An interesting shamshir with tulwar type mounts
Flat, curved, single-edged blade of fine damask, on a side of the forte three cartouches with inscriptions in Arabic and a tiger in gold, on the other side bands with inscriptions in Arabic between floral motifs, in gold too, the back decorated with geometrical motifs; typical, tulvar-like hilt with guard, enriched with floral decorations in gold. For the decoration in the blade see an almost identical arm called Tulvar type Sultan, Karnataka, 1790, National Museum Delhi. Our piece could belong to the same period and workshop.

Period: 18th Century

Provenance: India

Dimension: 96.5 cm. Length

History:

A shamshir, shamsher, shamsheer or chimchir is a type of sabre with a curve that is considered radical for a sword: 5 to 15 degrees from tip to tip. The name is derived from Persian: شمشیر‎‎ shamshīr, which means "sword" (in general). The radically curved sword family includes the shamshir, scimitar, Talwar, kilij, Pulwar and the sabre.

Originally Persian swords were straight and double edged. The curved scimitar blades were Central Asian in origin. The earliest evidence of curved swords, or scimitars, is from the 9th century, when these weapons were used by soldiers in the Khurasan region of Central Asia. The sword now called a "shamshir" was introduced to Iran by the Turkic Seljuk Khanate in the 12th century and was later popularized in Persia by the early 16th century, and had "relatives" in Turkey (the kilij), the Mughal Empire (the talwar), and the adjoining Arabian world (the saif) and (the sam-saam). (Wikipedia)