18th-19th century AD. A rare damascened single-edged T-section blade with swept profile, cast guard with quadrant profile with rosettes, wooden grip with projecting ears; silver-inlaid name panel to one face, with silver-inlaid arabesque panel to the other; silver maker's mark on the blade. See Nicolle, D., Armies of the Ottoman Empire 1775-1820, London, 1998; Tirri, A.C., Islamic Weapons: Maghrib to Moghul, Indigo, 2003.650 grams, 79.5cm (31 1/2"). Property of a London gentleman; acquired in the 1970s. The yataghan is a long knife or short sabre that lacks a guard for the hand at the juncture of blade and hilt, and that usually has a double-curve to the edge and an almost straight back. It was one of the favoured side-arms of the Janissary infantry regiments in the 18th-19th centuries AD. These yataghans were carried by the Zeibeks, who lived on the Ionian coast, around Smyrna.