Ottoman Pala

[eftihis]

Hallo, the photos below are from the book "portrait types of the midway plaisance" printed in St. Louis in 1894. The book is a "collection of photographs of individual types of various nations from all parts of the world who represented, in the department of ethnology, the manners, customs, dress, religions, music and other distinctive traits and peculiarities of their race", and the photos have been taken at the 6 months of the Worlds Columbian exposition. There many nice photos, with great costumes but some confusing things between the dress and who wears it: Turkish dress by Jews, Greek dress by an Albanian, A Bashibuzuk by a greek, a Janissary by an Armenian! It seems that some of the "models" for the dresses were mostly professional actor-like characters from an area where many ethnic groups lived, and felt free to wear whatever costume from their area...
Anyway, on the page of the 2 photos below the title is: NICHAN (Armenian) and the description states: ..."Mr. Nichan, the JAnizary, is an Armenian, born at Savaz, Armenia, about 500 miles from Constantinople. He was one of the life guards of the late Sultan Abdul Aziz (he died 1876)................The great carved sword he wears, sheathed in a beautiful scabbard set with jewels and richly ornamented, was presented to him by the Sultan for meritorious services"
Therefore we have a proof that these swords were made untill recently, ie at least untill arround 1870s. And here is an example for what they were used for, ie as presentation swords.