[ariel]

Teodor,

Professional Russian weapon historians and dilettante collectors alike put forward one explanation after another of the unusual construction of a Caucasian shashka. Among them is one exactly like yours: shashka is a a simplified version of a saber, kind of an ersatz weapon capable of being serviceable but without a time,- and money - requiring guard. You are also in a very good company of a splendid Latvian author of a book about history of knife fights, Denis Cherevichnik. He also thinks that Sardinian Leppa ( another guardless saber) was a weapon of poor men caring more about cost and simplicity than defensive functionality of guards.

Personally, I cannot exclude that shashka is a homage to the Ottoman Yataghan.

Kirill Rivkin recently published a video blog reviewing new books about Caucasian weapons. In it he mentions a monumental book by a Georgian researcher Mamuka Tsurtsumia that showed a very detailed and fully realistic picture of Georgian warriors wielding guardless sabers and reliably dated to 17 century. Regretfully, the book is in Georgian.
One of our Forumites, Mercenary, managed to unearth a Persian miniature dated to mid-18th century showing a battle of Persian and Afghani armies. Soldiers are shown armed with either “guarded” shamshirs or with guardless sabers ( shashkas?), both versions carefully drawn as such. These iconographic sources prove the existence of a shashka-like weapon 200-300 years earlier than the oldest examples known to us.