AN OTTOMAN SHEATH-KNIFE with slightly curved single-edged blade inlaid with silver stars, with reinforced back-edged point and narrow fuller along the back on each face, and beaked handle with rounded wooden grip-scales, originally continued over the lower part of the tang in silver, of which fragments remain, in wooden leather-covered scabbard with deep silver chape and locket each struck with the tugra mark of Mustafa I (ruled 1617-18 and 1622-3), the former with a ball finial, the latter with later ring for suspension, both partly engraved and nielloed, and partly overlaid in pierced sheet silver with characteristic designs of floral arabesques, first half of the 17th Century

Details

AN OTTOMAN SHEATH-KNIFE with slightly curved single-edged blade inlaid with silver stars, with reinforced back-edged point and narrow fuller along the back on each face, and beaked handle with rounded wooden grip-scales, originally continued over the lower part of the tang in silver, of which fragments remain, in wooden leather-covered scabbard with deep silver chape and locket each struck with the tugra mark of Mustafa I (ruled 1617-18 and 1622-3), the former with a ball finial, the latter with later ring for suspension, both partly engraved and nielloed, and partly overlaid in pierced sheet silver with characteristic designs of floral arabesques, first half of the 17th Century
11¾in. [E.65]

Lot Essay

This belongs to a group of daggers with silver nielloed decoration, a large spherical terminal on the scabbard, and inlaid silver stars on the blade. Some of these are included among the booty captured from the Turks at the siege of Vienna in 1683

For other examples see Alexander & Ricketts, No.318; Holstein, Vol.II, pl.LXXIV, 256; and Schöbel, No.167

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