While certainly you may get some organic pitch residue from the tang and carbon date it. This will only get you date, which may or may not resemble the age of the blade itself, as you said. The problem is, We have not seen or known of any mid-eastern swords which use this type of hilt construction. Arab broadswords used some kind of peening, with some rivets at times. Later arab sabres used a complex kind of hilt construction alongside rivets and wire wrapping. The only swords that I know of with used pitch adhesive for attachment from the mid-east are the Qajar era, persian "revival" swords, although the dimensions and "style" of your blade is totally different to those swords. My thought is that this sword originally had a proper tang, that was altered and reduced at some point of its lifetime to allow for a strange hilt construction. This blade seems to resemble arab swords from the early Islamic era, to late abbasid, yet the tip it different. Yet it still looks like mamluk 15th century sword blades.
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16th July 2006, 05:43 PM
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