Just an aside about karakulaks.
I found a Russian paper about weapons of Karachay-Balkaria: Northern Caucasus region. The paper is written by Soltan Elkanov, a highly respected weapon historian from the above area, very objective and not given to jingoistic tendencies.
He shows examples of fighting knives from the Golden Horde ( upper two pics) and an example of two Crimean bichaqs.
IMHO, they are remarkably similar to Bulgarian karakulaks. He cites a French consul in Crimea ( 1757) describing mass production of knives ( up to 400,000 units per year) and exported to the Caucasus, Black Sea area ( Bulgaria??) etc.
Taken into account history of Bulgarian nation ( Asparukh), one can suggest a common origin of Kipchak/Kuman/Tatar weapons and Bulgarian karakulaks. My colleague Sergei Samgin and I published a paper about a potential source of Ottoman yataghans : Ottoman invasion of Crimea in 1475, closely preceding the first royal yataghans of Bayazet and Suleiman.
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