A Khanjar of Ibrāhīm Ibn Ilyās Ibn Asad Ibn Sāmān dated 246 AH (28th March 860 to 17th March 861 AD)

Abstract

The blade of this weapon might be a few decades older than its hilt. However, the gilded elements on both probably date from when the blade acquired a new hilt, likely in the year Hijri 246 (28th March 860 to 17th March 861 AD) as mentioned in the blade inscription, when Ibrāhīm Ibn Ilyās was governor of Harāt. The gilding process used on the blade seems to be an exceptionally rare example of what was known in medieval Islamic literary sources as ‘gold water’, which has similarities with that found on objects from the 18th and 19th centuries China, where it was called Wu Tong. The weapon itself is a khanjar or large ‘fighting knife’ of a type characteristic amongst Sughdian peoples of Central Asia and amongst Turkic nomadic cultures of the Eurasian steppes. However, the design of the hilt is more distinctive and may have originated in eastern Iran, Islamic Central Asia or Afghanistan during the early medieval Islamic period. Though not necessarily a Sāmānid design, this form of hilt came to be closely associated with regions which would form the core of the Sāmānid state. Weapons comparable to this khanjar are very limited in the archaeological records of all regions except Central Asia and the steppes. Furthermore, nothing strictly comparable is known from the immediately pre-Islamic period within the territory that would become the early medieval Islamic world. The few large fighting knives which do exist differ significantly from this weapon but nevertheless reinforce the thesis that the khanjar’s stylistic origins, including both its blade and hilt, are to be found within the Islamized regions of early medieval Central Asia and Afghanistan rather than the Sassanian Iranian or Romano-Byzantine heartlands of what became the Islamic Caliphate. Meanwhile, the pommel of the khanjar of Ibrāhīm Ibn Ilyās is of what might be called a large button shape which, though larger than most other examples from this period, is probably rooted in the same design concept. Unfortunately, one has to wait for several centuries before finding acutely downturned quillons like those on this particular weapon.