Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

ariel · 21st July 2016, 01:33 AM

Ibrahiim,
With all due respect it seems to me that you are "lumping" different and unrelated weapons into one happy family.

This may be a necessary and inavoidable step at the beginning of any scientific inquiry, but it should be followed by a more advanced stage, I.e. "splitting".

Regretfully, we do not have actual examples of Caucasian shashkas dating to before the very beginning of 19th century. Iconographically, there are portraits of Cossack chieftains dating to the 18th century with fully developed Circassian shashkas ( to the point of that there are Russian "patriots" claiming that shashka was an originally Cossack weapon, an that Caucasians just stole the idea from them). Similarly, I am unaware of any "Bukharan" examples before the 19th century. This is not dissimilar to our ignorance of Turkish weapons prior to Mehmet II. In that part of the world weapons were actually used non-stop, the idea of museum conservation was unheard of and nobody cared enough to leave a detailed treatise with illustrations and historical analysis.

Thus, the genealogy of shashka-like sabers can only be observed "... Through a glass darkly".....

21st July 2016, 01:33 AM	#23
ariel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 5,503	Ibrahiim, With all due respect it seems to me that you are "lumping" different and unrelated weapons into one happy family. This may be a necessary and inavoidable step at the beginning of any scientific inquiry, but it should be followed by a more advanced stage, I.e. "splitting". Regretfully, we do not have actual examples of Caucasian shashkas dating to before the very beginning of 19th century. Iconographically, there are portraits of Cossack chieftains dating to the 18th century with fully developed Circassian shashkas ( to the point of that there are Russian "patriots" claiming that shashka was an originally Cossack weapon, an that Caucasians just stole the idea from them). Similarly, I am unaware of any "Bukharan" examples before the 19th century. This is not dissimilar to our ignorance of Turkish weapons prior to Mehmet II. In that part of the world weapons were actually used non-stop, the idea of museum conservation was unheard of and nobody cared enough to leave a detailed treatise with illustrations and historical analysis. Thus, the genealogy of shashka-like sabers can only be observed "... Through a glass darkly".....