Islamic Weapons at V&A Museum

[ALEX]

Originally Posted by wepnz

Oooohh... very nice. Really museums get some of the nicest pieces which ordinary collectors rarely get their hand on . Also, do you have pictures of the plaques or descriptions on the weapons, I'd like to know more about them and the regions they are from. I see Iran and also India (kattars obviously, but also Indian style hilts) and ofcourse the weapons getting lumped under islamic though they might not be.

I particularly like the forearm-guards (bazu-bands I think), especially the one with grape vines and a suitable green background. Also the third pic. sword seems be some kind of royalty due to umbrella symbol but to me the layout looks crude (the square diamond in the middle is noticably at an offset) and not good finish, although I suppose the sheer value of the stones makes up for it .

Thanks to all for the nice comments! I am glad you enjoyed the pictures.

Wepnz, I do have pictures of the description plaques, but did not want to post them for several reasons: 1) not to 'overload' some computers:-); 2) the museum descriptions can not be as accurate as one might think. For example, a spectacular Kilij in the British Museum is labeled as "Yataghan" :-) (see my earlier post with British Museum pictures). As Ward and Jens just mentioned in the other posts - the good books are the best references, in addition to one's own research and studies. This is profusely true!
I think that all weapons in this collection can be considered as Islamic, and Indo-Persian for sure. The 'umbrella' gold inlay is the Royal Mughal emblem. You correctly noticed "non-perfectness" of some stone settings, and this brings up a good point - why a royal-quality weapon would have a crude feature like this? I think the 'mentality' of the old masters was quite different, and what we consider crude now could have been a sign of hand-made quality and beauty of 'non-perfection'. I recently saw a Kremlin exhibit of Ottoman and Persian gifts to the Tsar in the Freer Collection, and the most prized weapons of the 16-18th Century Russian Court had the same "crudely set' stones, and even worst:-). I am sure these masters could have set them up in the perfect geometrical order, but they did not. I think there is a reason behind it.