Black Sea Yataghan on ebay

[Pitt1999]

Did anyone here get this piece? I was going for it but I fell asleep right before the auction ended.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/16562041942...mis&media=COPY

[Bob A]

So you slept for seven weeks? I'm lucky if I can get seven hours!

[werecow]

I check ebay almost every day and I missed it entirely, so I guess I was asleep for quite a while.

[Pitt1999]

Yeah, the auction ended right before my short period of hibernation . In all seriousness I just forgot about this auction completely and just remembered it today. I figured I would see if any of the forumites nabbed up this sword.

[Interested Party]

My question big question is. Is this an "over-cleaned" piece or a more modern production? In particular the stippled decoration of five petaled flowers (a wild rose, or other hawthorn?) and bees seems dubious. For clarification is this a historically appropriate subject and method for the Laz or the artisan who may have made this piece for them? The decoration on the back of the spine is nice and, in my opinion, does not look like the hand that stippled the blade.

I have attached some pictures, so this does not become one of those dead threads that one runs across when searching the archives for an obscure subject only to find that there is no context for the conversation 10 years later.

[Jim McDougall]

Thank you for adding the pictures!
This 'form' we now term the Laz Bicagi, and known as the Black Sea yataghan in the research, discussion and often controversial debate over many years here appears to have been one of a broader group of similar weapons mostly from Transcaucasian, Trebizon, Erzerum regions but these were known in the Caucusus as well as I have been told by contacts in Tblisi.
These seem to have pretty esoteric as they were little known in collecting circles in the 90s but became better known in following years.

As far as I have known there have not been more modern versions of these. References I recall seeing in research and discussions say that these do not seem to not have been forms around before late 1700s at earliest, probably more mid 19th c. . It is said (Jacobsen & Triikman, 1941) that by later in the century these were often found in out buildings and largely not in use.

It seems many, perhaps most of these in this recurved form with these features (needle point, forked pommel) have the work in the blade spine, which likely varied per the artisan making the blade. As often the case, varied artisans often completed different work on the blades.

Jacobsen and later Seifert (1962) termed these Kurdish-Armenian yataghans, which illustrates the rather broad distribution of these through transcaucasian regions.

I always thought these most intriguing and unusual and it was pretty exciting when I first got one back in the 90s when they were not well known. After that more began appearing and value dropped, so reproduction unlikely.