The question of Egypt

[Roland_M]

Originally Posted by motan

How come Egypt is such an exception?

Egypt was constantly occupied by different conquerers since around 500 BC.

The career as a province started with the persian Cambyses II. in 525 BC and ended in the 19th ct. after the liberation from Ottoman rule.

As a foreign ruler one the first things you have to do, is to stop any kind of local military arms production!

This is the reason, why wo cannot found Egyptian patterns. It is the same thing as with Greece after it became a Roman and later an Ottoman province. Or with the Balkan under Ottoman rule.

The egyptian weapons before 525 were mainly made from bronze and simply were reused as tools or whatever, since bronze is very easy to shape.

It also often happens, that conquerers destroy or confisticate all weapons to avoid revolt (Germany after WW2).


Roland

[ariel]

Roland,
Turks actually encouraged production of weapons in their occupied areas. The entire Balkans during the Ottoman rule were a giant weapon forge. Not only did they manufacture “ Turkish looking” weapons but also develop their own styles: witness Epirus swords, characteristic Cretan yataghans, Grecian bichaqs, Bulgarian karakulaks, “naval” yataghans etc, etc.
The entire Elgood’s book is dedicated to them.

Egypt under Mohammed Ali was in reality a quasi-independent state that actually fought with the Ottoman Empire. They must have had a well-developed arms and armor production enterprise.

The puzzling fact is the virtual absence of Egyptian styles, not of actual Egyptian examples. That is what we are talking about.

[motan]

Thank you all for your contributions. I am a bit wiser now but it is still a strange void. Egypt has produced some great weapons from the Old Kingdom and up to the great swords of Islamic pre-Ottoman times, but somehow did not follow up this tradition into early modernity.
Possibly, weapons were produced in Egypt in Ottoman style, but are not identified as a separate entity.
Some areas under Ottoman rule became hubs of weapon production, like the Balkan and Syria which made a variety of weapons to the taste of the different ethnicities of the Ottoman society, while others imported these weapons from these centers. It also makes sense that areas with clan structure and local chieftains or lower nobility developed more local types of weapons, while areas that were closely controlled by an empire did not. In the picture, Muhammad Ali of Egypt who was Albanian, pictured with a sword that seems like a Kilij hilt-Shamshir blade - type Ottomans sword often made in Damascus and popular in all southern areas of the empire.

[Kubur]

Hi Motan,

I was waiting a bit to see what the others had in mind.
They answered partially to your question.
In fact we all have Egyptian daggers, they are called Ottoman, Turkish, Arab, Bedouin daggers...
As it was mentionned by some members for the Mamluks, it's not always the Egyptians who borrowed these weapons but they also contributed to the field and later theses weapons were used by the Arabs, Ottomans... but they were not Ottoman weapons originally...
Here in these late 18th c. engravings you can see some Egyptian daggers...

Best,
Kubur

[motan]

Hello Kubur,
Thanks. This is a significant contribution. I suspected something in this direction, as you can read in my last post, but there was no evidence. It is there now. But still, it is strange that this great tradition has not continued into 19th-20th c., or did it??

[ariel]

Kubur,
Can you specify the source of these engravings and post the legends with the info which daggers are Egyptian?

As a wild guess l might suggest that North African/Arab kindjals older than ~ 1860 might be Egyptian, but after that they might be Turkish as well: Circassians lived in the Mamluk Egypt for centuries, but only after ~ 1864 they were exiled from their native lands by the Russians and were resettled all over the Empire.

As an example, Turks settled Circassians in Amman only in the 1870s, and they became an official Royal Guard in 1920s.
By comparison, the first governor of Khartoum was a Circassian Mamluk ( ~1820s). There are still “Qubba-s” ( secular burial buildings of him and another Circassian governor) in Khartoum on Abbas Avenue ( named after the first governor).

I have a classical kindjal of a Shapsough form ( very heavy and wide blade), with a “Sudanese” leather scabbard. Definitely not a Caucasian or Turkish production:-) I think it is an Egyptian Circassian Mamluk one.

[Kubur]

Hi guys,

I think the tradition ended before, during the Ottoman period, around the 17th...
Ariel, you probably mention the Qama far left, I think it's a pure Ottoman/Turkish but the blade might be Caucasian, I let that to you.
The legends mention just daggers with no provenance or local names...
These drawings were done in the late 18th during the Napoleonic expedition in Egypt and are very reliable.
There is one dagger that I never saw before, far right (in the corner), any idea of it's provenance??

[kamachate]

Originally Posted by ariel

I have a classical kindjal of a Shapsough form ( very heavy and wide blade), with a “Sudanese” leather scabbard. Definitely not a Caucasian or Turkish production:-) I think it is an Egyptian Circassian Mamluk one.

Hı Ariel,
Do we have any chance to see that piece, the Shapsough one? Forgive me if I missed it in ant of the previous threads.