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Lot Essay
This important blade bears an elegant gold-inlaid nasta’liq inscription which gives the name of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1717).
A closely related sword to that offered here, also with the name of the Emperor Aurangzeb, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (36.25.1591a, b; https://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/24328). Like ours, the Metropolitan sword is formed of a European blade of circa 1600 which was inlaid in Mughal India with a gold inscription along the spine. That example was later mounted with a 19th century enamelled and gem-set hilt. The Metropolitan example is dated to Aurangzeb’s sixteenth regnal year, 1673. Another closely related example, also with the Emperor’s name and dated AH 1072/1661 AD, is in the Furusiyya Art Foundation Collection (Bashir Mohamed, The Arts of the Muslim Knight, Milan, 2007, no.64, p.100). That blade is stamped with the name of the 16th century Venetian sword-smith Andrea Ferara. All three swords have very similar neat gold nasta’liq inscriptions along the spine surrounded by small floral flourishes.
Where our sword bears the name ‘Blood Thirsty’, the Metropolitan’s sword bears the name bi-muhr, ‘Without Mercy’. The practice of naming royal weapons is something that was mentioned by Niccolao Manucci (1639-1717), the Italian traveller and author of “Storia do Morgor”, an important account of the later reign of Shah Jahan and that of Aurangzeb. His account includes a list of names which belonged to some of the Emperor Aurangzeb’s weapons which included the likes of ‘Killer of Enemies, Tyrant-Slayer, Violent Stroke, Without Fault, Army-Vanquisher, Hand’s Friend, Waist-Adorner and World Conqueror’ - that which Aurangzeb was said most usually to carry in his hand (Manucci, Storia, II, pp.358-59, quoted in Abdul Aziz, Arms and Jewellery of the Indian Mughals, Lahore, 1947, pp.21-22). The historian Abu’l Fazl (1551-1602) in a discussion on the weapons belonging to the Emperor Akbar mentioned that ‘all weapons for the use of His Majesty have names, and a proper rank is assigned to them. There are 30 khassah swords, one of which is carried to the Haram every month, when the former is returned. There are also in readiness 40 other swords which they call kotal, out of which the complement of 30 is made up’ (after the translation in W. Egerton, An Illustrated Handbook of Indian Arms and Those of Nepal, Burma, Thailand and Malaya, London, 1880, p.23).
The fact that European blades were most commonly used for these royal weapons is worth touching upon. Joannes De Laet, the Dutch geographer and director of the Dutch West India Company, wrote that the ‘swords of the royal forces are curved like a sickle, but are so badly tempered that they break rather than bend. Hence there is a great demand for European swords’ (J.S. Hoyland and S.N. Bannerjee (trans.), The Empire of the Great Mogul, Bombay, 1928, p.115 quoted in Aziz, op.cit., p.19). This goes some length to explain why this group of royal swords were all European in manufacture. The blades on both the Metropolitan and the Furusiyya examples bear the parasol mark, a symbol of royal authority.
A closely related sword to that offered here, also with the name of the Emperor Aurangzeb, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (36.25.1591a, b; https://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/24328). Like ours, the Metropolitan sword is formed of a European blade of circa 1600 which was inlaid in Mughal India with a gold inscription along the spine. That example was later mounted with a 19th century enamelled and gem-set hilt. The Metropolitan example is dated to Aurangzeb’s sixteenth regnal year, 1673. Another closely related example, also with the Emperor’s name and dated AH 1072/1661 AD, is in the Furusiyya Art Foundation Collection (Bashir Mohamed, The Arts of the Muslim Knight, Milan, 2007, no.64, p.100). That blade is stamped with the name of the 16th century Venetian sword-smith Andrea Ferara. All three swords have very similar neat gold nasta’liq inscriptions along the spine surrounded by small floral flourishes.
Where our sword bears the name ‘Blood Thirsty’, the Metropolitan’s sword bears the name bi-muhr, ‘Without Mercy’. The practice of naming royal weapons is something that was mentioned by Niccolao Manucci (1639-1717), the Italian traveller and author of “Storia do Morgor”, an important account of the later reign of Shah Jahan and that of Aurangzeb. His account includes a list of names which belonged to some of the Emperor Aurangzeb’s weapons which included the likes of ‘Killer of Enemies, Tyrant-Slayer, Violent Stroke, Without Fault, Army-Vanquisher, Hand’s Friend, Waist-Adorner and World Conqueror’ - that which Aurangzeb was said most usually to carry in his hand (Manucci, Storia, II, pp.358-59, quoted in Abdul Aziz, Arms and Jewellery of the Indian Mughals, Lahore, 1947, pp.21-22). The historian Abu’l Fazl (1551-1602) in a discussion on the weapons belonging to the Emperor Akbar mentioned that ‘all weapons for the use of His Majesty have names, and a proper rank is assigned to them. There are 30 khassah swords, one of which is carried to the Haram every month, when the former is returned. There are also in readiness 40 other swords which they call kotal, out of which the complement of 30 is made up’ (after the translation in W. Egerton, An Illustrated Handbook of Indian Arms and Those of Nepal, Burma, Thailand and Malaya, London, 1880, p.23).
The fact that European blades were most commonly used for these royal weapons is worth touching upon. Joannes De Laet, the Dutch geographer and director of the Dutch West India Company, wrote that the ‘swords of the royal forces are curved like a sickle, but are so badly tempered that they break rather than bend. Hence there is a great demand for European swords’ (J.S. Hoyland and S.N. Bannerjee (trans.), The Empire of the Great Mogul, Bombay, 1928, p.115 quoted in Aziz, op.cit., p.19). This goes some length to explain why this group of royal swords were all European in manufacture. The blades on both the Metropolitan and the Furusiyya examples bear the parasol mark, a symbol of royal authority.