Yemeni sword

ariel · 23rd August 2019, 01:20 PM

With all due respect to the authorities:

The most obvious place to find Bukharan swords would be in the former USSR museums. AFAIK, there are none even remotely similar.
There are plenty of old Uzbek and Tadjik swords there, but all of them are just regular shamshirs of various quality and decorative techniques. These areas were under Persian influence till the Arabs came or under Turkic Mongols, all brandishing sabers. For more than a millennium they saw nothing else. Already in the 9th century Khwarizmians were boasting about their swords in curved scabbards.

In contrast, Yemen has always been the most “frozen in time” country.
Yemeni Arabic is widely considered the closest to the purest Pre-Islamic one. Just like the Omani ones, they might have preserved the pre/early Islamic swords as well.

In short, I, just like Teodor, see nothing Central Asian here, but the Yemeni connection sounds eminently plausible.

23rd August 2019, 01:20 PM	#21
ariel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 5,503	With all due respect to the authorities: The most obvious place to find Bukharan swords would be in the former USSR museums. AFAIK, there are none even remotely similar. There are plenty of old Uzbek and Tadjik swords there, but all of them are just regular shamshirs of various quality and decorative techniques. These areas were under Persian influence till the Arabs came or under Turkic Mongols, all brandishing sabers. For more than a millennium they saw nothing else. Already in the 9th century Khwarizmians were boasting about their swords in curved scabbards. In contrast, Yemen has always been the most “frozen in time” country. Yemeni Arabic is widely considered the closest to the purest Pre-Islamic one. Just like the Omani ones, they might have preserved the pre/early Islamic swords as well. In short, I, just like Teodor, see nothing Central Asian here, but the Yemeni connection sounds eminently plausible.