View Single Post
Old 14th February 2005, 10:52 AM   #55
Jens Nordlunde
Member
 
Jens Nordlunde's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Europe
Posts: 2,713
Default

This is what made me start the topic:
Arms and Jewellery of the Indian Mughuls, Lahor 1947, written by Abdul Aziz.
In the book he tells about Shah Jahangir, and about a falling meteor. The meteor fell around 10 April 1621 close to a village called Jalandhar. The meteor was dug up and presented to Shah Jahangir:
I ordered Master (Ustad) Daud to make a sword, a dagger and a knife out of it, and bring them to me. He represented that it would not stand below the hammer, and fell too pieces. I told him in that case to mix it with other iron and make use of it. As I had told him, he mixed three parts of lightening-iron and one of other iron, and having made two swords, one dagger, and one knife, brought them to me. From the mixing of other iron he had brought out its quality (watering). According to the manner of the excellent swords of Yaman and [the swords of] the South, it could be bent, and became straight again. I ordered him to test it in my presence. It cut very well, equal to true swords.
What Shah Jahangir means by saying 'a true sword' I don't know, but it is clear that meteoric iron had to be mixed, at least with the knowledge they had at the time.

So fearn, here we have a problem, as it seems as if you won't find a pure meteoric blade. From you posts, like with the posts of others, I more and more got the feeling, that you knew much more about the subject than most of us.
Thank you for taking your time to explain it to us - so far in a language which most of us can follow .
Nechesh, the above should answer your question as well.

Jens
Jens Nordlunde is offline   Reply With Quote