Nomadic swords

[Philip]

You might want to see how the concept survived the post-medieval period, here illustrated by examples from the Mamluk and Chinese culture-spheres. To keep things more evenly comparable, these are all made by chiseling the shape in the steel of the blade, not by installing a separate component made of sheet iron or other metal. And all have the long side towards the edge of the blade.

The Islamic ones retain the feature in a stylistic sense only. By the end of the 15th cent. when these two blades were made, the original functional purpose of the device that inspired its use in medieval Eurasia had morphed into a stylized, decorative element. The two examples are identified as Mamluk; both are in the Topkapi Sarayi Museum. In the Furusiyya Foundation collection, there is a blade (inv. no. R-229) identified as Ottoman, 17th cent. that has a very similar feature (see The Arts of the Muslim Knight, 207, cat. no. 30, p 66)

The two Chinese ones are in private collections; the earlier one 16th-17th cent., the other one a century later. As with the Islamic ones, they have become more stylistic than functional. Indeed, by the 19th cent., tunkou fell largely into disuse on Chinese sabers.