Kindi on swords and iron
In Medieval Islamic Swords and Sword making, Kindi’s treatise ‘On swords and their kinds’, by Robert G. Hoyland and Brian Gilmour, 2006, there is something interesting when Kindi describes the Frankish sword – here is a quote.
Page 42 ……[And] on their foreparts are crescent moons filled with yellow copper or gold, or a cross likewise filled [with yellow copper or gold]. And among them are some that have an incision in one part of their structure into which a nail of gold or yellow copper has been worked. Sometimes in the most well-formed [ancient] Yemeni swords that nail was also nailed with gold into its structure or tip. ……
Kindi is assumed to have lived in the first half of the 7th century AD, so the use of copper/gold nails is very ancient, as I suppose it is older than he is, and we both know that using the crescent moon is far older than Islam, but it is interesting that he mentions it. I wonder what Kindi means when he refer to ‘ancient Yemeni’ swords – how old would they be? Worth noticing too is, that he describes swords from ten different places, but it is only on the Frankish swords he describes markings like this.
Page 21 ……The Sri Lankan [swords] is divided into four categories. Among them are those forged in Sri Lanka. And among them are the Khurasani, which are those brought from Sri Lanka and its iron worked in Khurasan. And among them are the Mansuri, of which the iron is brought from Sri Lanka and they are forged at Mansura. And among them are the Frasi, of which the iron is brought from Sri Lanka and forged in Fars, and they are called imperial. The latter is itself divided into two categories: those bearing figures and trees and other images, and the plain swords.
Interesting to read about the early iron export within India, but they did of course also export iron to the Arabian Peninsula and to other places – we are in the early 7th century AD, so this export had been going on for centuries.
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