OTTOMAN....What do we mean?

[kahnjar1]

Originally Posted by Kubur

I agree with Ariel.
Ottoman is a very practical term to stay vague and to me much more cautious, than to pretend to know exactly where an object comes from.
If i'm sure of an origin for example, I will say Balkans or whatever, if I'm not sure, I will say Ottoman...
For Indo-Persian, I totally agree, it's too big and I don't like this vocabulary.
I guess for a lot of people, Indo-Persian means just a location: between modern days Pakistan and Afghanistan...
A lot of Persian influences in India probably pushed a lot of collectors to talk of Indo-Persians weapons. To me the opposite is not true, except few cases I haven't seen a lot of Indian weapons in Persia... I hope someone will understand what i'm trying to say...

As we know the Ottoman Empire was rather large and existed for a relatively short time in history, and the term therefore as you say is very vague. There are other ways of answering the question as to origin, that would perhaps be more helpful.....something like, as an example, "Ottoman, possibly/probably Turkish or Balkan" I realise these days that it is not very PC if one is found to be wrong in what they say, but isn't that the purpose of this Forum....to DISCUSS and if possible reach an agreement?? Being wrong is not a crime!
Stu