Hello,
I would like to present a central asian knife of the latter 19th century. It has white metal mounts in the typical style decorated with parcel gilding and niello and of course a band of inlaid turqoise. Length 31 cm, blade length 20 cm.
What I have not seen on arms of that region before, unlike for example on Afghan, Indian or Sudenese Arms, is an inscription shallowly etched into the wootz steel blade.
It is quite faint, probably having been repolished and re-etched more than once in its life, and extremely hard to photograph especially the latter part. I still hope someone like kwiatek might be able to shed some light on the contents.
For what it's worth I believe the first word to be کارد i.e. 'kard' and the date ۱۲۸۲ as an al hijra date corresponding to 1865-66 which would be plausible.
Thanks for looking
