You're most welcome Andrew. I also agree that Asian art of weaponry is a relatively less researched subject and multi layered inter-cultural interactions through ages makes it even harder. One of the biggest problems is this "black-and-white" approach I witness in most attempts of classification and cultural identification.
I am an art historian and archeologist so I tend to lookat the weapons as an another area of fine art just like architecture or paintings. As an art historian, we identify cultural origins and evolution of styles thoroughout ages as a whole but also notice the fluent nature of this evolution from culture to culture and from geography to geography. Take Renaissance for example. Can you say it is italian and only italian without denying the existence of nothern masters like Bosch? Or can you say the Flaman style of renaissnce art is a national style of painting that originates only in Flandra and belong only to that culture without denying the birth of that style in Italy? Same goes for Gothic cathedrals, Baroque etc. Art historians follow and identify the evolution of themes, styles, ornamantation figures, dress fashions, architectural components or even objects like spoons or chairs. It is naturally the healthiest approach to be applied in the study of bladed weapons as well.
And I see it is used in such fashion in European blades. I did not witness any fights between British, Italian,German and French researchers about which culture does the longsword belong to. People recognize historical origins and evolution from Roman gladius to spatha to Celtic and Gothic migration period swords. etc. all the way to late Middle ages, with contrubitions of every culture and geography on its way.
Yet when it comes to Western Asian swords either a mono-block approach "İslamic weapons", "Oriental weapons"as if all the different cultures from Andulusia to Malaysia is one and the same(the orentalistic view), or the reactionary view which is to ignore all evolution and inter-culturel trade of styles and identify one specific variation of one specific weapon as the national weapon of such culture that only originated from and only belong to that culture and geography. And this over-separative approach bring identification by the smallest of differences such as shape of a pommel.
Long story short, let's look at swords like architecture and stop fighting over who owns what. It is well-known that Gothic style is brought to Britian by French architects but this does not make Westminister Abbey any less British, does it?
