Ottoman Jade-Hilted Dagger with Sheath

What it is

Often described online as an "Ottoman jambiya," the dagger pictured here is in fact a straight-bladed Turkish dagger with its sheath, catalogued by The Metropolitan Museum of Art as Dagger with Sheath, Turkish, eighteenth century (accession 36.25.993a, b). It came to the Met in 1935 with the bequest of George C. Stone, an American engineer whose collection of more than four thousand arms and armor objects from around the world is one of the museum's great resources. With its sheath it measures 36.4 cm long and weighs only about 258 grams; the dagger alone is 33.8 cm. The Met lists its materials as jade, steel, gold, copper, shagreen and gemstones.

What to look for

Start with the hilt. It is carved from a single piece of pale, milky-green jade. The pommel spreads into a flat, curling cap topped by a small knob, the grip swells and narrows in a vase-like shape carved with a crown of leaves, and the base flares again into a lobed, leaf-like guard that sits over the blade. There is no metal guard at all: the jade itself does the work, which is a sign that this is a ceremonial piece more than a fighting weapon.

The blade is straight and double-edged, tapering evenly to a sharp point. Down its length run long channels, and over almost its whole surface the dark steel is inlaid with gold: scrolling palmettes and arabesques at the top and tip, and between them lines of inscription in Arabic script. The gold sits flush with the steel and catches the light as the blade moves, so that the weapon reads as much as a page of decorated writing as a piece of steel.

The sheath is the most colorful part. Its body is covered in green shagreen, the rough, pebbled skin of a ray or shark, dyed green; the tiny raised beads of the skin make a glittering, granular surface. Gold mounts at the throat and tip are chased with foliage and set with clusters of red rubies around green emeralds and other stones, arranged in interlacing ribbon patterns. Two small rings at the top would have held a cord so that the dagger could hang at the belt or be tucked into the sash.

How it was made

Three separate crafts meet in this object. The jade carver shaped the hilt from a hard stone that cannot be cut, only ground away with abrasives, which is why jade hilts were so costly and so admired; the crisp leaf carving on the grip represents many hours at the wheel. The bladesmith forged and ground the steel, and then a specialist inlaid the gold, cutting fine grooves or roughening the surface of the steel and hammering gold wire or foil into it, a technique often called damascening. The goldsmith, finally, made the sheath mounts, chasing the foliage and setting the stones in raised collets. In the Ottoman capital these trades were organized in guilds, and the finest work was made for the palace and the households of high officials.

The Met catalogues the dagger simply as Turkish and of the eighteenth century, without naming a workshop. That caution is typical: luxury daggers were often assembled from parts made in different places, and jade hilts in particular traveled along the trade routes between India, Persia and Istanbul.

A note on names

The name "jambiya" (Arabic for roughly "at the side") properly describes a dagger with a curved, double-edged blade, worn across Arabia, Persia, India and the Ottoman lands; the Met has true Ottoman jambiyas in the same collection. The pictured dagger has a straight blade, so in Turkish terms it is better called a hançer, the general word for a dagger. Neither should be confused with the yatağan (yataghan), a much longer, single-edged short sword.

Use and meaning

Ottoman men of rank wore daggers thrust through the sash, hilt up, where they were plainly seen. A jade hilt and a gem-set sheath like these announced wealth, taste and status far more than readiness to fight. Jade, prized for its hardness and its association with protection, was a favored material for hilts across the Islamic world, and jade grips of Indian origin were often fitted to Turkish blades. Jeweled daggers were also standard diplomatic gifts from the sultan's court: the most famous, the emerald-hilted Topkapı Dagger of 1747, was made as a gift for the Persian ruler Nadir Shah and today sits in the treasury of the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul.

Where to see it

For more objects from the same culture, see our page on Ottoman art. The dagger belongs to the Department of Arms and Armor at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. It is not always on display; the Met's online collection gives its current status. Other major collections of Ottoman arms include the Topkapı Palace Museum and the Military Museum in Istanbul and the Wallace Collection in London. For other objects in our catalogue that join fine craft with ceremony, see Armillary Sphere Ring and El Peto de la Mort.