assumed to be a secret jew. Again, what are the shamshirs he talks about ?

18th November 2006, 09:54 PM	#45
Rivkin Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 655	1. I did offer someone to coauthor the review, but we had a much too violent disagreement on whether "iron" is a variation of "iran" (as he believes), or, as per Abaev, Oranevsky :") and others one must consider an autochtonous origin. However, I did email prior to the publication a copy of this review to some forumite, mostly those who liked the book. 2. I have been interested in the subject for a while, so I did collect some references. I am however not a specialist (sorry for repeating), so I did expect that for example Dr. Feuerbach, who actually _did_ work with alanic weapons would find some error in my statements. 3. Actually one of the biggest challenges of working with weapons is that most of the publications, outside of some very old weapons for which one should check the archeology publications, occur often in God forsaken journals. Actually it is very hard to get good information, and I actually have far better references, but I did not include them in the review since they are virtually unobtainable (for example, there is a very good Ph.D. thesis by Nakov) and my use of them for reviewing purpose would be unethical. 4. Concerning weapons in general, we know too little right now. Iranian shamshirs as a type where made virtually in the whole middle east and attributing them can be hard to impossible, I have seen 2-6 pages full of references dedicated to a _single_ controversial sword, simply citing different opinions - what area is this "rumi" style is most characteristic for, what kind of koftgari technique is used (for example in Dagestan they like the koftgari to be elevated with respect to the sword's surface, i.e. the gold writing sticks out of plane). There are a lot of weapons that we know from textual information, but don't know how they look like - for example there is a lot of evidence that in 1600-1730's Karabagh (Azerbaijan/Armenia) was a huge center of arms production of swords and guns by local armenians, something like 3000 muskets per year. The weapons made where distinctive types of shamshirs and straight broadswords (as described by Ivan Karapet and others). Now do we know how these weapons look like, i.e. which of current "iranian shamshirs" come from this area ? Or, for example, can one make some sort of a conclusion from the statement that wide appearance of stamped marks on blades made in Tbilisi, practise quite characteristic of Northern Iran/Azaerbaijan coincides with a start of a massive migration of Armenians from Northern Iran to Tbilisi ? Or, for example, Arakel Davrizhezi writes that in the time of Abbas II the sharpest and biggest shamshirs were designed to chop lamb's head with a single stroke, and was used by jewish butchers, and therefore if it was discovered in a house of a muslim, such person would be assumed to be a secret jew. Again, what are the shamshirs he talks about ?