markings on "mongolian" knife

[blue lander]

I picked this knife up super cheap off e-bay. I know it's just a western hunting knife knockoff and there's nothing "authentic" about it, but I was intrigued and it cost about as much as a decent lunch so I bought it. The previous owner said he thought it was Mongolian, probably because of the horse head and red and blue motif, and that his mother had traveled there and through Asia "A long time ago", so it could be from anywhere. There's some brass markings on one side of the blade that definitely aren't Mongolian, any idea what language they are? Chinese perhaps?

The blade took an etch so it's carbon steel. It looks like somebody either aggressively sharpened it at some point or maybe it was reprofiled from a longer knife. It's got one very crooked fuller ground on one side and two on the other which adds to the weirdness, as well as a false edge on the drop point. The handle's too short to be usable at least in western hands, full tang.

[ariel]

I think it is a modern production from the Uighur Autonomous Region in China.

[blue lander]

Wow, I would have never guessed. Don't Uighurs use arabic?

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Originally Posted by blue lander

Wow, I would have never guessed. Don't Uighurs use arabic?

Salaams blue lander ~ Yes and no...

See Wikipedia. Quote."Uyghur formerly known as Eastern Turki, is a Turkic language with 8 to 11 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Significant communities of Uyghur-speakers are located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and various other countries have Uyghur-speaking expatriate communities. Uyghur is an official language of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and is widely used in both social and official spheres, as well as in print, radio, and television, and is used as a lingua franca by other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

Uyghur belongs to the Karluk branch of the Turkic language family, which also includes languages such as Salar and the more distantly related Uzbek. Like many other Turkic languages, Uyghur displays vowel harmony and agglutination, lacks noun classes or grammatical gender, and is a left-branching language with subject–object–verb word order. More distinctly Uyghur processes include, especially in northern dialects, vowel reduction and umlauting. In addition to influence of other Turkic languages, Uyghur has historically been influenced strongly by Persian and Arabic, and more recently by Mandarin Chinese and Russian.

The Arabic-derived writing system is the most common and the only standard in China, although other writing systems are used for auxiliary and historical purposes. Unlike most Arabic-derived scripts, the Uyghur Arabic alphabet has mandatory marking of all vowels. Two Latin and one Cyrillic alphabet are also used, though to a much lesser extent. The Arabic and Latin alphabets both have 32 characters." Unquote.

Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.

[blue lander]

Very interesting... I bring it up because the markings on the blade do not look anything like the modern uighur script (which looks arabic to a foreigner like me) nor like the old uighur script that Mongolian and Manchu once used.

[blue lander]

I just googled "Uyghur knife" and they look very similar to this. Larger and of much higher quality than mine, but that must be what it is. Is it just coincidence it looks so much like a Buck knife?

[David]

Originally Posted by blue lander

Is it just coincidence it looks so much like a Buck knife?

I am not sure exactly what you mean by this since Buck is a brand name and not a specific type of knife. If you go to there website you will find at least 10 pages of Buck knives for sale, many with greatly differing profiles. You will find the same varying blade profiles, including ones that are similar to your knife if you look through the catalog of a comparable commercial knife maker such as Schrade.

[blue lander]

I mean a Buck 119, which to me at least is "the" buck knife. Sorry for not being more specfic.

Apologies for the delay in these responses, I'm still in purgatory so my posts need approval.

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by David

I am not sure exactly what you mean by this since Buck is a brand name and not a specific type of knife. If you go to there website you will find at least 10 pages of Buck knives for sale, many with greatly differing profiles. You will find the same varying blade profiles, including ones that are similar to your knife if you look through the catalog of a comparable commercial knife maker such as Schrade.

The instance of 'Buck' being used colloquially for hunting knife in a general or broad sense is quite common, much as with 'Bowie' knives. It seems that utility or hunting type knives often have general terms or call names that have become broadly used for various forms. Even the term 'Uigher' knife may essentially be a misnomer in many cases as clearly the form has diffused widely and accepted numerous influences irrespective of geographic or ethnic boundaries.

Interesting input from everyone though! Even a modern knife can clearly generate good discussion on comparative sources for influence.

[trenchwarfare]

Scabbard looks Latin American.

[Timo Nieminen]

Uighur/Uyghur knife. I haven't seen one with such a chicken head before; lots of them have a pommel that might be stylised bird (perhaps even a chicken).

The scabbard is common for modern tourist Uighur knives. I don't think it's traditional.

Some relevant past threads:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=17377
http://www.vikingsword.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/001565.html

[blue lander]

The sheath is definitely very modern. The leather is actually fairly nice, but the belt loop is made from a thin strip of vinyl or something. I thought it might have been added afterwards, why would they make a leather sheath and not bother with a leather belt loop? But the stitching for the sheath and the loop are the same, so it must have been made this way. I've attached a photo of the loop as well as a closer look at the chicken or whatever on the handle. The handle would actually be large enough to be usable if it wasn't for the spikes on the back.

Looping back to the Mongolia angle, I've asked my in-laws over there to send me an "authentic" knife, the oldest they can find. Hopefully they won't end up sending me a souvenir quality one like this.