Iron daggers and combat knives from the Talas and Chuy valleys in museum collections of Kyrgyzstan

Purpose. We analyzed iron daggers and combat knives found in the Talas and Chuy Valley of Kyrgyzstan. The findings are presently kept in the collection of archaeological findings in the school museum of Kyzyl-Adyr Village in the Talas Region and in the private museum «Rarity» in Bishkek. Results. The collections included completely or partially preserved iron combat knives with single blades, a handle or a stick and an iron dagger as a part of collection of iron blade weapon found in the valley of Talas River. All these findings were discovered on the surface of a medieval ancient settlement Shelji or Sadyr-Korgon, in the Talas Valley of Kyrgyzstan. Since in the 1970s, the area of that ancient settlement has been flooded by a reservoir storage, and local inhabitants began to find various medieval objects washed out, such as tools, weaponry, accessories of belts, adornments and fragments of ceramic tableware. People have been collecting archaeological findings from the surface of this monument for many years. Many of them are kept in the museum of a secondary school named after M. Orozbekov in Kyzyl-Adyr Village of the Talas Region of the Kyrgyz Republic. The findings of combat knives and a dagger discovered on the site of that ancient settlement and kept in the school museum have been studied by the authors of this article during our trip to the Talas Valley. As a result of typological analysis, we singled out two types of combat knives and one type of a dagger among the findings. All of them were discovered at the monument Shelji. Another Kyrgyz dagger, one with a two-blade blade, cross-hair and a handle found earlier in the Chuy Valley, was studied as a part of the weapons collection kept in the private museum «Rarity» in the capital of the Kyrgyz Republic, the city of Bishkek. We traced similar constructional elements of the blade and the handle of the Kyrgyz dagger from the Chuy Valley and the dagger and a combat knife from the medieval monument Shelji in the Talas Valley. Conclusion. The items of blade weapons analyzed testify to the process of development in producing Kyrgyz daggers and combat knives in the region in the period from the High Middle Ages till present. The findings from the Talas Valley and Chuy Valley confirm that combat knives and daggers were used by Kyrgyz warriors during all historical periods of their settling in Tien Shan. The findings of combat knives testify that Kyrgyz warriors applied these weapons in hand-to-hand combats against their adversaries rather widely, when they fought against other states of Central Asia during the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern period. A combat knife or a dagger was the ultimate kind of weapon used by Kyrgyz warrior for defense purposes during hostile assaults. Such fights and weapons are brilliantly described in the heroic epic «Manas».