Ottoman Kilij

Origins

Curved single-edged swords came west with the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, whose horsemen had used slightly curved sabres since at least the eighth century. As the Seljuks and then the Ottomans pushed into Anatolia and the Balkans, their swords were still long and gently curved, close to the blades of the Mongols and the early Persian Persian Shamshir. The distinctively Turkish form developed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as Ottoman power reached its height: the blade grew shorter and broader, the curve deepened, and smiths added the yelman — a sudden widening of the blade near the point, sharpened on the back. By the eighteenth century this was the standard sword of the empire's cavalry and officer class, and in Turkish the word kılıç simply means "sword."

Design & Construction

A classic eighteenth- or nineteenth-century kilij has a blade of about 28 to 31 inches, strongly curved and relatively wide, with the yelman taking up roughly the last third. The yelman moves the sword's balance forward, so the blade strikes with great force for its weight, and its sharpened back edge lets the swordsman cut on the backstroke or thrust with a point that is broad but keen. Better blades were of crucible "watered" steel, often inscribed or inlaid in gold. The hilt is simple: a straight cross-guard with ball-ended quillons and langets that grip the blade, and a grip of horn, ivory or wood angled forward at the pommel like a pistol grip, which locks into the hand during a cut. Scabbards were wood covered in leather or silver, with two suspension rings for wearing edge-down from a belt.

Combat Use

The kilij was above all a cavalryman's weapon, carried by the sipahi horsemen of the timar system and by officers and officials; the infantry Janissaries fought mainly with firearms and their short Ottoman Yatagan, though their officers wore the kilij as a mark of rank. In the long wars with Venice, Hungary, the Habsburgs and Russia it met the Cossack Shashka and the European sabre, and it strongly influenced them: the Hungarian and Polish hussar sabres descend from Turkish models. In Egypt the Mamluk cavalry carried kilij-pattern sabres against the French in 1798, when Bonaparte's squares shattered their charges at the Battle of the Pyramids; French officers took the "Mameluke" sword home as a fashionable trophy.

Legacy

The Mameluke sword became a European and American dress sword of the nineteenth century. Britain adopted it for general officers in 1831, and the US Marine Corps made it the officer's sword in 1826 — a tradition said to recall the jeweled Mameluke sword given to Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon after the capture of Derna in 1805 — and Marine officers carry it still. European light cavalry sabres such as the 1796 Light Cavalry Sabre owe their curve partly to Turkish example. Genuine Ottoman kilij with watered blades, gold inscriptions and silver-mounted scabbards are among the most prized Islamic arms, and dated and signed blades are studied closely by collectors and museums.