Yataghan research beginning

[Timo Nieminen]

Originally Posted by ariel

As an aside: quite a lot of Afghani Salawar Yataghans have incurved blades. Whether this is a long-standing local tradition or an externally- adopted feature ( there were quite a lot of Ottoman mercenaries in the area) is an interesting question. The same applies to Afghani/Bukharan eared handles.

There's an old history of forward-curved blades in India, well back into the 1st millenium IIRC from Rawson. Some say these are copied from forward-curved Greek swords, courtesy of the Alexandrian conquests, but they are quite plausibly locally developed. Then we have the Central Asian Greek kingdoms (e.g., Bactria), but there is the question of continuity. In any case, we have forward curved bronze knives through much of Central Asia.

So it's hard to find conclusive evidence about who influenced whom. (But, alas, easy to find information to support any single point of view.)