Mystery Weapons from Bulgaria

TVV · 23rd May 2005, 08:06 PM

Great points, Erlikhan. However, there were Christians who were permitted to carry weapons, for example some Christians occupying minor administrative positions, such as being in charge of high mountain passes, etc. Also, even before the 19th century there were quite a lot of outlaws in the Balkans, some of them Muslims and deserters from the Turkish army, and some were Christians. The latter are sometimes romanticized as rebels but the truth is the great majority of them had no nationalistic or revolutionary sentiments and took up arms with plundering as their sole motivation and attacked Muslims and Christians indiscriminately. There were also a number of small unsuccessful rebelions and uprisals, whose participants used a variety of weapons.
When talking about Bulgarian types and variations of edged weapons I am not trying to separate them into Christian and Muslim examples, on the contrary, I believe the same weapon types were used by both Christians and Muslims, which can be evidenced by photographs of Bulgarian haiduts and revolutionaries, posing with kilidjes and yataghans. What I was trying to state in the begining of this thread was that in the lands that are now Bulgaria the edged weapons looked a bit different to the ones in Anataolia, who looked different from the ones in Greece, etc. There were local preferences in design and decoration, and there were perhaps one or two weapon types that are found in this region only, such as the mystery wepons from the start of this thread. And even those may not be Christian at all.

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23rd May 2005, 08:06 PM	#15
TVV Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Bay Area Posts: 1,660	Great points, Erlikhan. However, there were Christians who were permitted to carry weapons, for example some Christians occupying minor administrative positions, such as being in charge of high mountain passes, etc. Also, even before the 19th century there were quite a lot of outlaws in the Balkans, some of them Muslims and deserters from the Turkish army, and some were Christians. The latter are sometimes romanticized as rebels but the truth is the great majority of them had no nationalistic or revolutionary sentiments and took up arms with plundering as their sole motivation and attacked Muslims and Christians indiscriminately. There were also a number of small unsuccessful rebelions and uprisals, whose participants used a variety of weapons. When talking about Bulgarian types and variations of edged weapons I am not trying to separate them into Christian and Muslim examples, on the contrary, I believe the same weapon types were used by both Christians and Muslims, which can be evidenced by photographs of Bulgarian haiduts and revolutionaries, posing with kilidjes and yataghans. What I was trying to state in the begining of this thread was that in the lands that are now Bulgaria the edged weapons looked a bit different to the ones in Anataolia, who looked different from the ones in Greece, etc. There were local preferences in design and decoration, and there were perhaps one or two weapon types that are found in this region only, such as the mystery wepons from the start of this thread. And even those may not be Christian at all.