hey a bit late to this thread, these are not tibetan knvies.. they are chinese muslim Hui knives, a conglomerate of different groups of chinese people converted by persian and arab muslim traders and missionaries and descended by arab and persians the mongols brought to eastern china, they were mostly used in the administration whenever the nomads invaded the chinese..
these chinese muslims had a higher social position in the mongol, manchus ect states than the ethnic chinese in general and were typically able to bare arms and had a much greater freedom of movement , being a small rather nonhomogeneous group dependent on the occupying force for their livelihood.
they also travelled abroad freely for hajj, trade ect. and so were the catalyst for chinese nationalism in the 19th century that rebelled against the collapsing occupying manchu state because of their access to weapons, better education than the general population and access to external information and their positions in the government and their greater freedom of movement.
their was various attempts by the hui to secure a posiiton of power both when the mongols collapsed and when the manchus did..
they made up the bulk of the warlords with the collapse of the manchu state,
even forming some caliphates in the 19th century and being the vast majority of the warlords fighting with the japanese and the communists.
they are a curious ethnogroup.
they are historically urban peoples, traders and employees of the state and were employed by the nomads to maintain their rule in urban settings in many places. this caused the group to generally be very dispersed throughout china.
Linxia is their current epicenter but historcally they had large populations in yunan, suchuan, guangdong, shanghai , beijing ect ect .. due to war and being targeted specifically over the centuries their population is much smaller than it was historically. the japanese had a particularly ruthless attitude towards them in eastern china as did the communists.
they had a mix of chinese and nomads bladed tools and weapons and you can see images of hui wearing large belt knives like the mongols and manchus do.
over time a some stypes of knives appeared that combined middle eastern, chinese and nomad traditions.
these include the products of the bonan people another interesting very small hybrid group of similar origins specialising in making knives and swords
the hui items have a distinct look and probably influenced chines items in general
you can see the rivets have flowers or wheels spoke Patterns on them, this is something distinct to chinese weapons. the fullering is very much middle eastern, persian ect in style and the blades with have chinese mosaic in them and sometimes a middle eastern inspired cartouche .
the Baldes are often very thick.
the sheaths will be a mix of middle eastern and nomad in style many times with a pointed chape more as a persian or afghan knife not a blunt mongol tip .
you can even see these middle eastern and central asian influences even on cantonese "butterfly" swords some times. riveted bone handles cartouches in the blades fullers doing uturns at the ricasso ect.
these leaf shaped knives can be long too up to 60 centimeters. similar in size to the long mongol knives. or they can be tiny in size .
ive also see examples with asymmetrical fullering like uzbek knives and caucascan knives sometimes have.
these is also double edged dagger versions of these and long narrow versions like a tibetan dagger.
some times they will have chinese writing on them , ive seem them also with arabic and manchu writing as well.
anyway considering the dispersed population of the hui and the nonhomogeneous nature of their culture and the fact that they are traders buying and selling items and trading and ordering goods from other ethnic groups they trade with id say these knives were not recognized as distinctly their own but something that came out of their population in general.
for example ive see quite a few marked as coming from yunan and Sichuan in collections or from hui in burma. but then their is others that have clear arsenal marks from armories in beijing ect.
its a sort of hybrid knives for several different cultures.
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