armthearmour:A lovely Kard with a white jade grip, India, ca. 18th century, from Czerny’s Internatio
armthearmour:A lovely Kard with a white jade grip, India, ca. 18th century, from Czerny’s International Auction House. I just want to take a moment to appreciate that grip, because it appears to all be carved from the same piece of jade, which is astounding, it’s absolutely beautiful.Today, on Beautiful Weapons…A kārd (Persian کارد [kard] - knife) is the equivalent in the Persian language for knife.In the specialist jargon, Kard is considered a type of knife found in the Persianate societies like Persia, Turkey, Armenia and all the way to India. Mostly used in the 18th century and before, it has a straight single edged blade and is usually no longer than 41 centimetres (16 in) in length. It has no guard, and usually the handle was bone, ivory, or horn. It was mostly a stabbing weapon, and commonly the point would be reinforced to penetrate chain mail. A major characteristic of a kard is that the hilt is only partially covered by the sheath.Since this is a curved blade, I imagine it’s being called a Kard because it’s simply a knife from a Persian-speaking portion of India during or after the Mughal Empire? (Can’t find the original source of the photo, sadly.) -- source link
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