Ariel, the Tartar weapon certainly resembles the second Circassion sabre...almost identical.
The weird thing is that extremely thin point...it's almost recurving, it's like a thin tail or barb (the fish connotation is apt in this case). The flyssa is similar, but none of the straight examples I'm looking at (the inexaustible Oriental Arms archive
) have this feature, and neither does the curved one that started this thread. I can't deny the strong similarity though
The scenario at this point would be that a considerable contingent of Circassians? would have been dispatched to Algeria. The only info I've found so far is that 2000 yeniceri were originally sent to Algiers, their number eventually swelling to 18000 by the French conquest in 1830. Apparently they were garrisoned in Algiers itself, venturing out to put down rebellions and fight border wars/battles with Morroco and Tunisia.
Since Kabylia was generally closed off to Ottoman incursions, how would these Circassian swords have reached such prevalence in Kabylia? If the swords were seen as an exotic commodity to be adopted, how come it wasn't restrained to the elite?
I like these questions a lot! Ottomans kept lots of records...somewhere there must be some registers about the constitution of the troups sent to Algeria. I'll keep looking
Emanuel