Jew-likes is something more similar to turkish denmeh than to karaites - while the latter ones are a sect in judaism. Jew-like (zhukty) means someone who descends from a jew, preferrably on their male line.
The reason for their existance is that until very recently religious identification for most of caucasians was rather vague. People lived by clans, sharing the same male ancestry. Female ancestry did not account for anything (since women were almost in 100% taken from clans or nations different from that of the father).
As a result, clans were identified by their founder - chechens of georgian ancestry (gurj), georgians of chechen ancestry, abaza of svan ancestry etc.
Similar to this jew-like clans (for example Bagrations) are defined as the ones that were founded by jews.
I don't think this sword has much to do with them...
Concerning shashkas - unless this is the same shashka being resold over and over again, I've seen quite a lot of those.
|