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What one can tell about Azerbajani weapons? First let us ask ourself, what is the Azerbajan and what is Persia. Since 12th century both become dominated by turko-mongolic tribes. Their military was traditionally composed from turkoman, with some inclusion of kurds and in later times - georgians, lezghi and even armenian. Persian as in "members of persian tribe" were present in the army in extremely small numbers, moreover traditionally they were used in gun bearing regiments. Because of this, I think it is rather strange to talk about some specific persian ifluence (whichwas mostly confined to language, literature, religion and government bureacracy), like their wrestling traditions, defining the nature of iranian arms. While in the current state of Azerbajani, the presence of Armenians, sunni Lezghi and others to some extenet decreased the power of turkoman lords, however massacres and deportations organized by Savafids gradually decreased such presense. Here one also must concentrate on turkoman influence.
If one to accept this, one can not truly distinguish between Karabagh (currently Azerbajan or Armenia) and Tabriz (turkish-speaking Iran). Both were controlled by the same families - should we expect chingizoid-turkoman Qajars, lords of Shusha and Karabagh, future Shahs or Iran, to change their weapons every time they cross Arax (river separating "Iran" from "Azerbajan") to arrive into their family strongholds in Shusha and Shirvan?
Should regular georgian army, recruited and armed in Georgia, used by Shah to control Afghanistan (see "Georgia and the Fall of the Safavid Dynasty," BSO(A)S 14, 1952, can be found of jstor) be labeled as the one carrying persian or georgian weapons ? What about Lezghis who served Nader-Shah (as all other Shahs with an exception of Pahlavi and Zand - not a persian by tribe)?
In fact, while one can certainly observe some tribal distinction between weapons of these countries, their mutual influence is colossal, specifically due to the common overpowering presence of turkoman clans. Again, one should not expect great variations among weapons used by the same Qajar family, whether in their lands in modern Azerbajan or in Tabriz.
Now to the point of quadara. I was trying to think in what context one can be depicted - it is certainly not so much a parade weapon, especially since Astvatsaturjan seems to descirbe single edge kindjals as "knifes", i.e. something quite utilitarian. The answer came when I was reading an article (I can not guarantee its accuracy, since it was heavily pro-armenian) with series of photographs - azeri artillery at Shusha, etc., one of them (the first picture below) was titles "shahsey-vahsey, Azerbajan". Shahsey-vahsey is a derogatory term, popular in Caucasus, for Shia Ashura festival. As one can see the weapon's blade here is straight, single edged. While I can not quarantee the authenticity of this picture, it is better than nothing.
Now to show that such quadaras and even kamas are not constraigned by any means to modern Iran - the following 2 pictures are from Iraq. On the first one you can clearly see quadaras in the crowd, on the last picture - a kindjal-kama. Again, Ashura festival.
P.S. A while ago I stated my disbelief that kindjals can be used in Ashura. Well, I stand corrected - I have seen a very sanitized version of Ashura, this one seem to be much bloodier.
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