It is a couple of days since Ariel posted his typology of shashka and his conclusion that the Caucasian shashka and Afghan military variant shared many features in common, while the Bukhara guardless saber shares many common features with the Khyber variant. There has been no response to his classification, which does not necessarily mean that everyone agrees but I'm not hearing any major dissent either.
Ariel's analysis shows two distinct "patterns" and has been very well documented in his table that I have redrawn below with some regrouping to list a "Type A" and "Type B" of the swords that are variously called shashkas or shashka variants.
This is exactly the sort of typological classification I was hoping this thread would arrive at.
Ian.
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