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Originally Posted by Jim McDougall
I cannot add to this, but also find it most interesting. The lore of poison blades is known in medieval Europe and most certainly probably in many other cultures and times, but as noted, there seems to be no hard evidence of any such practice. ...
It seems in reality that these would lose or alter their properties in such processes as forging, but simply the knowledge of their presence might have led to such allusions.
I did read somewhere that some sort of 'paste' using various toxic venoms was used on blades, but again, this seems another form of psychological oriented myth.
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i saw a video not all that long ago, on youtube i think, of a phillipino bladesmith forging a blade and rubbing it with crushed deadly spiders to make the blade more deadly. he said it infused the blade with spider venom, but i must assume the heat treatment afterwards would burn it all up.
edited: found it,
HERE
as a side comment, even islam is not a homogeneous religion. as there are a number of sects like the sunni and shia that do not like each other very much. and others. islam does not have an overall religious leader like the catholics (the pope) and the buddhists (dalai lama). even the christian protestants have a pyramidal rank structure of bishops and arch bishops.
turkey, in the form of the ottoman empire used to provide some structure under it's sultan who was also the caliph and religious leader, but vast as it was, did not extend into lands outside the ottoman control. when it fell apart and the west imposed artificial boundaries without regard to local conditions, the seeds of the present conflicts in the region were sown, and we are forced to live with the resulting crops.
ah, well, enough politics. back to the present. at least the diversity provides us with a never ending source of differing sharp pointy things to collect.