Hi Ariel, you are right of course. It was late and I did use my words a bit loosely. Denis' idea is a hypothesis and not a theory and I only meant that it was yours because you brought it up, eventhough you did not give an indication that you actually support it. But I am not a moran
. There are hardley any bedouin daggers that were made before 1900 and survived. They are not very sturdy and were discarded when out of use. Many shibriyas found in local souks are in very poor shape. This, together with the lack of written sources, make it highly unlikely to find any evidense supporting Denis' idea. In my view, shibriyas are a local type with very humble beginnings (see picture) made in small towns bordering the Syrian desert/Negev/Sinai to the needs and imagination of local users, but this idea is only based on observation and deduction from scant evidence.