Review of "Arms and Armour from Iran" by M. Khorasani

[frequent]

Originally Posted by Rivkin

Btw, I have a question to those who read the book. It constantly says "attribute to" then the name of some Shah. How was this attribution made ? Was it made by analyzing when it was acquired by the collection, by analyzing the maker's mark and exactly pinning the sword's origin and the master and from the length of master's life - approximate production time or it was done solely based on what is written on the sword ?

Did they take in mind, how many of those "Shah Abbas" or "Nader-Shah" are fake, and how many of such swords Amuzga and Kubachi alone were making in XIXth century ?

hi i have been reading this thread and it is interesting but it isnt interesting in a good way. this looks like a negatively biased review can you offer any evidence for these claims that you're making please. please start with this last one you make. so much of this review is generalizing too many things. i dont understand why the moderators are not controlling this negative words here. i thought ths was a friendly place to go to.

[Rivkin]

Why not. Astvatzaturjan, "Oruzhie Narodov Kavkaza", p.202 ..."Besides signatures on the blades they used to put (long description of various items)... with a singature Haderat Shah Abbas, meaning "His Highness Shah Abbas"". Or for example on page 333 about georgian shamshirs: "Real iranian bular blades of XVIIIth century are rare. Much more often we see steel blades of caucasian work, imitating iranian shape with signatures imitating those on iranian blades". Sometimes this imitation was sort of painless, like "no hero but Ali, no sword but Zulfakar" on Geurk's blades, but sometimes it was quite menacing.

Now most of Amuzga "fakes" are quite easy to identify, even those that are copies: in XIXth century some russian noblemen would send a persian blade to Kubachi asking to make a copy.
In the end of Kubachi/Amuzga story I would say that I personally have seen a lot of absolutely fantastic blades from there attributed to various Iranian leaders, mostly to Nader-Shah (don't know why, but Kubachians probably were proud to withstand his siege).
There are even legends coming around about all of this, for example Rasul Gamzatov cites a funny legend "Napoleon was given by Persians a blade of Timur, the East is great, those of knowledge when looked at the blade immideately identified it as coming from Amuzga".

Look out for turks as well. Astvatzaturjan, "Turezkoe Oruzhie", p.111: "Comparing to sabres kilij, sabres shamshir have few signatures, From 21 sabres in the State Historical Museum, 7 are signed and only 2 of them are dated. Both blades and signatures were made in Turkey (using turkish methods of signing), but were supposed to be the work of iranian masters, specifically .... Assadullah from Isfahan. That is why the fake signature "Work of Assadullah from Isfahan" appears often on the blades from Hermitage and State historical museum".

Finally there is a blade that was recently shown by Dr. Feuerbach. I could not read "Shah Abbas" there, but I think I trust al-Anitzi. Is it also an early XVIIth century ?

In short, faking Timurs, Abbases, Assadullah was a profitable and respectable thing to do. I am not an expert and hope to be corrected by you, frequent (Ruel, Doug, Manoucher ?), or others, who are more of an expert. I hope numerous russian-speaking people here can check the translation.

Concerning friendly place - well we can occasionally ask questions here, don't we ?

[Rivkin]

The message that I have tried to deliver here - it can be written on the blade that was owned by biblical king David, or Mohammed, or Timur, or Shah-Abbas, but it does not mean they can be "attributed" to these historical figures, otherwise we have to assume that every blade in the pavilion of holy relics should be used to date arab and one - even hebrew swords, the spear of destiny should be used to date ancient roman spears and so on.
Some of them are definitely original and have authentic signatures, but some of them...

Btw, I repeatedly stated - treat my review with a grain of salt. It can be based, and a lot of things there can simply be wrong.

For example, frequent, that is a simple question - how come Iran lost its Circassian part to Russia ?

[B.I]

with my very limited knowledge of persian history, i am under the impression that persia was never truly conquered at any point in its history.
is this correct?
if so, then i am surprised at the lack of historical pieces pre-17thC and post 10thC in the museums. the museum pieces, whilst attractive, are not of higher quality than in many private collections outside persia.
is there a reason for this? (genuine question - am i missing something within the country's history that accounts for this lack of early steel weapons?)
there are many weapons in existance that cover this period, and i was hoping to see some early pieces still in persia (by early, i mean medieval and not before).

kirill, i think that your review was honest and thorough. whether others agree or disagree is meaningless, for it is a personal opinion and one offered up for discussion.
besides, after reading your review, manola has decided to buy the book. how can this possibly be a bad thing? the more people that buy the book, the more chance others will be published.

[Rivkin]

Well, it would not be ethical to Mr. Khorasani to blame him for not reading some obscue things.

Concerning the literature - you probably know it far better than I do. If you are interested in the obscure stuff, it is:
Kochkarov Umar Usufovich, Ph.D. dissertation, "Vooruzhenie srednevekovogo vsadnika ....",
Nakov Felix Ruslanovich, Ph.D. dissertation, "Cherkesskoe (Adygskoe) Klinkovoe oruzhie"
Shaviev N. A., "Istoriya i kultura kabardinzev ....", Nalchik, 1968
"Sbornik materialov po archeologii Adygei", Maikop, 1961
Concerning review papers I have not mentioned before, for example A.V. Komar, O. V. Sukhobokov, "Vooruzhenie i voennoe delo Khazarskogo Kaganata", Vostochnoevropeisky Archeologichesky Zhurnal, 3 (2000).

and so and so on. But again, you probably know so many more references, especially on early alanic/khazarian things.

[Ann Feuerbach]

Thank you. For my Alani etc info I ask my good friend Irina Arzhansteva, I want her to translate and publish her PhD (Moscow?). It was on the sword styles of Central Asia, she knows so much and has published so little on it.

[Rivkin]

In my experience getting Ph.D. dissertation copied from Russia is a royal pain until you establish a contact with a secretary/someone working in the library or so. You send them money and they scan it for you; working with department chairs or other high ranking people unfortunately does not work (at least did not work for me). It is a pity that there is a sea of works on early sabres (how can I not mention Gorelik, Kirpichnikov or literally dozens of others), but how much is translated ? Close to zero - a few works here, a few works there. I have approximately half of Kaminsky's review papers (unfortunately these ones are _really_ short reviews) scanned, so I can easily put them here (I am sure he would not mind). I do have some of this Ph.D. thesises also in a scanned version, however I would warn that some of them are not of top quality. They have a lot of new information, but you have to distill it from 200 pages.

[Andrew]

Originally Posted by frequent

i dont understand why the moderators are not controlling this negative words here. i thought ths was a friendly place to go to.

First, because the moderators are all in the USA, and I was asleep when the post was made.

Second, because negative words will not be "controlled" here. We will step in when the discussion gets off-topic, rude or uncivil.

[Rivkin]

By memory (can be imprecise):
Persia I think was completely conquered many times. Greeks, Arabs, Il-Khanid Mongols, Amir Timur... There would always some part remain where Iranian culture would preservere more, and some that were probably semi-independent, but the problem also is what do we understand by Iran, meaning what kind of boundaries do we accept as Iranian.

Iran de facto did not exist as a country for a very, very long time until Shah Ismail conquered most of it and established his Shia state.

Concerning things that happened to Persia in the mean time. Amir Timur organized massive deportations of all craftsmen to Bukhara and Samarkand, his capital. His favorite winter headquarters was Karabagh.
His favorite policy to resisting cities was to surround them, check the documents of exiting people, allowing craftsmen, sayed (i.e. "descendants" of Mohammed) and other "needed" people to proceed with deportation to Bukhara, then split the city into sectors, making each unit responsible for certain sector and requiring it to bring certain number of heads (calculated according to old maps and accounts on pre-war population). Then the heads would be deposited into huge piramids.
Not really much survived after these policies.

[Tim Simmons]

That is an interesting point. I have often wondered what weapons the nomadic peoples of Persia would have armed themselves with. Being rather keen on tribal rugs, from this I would think most of these weapons would not be the lavishly decorated ones. To the east of Persia the tribal weapons must have been the same as Afghan. People like Baluch, Timuri/Taimuri.

[Rivkin]

I hoped to see a lot about Steppe swords in this book, from Kalachuri to mongol weapons. However it seems that Iranian collections are not much better than the Western ones . It talks about crucible steel, mentions kalachuri, shows a tiny picture of seljuk sabre, and we arrive to shamshirs. There are a lot of Shamshirs in this book, hordes of them, but the information on pre-shamshir swords of Islamic period is relatively scarse.

[B.I]

Originally Posted by Rivkin

I hoped to see a lot about Steppe swords in this book, from Kalachuri to mongol weapons. However it seems that Iranian collections are not much better than the Western ones . It talks about crucible steel, mentions kalachuri, shows a tiny picture of seljuk sabre, and we arrive to shamshirs. There are a lot of Shamshirs in this book, hordes of them, but the information on pre-shamshir swords of Islamic period is relatively scarse.

the seljuk sabre is exceptionally important, and is arguably one of the most important early persian swords, given its fantastic condition. i know the present owner of this sword, and he wasnt too happy about its inclusion (done without his knowledge, hence the poor image). all the information included was taken from a publication by the previous owner, and much research has been done on it since.
i urge anyone in, or going to italy to go to the basilica. in the treasury room (ground floor) there is a persian dagger which they claim (with no real knowledge of the subject) to be of the 14thC. whether this date is accurate or not i dont know, as it is not my field. but, it is definately old and pre-dates the 16thC. the room is very dark, and photography is prohibited. i do have a few images somewhere, but they are poor and done quickly with no flash. as far as i know, the dagger has not been published. david alexander dismissed the 14thC date, but couldnt offer me an alternative. but, i have seen him get it wrong before, so the dagger is definately up for someone to research further!

[tsubame1]

Originally Posted by B.I

i urge anyone in, or going to italy to go to the basilica.

Sorry for asking, B.I., but here in Italy we've more "Basilica" that empty vodka bottles in Russia. Which one you refer to ? S.Pietro in Rome ?
I'm interested due to my capacity to go everywhere as far as Catholic Churches goes even to take pictures and handling material, or making somebody else allowed to make it.
It would be interesting to have further information.