Quote:
Originally Posted by ariel
The clasp knife is a classical Ваlkan example: short and wide blade with a pronounced clip point. There are many identical examples shown in Tarik Gozo’s book “ Balkan Arms”. The exaggerated clip point is likely a purely technical feature to fit the wide blade into the curved handle: otherwise the blade would massively protrude and make the overall contour uncomfortable. The only example of a similar blade I know is the so-called Malappuram Katti from Kerala: but that area in India was heavily influenced by Arabs and Turks.
But what is really interesting is the blades of the non-clasp variety. They are identical to the panoply of Central Asian P’chaks , commonly known as “Bukhara” or “Uzbek” knives: among the shown examples we see Tugri ( point at the level of the spine), Kaike ( point raised above the spine) and Kazakhcha ( narrow blade with a short clip point). It makes me wonder whether both Balkan and “Uzbek” knives are renditions of ancient Turkic knives retaining their shapes in both localities for the past half-millenium.
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update / follow up:
just bought one of the non-clasp / straight variety ones (together with a clasp one) in Hercegovina where they are sometimes found & offered for sale and it looks very similar to both shown ones at the top and by Detlef's link. It is a typical knife known and used in the past there, confirmed by the local folks.
With the interaction in the Ottoman times it could well be some kind of exchange took or could have taken place between regions perhaps.
Unfortunately a lot is written about big fancy swords and daggers but hardly anything on this smaller knives