Thread: Petra
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Old 8th October 2017, 11:19 AM   #13
motan
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Join Date: Apr 2016
Location: Jerusalem
Posts: 274
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Hello Oriental Arms,
Great picture. Good to see that the tradition is still alive. The whole attire has not changed much from around WWII.
The quality of Jordanian shibriyas is indeed not great, some rare exceptions aside. I think that it has to do with the lack of serious dagger-making tradition and the little money potential costumers could pay. The construction with thin metal foil over soft material like pine wood, held together by soft soldering of tin or lead is prone to damage. As cheap assesories, they were also not particularly well maintained.
The whole story of the rise of shibriya making and its peak in the 1940's and 50's is difficult for me to understand and I will not speculate here.
Shayde78, the writing on the your blade has no date and I think it is the makers mark because with my limited Arabic I can identify the word A'mal = the work of..=made by. I could ask someone to translate, but I am sure A.alnakkas can do it too. As I said before, your shibriya can be dated quite securly to the 1940's.
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