Saifs

[Nihl]

Originally Posted by ariel

S-shaped guard is a feature of regulation Ottoman swords from the second half of 19 century or later. They “borrowed” it from the European sabers as a part of “europeanizing” their military. The same was true about Persia.
Their relative rarity is likely explained by the relaively short time span for the use of bladed weapons.

Tulwar, shamshir, kilij, saif, all of them are “sword”, but in different languages.
How to call swords with a mix of different features?
That depends: Russian ( and, I guess, some other) schools would put emphasis
on the blade. Indeed, it is the working part of any sword. Polish school would emphasize the handle: it defines the matter of wielding the weapon.
Russian historians of weapons would call any sword, with any handle, but with a Persian blade a shamshir.
Polish ones would call a sword with a Persian blade and an Indian handle a tulwar, with a Turkish one a kilij and with an Arabic one a saif.

Intriguingly, a straight indian sword with a firangi or khanda blade but with a tulwar handle would be called a tulwar, but same blades with a basket handle would be firangi and khanda.

I do not think we can be categorical. It is a matter of local tradition and who are we to insist the locals are dead wrong and insist on our clearly european point of view ?

As someone from what I suppose you might call the "Indian school", wherein indeed mixtures of blade and hilt-types are common, I personally prefer the more comprehensive, albeit probably more pedantic approach of identifying a sword by both the origin point of its blade and hilt.

In other words, to use the photos Marius posted earlier as an example, I'd "name" (describe) each sword as the following:

A persian shamshir; with a local persian blade and hilt.
A turkish shamshir; with a persian blade and a turkish-style hilt.
An indian tulwar; with a persian blade and an indian tulwar hilt.
A syrian shamshir; with a persian blade and a syrian-style hilt.

This is all assuming, ofc, that the swords in the pictures related indeed have actual persian blades on them, and not locally made blades in persian style

Also I'll explain, because I'm sure someone will notice, why I classified the third "shamshir" as a tulwar and not a shamshir. This is because, in this case, I think the hilt type indeed usurps whatever style of swordsmanship the blade type might normally indicate. This is to say that, because of the restrictive, draw cut-centric style of swordsmanship that the tulwar hilt is based around, you cannot reasonably use a shamshir blade mounted on a tulwar hilt like an actual shamshir. Although typical persian shamshirs can be used for draw cuts, shamshir hilts are also usually open, meaning one is able to physically perform maneuvers other than just draw cuts, unlike tulwars.