Odd piece-what is it?

[Jens Nordlunde]

I have a picture in one of my books of a katar, at least as curious as the one shown. It is in P. Holstein’s book ‘Contribution a l’etude des Armes Orientales, vol. I. Plate XIII, no 19.

Besides the way it looks, there is another strange thing about it. In the text to the figures it says, “Garsoe-katar (Bhoudj, Catch). Collection Henri Moser, actuellement au muse de Berne”. I have seen the Moser collection several times, but never seen the katar, so I contacted the curator of the department and asked about the katar, but he denied that a katar looking like that was in the Moser collection. So it seems as if it either disappeared shortly after Henri Moser had given the collection to the Historisches Museum in Bern, or an error was made in Holstein’s book. Strange also that it is called a ‘Garsoe-katar’ as a Garsoe-katar looks like the upper katar shown in post #4 from Tirri’s book. It is the way the sidebars are made which makes it a Garsoe-katar, and the one from the ‘Moser collection’ does not even have sidebars.

If we say that the width of the grip is the same as on a ‘normal’ katar about 7.5 cm then the blade would be about 17.5 cm and the total length 22.5 cm. The way the blade looks, this would make it a very heavy katar, and no doubt difficult to used without sidebars and with only one crossbar.