quadara - Caucasus, Trabzon, Iran ?

[Andrew]

Originally Posted by Rivkin

Ugh, what I meant is that when one talks about the origin of a certain weapon, contemporary sources are far inferior to the archival ones since the events leading to creation of new sword patterns typically happened many centuries ago.

However, if we are to talk about modern sources vs. old ones in general, I find the latter to be superiour. One can just compare on one side Ibn-Khaldan, Ibn-Iyas, Maqrizi, Suleiman Faiq with Edward Said and see for hilmself which he likes better.

I understood what you were saying. I just don't agree completely. (Not sure this is the point of this thread anyway. ).

I don't "prefer" one source over any other: I try to consider them all.

The sources you listed are all unfamiliar to me so I do miss that point.