Indian pseudoshashka

[ariel]

Ibrahiim,
With all due respect it seems to me that you are "lumping" different and unrelated weapons into one happy family.

This may be a necessary and inavoidable step at the beginning of any scientific inquiry, but it should be followed by a more advanced stage, I.e. "splitting".

Regretfully, we do not have actual examples of Caucasian shashkas dating to before the very beginning of 19th century. Iconographically, there are portraits of Cossack chieftains dating to the 18th century with fully developed Circassian shashkas ( to the point of that there are Russian "patriots" claiming that shashka was an originally Cossack weapon, an that Caucasians just stole the idea from them). Similarly, I am unaware of any "Bukharan" examples before the 19th century. This is not dissimilar to our ignorance of Turkish weapons prior to Mehmet II. In that part of the world weapons were actually used non-stop, the idea of museum conservation was unheard of and nobody cared enough to leave a detailed treatise with illustrations and historical analysis.

Thus, the genealogy of shashka-like sabers can only be observed "... Through a glass darkly".....

[Jim McDougall]

I have long very much admired the scholars among us who have had the tenacity and endurance to deeply study the complex histories of Central Asia, the Caucusus and the Steppes into China. Even those descriptive areas cannot possibly approach the incredible anthropological and cultural elements comprehensively.

I agree with Ibrahiim in observing the futility of trying to find distinct connection between this number of weapons having certain degree of similarity and often subtle influences and from such broad sources ethnically as well as geographically over long periods of time.

The genealogy analogy is well placed, as I personally discovered in the years I tried to accomplish my own. While often dead ends and misperceptions plagued the search, it helped to place all possibilities together in order to comprehensively keep them in perspective.

While the tunkou element is a subject unto itself, and I brought what I could discover in my earlier post......the subject of these swords as a form remains quite clouded. By collectively putting our research and ideas together however, who knows what me might discover!!!

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Originally Posted by ariel

Ibrahiim,
With all due respect it seems to me that you are "lumping" different and unrelated weapons into one happy family.

This may be a necessary and inavoidable step at the beginning of any scientific inquiry, but it should be followed by a more advanced stage, I.e. "splitting".

Regretfully, we do not have actual examples of Caucasian shashkas dating to before the very beginning of 19th century. Iconographically, there are portraits of Cossack chieftains dating to the 18th century with fully developed Circassian shashkas ( to the point of that there are Russian "patriots" claiming that shashka was an originally Cossack weapon, an that Caucasians just stole the idea from them). Similarly, I am unaware of any "Bukharan" examples before the 19th century. This is not dissimilar to our ignorance of Turkish weapons prior to Mehmet II. In that part of the world weapons were actually used non-stop, the idea of museum conservation was unheard of and nobody cared enough to leave a detailed treatise with illustrations and historical analysis.

Thus, the genealogy of shashka-like sabers can only be observed "... Through a glass darkly".....

Salaams Ariel, Thank you for your post in which you describe the situation of my posts as being .."Through a glass darkly"... which I am sure you will agree is a far better state than "looking through mud" at a subject long ignored.
I am glad you noted my lumping all the possibilities together which is exactly what my aim was ..and since we are at the beginning (almost) on this quite peculiar form I did indeed deliberately group as many of the variants together and it can be seen what is potentially link-able and more importantly what is not. It also serves I hope, to illustrate to other readers how diverse this form may be...and in grouping together form from different points of the compass it may be seen what a vast subject this is...