Reinforcements on the scabbard of Polish sabres, and a 20th century example?

[Sakalord364]

Originally Posted by awdaniec666

To answer your other question if your Afghan scabbard is linked to those Polish-Hungarian ones (guess I forgot to), there are few possible solutions:

- Is the scabbard shown by you a common specimen in Afghanistan or just an exotic type? Can we really link this scabbard to the Afghan culture or is it maybe an object made somewhere else? (A lot of Poles lived in the Near-East as Emissaries.)

- Coincidence/Practicality; Afghans developing this technique themselves (this technique we´re talking about here is no rocket science. If you want to enforce a scabbard tip, this is a straight forward way to do it.)

- A European scabbard found its way to Afghanistan.

- The style came through the Ottomans to Afghanistan.

Until no other facts or comparable specimen are given all of those are equally possible. My gut feeling is that this scabbard of yours is a modified older European one (Polish/Hungarian/Austrian) which has be modernized to fit Napoleonic styles and with its hanging ring some regional/regimental fashion.

This type of scabbard with these fittings is commonly found among Afghan swords of the early 20th century. The curved examples are rarer and made by private artisans, the style is in imitation of the straight examples which were made by the official military factory. However I have never seen this type of scabbard reinforcement before. The last Afghan dagger I included because it had a somewhat similar method of scabbard construction.

I will add that the fittings on the sword that has the unique scabbard reinforcements are noticeably cruder than the other swords pictured.