Bosnian Bichaq

[Pitt1999]

Originally Posted by gp

don't underestimate yours; the quality is good to very good.

Forget about Bosnian scabbards, always the poorer part as it is just very thin copper on wood ( and not the best strongest wood I dare say).
Hardly to find an undamaged scabbard.

The knives or daggers though are very interesting; can you tell us a little more? like lengths, width and such? Much obliged !

I've added some photos that show the lengths of each of these knives. Interestingly they are all nearly the same in terms of blade width, all about 1 inch wide with almost negligible variation.

I got lucky with the two knives that I call either bird beak pommels or frog mouth pommels. They were purchased at two different times from two different sellers.

The other two are quite odd (to me at least) in the world of Bosnian bichaqs. The boxy bone hilted bichaq lacks the refinement these knives normally have. As you can see the hilt is very square and the "bolster" is just pieces of copper/brass pinned to the tang. The scabbard is also very basic being a sheet of copper/brass formed to the shape of the blade with very thin wood shims friction fit inside to help retain the blade. The contrast is the very nice engraving of "Sarajevo" on one side of the scabbard.

The horn hilted bichaq stands out by having the previously noted horn hilt. It is also a simple hilt, lacking ears or another form of shaped pommel normally seen on these knives. The horn scales are also mostly unadorned with only three small unknown red inserts on each side of the hilt. The scabbard is some type of thin iron/steel sheet that was either painted or otherwise blackened over a wood core. I am unsure if this scabbard is original to this knife however. The scabbard was clearly carved to accept the bolster but when sheathing the knife it is stopped before the bolster can go in, but far enough to where the blade is completely sheathed. The fit is good and tight though so this was probably an error during manufacture. I also got a slightly better picture of this knives mark, which is quite different from the usual shamshir mark normally seen on these.