When a Persian Shamshir Becomes a Malay Sundang...sort of...

[CharlesS]

Many of you are aware that I am fascinated by cross cultural pieces(blades) from the Islamic world and I have shown a wide variety of them in the past on the forum. This piece, however, may be my prize!

This sword is a combination of a 19th century Persian made trade blade of good quality wootz steel(in a style with a weaker curve, more typical to central Asia) with a southern Chinese style guard, and a European style grip, with a distinctly Malay style "cockatoo" pommel with floral motifs. The blade bears the familiar marks of the Assad Allah blade smiths, and has a familiar cartouche on its opposite side in Arabic script.

The Malay who bought this had every intention of making it his own and clearly spent quite a bit to alter the blade and give it a "homespun" identity. I cannot imagine that this blade would have been altered in this fashion in Persia.

My theory on this sword...and we will never know for sure, so purely a theory:

I believe the blade was bought as a status piece as there would have been great respect in the Muslim Malay world for foreign and exotic wootz steel, not to mention the cartouche in Arabic and maker's marks. I wonder if the Arabic script is Arabic or Persian Farsi. One would imagine a much greater likelihood of Arabic being read in the Malay world, but less likely Farsi.
Most likely the problem with the original blade was its length and we don't know if it had a Persian hilt or was the blade alone. So at some point a decision was made to shorten the blade, but not just to shorten it, but make it a more recognizable Malay style and to give it a top edge where a flat or rounded spine had once been.

Note that the as the fullers begin, the spine has been ground down to create a second edge. The top fuller immediately begins to disappear. The blade's tip bares no resemblance to a shamshir, but much more so a sundang or a Moro kriss. The fact that the fullers "run off the blade" assures us that it is a shortened blade.

One might wonder about the length of the blade as compared to a sundang, but if it was shortened any more the balance would be completely lost, and clearly there was no intention to start shortening from the opposite end and lose the beautiful chiseling.

The hilt alone is fascinating as it combines a south Chinese guard(was the owner perhaps an ethnic Chinese Malay??) with a European style grip...which certainly would have been commonly seen by the 19th century. Then add the Malay style "cockatoo" pommel in carved horn with floral motifs for a finishing touch! Note the upper silver portion of the grip creates a 'lip' over the top of the pommel. This is not unusual in Malay sundangs. the pommel never had a downturned portion.

I truly believe the owner was trying to create a sundang from a shamshir, but the width and length of the blade made for quite a few unique adjustments resulting in a lengthier than usual blade, that is a for a sundang.

The scabbard is new and was created by Philip Tom, a fellow forum member. Since we had absolutely nothing to go on regarding what the original scabbard of such a unique sword would look like, Phil took some features of a Chinese dao scabbard(mouth and curvature at the end) and combined it with the aesthetics of a Malay scabbard for the finished product.

Let me assure you that this sword is well over 100 years old as it is, and it might be tempting to think it is a recently put together piece, but most definitely it is not. Clearly a great deal of thought, effort and expense went into its alterations.

Of course much of what I have stated above is pure theory and conjecture, as we can't read the minds of the creators of this piece, but to me this makes sense based on the observable characteristics.

I am eager to read comments and input.