A question that always puzzled me: how did the Iranians "forget" how to to make wootz?
Why did not Javanese masters forget how to make pamor? The ban on carrying weapons came in Japan at about the same time the last Persian wootz blades were produced; nevertheless, the art of making Nihonto blades was fully preserved.
Why did it take Russian, German and American metallurgists to re-invent the technology of wootz manufacture?
Why weren't wootz blades manufactured in Turkey or Egypt? After all, it should have taken just a couple of Iranian masters brought to Istanbul to start up a mass production of wootz blades. I have a wootz yataghan of Balkan(?) provenance, but that's it.
Is it possible that there was no well-developed wootz-making industry in Persia, ie, the great majority of ingots ( or, in the extreme case, all of them) being made in India and exported to Iran for the final stage of blade forming? Is it possible that there was tight import control on the ingots consumed by Iran and not reaching the Ottomans? The withering of Iranian wootz swords ( mid-19th century) co-incides with the British ban on the manufacture of wootz ingots in India (allegedly to prevent deforestation). After that, all Iranian swords were of plain steel or mechanical damascus construction. That should not have happened had there been an established, independent wootz production in Iran. Russian Captain Massalski personally observed making wootz ingots in Bukhara in the first half of the 19th century. Are there any eyewitness accounts of wootz manufacture in Iran? This is a direct extension of Brian's earlier inquiry
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=4047
Back to my original question: perhaps, Persians never "forgot" how to make wootz; they just never knew. Perhaps, the reason why the Europeans could not find the secret of Persian steel was that they looked in the wrong place: they should have asked the Indians and the Uzbeks
