Karabela...

[S.Al-Anizi]

Hi,

While I was strolling around a museum over here, I found a show case with some swords in it. Two of the swords were fake, the bottom an Indian saber repro, and the top is a newly made Indian tulwar, nice, but not old. The other is a Karabela, although it was sheathed and I wasnt able to see the blade. I was told that that one was Turkish.

Anyway, another sword was nice and I inquired about it. I got an interesting answer from the curator. Anyway, here are the pics:









The hilt as you can see has recently been meddled with. The rivets are new and shiny, and there is some excessive adhesive around the crossguard which was probably used at a later time to secure a loose crossguard. Hilt material is of very old rhino horn as ive been told, the top part of the hilt is covered with a thin corroded piece of sheet iron.

Does this karabela show any definitive style to you? Caucasian? Turkish? Persian? I got a very different answer but I would like to here the public opinion on these.