Turkic nomad sabers of XVIII-XIX centuries stored in the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Local History Museum of the Atyrau region

Purpose. We aim at introducing detailed information about the sabers stored in the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan (NMRK, PMOtk4-5147, KRUMtk3-101) and the Local History Museum of the Atyrau region (LHMAR, GIKM 5569). Results. The sabers analyzed have the following features. Saber 1, which is stored in NMRK, namely PMOtk4-5147, is a rare sample of a long-bladed weapon with a curved acute-angled blade, a wooden haft and a hand-guard of a West Asian type. Its size, design and decoration are similar to the Iranian shamshir of the XVII-XIX century, but the saber considered has certain important features. For instance, its blade is less curved, the cross-guard is ribbed, there is no traditional metal head at the top of the haft, and its side plates are wooden rather than made of bone or horn. Moreover, the top of the haft is not at the right angle, as it was typical for shamshirs, but is bent towards the blade. According to the design and decoration, we can conclude that the weapon-smith made this saber in the frameworks of the Iranian variant of the West Asian military culture but was aware of the weapons made by Turkic and Syrian gunsmiths. The saber must have been produced by a Persian or a Central Asian master working in the XVIII-mid-XIX centuries. The wooden haft was attached later, after the sward was brought to Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan museums and private collections have more sabers of a similar type. Saber 2, KRUMtk3-101, features a highly curved acute-angled blade with a massive spine. The upper part of the blade has an engraved ornament (a stamp?) on the left side. Unfortunately, the blade has a layer of patina, and the ornament can be seen only partially. There is a wide fuller on both sides of the blade, along the spine. The haft is L-shaped; the side plates are made of bone. The saber also features a metal top on the haft in the form of a thimble with some swag ornament around the lower edge. The cross-guard is metal. This saber is very close to typical Iranian shamshirs of the XVIII-XIX centuries with the main feature being a prolonged cross-guard. Iranian weapons could have such cross-guards, although they were not as frequent as the classical type. According to its features, saber 2 can be attributed to a shamshir of the Persian type dated the XVIII-XIX centuries and produced by an Iranian of Central Asian master. It could have belonged to a wealthy Kazakh warrior. Saber 3, GIKM 5569, combines a classical shamshir blade and a cross-guard with a peculiar haft. We do not know of any exact analogs for such a haft. Typologically, the closest type belongs to Kazakhs’ sabers from the collection of the West Kazakhstan Local History Museum. The top of the haft resembles an eagle’s head produced in a peculiar semiabstract way. Such a combination of a shamshir blade with an eagle-head top of the cross-guard allows us to identify saber 3 as a symbiotic sample. The blade could have been produced by an Iranian or Central Asian master in the XVIII-XIX centuries, with the haft produced by Kazakh masters of the same period. Conclusion. Sabers of the shamshir type considered demonstrate that the information from written sources about the abundance of long-blade weapons made by Iranian and Central Asian masters in the Kazakh set of long-blade weapons of the XVIII-XIX centuries is obviously true. However, Kazakh nomads were creative about redesigning the weapons imported by adding to them peculiar types of saber hafts.