Saifs

[ariel]

Nihl classified sabers according to the Polish school despite officially defining himself as belonging to the Indian one: by the handle:-) And I agree with him 100%.

Historically, all of them stem from South-Central Asian Nomadic tribal curve-bladed swords (sabers).
The earliest contact of any foreign military with them occured in the late 7rh century, when Khazars ( Turkic tribe occupying area berween Caspian Sea and Dniepr river/ Crimea, current proper Ukraine) fought with the Arab inviders trying to enter Europe through the Derbent Pass.

Subsequently, over the next couple of centuries victorious Arabs passed this pattern to the Persians, Khwarizmians, Selcuks, North -Africans Babur brought it to North India whence they spread all over the subcontinent. Mongols in the 13 century broughr it to Eastern Europe.
It became the most frequent blade pattern all over the World down to the current parade swords.

Every country, every ethnicity gave it its local name, that can be easily translated into a generic word “sword”. Arabs call it saif, Persians and Afghanis shamshir, Ottomans kilij, Uzbeks and Tajiks call it Klych, Indians call it Talwar, Poles - Szabla. The blades differ only mildly, some are wider, some are slender, they have different curvatures, some habe yelman, some have fullers etc. That’s all. In each country one could find blades with and without these features.

But the real ethnic difference is in their furniture, mostly in their handles. That is how we know that this one is Moroccan, that one -Indian, those are South Aravian, North Aravian, Persian etc.

The one we are discussing is a hybrid of several styles: it has generic Persian blade, but what pinpoints it to its origin is the Indian Baluch handle with its characteristic pommel and with the Omani silver knot on it.

That’s why I did not include Persian blade as a defining component: they were used all over the Islamic world and the entire Eastern Europe.

[Nihl]

Originally Posted by ariel

Nihl classified sabers according to the Polish school despite officially defining himself as belonging to the Indian one: by the handle:-)

Ariel, with all due respect, please do not tell me how I classify things. I found that your comment there rather rubbed me the wrong way.

I think perhaps my system might simply be too nuanced for you; you'll note that I, like I said I did, listed out both the hilt and blade origin when defining each sword, with the exception of the tulwar, for reasons I described in my previous post. Perhaps the shorthand description I gave of each sword (before the semicolon) confused you, but I think even then I was true to my word.

I gave brief descriptions like "turkish shamshir" and "syrian shamshir", which I think is accurate to my beliefs (or my "school"). If I cared more about the hilt, then I would not have included the term "shamshir", which describes the blade. Rather, I would have said "turkish kilij" and "syrian saif". If I had cared more about the blades, then I simply would have described all of them as just shamshirs. The tulwar, like I already said, I feel I have justified in my previous post, but perhaps I should have said "an indian tulwar with a persian shamshir blade" if I had known someone was going to give my post such a vapid analysis. I wanted to keep things brief as I do have a tendency to ramble otherwise.

[ariel]

Nihl,

I am sorry you took my comments the way you did. No ill intent was meant. You can classify objects any way you wish, but in fact your definitions of all of them fully coincided with the so-called " Polish system", i.e. primacy of the hilt, even in the case of a saber with Persian blade and Indian handle. That's all. There is nothing personal.

Yes, I know that Elgood also stressed separate descriptions of blade and hit. But in his case it was done with purely Indian objects composed of parts of different ages.

There are many ways how to name "composite" swords: Fiegel used the blade as a determining factor, Polish school uses the hilt, and there is no easy way to sum up every feature to describe swords belonging to a specific area but incorporating features/parts of multiple origin ( the Baluch/Omani saber is an example, likely because of long-standing tight relations of both geographic areas).

It is immaterial what kind of moniker we give to a sword as long as our description of its construction is openly listed. In any case, the contemporaneous local users most likely called them by their own local monikers. Throughout the Arab world all Indian tulwars, Moroccan nimchas and Turkish Kilijes were just " saifs", and virtually identical janbiyas were janbiyas in Yemen, but khanjars in Oman and had multiple different names in Aravia depending on the tribe. What we call Pulwar in our lingo, was just a shamshir for the Afghanis. We are not carrying those swords into battle and our lives do not depend on them. We are just collectors and our only law of the land is how to describe them in the most accurate way comprehensible to our colleagues.

And, as we know, there are at least 9 ways to skin the cat:-)

Peace?