Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

ariel · 8th March 2021, 03:08 PM

Agree.
It raises yet another digression. South Georgia and Northern Anatolia had a signigicant number of islamized Georgians ( besides Lazes), the so -called Meskheti Turks. In 1944 more than 100,000 of them were expelled to Central Asia to prevent their potential (!) espionage, collaboration with the Turks and other anti-Soviet activities. In general, the usual Soviet paranoia about “disloyal nations”. Likely there were a few jewelers among them:-). In that case the scabbard could date from 1950s or even later.

That might be the reason why Kwiatek found translation strangely “Caucasian”.

I wonder whether the origins of the peculiar throat of the scabbard might be found in the construction of local knives. Otherwise, I have difficulty to imagine how the entire thing functioned: there must have been an uncovered upper part of the edge. 50:50 chance that every time the owner tried to pull the kard/bichak ( ?) out he needed a Band-Aid:-)

8th March 2021, 03:08 PM	#26
ariel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 5,503	Agree. It raises yet another digression. South Georgia and Northern Anatolia had a signigicant number of islamized Georgians ( besides Lazes), the so -called Meskheti Turks. In 1944 more than 100,000 of them were expelled to Central Asia to prevent their potential (!) espionage, collaboration with the Turks and other anti-Soviet activities. In general, the usual Soviet paranoia about “disloyal nations”. Likely there were a few jewelers among them:-). In that case the scabbard could date from 1950s or even later. That might be the reason why Kwiatek found translation strangely “Caucasian”. I wonder whether the origins of the peculiar throat of the scabbard might be found in the construction of local knives. Otherwise, I have difficulty to imagine how the entire thing functioned: there must have been an uncovered upper part of the edge. 50:50 chance that every time the owner tried to pull the kard/bichak ( ?) out he needed a Band-Aid:-) Last edited by ariel; 8th March 2021 at 05:06 PM.