Help needed identifying shamshir wootz blade

[mariusgmioc]

Can't help you with the translation but to me, it looks like the blade is older than the grip, possibly 18th century.
The photos are not very good, but the blade appears to be in pretty good condition. Could you discern any pattern in the wootz?

[William Fox]

Originally Posted by mariusgmioc

Can't help you with the translation but to me, it looks like the blade is older than the grip, possibly 18th century.
The photos are not very good, but the blade appears to be in pretty good condition. Could you discern any pattern in the wootz?

Thanks.

You are correct. To me, it looks like the blade is an old quality piece, but the hilt has been repaired, or the blade re-hilted, in an unskilled way. It is firm in the hilt and could be used in combat, but it was crudely done.

I have a feeling that the old Persian blade was at some point in its history disassembled and was later put back into use somewhere in Arab world, probably the Gulf. I say this because the re-hilt is so crudely done. If it had been constructed in one of the major cities like Damascus surely it could have been done better. There is some form of plaster crammed into the gaps, to give it extra strength! This is the sort of field repair I would expect was done in the Hejaz. All of this is just a felling, nothing more.

[estcrh]

Maybe someone on the forum can answer how the grip of a Syrian shamshir is different from the grip of a Persian shamshir. This looks like a persian blade but is it a Syrian sword with a Persian blade, or a Persian sword?

[mahratt]

Originally Posted by estcrh

Maybe someone on the forum can answer how the grip of a Syrian shamshir is different from the grip of a Persian shamshir. This looks like a persian blade but is it a Syrian sword with a Persian blade, or a Persian sword?

Hello my friend. I will try to answer your question. Here are a photos hilts of Persian and Syrian Shamshir. And with the other photos I've highlighted the main features of which say it is Syrian Shamshir handle.

I hope that in spite of my bad English, I was able to explain the differences

[estcrh]

Originally Posted by mahratt

Hello my friend. I will try to answer your question. Here are a photos hilts of Persian and Syrian Shamshir. And with the other photos I've highlighted the main features of which say it is Syrian Shamshir handle.

I hope that in spite of my bad English, I was able to explain the differences

Thanks!!!!

[Arthur.Rothschild]

Originally Posted by mariusgmioc

Can't help you with the translation but to me, it looks like the blade is older than the grip, possibly 18th century.
The photos are not very good, but the blade appears to be in pretty good condition. Could you discern any pattern in the wootz?

It is a Quran scripture( Nasr mn Allah wa Fateh Qareeb) which means victory from Allah and an imminent conquest. In addition to the maker name Asfahani. It’s worth to mentythat this sword is Neither authentic work to Asad Allah neither the stamp is real. Unfortunately, many makers try to forge the stamp and using his name as trade mark.

[ALEX]

Originally Posted by Arthur.Rothschild

... It’s worth to mentythat this sword is Neither authentic work to Asad Allah neither the stamp is real...

The cartouches and inscriptions on the blade in Post 1 and 11 seem to be proper, authentic and contemporary to the blade. Whether made by AssadAllah himself or not is something that cannot be claimed with certainty. Most authors describe such blades as "bearing AssadAllah maker mark". Labeling all such cartouches as non-authentic/not-real would be inaccurate and improper.. unless they are obviously modern made and/or on modern blades.

[ariel]

And yet another resurrection of the topic!
I love it.


AFAIK, no new evidence for or against physical existence of an Abbas-era swordmaker named Assadulla had surfaced in the interim. We are back to our deeply held beliefs about the role of a single personality in history.



Meanwhile, Israeli archeologists find one evidence after another pointing to a historical figure of King David. The latter was hotly “disproved” by a modern bunch of deconstruction specialists.

Absence of evidence is the evidence of absence: somebody may still find a shred of old paper mentioning Assadulla by name. And recently,a very smart guy named Kamil Khaidakov from Moskow reported Shamshir blades with deep stamps of Assadulla on their tangs. Something to think about.

BTW, The Iliad was written not by Homer, but by another ancient blind Greek poet ( or a commune of them) :-)

[mariusgmioc]

Originally Posted by ariel

Absence of evidence is the evidence of absence: somebody may still find a shred of old paper mentioning Assadulla by name. And recently,a very smart guy named Kamil Khaidakov from Moskow reported Shamshir blades with deep stamps of Assadulla on their tangs. Something to think about.

BTW, The Iliad was written not by Homer, but by another ancient blind Greek poet ( or a commune of them) :-)

Hello Ariel,

As I am not a native speaker, I may have misunderstood your message.

However, absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence.

I will illustrate my argument with a single example (albeit there are many) inspired by you.
For decades scholars argued there is absolutely no evidence for the existence of Troy, and that Homer's poems Iliad and Odyssey are purely fictional creations...
... until one individual with absolutely no theoretical background took the two poems for EVIDENCE and started digging. And he found Troy.

Now there is another issue I want to bring up. WHAT IS "EVIDENCE?" Is an inscription on a sword saying "Work of XXX" evidence for the existence of the respective swordsmith? And here, we can argue ad nausea because what is evidence for some, can be rejected by others. However, based on my own common sense, I believe that we can make a rationally valid assumption that there existed a certain swordsmith named XXX. Now, whether he made the respective sword himself or a later imitator, is another issue but the mere existence of immitators I see as a confirmation of the assumption that at a certain moment there existed a swordsmith XXX. If he had not existed, why would his signature be immitated?

My two cents...

[A.alnakkas]

Originally Posted by Arthur.Rothschild

It is a Quran scripture( Nasr mn Allah wa Fateh Qareeb) which means victory from Allah and an imminent conquest. In addition to the maker name Asfahani. It’s worth to mentythat this sword is Neither authentic work to Asad Allah neither the stamp is real. Unfortunately, many makers try to forge the stamp and using his name as trade mark.

You are correct that the translation on he spine is a Quranic verse. But the maker's mark is not even Assadullah, it is Zaman Asfahani, another well known smith. The translation was included in the original post so I am not sure how that was missed. There are no signs of fake inscriptions, as well documented items have such method of signatures in well established collections.

[ariel]

“However, absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence”

Marius,
You are absolutely correct: this was a typing error and I am guilty for not noticing it:-((((((

And I agree with your argument: the very mention of Assadulla’s name and his “address” (“ from Isfaghan”) , as well as his relatives ( “Son Kalbali”) and pupils (“Zaman Isfaghani”) suggest that old swordmakers who lived close to his time knew about his physical existence.