The travels of a very important dagger

[ariel]

I guess I am the ideal judge: not metallurgist, not well educated in the fine points of Damascus steelmaking and not into rich and sophisticated weapons. In short, a rank amateur.
Personally, I like the first example on the right : the wootz lines are not as tightly controlled as in the last example but are free-floating and very "poetic" (Sorry, can't find a better word!). The last example seems to me to have a rigid and "squeezed" appearance.
Well, this is my 5 cents worth.
And it is worth exactly that: 5 cents. Because at the end of the day all esthetic judgemens are purely subjective and are a matter of personal taste. Both patterns in this thread are high class objects of art and each will have it's admirers.
" De gustibus non est disputandum", no arguing about taste.
Or, as one guy said about his horrifically ugly and grossly deformed girlfiend " Well, either you do like Picasso or you don't"

[Ann Feuerbach]

Yes, the eye of the beholder...on a similar note, the Islamic Historian Al-Beruni said that sometime in Khorasan (region of Central Asia), they do not etch a crucible steel blade to reveal the pattern.

[B.I]

i had not intended this post to be a statement of the difference of indian vs persian but it seems as though it lends itself to this. i am not complaining as maybe it needs to be discussed.
jens, you say -
and in a way it is as if, the more you read, the less you know – I do however hope that that will change

this was my point exactly. the more you read, the more dominated you are with the general concensus. if you wanted to seperate yourself from this, where do you start? do you forget everything you've read and start afresh? i think this may be the only way to move forward. jens, you show one blade that is distinctly indian and one is without a doubt persian. and yet, the fittings of this 'persian' dagger is indian. now, do we assume that it is persian because fiegel and his peers say so?
it is hard to detach yourself away from the current thought, and i am as guilty as any for doing the same. if a dagger is indian in form, and yet the blade seems persian, we should assume it is indian and take the journey to convince ourselves otherwise, instead of the other way around. otherwise, we are all guilty of assumption.
the patterns are deceptive, and the more i look into mughal influence, the more the world opens up. we have our definate sources in egerton and hendley (and a small handfull of others). but, we know for a fact that mistakes were made, and yet we still jump on a well known bandwagon and scream persian, when we should be assuming indian, and asking persian. once again, i state i am guilty as well. we are all afraid to doubt our peers and yet surely by questioning, we are furthering what they initiated. they never claimed to be experts, but just took what was known at the time a little further.
ann, i dont doubt your studies and yet you state the persians were -
'More "advanced" than the Indians'
is this from your own studies are are you as guilty as the rest of us in assuming the general opinion. the records clearly show the persian influence of the mughal courts. their presence in india did more than influence the local style, and it developed into a hybrid, as well as a simulation of a fashionalble style of the age. in my studies, i have drawn a distinct line between the two cultures and for the first time, i doubt my own findings. these doubts are not sudden (over dinner??) but instilled over a confusion of conflicting data.
rick (rsword) showed a sword recently that we all enjoyed pushing our opinions on, and yet we were all reluctant to claim anything against our known sources. his sword showed a distinct persian influence over a definate indian style. so, what about taking it further. if the fashion of the time was persian, and not the underlying hindu culture, why do we not assume the 'persian' blades were not created locally to suit the current trend. why do we all claim that the ingots were exported to persia and not complete blades. why do we assume that the indians exported ingots and then imported complete blades made by the persian artisans. i'm not saying this didnt happen, but i know for a fact that the indian artisans were not as secondarly to their persian superiors (???) as some like to assume. where is this information coming from?
if the mughal courts imported their 'home' culture to india, why would this stop at bladesmithing.
for the first time in ove rone hundred years, the academic world is beginning to branch away from the assumed knowledge of their contemporaries. this division happened some time ago in the higher-end collective world and its about time that india has had the acclaim it deserved. yes, it was over-run with a dominant culture, but it did so admirably and also kept its own tradition to run alongside its 'conqueror'.
can anyone claim the persian artisan was more advanced than the intricate work of tamil nadu, which fought to keep its native style throughout an islamic dominance and a moghul annoyance (sorry to any aurangzeb fans, but he never truly conquered the deccan as he liked to have claimed)
ariel, your claim of rank amateurism is admirable (but not believed by anyone ). this stance just shows an open mind. your personal opinion should overshadow your views, as this shows a reluctance to listen to others.

not quite sure where the above rant has led, but i'm still deeply entrenched in the indian camp. the truth may be obvious, or shockingly opposing general thought, but i know the answers are not quite apparant as yet but we can only hope they become known during our collective lifetimes.

[Jens Nordlunde]

Like I said earlier B.I., I think that many of the ‘Persian’ blades were made in India – not that I can prove it, it is only a feeling.
I do see how blades could easily be imported into India, even blades made of Indian wootz. If the wootz ingots were exported by sea to Persia or other places, the blades made, and then exported by caravan via the Silk Road to north India – no one would tell from where the ingots came, the only thing the buyer would know was, that the blade came from Persia – so the steel must have been Persian.

Jens

[Ann Feuerbach]

Originally Posted by B.I

ann, i dont doubt your studies and yet you state the persians were -
'More "advanced" than the Indians'
is this from your own studies are are you as guilty as the rest of us in assuming the general opinion. .

I base this on the comparison of the crucibles and furnaces used to create the crucible steel. In central Asia high quality refractory clay and very well thought out/ complex furnace design, vs India that used ordinary clay and furnaces not much different that a hearth.

[Ann Feuerbach]

Don't forget, Uzbekistan was a HUGE producer of crucible steel in antiquity and northern India (which technically is Central Asia) is not that far away.

[B.I]

hi ann,
i can only judge the end product, and the potential history. as for the manafucturing, i gladly bow down to your superior knowledge
when you say 'crucibles and furnaces used to create the crucible steel' do you mean from the whole of india? are there differences, as i had always assumed. surely the wootz cakes from the north may differ from the south, and the creation of the furnaces.
also, is the pattern created down to the the furnace, or the forger within?
if the wootz cakes were exported to persia and created into wonderful persian patterns, then surely it is down to the craftsmen and not the origianl furnace. the studies done in the eary 19thC could understand the process of creating the wootz cakes, but they seemed almost lost in the creation of the blades, claiming the 'secrets' to be lost or hidden from european eyes.
please excuse my ignorance, and let me down gently if i outragously blunder
i thought the main source of wootz was from salem and golconda in the south. the wootz here 'gave only a slight indication of a pattern, the crystals being small and the steel inferior in quality'. surely this is the tight chrystaline wootz that seems apparant on many indian blades, due to the amount of ore being mined from this area. in my collecting, i've noticed that wootz of this type is not as rare as we would actually think. most pieces of quality are indeed wootz, its just that the pattern is sometimes not easy to bring back.
however a wooz cake from cutch 'not only furnished excellent steel, capable of being hardened and tempered without much difficulty, but exhibited the damascus figure, both in the cake itself, and when drawn out by forging it into a bar.'

i hope that my sources are not outdated and laughable in comparison to modern research the author watched the cakes being made, and also made an in depth study at the time, which also included giving the cakes to european smiths to attempt to replicate the maniputaion of these wootz cakes, as well as trying himself.

[Ann Feuerbach]

The research of crucible steel production in Central Asia is quite new. I studied the material from Merv, Turkmenistan, and Thilo Rehren and Olga Papakristu have been studing the remains from Uzbekistan. At Merv we have small scale production but in Uzbekistan they have at least 100,000 crucible, from centuries of production. I reviewed every ethnographic account of crucible steel production I could find. Yes, furnaces are different but some things appear the same...check out http://moltenmuse.home.att.net for some information on the differences and similarities. It seems the fine indian pattern is due to the fact that they tool the crucibles out when the steel was liquid, which caused fast solidification, small dendrites, which means closer dendrite spaces, and Verhoeven et al found that the cementite aligns along these dendrites. In Central Asia, the ingots solidified slowly, this produces larger dendrites, bigger spacing between them and therefore you can have thicker patterns. Of course forging also plays a part. Also, Mn was deliberatly added sometimes in Central Asia, which would make the lines darker when etched. This still needs more research but we are working on it!

[Rick]

Okay , now I'm getting confused (nothing new in that ) .
Pictured below is a Bokhara karud with what I consider a very tight pattern .

Using the Occam's Razor approach shouldn't this be Uzbek crucible steel simply by virtue of the proximity of Bokhara to Uzbekistan ?