Beautiful pictures Wolviex. You mentioned these are sabres, so I'm guessing that these blades, unlike the Topkapi swords, are not straight. Judging by the number of examples, this style of decoration however appears to be relatively common.
About the writing, I can't read Persian, but I can read Arabic. I don't understand that inscription, so I'm guessing it is not Arabic.
The style of the script is Nasta'liq, a style that was used mainly in Iran and India.
Early Arabic inscriptions, up until the 12th century, use a script (the arabic word for script is khatt) called Kufi. Many of the "Blessed swords" do have Kufi inscriptions on them. In the late 12th century more flowing styles of script like naskh became fashionable. Mamluk art usually used another script called thuluth, although kufi was still occasionally used during the mamluk period, and the Ottomans tended to prefer a script called diwani.
Last edited by Aqtai; 22nd June 2005 at 10:32 PM.
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