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Originally Posted by ariel
My undestanding is that Kindjal is a typically Caucasian weapon. All along, Caucasians of various ethnicities and religions were very active in foreign militaries (Mameluke in Egypt and, especially, in Persia. In the latter, they might have constituted the bulk of the military). Also, frequent invasions from Persia and Turkey displaced many of them into the victors' hinterlands.
This is a classical scenario for the spread of a particular weapon type.
I have a typical Kindjal, but it has a rhino handle and alligator (lizard?) skin stips on the scabbard: a very likely "Sudanese" type.
As to single-edge or double-edge... If Shashka is a "big knife", there is no reason why single-edge Kindjals could not have been also used in, say, Circassia. Are we saying that a single-edge Kindjal is a Persian development?
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This is similar to my thinking, especially since kindjals in Egypt were specifically recovered by napoleonic army from mamluks, and I have never seen them before or after on any pictures.
While I can not deny a chanse of such weapons created in parallel elseswhere, since kindjals are somewhat similar to ancient daggers - as in attachment (2500bc).
Now, other images coming with this post - two short transcaucasian "qaudaras" - almost completely straight blades, single edge and armenian family from Nagorny Karabagh (?), boy has a small knife-like quadara.
One of quadaras is photographed at the angle, so it is a little bit distorted.