Non european blade on Napoleonic saber

[Roland_M]

A napoleonic era "Sabre de cavalerie légère à la Chasseur" with a non european blade from around 1800.
The blade length is 85 cm, the overall length is 98cm and weighs 870g.
The blade is very sure not from Europe. My personal guess is that it was forged in the Ottoman Empire.
It is a pipe back blade with the shape of a turkish kilij and a sharp back edge.

The blade thickness at the beginning of the back edge is only 1.5 mm or 0.059 inch.
Close to the short ricasso the blade thickness is 2 mm. I have read books with rumors about such thin blades, but I could not believe it. Now i have one, still hard to believe, even when I hold it in my hand.
The blade is etched with five moons and a kind of cartouche, picture 3,
I hope this can help to find out more information.
I showed pictures of the blade to a well known german blade smith and he replied (quite euphoric) that it is made from layered steel like japanese katana. Exactly as japanese blades, the saber have a mirror polish, which is almost intact.
The blade was worn over a couple of years (detail in picture 4), probably in the Napoleonic campaigns.
The blade itself have some nicks and it is slightly bended from thrusting (seen from top).

Now the blade rests forever in a carefully made scabbard, which is even in excellent condition.

Together with a real worn mandau (with a hamon like on katana) this is the absolute highlight of my collection.


Thanks for reading and I hope i can read some comments to this blade.


p.s. I'm not sure about the right category, I think the main work of the blade is non european.

Best wishes
Roland M.

[TVV]

This is not an Ottoman blade. Looks very European to me.

Teodor

[A.alnakkas]

Yes, a lovely European blade that was meant to have a good polish :-)

One of my Qatari friends uses a clauberg for Ardha, he was once cleaning it while etching a wootz blade. Some of the etchant dropped on the clauberg and a pattern like this one appeared. He polished it again, as I dont think those were meant to have such patterns exposed.

[Battara]

Could the blade originally be Russian in origin? They did do laminated steel. I am having difficulty seeing if the inscription remnants are Cyrillic or Arabic.

If Arabic, then this could indeed be an old Ottoman shamshir blade reshaped for French(?) use.

[ariel]

Solingen did damaskus.

[estcrh]

I have never sen an Ottoman kilij that looked anything like this blade, either in the shape or the metal type.

[trenchwarfare]

That looks like the Peter Munich "moon". That would put it late 17, early 1800s. Very nice piece.

[Roland_M]

Originally Posted by Battara

Could the blade originally be Russian in origin? They did do laminated steel. I am having difficulty seeing if the inscription remnants are Cyrillic or Arabic.

If Arabic, then this could indeed be an old Ottoman shamshir blade reshaped for French(?) use.

If Russian, then from Zlatoust. Zlatoust weapon factory was founded in 1813. I have a book with the best blades from Zlatoust, see the picture I added. All blades from Zlatoust of this kind are very decorated. Ivan Bushuev is my favorite artist. On page 130 is a similar saber from Wilhelm Schaaf (1820), but it is not made of layered steel. The early blades from Zlatoust made of layered steel are not real, only a surface etching.
This is all I know.


The other book is from the German Blade Museum "damascened steel, history of a legend". Many different german blades made of damascened steel from 18-20th century. None of the blades is similar to this saber.