Hi,
Thank you all for your response, but particularly TVV who gave a good overview of the Egyptian situation. I think that this phenomenon is wider than Egypt alone.
In early Ottoman period, Ottoman military ruled and had all the weapons. Soldiers who were drafted in Albania, the Caucasus, and the Balkan brought their own regional weapons with them and these mixed into the wider Ottoman culture.
In later Ottoman period, the control over their territory became weaker and less centralized. More local dagger types emerged, but only where tribes and clans with independent character were present, like in, Lower Iraq, the Syrian desert, in Druze and Christian mountain strongholds and Kurdistan.
Eytan
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