75 - Caucasian shashka with horn grip and curved back-edged blade, short version, 19th/20th century

Caucasian shashka with horn grip and curved back-edged blade, short version, 19th/20th century Steel, horn. Shashka of Caucasian form with curved, single-edged blade with a double narrow fuller along the back. One-piece dark horn grip without a guard, with small rivets, the pommel split and bent into a hook. A special feature is the short version with an overall length of 60.5 cm, the blade not shortened. Without scabbard, without marks. Blade stained, with age patina. L. 60.5 cm, blade length 48 cm. The shashka is the sabre of the Caucasian mountain peoples; its name goes back to the Adyghe word for “long knife”, the oldest depictions date from the early 17th century and come from western Georgia, the first written mention from 1747. Its characteristics are the slightly curved, single-edged back-edged blade and the grip without any guard, whose pommel is bent into a hook and split into two “ears”; the weapon was worn with the edge upwards, and in the Caucasian form the grip sits in the scabbard up to the pommel. Non-regulation pieces from the Caucasus have grips of horn or of niello silver and in some cases older European trade blades from Hungary or Solingen. Russian troops became acquainted with the shashka in the Caucasian Wars; it was introduced in 1834 as a model for the Nizhny Novgorod Dragoon Regiment, in 1881 as a Cossack and as a dragoon sabre for the entire cavalry, and from 1927 it continued to be made in a Soviet version until 1946. These regulation models have grip sleeve and pommel of brass, the dragoon model additionally a knuckle bow, and on the blade the acceptance mark and the mark of the Zlatoust arms factory. Besides the full-length weapons, reduced-size shashkas for boys are recorded.