SAFAVID IRAN, SECOND HALF 17TH CENTURY

The hilt of this large kard is in the name of Shah Suleyman Safavi (r. 1666-94). The beginning of his reign is notable for his having two coronations, after the first occurred at an inauspicious time. This unusual occurrence is recorded by the French traveller John Chardin, who had been granted privileged access to the Safavid court by Sulayman's predecessor Shah 'Abbas II (J. Chardin, Le Couronnement de Soleïmaan Troisiéme, Roy de Perse, Tehran, 1976).

The present lot relates to a small group of particularly finely decorated and large kards made with watered steel. The earliest securely dated kard of this type is from the Tanavoli collection and dated 1024 AH/1615-16 AD (James Allan and Brian Gilmour, Persian Steel: The Tanavoli Collection, Oxford, 2000, no.A10, p.153). Other similar examples are in Louvre, Paris (inv.no. R901), the Nasser D. Khalili Collection (David Alexander, The Arts of War: Arms and Armour of the 7th to 19th century, Oxford, no.83, p.142) and one other belongs to a private German collection (Claud-Peter Haase et al., Oriental Splendor, Islamic Art from German Private Collections, Hamburg, 1993, no.139).