Crimean Tatars knives in the 18th century

[mahratt]

Originally Posted by ariel

I am not talking about military history . Wars are cruel in general, and this is true for both sides, especially long ago. Slavery was the usual way of life in Russia and Crimean Khanate. Russia occupied Crimea not because it wanted to end slavery: it was a land grab to gain better access to the Black Sea. Read about Potemkin. Do not forget that having occupied Ukraine, Russians in the same 1783 extended slavery from their territory to millions of formerly free Ukrainian peasants. This was well more than 3 mln Ukrainians and Caucasians sold by the Crimean Tatars over centuries.
This Forum is not for political discussions. We are just talking about the veracity of numbers, no more. Who is right and who is wrong is not a topic of my attempt to help you to think clearly and use historiography instead of wishful thinking.


Be it as it may, Crimean Khanate was forcibly absorbed into Russian Empire in 1783 and Beauplan visited it 10 years later. More than enough time for the Russian occupiers to close the number of weapon-producing workshops.
It is possible that Peysonnel erred in his report of 400,000 knives per year or was hoodwinkled by the locals, or misunderstood, or... anything else. But one has to take into account the inevitable possibility that the production of edged weapons was dramatically cut down
No different from the British restrictions in India, Spanish in the Philippines, Americans in the post WW2 Japan etc.

Not taking it into account invites wrong conclusions.

If this forum is not for political discussions, I don’t understand why you start talking about the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 1783. If you write about Potemkin, then you should know that this was not the first war with the Crimean Khanate. And that the initial reasons were precisely because every year the Crimean Tatars took into slavery 20,000 Russians and Ukrainians. By the way, you probably forgot that Ukraine at that time (from the middle of the 17th century) was part of the Russian Empire. Speaking about slavery in Russia, you probably mean serfdom? It was a shameful phenomenon ... About the same as slavery in the USA, which was abolished in 1865. Slavery in the Crimea was different. Crimean Tatars specifically attacked neighboring states in order to capture slaves. I hope you understand the difference.

However, really enough about politics.

If we are talking about historiography, you are not very attentive ... Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan was in the Crimea in the 17th century (the years of his life 1595-1673). Simon Pallas was in Crimea 10 years after Crimea joining Russia in 1793. But as I wrote above, Pallas writes that 5 weapons workshops and 23 shops (or workshops) selling knives and various iron tools worked in Bakhchisarai. Probably the Russians, for some reason, have not seen 5 weapons workshops in Bakhchisarai for 10 years
Because, according to your logic, they should have closed exactly these 5 weapons workshops. By the way, we have actual data on a reduction in the production of weapons in India, but there is no data on a reduction in the production of weapons in Crimea. I suspect you'll talk about logic. But I would prefer the facts.

Now about the figure of 400,000 knives, allegedly produced in the Crimean Khanate in one year. In the mid-18th century, the entire population of Crimea totaled less than 400,000 people (this includes women and children). These are just figures for thought If at that time 400,000 knives were produced in the Crimean Khanate a year, then even over 5 years 2 million knives were produced. The question is, where are all these knives now? Given that Peyssonnel writes about “luxurious knives” that even got to Paris, these “Crimean” knives should have been preserved to this day in a significant amount ...

Perhaps you have some kind of information about weapons workshops in the cities of the Crimean Khanate (for example, in Bakhchisarai) in the mid-18th century. Then this information can be compared with the data provided by Simon Pallas at the end of the 18th century. This would be really valuable and interesting information.

[ariel]

Originally Posted by mahratt

If we are talking about historiography, you are not very attentive ... Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan was in the Crimea in the 17th century (the years of his life 1595-1673). Simon Pallas was in Crimea 10 years after Crimea joining Russia in 1793.

You are correct here: I typed the wrong name. My fault.
The rest stands.

[mahratt]

Originally Posted by ariel

You are correct here: I typed the wrong name. My fault.
The rest stands.

The rest is more than debatable ...

Do you have any information about weapons workshops in the cities of the Crimean Khanate (for example, in Bakhchisarai) in the mid-18th century?
This would be much more interesting than your erroneous reasoning on history And even more so it will be more on the topic of the forum

[ariel]

At the recent conference in Kremlin, there was a talk about Crimean weapons.
The presenter cited documents of that era ( early years of occupation of Crimea by the Russians) with orders of mass confiscation of indigenous weapons. What looked rich and gorgeous, went to private hands of Russian bonzas and to museums, the rest were likely destroyed or allowed to disintegrate. Not a miracle, that virtually all Crimean weapons preserved till now were made in Poland: the smartest Crimean Tatars saw the writing on the wall and emigrated to Poland and Lithuania, where they continued to make ( or order from local masters) their sabers.
One can wonder why in Poland these sabers were called " ordynkas" ( "of the Horde origin")
As to Crimean knives, they were exported to Russia, Circassia, Valakhia, Turkey proper, Balkans. From Turkey, they went all over the Empire. Only Circassia imported 5000-6000 knives per year. In Circassia, even later on, they were called " Bakhchisarai P'chak"
Here are several pics of Crimean Tatars with their knives, various forms. All were posted on a Russian Forum guns.ru with which Mahratt is unquestionably familiar.
Especially interesting, IMXO, are two: the sheepherder and the pic of 2 local knives bought personally by the Tsar in Bakhchisarai in 1837. Uncanny resemblance to Karakulaks. One wonders whether Bulgarian herders acquired the pattern from Crimea? A colleague of mine, Sergei Samgin and myself published a paper on the potential Crimean origin of earlier Ottoman yataghans: seems that even in the middle of 19 century Crimean Tatars were preserving their tradition.
Also there is a pic of Crimean Tatar forge in Bakhchisarai: one can hardly call it " production center":-) Not much different from Indonesian or Philippine " hole in the wall" establishment. Should we put in question the origin and the magnitude of production of Javanese Krises and Philippine Barongs?

[ariel]

Here is another, this time alleged, Crimean knife. The cap on top of the hilt is a frequent Crimean feature : see Tatar sabers.
Pay attention to the down-turned handle. Similar examples are seen on 2 pics from the previous post.

[Kubur]

Originally Posted by ariel

Here is another, this time alleged, Crimean knife. The cap on top of the hilt is a frequent Crimean feature : see Tatar sabers.
Pay attention to the down-turned handle. Similar examples are seen on 2 pics from the previous post.

What an amazing knife Ariel!
So Persian
What about the blade is it a katar??
Do you know other examples like this or it is an anomaly?

[ariel]

I know nothing about this dagger. But the only thing resembling Persia is downturned quillons. However, same was seen on Mamluke and Ottoman examples, and Crimea was an “Ottoman- related” area.
It is not a Katar, that’s for sure.
As I said, for me the only Crimea-resembling detail is the cap.
One of those mysterious objects....
The owner said that the seller told him it was Crimean. That’s why I used “ alleged”.

[mahratt]

Ariel is not entirely accurate in presenting the facts. I do not know why...
It was impossible not to notice that I, too, was a participant in a conference in the Kremlin. So I heard a report on the "Crimean weapons." Unfortunately, this was a very low-level report. Forum participants who know the Russian language can easily be convinced of this by watching the presentation and the questions that after presentation followed at this link:

https://www.kreml.ru/research/confer...raniyakh-2019/

The very first report.
But the questions asked to the speaker are much more interesting. The speaker could not answer these questions, since he does not understand arms and armor at all.

The author of the report, unfortunately, does not understand weapons at all. This person is a specialist in archival documents. But he has very big ambitions. As a result, the report was full of mistakes ... And the facts that the author cited in the report were distorted, since 1) the author did not use the original sources, but used translations into Russian, in which the translator made mistakes, 2) the author deliberately distorted certain facts...

If so many knives were made in the Crimean Khanate, as authors who visited Crimea in the 18th century write, there were so many that it was impossible to destroy or to seize all knives.
I am very familiar with the images that you posted, since many years ago they were discussed on the Russian forum. All these images are quite late and cannot be used when discussing Crimean knives of the 18th century.
Since you recalled the article that you wrote with Sergey Samgin, it should be noted that when Sergey Samgin made a report on this article at an international scientific conference at the Museum of Arms in Tula, the article raised a lot of questions. And not one question your colleague could not answer ...
It is at least strange to compare the forge of 1914, when in the Crimea they could no longer make good knives and forges of the mid-18th century, where the knives were produced in very large quantities. In addition, in 1914, Bakhchisaray was no longer a big city with 1,000 shops, but a big village.

[mahratt]

Originally Posted by Kubur

What an amazing knife Ariel!
So Persian
What about the blade is it a katar??
Do you know other examples like this or it is an anomaly?

The most amazing thing is that several years ago (to be precise in 2010) this knife was actively discussed at the Russian forum (the very one where Ariel took the illustrations from), because this knife was bought by a friend of mine from Russia. And there Ariel claimed that this knife had nothing to do with Crimea ... Ariel wrote that it was an Afghan or Indian knife, and he was mistakenly called the "Crimean" ...