Safavid or qajar blade?

[Drabant1701]

So I bought this really beat up shamshir blade. The handle is a 20th century replacement and it has no crossguard. It caught my eye since it has a Shah Abbas mark. I know that the Shah Abbas mark is on many blades long after his death, even in the 19th century. The blade has split at the sharp end and if you look at the ridge of the blade you can follow a line from the split all the way to the grip, almost as if they forged two sides together. There is some very interesting wootz patterns in the blade, its hard to get a fell for the overall pattern since its dirty and pitted and hard to photograph. I have cleaned a bit of it, I will do the rest but it will take time. Could this be a Safavid blade or is it wishfull thinking on my behalf.
Thank you for reading

[David R]

Reminds me of one of my dismounted blades. One suggestion from the informed is that this sort of split is an homage or reference to "Zulfiqar (Arabic: ذُو ٱلْفَقَار, romanized: Ḏū-l-Faqār, IPA: [ðuː‿l.faˈqaːr]), also spelled Zu al-Faqar, Zulfikar, Dhu al-Faqar, Dhulfaqar or Dhulfiqar,the sword of Ali ibn Abi Talib"
. nb this is a copy paste from WikiP, so follow up at your own risk!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulfiqar

[Drabant1701]

Originally Posted by David R

Reminds me of one of my dismounted blades. One suggestion from the informed is that this sort of split is an homage or reference to "Zulfiqar (Arabic: ذُو ٱلْفَقَار, romanized: Ḏū-l-Faqār, IPA: [ðuː‿l.faˈqaːr]), also spelled Zu al-Faqar, Zulfikar, Dhu al-Faqar, Dhulfaqar or Dhulfiqar,the sword of Ali ibn Abi Talib"
. nb this is a copy paste from WikiP, so follow up at your own risk!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulfiqar

Thank you for your answer David. In this case I dont think it was split when new, it has simply separated the two halves from each other due to heavy wear and/corrosion. On many of my wootz blade there are lines on the spine, but on this one it one countiouos line all along the spine from point to grip.

[David R]

Originally Posted by Drabant1701

Thank you for your answer David. In this case I dont think it was split when new, it has simply separated the two halves from each other due to heavy wear and/corrosion. On many of my wootz blade there are lines on the spine, but on this one it one countiouos line all along the spine from point to grip.

Which is just how mine is. Alternatively one writer (Stone?) suggests that a method of recycling a worn blade was to forge it out to twice its length, fold it over a lesser quality core and weld and forge it into a "new" blade!
I do wonder is sometimes they just forged two tired blades together to make one usable blade.
Will we ever know for sure?

[ariel]

This blade was forged from a high-class KaraTaban, the ultimate variety of Persian bulats.
It came into existence during Safavid dynasry ( perhaps even as early as Shah Abbas I reign and by and large disappeared during the late Qajar dynasty (1789-1925).
Name of Abbas doesn’t help: it was inscribed on multiple swords from various countries and as late as the end of 19 century together with names of Assadulla and Kalb-e Ali, both of whom lived in the 17 century.

Thus, there is no way we can assign this blade to either dynasty with any degree of certainty.
Longitudinally split blades must have been by and large ceremonial: the split segments, especially wootz, were by their very nature very fragile and any strong battlefield contact would fracture them. Perhaps, that was the cause of that blade’s failure. Subsequent rusting did not help.

[ariel]

[QUOTE=Drabant1701;27125 On many of my wootz blade there are lines on the spine, but on this one it one countiouos line all along the spine from point to grip.[/QUOTE]

Please find my topic “ How the wootz blades were forged?”
You are absolurtly correct: many wootz blades have a “seam” or a “crack” of various lenght on their spine. This is where the slag comes out during forging. In your case, with a very long and uninterrupted “seam” , it strongly suggests that the blade was forged together from two thin wootz blades, leaving free distal components .
I am still waiting for Ric Furrer report on the composition of wootz and pics of polished and etched fractured area.

[Drabant1701]

Originally Posted by ariel

This blade was forged from a high-class KaraTaban, the ultimate variety of Persian bulats.
It came into existence during Safavid dynasry ( perhaps even as early as Shah Abbas I reign and by and large disappeared during the late Qajar dynasty (1789-1925).
Name of Abbas doesn’t help: it was inscribed on multiple swords from various countries and as late as the end of 19 century together with names of Assadulla and Kalb-e Ali, both of whom lived in the 17 century.

Thus, there is no way we can assign this blade to either dynasty with any degree of certainty.
Longitudinally split blades must have been by and large ceremonial: the split segments, especially wootz, were by their very nature very fragile and any strong battlefield contact would fracture them. Perhaps, that was the cause of that blade’s failure. Subsequent rusting did not help.

Thanks Ariel! You are a great source of knowledge as allways. You are right it is very hard to asign age ro these blades. Such a large number of blades have the Shah Abbas and Assadulla mark. Is there any blades where there are consensus that it is an actual assadulla blade from the correct period?

[ariel]

Regretfully, none. There are beautiful blades dated within the period of his productive life, but we have no idea how mechanically good they are. The only, perhaps even apocryphal, story of Assadulla’s blades is the one where his sword cut through a helmet undamaged by the blades by other masters.
There is a sarcastic statement that out of the 300 blades he could have produced during his productive life at least 500 with his signature can be found in private European collections.
On top of that, some rather solid researchers suggest that there was no real Assadulla, and that his name was just a claim of superior quality used by a multitude of bladesmiths of widely different abilities.

Mechanically, wootz blades are of uneven quality, but there are many stories of their breakability. Their only unquestionable advantage is the beauty of their superficial patterns.
Old Indian smiths forged their ingots into cristalline pattern (“ salt-and-pepper”) while Ottomans largely produced simple Sham blades. Both groups claimed mechanical superiority of their blades over the Persian ones. But we do not dare testing these claims at the present time.

The pattern of wootz blades depends in large measure upon the technique of forging. Anosov succeeded producing wootz ingots ( industrial espionage, but that is another story), but his instructions were so confusing that after his death his coworkers could not reproduce the feat. Even worse, despite his claims of reproducing all known patterns of wootz, all his existing blades are Sham at best. Even his yataghan sent to Faraday as a plea for recognition has only small area of a weak Sham pattern.

Modern masters all over produce wootz, but the small secrets of forging technique require generations of experience

Thus, the secrets of wootz are still undiscovered, but who needs them? Modern metallurgy produces iron alloys of unquestionably superior quality.

[Drabant1701]

"Thus, the secrets of wootz are still undiscovered, but who needs them? Modern metallurgy produces iron alloys of unquestionably superior quality."

Back when I started collecting I bought only eropean and american arms, but after seeing wootz for the first time its been all oriental arms. I never ge3t tired of looking at a nice wootz blade
And when I have your atention Ariel, I have this sword with an unmarked wootz blade, its my favorite wootz in my collection and its mounted on indian mounts but I do think the blade is persian. What do you think looking att the wootz in the picture below. Also here is a terrible movie of it https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/702399107

[ariel]

Very, very, very nice!
To distinguish between Indian and Persian manufacture one needs a lot of luck ( Indian masters learned Persian technique sometimes in the 17th century and there were real Persian bladesmiths at the Mughal court and, likely, some private ones too), picture of the entire sword and another one focused at the part of the blade near the handle.

[Drabant1701]

Originally Posted by ariel

Very, very, very nice!
To distinguish between Indian and Persian manufacture one needs a lot of luck ( Indian masters learned Persian technique sometimes in the 17th century and there were real Persian bladesmiths at the Mughal court and, likely, some private ones too), picture of the entire sword and another one focused at the part of the blade near the handle.

Here are more pictures. This blade differs from my other shamshir blades, my other shamshir blades have straight sides but this is curved inwards (hard to explain I made a picture).

[ariel]

The blade is highly curved and tapering down to a very sharp tip.
There is no “ indian ricasso”, ie an unsharpened part of the blade adjacent to the quillon block.

Both of them together tell us this blade’s fashion ( and,-highly likely,- its origin): Persia.

Suggest contacting Jens Nordlunde and check whether he still has a copy of his book “A passion for Indian arms”. If you read it carefully it will give you a lot of tips on multiple sources of Indian and on Persian bladed weapons.

[Drabant1701]

Thanks Ariel! I have Jens book, I bought it when he published it. I will have to read it more carefully.