Another Black Sea Yataghan out of Africa

[DaveF]

I acquired this a couple of days ago from a guy who does house clearances. It was part of a bunch of African weapons and artifacts that had been collected in Africa by the parent of one of the elderly couple who had had them for many years at the bottom of a chest. I couldn't help noticing that the decorative binding on the scabbard and the binding on the hilt are very similar to the example identified by Anthony Tirri as African.
The scabbard is partly covered by faux leather (Rexine?), so I'm assuming the scabbard must date from some time after the early 20's.

So, another Laz Bicagi with a link to Africa. Needless to say, I'm very pleased to have it in my collection!

[mahratt]

Originally Posted by DaveF

I acquired this a couple of days ago from a guy who does house clearances. It was part of a bunch of African weapons and artifacts that had been collected in Africa by the parent of one of the elderly couple who had had them for many years at the bottom of a chest. I couldn't help noticing that the decorative binding on the scabbard and the binding on the hilt are very similar to the example identified by Anthony Tirri as African.
The scabbard is partly covered by faux leather (Rexine?), so I'm assuming the scabbard must date from some time after the early 20's.

So, another Laz Bicagi with a link to Africa. Needless to say, I'm very pleased to have it in my collection!

Hello. Great sword.

Unfortunately Terry was wrong. Today it is known that Laz Bichak is a weapon used in Lazistan. Lazistan is a Georgian historical region inhabited by the Laz people. Today it is part of Turkey and is divided into the provinces of Rize, Artvin, Trabzon.

[ariel]

Tirry was wrong attributing Laz Bicagi to N.Africa, no doubt.

But we still do not know whence the inspiration for this weapon came.
Tirry based his attribution mainly on two factors: straighten the blade and you will see Algerian Flissa with the needle-point tip and the part of the blade adhering to the handle being virtually identical between the two.
In other words, it is easy to imagine that Lazes serving in North Africa ( and there are evidences that they did) just double-bent the Flissa and got their yataghan-like national weapon. Not for nothing another local name for it is Yataghan Karadeniz, the Black Sea Yataghan.

So Tirri, who was not a dummy, might have had something right about the
“ primeval” Laz Bicagi.
Quite some years ago I visited Askeri Muze and saw several of these strange creations. I asked to speak with the curator, and a young woman named Gozde Yasar casually told me their name and the locality. She was surprised that foreigners never asked these questions. I posted it here and within literally several days Turkish and Greek Forumites posted old photographs from the Trabzon area. That’s how it all started:-) But Tirry’s analysis was never disproved. So, snarky remarks about him are inappropriate. Certain things are more complex than we think and quite stubborn.

[Jim McDougall]

That is an interesting twist on the possible origins of these, and I agree, Mr, Tirri was notably knowledgeable. Knowing that the Laz, while not involved with the Janissaries and such Ottoman forces, it does seem that they were involved in naval service, and by this same token, did have some reputation in piracy just as many of these ethnic groups who were often involved in outlaw activity. With this being the case, they certainly could have developed the form as a version of the Kabyle 'flyssa' with its needle point and bellied blade. However this is a bit of a tenuous assumption given the well established presence of these through Black Sea regions, into the Caucusus, and only a single example seen from North Africa. The reference to these being versions of the Egyptian khopesh Tirri noted were 'interesting'.

I first acquired one of these about 1996, and these were remarkably obscure, but I found them described in a then not well known article by Jacobsen & Triikman in Denmark in 1941, "Origins of the Shashka". In this it is termed a Kurdish-Armenian yataghan, and was presumably included with its forked pommel compared to the cleft in the shashka hilt. It was noted the example was from Danish collection with provenance to Trebizon c. 1857.

I then found an example shown in "Schwert Degen Sabel" (Gerhard Seifert, 1962) also classified as a Kurdish-Armenian yataghan. ..interestingly he showed the example alongside a flyssa, thereby implying an association but with no further elaboration. When I contacted him and asked how he arrived at the attribution, he told me, from Holger Jacobsen, his mentor.

I found the 1986 Hungarian reference that Jacobsen had used showing a number of these kinds of dramatically recurved blade and cleft pommel swords from regions from the Transcaucusus into the Caucasian regions (where these are also found as per persons I reached in Georgia).

Discussions, research and debates that went on from 1996 and up to the publishing of Tirri's book in 2004 consistently showed these from 'Black Sea regions' as well as Caucasian, but with a single example from North Africa, that attribution faltered for the form overall. That a single anomaly existed with what were said to be possible African letters was however interesting.

When Lee Jones saw these in Istanbul listed as 'Laz bichagi' confirmed some time after by Ariel in his trip to Istanbul well secured these as Laz weapons.
Other posts in threads included photos of these worn by Laz individuals, and in Pontic (Greek founded) areas in Turkey near Black Sea, which accounts for numerous examples in museum in Athens (pictured).

Artzi had examples of weapons from Caucasian regions which apparently had similar leatherwork (even green) and it was noted (in other discussions, not by Artzi) that this argument for these being North African was not necessarily viable.

So it would seem that these were somewhat widely diffused in accord with Laz and perhaps others who might have used them, but the origins remain unclear. What is known is that like the flyssa, it was a relative latecomer to the ethnographic edged weapons group, and as was suggested by a writer here then (as Ham) likely evolved from the Ottoman yataghan independently.

Other versions of these have similar recurved blades without needle point, some have a shallow cleft only rather than the horned forks, so we might wonder if these examples which seem to have evolved in Transcaucasian regions were part of a larger development in form alongside these.As mentioned, Jacobsen included these in his discussion on the shashka, with an apparent focus in part on the 'cleft pommel'. This feature was of course present on Ottoman yataghans but not something that seemed to be popular in North Africa, as seen with the flyssa, with the blade likely evolved from them but clearly not the hilt. So then what in the world did these 'horns' signify?
Could it have been the horns on some Persian maces ? These Black Sea yataghans seem to have Persian influence in the types of fuller or channel patterns and the often chiseled blade backs.
I will try to find the pages of the 1896 Hungarian paper that show some of these.

[mahratt]

DaveF,
Unfortunately, Tirri wrote his book (not fundamental research, but a pre-sale catalog of his collection) when access to information was limited compared to today. Hence some errors.
Someone can fantasize as much as he like about straightening and bending blades, but facts are stubborn - there are many photos confirming the use of Laz Bichaks in "Turkish Georgia" and not one photo from North Africa. At the same time, French and German ethnographers since the 1800s have written many scientific works with good illustrations on the ethnography of the African population. But you won't find Laz Bichak in them.
So it is worth considering the books of such authors of the recent past as Tirri, Lebedinsky and Jacob (undoubtedly respecting them their work), who wrote their books in the years of limited access to information , with a certain skepticism.

[ariel]

Jim,
Thanks for your detailed ( as usual) exposition tracing the development of our knowledge about those peculiar Trabzon swords.
As we see, even well before Tirri Danish authors mulled over their peculiar similarities with Flissa. Nothing definitive, but just a placement into the same illustration….

Tirri was the first to openly advance his hypothesis and present salient points of their similarities. He exercised an imaginative “what if” approach to suggest a transition from the straight blade of Flissa to a peculiar yataghan-like blade of Laz Bichagi. I remember seeing the latter with non-forked pommel, but the Laz lived between the Turks and the Georgians with the idea of a split pommel being organic to them, and they created an exaggerated form of it, something akin to the Zelbek creation of T-pommeled yataghan. The resultant Pontic weapon was fascinating and peculiarly beautiful, but practically it was a dud. Whether its short life span was due to the latter or just to simple fact that it appeared on the scene when swords were on their way out is also not certain.
One can only admire Tirri’s idiosyncratic and imaginative approach. Yes, he was wrong in claiming this weapon’s active life to North Africa but his hypothesis of its origin had not been disproved till now. I am afraid we shall never learn the final truth, but that is not a peculiar occasion in the study of weapons coming late in history in small isolates such as Sardinian Leppa or the so-called Bedouin pseudo-shashka.
Let’s give Tirri his final due.