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Originally Posted by Jim McDougall
Absolutely excellent summation Ibrahiim!!! I think you have put that together spot on, and I think this is basically the best solution to the kattara/sayf conundrum thus far. Naturally other fine points will be added, but this seems to plausibly describe this grouping of sword types as contemporarily used and with varying application.
On the kattara term, though it is a reach, in the northern parts of India and Afghanistan there is a type of dagger used by Kalash tribes usually in Chitral and of course this diffused widely.....it was called a 'katara' which seems to be another term in various linguistic parlance used for daggers and swords interchangeably. Remember that in these regions particularly it is often hard to define exactly where 'sword' category ends and dagger or knife begins...the 'khyber knife' for example is a huge butcher knife the size of a sword (also termed Salawar yataghan though it has nothing to do with the traditionally specified yataghan).
Also, the term katar for the well known transverse bar daggers seems to derive from a Hindu word for 'cut'. Perhaps these terms may have entered Arab parlance via Omani presence in Baluchistan and Indian trade ?
Outstanding work here guys!!!
All the best,
Jim
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Salaams Jim ~ Great reply. Great support. Thanks for your confirmation so far. I hope people can understand the vagueness that decends upon anything virtually before 1970 here... It is like entering a Mediaeval tunnel. Myth, superstition and unsubatantiated information fog the screen. I agree that we appear to be on the button with the dancing sword. I am also convinced about the Old Battle Sayf.
Regarding the curved Kattara. I agree that it could be a bastardised foreign word even from the English "cutter" or the Hindi "Katar" or qudurrah or from the Sri Lankan "kastane" or more than likely since I see a link with the Zanzibar hub and slavery off the African sword group (Kaskara?). As lofty points out there is also the possibility via a name in the Shuhooh tribe which is similar; so the book is open on that.
What I find interesting is that the Forum gave this particular tree a really good shake and eventually the facts have popped out. We even started off with the wrong terminology and corrected that in mid stream! Before this the entire world of swords was in my opinion "totally in the dark" over this important issue of the dancing sword and way out of timescale on the Old Omani Battle Sword and its important significance.
What is amazing is that the same weapon designed in or before 751 AD not only lasted up to the arrival of the dancing sword and curved Kattara but beyond that into the 20th Century though by then attaining an Iconic status (and gradually overtaken by the advent of firearms) but still the primary fighting blade of Oman for more than 1,200 years.
This BATTLESWORD weapon was a virtual heraldic symbol to the original Omani Ibathi religious style and has attained honorific Iconic proportions having been modified over the hilt in the decorative style of the Royal Khanjar for the al bu Saiid Dynasty.
The Old Omani Battlesword
"Sayf" and its shield "Terrs" are classic living examples of weapon freeze.
Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.