¿ YATAGAN SABER?

ariel · 7th February 2005, 04:13 PM

The blades:
I am talking about locally made blades. Caucasians (Circassians and Daghestani/Chechens) liked their shashka ("big knife" is a literal meaning) to be very light. Uzbeks and the rest of the Central Asians essentially transplanted a local blade (what we usually see as Tulwars, Pulouars etc) onto a "caucasian" handle.
Caucasian shashkas used a lot of Europeaan or Persian blades, but they were all pretty light.
The handle:
The definition "asian" has nothing to do with Daghestan being nominally in Asia (just like Circassia , the cradle of Shashkas, is nominally in Europe). We are talking about tiny distances and the Europe/Asia divide being artificially imposed by the European cartographers. Georgians still view themselves (or would like to be viewed!) as the Easternmost Mediterranean nation.
The distinction between "caucasian" and "asian" handles was made by the Russian military around 1880s, when the Central Asian shashkas became known and even popular among the officers ordering their equipment in the multitude of commercial workshops around the Caucasus and exercising wide and free choice of the style they wanted. Thus, similar blades of whatever origin could have sported either type of the handle. Later the styles became officially regimented by the ministerial regulations but we start talking here about mass-produced, regulation sabers and I am not very interested in those...
"Islamic" or "Asian":
Both Central Asians and Chechens are Muslim; thus calling the style Islamic would not help. Caucasian and Asian (perhaps, Central Asian would, indeed be better?) are very adequate and precise definitions.

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7th February 2005, 04:13 PM	#11
ariel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 5,503	The blades: I am talking about locally made blades. Caucasians (Circassians and Daghestani/Chechens) liked their shashka ("big knife" is a literal meaning) to be very light. Uzbeks and the rest of the Central Asians essentially transplanted a local blade (what we usually see as Tulwars, Pulouars etc) onto a "caucasian" handle. Caucasian shashkas used a lot of Europeaan or Persian blades, but they were all pretty light. The handle: The definition "asian" has nothing to do with Daghestan being nominally in Asia (just like Circassia , the cradle of Shashkas, is nominally in Europe). We are talking about tiny distances and the Europe/Asia divide being artificially imposed by the European cartographers. Georgians still view themselves (or would like to be viewed!) as the Easternmost Mediterranean nation. The distinction between "caucasian" and "asian" handles was made by the Russian military around 1880s, when the Central Asian shashkas became known and even popular among the officers ordering their equipment in the multitude of commercial workshops around the Caucasus and exercising wide and free choice of the style they wanted. Thus, similar blades of whatever origin could have sported either type of the handle. Later the styles became officially regimented by the ministerial regulations but we start talking here about mass-produced, regulation sabers and I am not very interested in those... "Islamic" or "Asian": Both Central Asians and Chechens are Muslim; thus calling the style Islamic would not help. Caucasian and Asian (perhaps, Central Asian would, indeed be better?) are very adequate and precise definitions.