Afghan Shashkas

[ausjulius]

Originally Posted by ariel

Ausjulius, where have you been all these years?!!!!
You are a treasure of information!
Are these weapons historically accurate? Kazakh sabers appear to have Tibetan motives (pommels, for example). One Turkmen sword (apparently, a museum piece) looks very Chinese.
I looked at the Amazon.com for the Atlas of Central Asian arts, Bishkek, 2002 (apparently multivolume) and could not find it.
Can you get it for me? Just let me know the price of the books and shipment to the US and I shall send you a check or Paypal it right away.
Any way to get my hands on the really old swords/daggers?
You can send me a Private Message.

regarding the chinese looking sword, id say it is actualy chinese or made to sell to chinese,, these poeople were moving around much in the 19th centuary and these items were either radied of the chinese or even sold to them in east turkmenistan the sity of yangasari is a knife city,, there in pre chinese times .. before 1950,, there was many sword makers many of these guys were fighting the japanese and the chinese and the russians and all sorts of internal conflicts and thye had been doing this for the last 1000snds of years,,
so allsorts of items were captured ,, many times when one group was attacked and chaised form there grazing pastures they would flee some distance untill they found another place to graze there animals,, sometimes traveling 100s of kilometers,, or more,
so form east turkmenistan and inner mongolia it was not far to travel to uzbekistan or kazahkstan,, there is many uzbeks in east turkmenistan aswell as kirgiz, mongols, kazakhs and tajiks, and even afew tatars and russians ,,
so id say this was a one of thin , maybe the man who made it had lived in china proper and later when making a sword decided to make it in a chinese style,,


regarding the book , ill have a look for you , but it may not be in english ,,
still normaly you can get them with a small english subtext,,