Ottoman Hancer for translation

[mariusgmioc]

Originally Posted by motan

Hi Mariusgmioc,
I do not disagree with either you or Kubur, but just want to cast doubt on some conventional notions that have little evidence in support and to demonstrate the problem of Ottoman identity.
Just as an example, you say that Osman (Othman) is not an Albanian name. Well, it isn't, but many soldiers, Janissaries and Mamlukes took on a Turkish or Arab names.
The fact remains that most people think that this type of dagger is Albanian, but we already know that some, like yours, were not made in Albania.
Another problem is that this type of dagger, as well as good Kurdish daggers and some Iraqi daggers have wootz blades of this style, which is NOT Persian of the same period (late Qajar) of good+ quality. All of those are attributed to the 19th century. This is in disagreement with the notion that wootz production has stopped is Southern India in early 19th c and was non-existent or forgotten in all other areas.
To sum it up: very nice dagger , very rare to find provenance on such daggers, therefore extra special. For the rest, it is all open.

PRECISELY! Now, as much as I would like to disagree, I simply cannot find anything in your comment to nit pick and have to agree with everything you said... but...
... there is always a but...

Just because "most people think that this type of dagger is Albanian" does make it necessarily true?!

Also, stylistically they don't have almost anything Albanian or as a matter of fact from the Balkans... (yet they have very much Persian influence in shape, decoration an script).

So... citing from guess who...

... "just want to cast doubt on some conventional notions that have little evidence in support and to demonstrate the problem of" Albanian identity.

Moreover, as you said, many of them are sporting nice wootz blades which are NOT known to be the work of any Albanian smiths as wootz production was pretty much restricted to India and Middle East...
... and, again as you said, they are NOT the high contrast Persian wootz, nor the finer patterned Indian Wootz but a lower contrast wootz of uncertain origin... that happens to be very common in some Turkish blades.

see another example of such lower contrast wootz at the link below

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=25477

Now, how many examples of such daggers do we have with certain (not anecdotal) Albanian origin?!

And even if production of wootz has stopped in India in early 19th century, does it mean it stopped everywhere... at precisely the same time?!
Or the disappearance of wootz production stretched over more decades as old wootz ingots were still abundantly available, and there was a pretty large pool of old wootz blades that could be reworked.

PS: Even if they didn't know to produce new Valyrian steel anymore, they were still capable to rework old blades... right?!