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Originally Posted by ariel
Had nothing better to do, so was leafing through the "Arms and Armor from Iran".
One chapter discusses the origin of sabers, ie curved swords. It asserts that:
1. Sabers came to the Islamic world sometimes after the 10th century (14th?) from the nomads of Central Asia
2. They were unlikely to be of "nomadic" origin, but rather hailed from China, because bladesmithing requires high degree of urbanization.
Questions:
1. The first contact of the Islamic (Arab) armies with the "nomads" occured during the Arab attempts to invade Khazaria sometimes in the 8th century and there are many examples of Khazar curved swords from that era ( see" The Arts of the Muslim Knight" by Mohamed, as well as "Weapons of the Ancient Orient" by Gorelik, "Khazars" by Pletneva etc). Khazars had very well developed urban culture by that time.
2. Was urbanization truly required? We can just look at Dyak swords or Moro swords. Both cultures produced magnificient blades without any urbanization.
Any insights?
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the curved swords originate in siberia and central asia and the west of siberia,,..
they have nothing to do with china and were as new to china as they were to the west.. in europe they arrived in in the 6th centuary or before..
they did not take well to the celtic and germanic people who prefered to fight on foot.....
the arabs obtained these swords in the 8 centuary ,, proably before, but they didnt reach popularity later, they were introduced by mercinaries from central asia.. mongol and kipchak mostly,
hence the kipchak rulers of egypt for so long..
the curved horse mans sword originated proably in the region between tuva,, western mongolia and the altai republic.. this area was the region where the oldest exsampels are found, and proably spread out from..
the long thin stright swords originate from this area also although it is presumed more into the region of east turkmenistan and east kazakhstan
chinese prefered short swords of bronze, and later iron well after the nomads had developed steel swords, mostly this was proably use of production and technique..
there is one point , the nomads could not make many weapons .. and so many times they woudl purchase weapons from their soon to be victims ..
this dosnt mean they didnt know how to make them , or actualy .. were the developers of them,, as they were.
generaly becasue of the short supply of iron and trouble needed to mine it they used little iron and all their knives, armor and arrows.. ect ect were hardened steel,, while in europe and asia normaly cheap plate was iron or case hardened and only the rich had steel,, and arrows were mostly case hardened or of iron ...... i would presume these value of iron was high enough there was enough smiths willing to work it that there was little left to be used in the untreated state
this actualy was a point refered to in chinese and european texts.. and the nomads arrows were generaly far superion in quality to thier own.. and the same is commented on their swords.. on the old blades found in graves they are native in design and high in quality..