A fancy peshkabz, a call for help on translation and thoughts on provenance

[GePi]

Originally Posted by mariusgmioc

Very beautiful knife! Congratulations for this exceptional acquisition!

As you said, the blade is typical Persian 18th to early 19th century.

Both the hilt and and the scabbard may be later replacements and don't look very Persian to my eyes.

The scabbard looks more from the Caucasus area (which was a part of Persian empire throughout the history). I have seen exactly the same style of silver engraved decorations with niello panels and wire wrapped tips on kindjal scabbards.

The hilt is very similar to some I have seen on North Indian knives.

Let's hope for a translation!

Thanks, I am still pretty stoked I got it.

I agree that caucasian scabbards have similarly decorated fittings, and I am sure that is where the attribution by the auctioneer comes from, but I have never seen a peshkabz from that area before. The decoration also strongly reminds me of kard scabbards like this one though, and these are usually attributed to central asia.

As for the silver hilt scales, there was also this peshkabz on sale in the same auction featuring a definitely central asian scabbards with typical turcoise cloisonne.