Karud dagger with unusual chased scabbard

[ariel]

Originally Posted by Ian

Guys,

I think we are headed down a familiar path. As ariel notes, CharlesS (and others) have shown a large number of mixed-cultural edged weapons that have been discussed previously in this Forum. We usually have no clear information about the various items' provenances, and attempts to describe where these were made and used are often speculative. When attempting to place such items geographically, we often end up in the realm of guess work, otherwise known as "professional judgement" or "expert opinion."

It's interesting to debate these topics but, in terms of informing the reader here, it is perhaps most helpful to define the blade (e.g., karud, pesh kabz of Afghan type) and dress (e.g., indo-Persian), with a likely geographic attribution (e.g., Central Asian).

What readers here are mainly looking for is guidance that is fairly clear, but also expresses the uncertainty of its characterization.

Exactly true.

The process of defining a weapon is pretty standard and stepwise.

First, we define a type of a weapon in question: shamshir, yataghan, nimcha, kaskara etc. Easy.

Second, we try to pinpoint its origin. Manceau in France and Labruna in Italy produced very convincing yataghans that were not really Ottoman, but the names of the manufacturers were clearly stated. That was also easy.

After that, the tougher parts start.

Since sometimes the exact provenance is uncertain, we have to rely on the preponderance of evidence. The dagger in question is definitively a “ karud”. There are also some features hinting at its Central Asian origin: 2x1x1 rivets, certain crudeness of execution etc. However, there are no features compatible with Indian origin ( like the just posted khyber). Elephant ivory was traded widely and cannot help us. Thus, the preponderance of evidence is in favor of Central Asia from Afghanistan to the Khanates.

Lastly, we look at the decorations. Here we see very “ Buddhist” repousse motives of the scabbard parts. This tells us that they came from a different tradition. Whether this ” karud” found itself geographically somewhere else or the scabbard was decorated by a “ buddhist” master in CA is unknowable. In any case this “karud” never became an established pattern of a “Buddhist” weapon tradition but remained firmly as a CA weapon.

Thus, our final description may sound something like “CA pesh kabz with straight blade and a scabbard redecorated with “Buddhist” repousse motives”.

This is the best we can do with strange objects.