Thread: Old Khyber
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Old 11th September 2019, 12:24 AM   #29
ariel
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Quote:
Originally Posted by motan
My 2 cents:
- The knife itself looks true to type and old, although sophisticated forgery of the whole knife, as well as later "decoration" can not be totally rejected. We will probably never know. The argument that this is not typical of Khyber knifes only means that and no more. A-typical weapons are found in all categories (like in Jimws example).



A more productive way to approach this knife would be to try to read the texts and see in what language they are written and what they say.
The inscription is in Farsi. I saw word “Allah” and am almost sure the entire text is a part of one of the Suras.
Regretfully, I discarded all other images and cannot find them. Will try more, but 99% it will be something generic and not helpful.

Motan turned this discussion into a rational direction. And Richard G’s suggestion of a Jalali calendar is appropriate accounting for the Farsi inscription and mass production of etched blades in Persia at that time.

I would like to ask a general question: on what grounds do we discard unusual objects as some kind of “fake”?
This khyber ( and right away: I did not buy it simply because it was not very interesting to me ) is indeed unusual for several reasons. But inventing stories of “souvenir”, “last 20-30 years”, “Sunni religious beliefs” is not productive. We see tons of unusual, atypical weapons, but as Motan rightfully said, this means only that they are atypical, and no more.
Shouldn’t we rely in our assessments on physical facts?
By now everybody agrees that this khyber is genuinely old. Wouldn’t it be honest to conclude that we have no idea when its blade was etched? That “1229” may be a genuine date ( even in Jalali)?

I think that a proper way of attributing and dating old weapons should be based on hard facts and not on rash personal feelings. This is how every branch of real science works.
And if we do not have facts at our disposal, we need to humbly conclude that we just cannot date an object based on the existing information instead of dumping it into a garbage bag of seller’s shenanigans. We may conclude that we do not like it, that our antennae are twitching etc., freely admit it, and no more. And not buy it. This is a realm of emotional response, but not a scientific approach.

This Forum prides itself on striving for scientific approach. Jim is a walking encyclopedia of esoteric information, Jens forgot more about Indian weapons than we all remember, Motan seriously studies shibriyas, Battara is our Moro guru, Alan knows more about Indonesian Kris than anybody I know etc, etc. ( sorry if I did not mention other people, but I had to stop somewhere:-))
Even they admit from time to time that they do not know something and cannot pass an informed judgement. Shouldn’t we all adopt a similar attitude?

“Just the facts, Ma’am!”
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