The scimitar is a type of cold piercing-cutting weapon with a curved blade. According to legend, the Turkish janissaries invented it to circumvent the Sultan's law. The sultan forbade the wearing of sabers in peacetime, and instead, the janissaries began to wear shorter combat knives - scimitars.
The yatagan was actively used by Turks and residents of the Middle Eastern countries: Syrians, Persians, etc. In the east, it began to be used in the 16th century, and by the middle of the 17th century it was already quite widespread. Initially, this knife is a descendant of the ancient Egyptian sword. Scimitars, decorated with carvings, notches and engravings, were worn like daggers behind a belt in a wooden scabbard lined with metal or covered with leather.
The scimitar has a long blade with a double curvature, the concave side of the blade is sharpened, like many other types of piercing-cutting weapons. However, unlike them, the blade of the scimitar has the same width almost along its entire length, and does not expand towards the tip.
Since the weapon weighs only about 800 g and has a long blade of about 65 cm, it allows you to deliver both piercing-cutting and chopping serial blows. In this case, the shape of the handle does not allow the weapon to escape from the hand. The handle covers almost the entire lower part of the palm, and sometimes has a stop perpendicular to the straight part of the blade. Thus, this is a fairly serious weapon.
The convex side and blade were used to defend and deflect blows. Sometimes they blocked the blows of the enemy with the help of the other side of the blade. The design of the scimitar made it possible to relatively reliably hold the enemy blade, but made it impossible to deliver counterstrikes at lightning speed. In addition, piercing armor with a scimitar was not easy due to its features and low weight.
The most effective was the use of the scimitar in close combat. There are also versions that the weapon was used as a throwing weapon at short distances (up to 5 meters). This was possible due to the specific shape of the handle and blade.
