Origins of Kilij

[Alina]

Originally Posted by ariel

I am intrigued: where did you see Ottoman kilijes dated first half of the 15th century? Even Yucel says that there are no surviving examples of Ottoman swords before Mehmet's reign.
Mameluke Kilijes? But of course! That was my point. The first sword was clearly defined as "attributed to". The second one, however, is dated.
Astvatsaturyan ("Turkish Weapons", pp. 85-89) discusses Kilij belonging to Prince Mstislavsky ( died in 1540) and signed by Abdul Ali Kassem the Egyptian.
Please provide proof of your assertion that there were Ottoman (NOT Mameluke!) Kilijes with Yelman before that time. Your quote of Yucel's description of an even earlier Mameluke Kilij seems to support my point, isn't it?

It's really quite simple. The reign of Fatih Sultan Mehmet was 1444-1446, a takeover by his father, and then 1451-1481. 1444-1446 is the first half of the fifteenth century, is it not? There are two kilics with large yelmans attributed to Mehmet II, neither is explicitly dated. So, we can't know when in his reign they were made. It could have been as early as 1444 or as late as 1481. However, there are several nearly straight swords with large yelmans dated simply as 15th century in Yucel's book, as well as one kilic with a moderate sized yelman said to be characteristic of the early reign of Mehmet.

As to the issue of the sword I mentioned supposedly dating from the 13th century, it would certainly support your case, were it 13th century, but I don't think it is at all. I think that sword is most probably 15th century. Besides which, it has practically no yelman at all, merely a sharpened false edge. To say that the pala of the 18th century stemmed from the 13th century Mamluks is completely wrong.

Finally, your initial supposition was that the kilic with a yelman came to the Turks in the 17th century. That statement is fallacious. I don't think there's a kilic in Yucel's book from the 15th or 16th centuries that doesn't have a very pronounced Yelman. To back up my position, here are some kilics that date to the 15th and 16th centuries according to Yucel:

My personal favorite, the kilic of Bayezid-i-sani and so is late 15th or early 16th century:



Kilic of Fatih Sultan Mehmet, and therefore 15th century:



Kilic with no attribution, considered to be late 15th century:



Kilic from the 15th century, no indication as to early or late:



Kilic from the 15th century, no indication as to early or late:




So, given that evidence, it would seem clear to me that the kilic with the yelman began springing up in the Mamluk Sultanate at the same time as the Ottoman Empire. With the exception of the lone curved sword Yucel dates to the 13th century, there is absolutely no evidence that the Mamluks developed the kilic, or that they were the first to come up with a yelman. Furthermore, such a theory wouldn't make much sense, as the Mamluks themselves came from many of the same Turkic regions where the Ottomans had lived before moving to Anatolia. Therefore, they would have access to the same weapons technology from that region.