QAJAR IRAN OR POSSIBLY OTTOMAN SYRIA, 19TH CENTURY

Details

AN ENAMELLED AND GOLD DECORATED DAGGER (JAMBIYYA)
QAJAR IRAN OR POSSIBLY OTTOMAN SYRIA, 19TH CENTURY
With a curved double-edged watered-steel blade; the hilt and the sheath decorated with polychrome floral enamel decoration on white ground with green highlights and gold borders, top of the hilt with inset foiled cut-glass bead, minor areas of repair to the enamel
16 7/8in. (42.5cm.) long

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Lot Essay

Similar daggers have recently sold at auction. See for example one at Sotheby's, 14 April 2010, lot 229 and in these Rooms, 4 October 2012, lot 156. Those were both catalogued as Qajar Iranian. However enameled daggers of this type seem to have been produced across the Near East. Two seemingly related daggers in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection are catalogued as Ottoman, 19th century (David Alexander, The Arts of War, London, 1992, nos.87-88, pp.146-47). This attribution is made on the basis of their similarity to an example in the Metropolitan Museum which is signed by a master who either worked in or came from Damascus (inv.no.32.75.263, James, op.cit., p.146).

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