Perfectly explained Dima! and I well understand their preference for isolation, after all, they were indeed always threatened by invasion. The 'Great Game' was not just a 19th century phenomenon (invasions through millenia) and their strategic location in Central Asia made it a most desirable real estate.
With the focus on firearms in the 19th c. it would seem that swords and blades were surely secondary in the arms game, so that incidental production, mostly remounting, probably continued in more isolated tribal levels.
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