Kattaras aplenty

fearn · 20th July 2009, 01:54 AM

Hi Charles,

No offense taken. The one I'm thinking about is the second picture, those, curved, single edged blades. Or take a look at the two sheathed kattaras on the official seal of Oman.

I'm not proposing that there's some sort of "evolution" of kattara to the dha or vice versa. It's one of those pictures that makes me wonder whether the omanis simply put a simple kattara hilt on any blade they got, straight or curved, or whether some omani sailor got a look at a dha or an old Tang era dao, and then told a kattara maker about it (as in, wow those single-edged curved blades were so cool! Could you make me a Chinese/Burmese/Thai style kattara?)

As for Michael's search on the triconsonantal KTR root, I wonder if the word came from the same root as the Indian katar?

One thing I remembered was Tim Severin sailling a traditional Arabian Dhow from Oman to China in 1983, just to prove it could be done. I saw something about it in National Geographic. Anyway, he used Indian shipwrights to build the boat (tied together, not bolted), and one point was that the Medieval Indian Ocean was tied together from Arabia through Indochina. Oman after all, was one of the routes through which Islam moved to Asian port cities, all the way to China. Because of the Omanis' long status as a trading nation, I'd expect their weaponry to show influences from many cultures. Same way we Americans have our nunchucks and so forth.

Best,

F

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20th July 2009, 01:54 AM	#7
fearn Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 1,247	Hi Charles, No offense taken. The one I'm thinking about is the second picture, those, curved, single edged blades. Or take a look at the two sheathed kattaras on the official seal of Oman. I'm not proposing that there's some sort of "evolution" of kattara to the dha or vice versa. It's one of those pictures that makes me wonder whether the omanis simply put a simple kattara hilt on any blade they got, straight or curved, or whether some omani sailor got a look at a dha or an old Tang era dao, and then told a kattara maker about it (as in, wow those single-edged curved blades were so cool! Could you make me a Chinese/Burmese/Thai style kattara?) As for Michael's search on the triconsonantal KTR root, I wonder if the word came from the same root as the Indian katar? One thing I remembered was Tim Severin sailling a traditional Arabian Dhow from Oman to China in 1983, just to prove it could be done. I saw something about it in National Geographic. Anyway, he used Indian shipwrights to build the boat (tied together, not bolted), and one point was that the Medieval Indian Ocean was tied together from Arabia through Indochina. Oman after all, was one of the routes through which Islam moved to Asian port cities, all the way to China. Because of the Omanis' long status as a trading nation, I'd expect their weaponry to show influences from many cultures. Same way we Americans have our nunchucks and so forth. Best, F