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Originally Posted by Jens Nordlunde
Kindi is assumed to have lived in the first half of the 7th century AD, so the use of copper/gold nails is very ancient, as I suppose it is older than he is, and we both know that using the crescent moon is far older than Islam, but it is interesting that he mentions it. I wonder what Kindi means when he refer to ‘ancient Yemeni’ swords – how old would they be? Worth noticing too is, that he describes swords from ten different places, but it is only on the Frankish swords he describes markings like this. Interesting to read about the early iron export within India, but they did of course also export iron to the Arabian Peninsula and to other places – we are in the early 7th century AD, so this export had been going on for centuries.
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Al-Kindi lived on the 9th Century, according with the sources. It is hipothesized that Yemen was a main productor center of wattered "procesed iron" (wootz, probably) and swords, which also were made there from the "procesed watered iron" form Sri-Lanka. It also is hipothesized that this production reached it´s peak in pre-muslim times, and that the end of the iranian rule, the demise of the Himyarite dynasty and the shift to the northeast (Baghdad) of the political and ecomical mainstream, finished this production. As you know, this points are expresed by Robert G. Hoyland and Brian Gilmour.
The exports of watered "procesed iron" in fact mentions Mansur, but Mansur was at that moment on arab hands, if I recall correctly, as it was part of the Sindh. Mansur was probably located in today´s Brahmanabad, on Pakistan. More interstingly, the watered "procesed iron" was exported to Bukhara. It is also said that the frankish swords probably were known from the trade with the Viking-Rus, the oriental commercial colony vikings established in today´s west Russia, but it is also known that the franks used the swords as one of their main export products during the Middle Ages. Before and after the settled on France.