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Originally Posted by ariel
It is also etching.
Can you read the inscription?
I wonder why all the pieces with Armenian inscriptions come from Georgia. Sure, I know that there were many Armenians living there. But, why nobody, to my knowledge, refers to any centers of swordmaking in Armenia proper?
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I think it is a real damascus. Concerning the enormous amounts of armenian signed items from Georgia and absence of those from Armenia/centers of sword productions:
Disclaimer to moderators - feel free to delete this post, since we just had a flaming discussion on this issue.
1. In 1580 Abbas the Ist of Persia implemented the following policy:
a. All towns in Armenia were destroyed and their citizens killed or deported to inner parts of Iran.
b. In Caucasus Shah loyalists among the turkoman, Shah-Sevan were given land, power and fortresses to form a barrier separating Ottoman and Iranian empires.
As a result, armenian population survived only in remote mountanous areas and had no urban communities of their own. For this reason, weapon production could not really exist there.
In early XIX century Russian government called upon armenians to come to russian-controlled territory. They would be given tax-free status for the first 6 years, and land in certain areas if they want. As a result of this and the renewal of armen. vs. kurdo-turk hostilities in Ottoman vialyets (so called "six vialets) with armenian population, armenian population rapidly eArmenian community in Tbilisi is extremely old. While armenian community always existed in Tbilisi and other cities, there were no large urban armenian centers in Armenia proper, additionally most of armenians in six vialets were peasants.
2. Until Shah Abbas and even afterwards the most powerful state in Azerbajan area was called Shirvan. There are quite a few examples of shirvanese arms and armor in the museums and literature. Whether they are armenian made or not can be a subject to speculations. The same can be said about many examples of old iranian weapons - how do we know it is not an armenian production.
3. Now to signatures in armenian. First of all, even in Lviv which was under christian control armenians despite their powerful presence in arms making community did not put armenian signatures on the weapons. In my opinion it is because in order to have armenian slogans you have to make weapons for other armenians or at least have significant open armenian nationalism. Both true for Tbilisi - large armenian population, allowed to bear arms, russian specific benevolence towards armenians as only truly loyal locals together with growing armenian nationalism (Dashnaktzatyun was founded in Tbilisi).
Concerning Iran I would add the following speculation - first of all dhimmis are typically prohibited from owning and bearing arms, therefore armenian for armenian market should have been almost non-existant. Secondly, in Islam as well as in Judaism there is a notion of "unclean" (najes). In Islam, however, unclean traditionally does not only mean things like excrement, there is an open discussion whether non-muslims, specifically christians and jews are unclean. Liberals like Al-Sistani for example state that there is no way to really know since there are good arguments towards both, so one should err on the side of perceiving christians as unclean. The results of this that according to the islamic tradition one follows in Iran there are can be many things one does not do with christians - one does not eat from the plate they touched, one does not bathe together, one does not drink from the same source of water, one does not it the food they touched and so on.
Now, in light of these, would armenians be really high on idea selling muslims blades with "made by unclean people" written all over it ? I would stick to putting Assad Allah kartouches.
Again, disclaimer to moderators - feel free to sack the post. All the above is my personal opinion.