Silver yataghan with inscription
 

Hallo friends,
This is a fine silver yataghan, i believe the silver work is Greek, it is identical with the work we see on pistols made in Epirus (North Greece), but again the Turkish inscription remains a puzzle. Any help?

In Epirus they were making silverwork not only for Greeks but for all the nations of the area. Also the blade could be older and remounted in silver hilt and scabbard.

Your photos are not so good to see the silverwork, but I can imagine what you say about Epirus.

More photos
 

Sorry for the bad photos i am posting some better ones of the silverwork.
Regards!

More inscriptions
 

This was a year ago, but there was no reply, but maybe now we will have a better luck. I am also posting photos of the inscription from the top of the blade.

The third and forth photos are from a very similar, sorter blade, with the same silverwork on the scabbard.

Looking again this piece I am not sure that silverwork is from Epirus. It is very good repousse work but it lacks any charachteristic motives from the area.

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/attach...tid=9930&stc=1

What is that deep stamp? I have seen this on a number of old weapons. Was this some kind of popular religious icon, or a government inspection mark?

n2s

It is the makers mark. Common in yataghans with good blades

Do you mean as in a maker, or as a general practice by all makers; and, if the latter, has anyone tried to catalog them?

n2s

Astvatsaturjan has a number of them for caucasian makers; however, they are very often too alike to each other (typically "heart" or "vase" with some arabic insription) to reliably distinguish them. Another kind of stamp is an arsenal mark, but since there were only 2-3 large armories in the middle east that samped their items, those are somewhat rare.

It would seem pointless to go through the trouble of marking a blade if the end result is indistinguishable. I wonder if these marks may have been associated more with a maker's guild rather then individual makers.

n2s

In this particular sword the mark is very clear. I have seen many others where you cannot figure out what they show.

The usualy story is that people are trying to put too long signatures in their marks - as a result it is somewhat unclear what you have -"all", "mu" or "s". Taking into account that these marks tend to wear off, many of them are completely unintelligable.

Most of them are not guilds, they are usually something like "Amal Muhammed" - made by Muhammed.

Isn't it a date in the middle of the Solomon's Star? 1215?