Dagger with Sheath late 17th century Hilt, Indian, Mughal; blade, Turkish or Indian From the sixteenth century on, pierced blades were popular in Turkey, Arabia, Iran, and India, and there are a number of examples in the Metropolitan Museum's collection. In several respects the blade of this dagger is similar to that of accession number , b, dated to the eighteenth–nineteenth century, notably in the pierced leaf forms below the lobed section that contains a slot for the "rolling balls"––which here are tiny polished rubies and emeralds that were strung on a wire dropped through a hole at

Dagger with Sheath late 17th century Hilt, Indian, Mughal; blade, Turkish or Indian From the sixteenth century on, pierced blades were popular in Turkey, Arabia, Iran, and India, and there are a number of examples in the Metropolitan Museum's collection. In several respects the blade of this dagger is similar to that of accession number , b, dated to the eighteenth–nineteenth century, notably in the pierced leaf forms below the lobed section that contains a slot for the "rolling balls"––which here are tiny polished rubies and emeralds that were strung on a wire dropped through a hole at the top of the blade before the tang was welded on. The same feature also occurs on a late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century Ottoman dagger in the Landesmuseum Württemberg, Stuttgart, and on another almost identical example in the Rüstkammer of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, all of which indicates that dagger blades in this style were probably produced over a long period of time. It is uncertain where these pierced blades––as opposed to their fittings––were crafted, whether they originated from one center of production in Iran or Turkey or whether the style was widely imitated. The blade of this dagger is embellished with a coherently executed arabesque design, which in later examples of the eighteenth to nineteenth century degenerates into disconnected floral motifs, suggesting that this more finely worked blade is probably of the seventeenth to India, daggers fitted with hilts of this type are known as chilanum and are characterized by an elongated splayed pommel and guard, sometimes chevronlike or curved to create a double crescent, usually with baluster-shaped grips; in some examples the forward quillon is curved upward to form a knuckle guard. The hilt type probably originated in the Deccan. Among the earliest representations ot the type appears in a Deccani miniature dated about 1555, which portrays Sultan Husain Nizam Sh

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