I went to the London A&A fair today. I didn't buy anything except a book on Islamic arms and armour. As I was reading it this evening I thought I would get you guys to answer a couple of questions I have as I have my rest of the world collection cabinet but I am no expert on middle eastern stuff.

I bought , just to use as an example, the sword below as the guy didn't want much money for it at all, and I just liked the style and the blade which has a nice heavy, slightly curved sabre profile with wide fullers and narrower triple fullers within those. It is a very basic sword but as I say it was going for very little and I liked it.

He thought it was a kilij and from Turkey. I think I disagree with both points. It seems from books I read that a kilij has a blade which widens towards the point, may have a sharpened back edge and is a heavily curved and wider shorter version of the narrower variety of shamshir that we in the west have as our default image of the scimitar sword.

This does not have those properties and although it has a wider heavier blade, I see many examples described as shamshir which have this hilt type and the shallower curve, wide and heavier blade like this.

So I think its a shamshir. Correct, incorrect. spin again ?

I also looking at pictures and reading books think ti is Persian not Turkish/Ottoman. Correct, incorrect ….. ?

Date - 19th century, 18th century.... 6 months ago ? Someone has had a good go at it with metal polish so the copper wire and rivets are way to shiny and it has annoying dry white polish residue in every nook and cranny. But I think the construction (not polished bits of patina) seem authentic.

Also I have another inexpensive shamshir which is 19th century I think, and of the narrow heavily curved type with the rounded angled pommel I associate with the scimitar image. Pics below (I will separate them into a couple of posts because of size limits if I need to).

If these two types are both shamshir and I come across a lot of images of both types (of far better quality than these), but are different in style and dynamics, what is the difference ? Is it period ? Is it region ? Is it purpose ?

I am not in any way a middle eastern specialist and neither of these pieces was expensive so please shoot holes in them or my arguments as much as you want. Just interested.

D

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Fairly obviously the first sword I am talking about is the bottom one in the pictures. The picture order came out back to front.

Correction - the first one described is the first set of pics - weird when previewing the pics were the opposite order but when submitted they reversed. Hey ho.

https://youtu.be/Okp3x1F1JGo

Skip to 08.45 to avoid the lengthy pre-introduction, 12.00 to skip the post-introduction. Might be interesting viewing.