Comments, please on Turkish Knife, made from a file

[ham]

By reading and rereading Homer's Iliad over a period of years, a German entrepreneur named Heinrich Schliemann found and excavated the ruins of Troy at Hissarlik in the latter 19th century. Both self-educated and self-financed, he performed a genuinely remarkable archeological feat-- yet in his eagerness, Schliemann dug right through Homeric Troy, to reveal several earlier levels of the ancient city.

When considering an artifact, it is wise not to proceed with an end result in mind-- let the piece reveal itself.

Considering the various elements of this dagger, it becomes clear that it is not a cohesive work. Rather, it is an agglomeration of alterations and additions. The fact that the blade is ground from a file is the least important matter in ascertaining its origin-- Britain exported good Birmingham files to Africa, the Middle East and all of Asia throughout the second half of the 19th century-- such items were traded and retraded to even farther geographical locations.
Consider: form of grips-- generally Ottoman, yes. The faceted bolsters are brass, the grips are wooden-- since both appear intrinsic to the piece they are the place where one ought to begin. This was a humble piece to begin with, though reasonably well constructed. Blade is also modest though well-ground, and of Ottoman, not North African, form.
All the rest is elaboration. The silver boss on the pommel is not Ottoman, rather it is Indian, probably Rajput as it is matrix-hammered. The wire wrap certainly is similar to work done by the Moros (Muslim Filipino indigenes-specialists kindly forgive the lack of specificity) but not necessarily exclusive to them. It can also be Arab.The sheath of wood has incised designs, typical of Algerian flyssa sheathes, yet the silver mounts are unusual in combination with it. They may well be Arab as has been observed above, but this again is not exclusive. Very similar work was produced in various parts of Indonesia. Is the sheath original to the dagger or is it a near fit which was associated with it? Finally, were these alterations made in the knife's working life or afterwards-- more recently? If the dagger and sheath and all the embellishments display a consistent patina, the dagger probably came from Anatolia and was then embellished and fitted with its silver-mounted sheath on the Arabian peninsula.

With a piece like this, it is much easier to ascertain what it is not, than what it is. By ruling out possibilities, we are left with likelihoods. Observation, followed by deductive reasoning, take us where direct assumptions cannot.

Ham