Omani Khanjar (Jambiya) for Comment.

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Originally Posted by estcrh

Ibrahiim and Jim, while you should be able to completely trust the descriptions provided by the Met that simply is not currently possible, you have to look at each individual item and decide for yourself if the discription is a accurate and or complete. I have spent a considerable amount of time going through every available image of the armor and weapons that can in any way be called "Indo-Persian" and the Met just has not done what can be called a great job of describing many of the items. I have found discriptions that are vague, incomplete and in some cased just plain wrong and for such an esteemed museum with such a wonderful collection this should not be.

Here is just one representitive example, this Persian char-aina cuirass was originally described for quite some time by the Met as being a 1700s North Indian cuirass, anyone with a bit of knowledge could see that it is actually a Persian char-aina cuirass, when I posted this on Pinterest a few months ago I questioned the mets description, expanded the description and added alternate names, you can see my recently made Pinterest post in the middle, now the Met has changed the description but they have spelled it wrong, you can see this is the following images.

It went from being a 17th century North Indian cuirass to being a 19th century Persian "chair-aina"...which is still not correct, the proper spelling is "char-aina".

Salaams estcrh ... I note that there are several ways of describing in spelling the armour above...which by the way is an excellent picture for which you are thanked for posting. In fact the business of mirror armour is interesting in its own right from the Talismanic viewpoint.

Personally I avoid locking horns with research departments of internationally reknowned museums as my knowledge is not that great and suggestions that the Met. is in some way not up to the job seems just a little harsh to me.

On the other hand it may be true to some extent in provincial museums of dubious reknown but that is rather down to finances I suspect.

The description of the precious stone laden Khanjar which does seem to be based on the Omani Khanjar but likely executed in a foreign workshops which I suggest could be Russian...is not misleading since it states as much as most people would need to know and note it was dedicated by George C Stone...himself no slouch in the area of ethnographic weapons.

Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.