Perhaps, steady-state was an imprecise choice: I meant established, functioning, well-oiled or suchlike.
Going to a different topic I raised earler: the origin of the curved saber.
The Mohamed's book shows Khazar sabers, some with pretty obvious false edge ( vestigal yelmans) and suggests that these were the swords later called Kalachuri by the Persians/Indians.
This being the case, one would have to re-think the origins of the Shamshir.
According to Zakey, the introduction of the curved sabers into Muslim culture occured with the Turkic Mongols invading Persia in the 13th century.
However, Umayyad Arabs fought Khazars as early as in the 7th-8th centuries and Northern Iran was a part of the battlefield. This is when the straight Arab swords met the curved Khazar ones for the first time. Thus, it is likely that the replacement of the sword pattern in the Islamic armies occured much earlier than we think. Persians, who were under full Arab control, just adopted the new and superior pattern and continued to curve it more and more until the Safavid era. Another possibility is that the Seljuk ruler Israil ( a native Khazar or adopted Khazar) introduced curved Khazar sabers during his wars with Mahmud Ghaznavi in the 11th century.
Either explanations ( likely, the former one, ie Khazar-Arab Wars) would represent the starting point of the introduction of curved sabers into Islamic military culture. This would explain the North's and Nicolle's claims that curved sabers were present in the Islamic world as early as 8th-9th centuries.
If the Persian cavalry under Shah Mohammed fought the invading Mongols with straight swords, I must be wrong. If, however, they already had curved sabers, the idea of the " Chingiz Khan- inspired " origin of shamshir must be incorrect.
|