Cavalry sword and scabbard

This sword, often associated with the name Boabdil (the name given to the Nasrid king, Mohammad XII), was taken as a trophy by the Christians during the Battle of Lucena (1483), in the course of which the sovereign of Granada was taken prisoner. The arms and weapons taken as trophies remained in the hands of the descendents of Diego Fernández de Córdoba, head of the troupes, until they were relegated to museums. Some were bequeathed to the Museo del Ejército and others to the Real Academia de Armería, during the early part of the 20^th century.

The term ‘cavalry sword’ designates those swords used by light cavalry; they were shorter and thinner than the classic sword. The Boabdil sword has a tripartite hilt, crowned by a spherical pommel in gilt silver and enamel, topped by a conical button. The grip is cylindrical, slightly bulged, and composed of a section of ivory held between two enamel and gilt-silver bands. The guard has a curved shape and is composed of the same festooned material and ornamentation of triangular shapes. The quillons curve up at their tips in the form of serpent-like dragons (?) and wrap around an inlay of interlacing leaves and tendrils.

The scabbard is made of two brown leather-covered sections of wood. The chape and trimming, decorated in gilt silver has fixtures with rings to which are attached two festooned rectangular straps—all that remains of what was once a shoulder strap.

The décor is exceptionally refined and follows a geometric design with floral and epigraphic ornamentation. The grip, which is held between two bands of inscribed cartouches, follows a wide register, organized on a vertical plane: here and there an inscribed hexagonal cartouche in the central recesses of the small poly-lobed arcades is echoed in mirror image by two four-lobed forms enclosing a shell. These are framed by leafy branches topped with buds and bifid fleuron which extend into the lateral spaces in flourishes dotted with fleurets and veined leaves. The ivory is deeply sculpted with dividing stems, the vegetal elements carved with dense veins, and little eyelets set in the hollows of the fleuron—just some of the many characteristics of ivory work typical of al-Andalus during the Umayyad period.

With the exception of the sections in silver thread on the leather of the scabbard, the remaining parts are in gilt silver, enriched with an ornamentation of bright colours in cloisonné enamel (green, red, white and black). An epigraphic ribbon on a granulated field is outlined in tiny pearls and encloses eight-pointed stars and cruciforms decorated with a delicate floral motif: rosettes of palmettes around a small four-lobed shape within the stars and flourishes within the cruciforms. On the appendice at the top of the pommel, the ornamentation takes up a zigzag register. The inscriptions on the ferrules appear under the trilobate arcs, framed by vegetal elements. The eight-pointed stars decorating this sword are identified in the Islamic world as symbols of the divinity that comply with the eulogies.

The organization of the ornamentation in cruciforms and stars recalls the customary stucco and ceramic wall decorations we see in the Maghreb and Iran. The cruciforms and stars are very close to those, in ceramic, manufactured in Kashan that decorate the wall of religious edifices.

The enamel technique—cloisonné and champlevé—was employed in the Near East, although sparingly and primarily for jewellery, all the way up to the 13^th century. Its use was more widely spread in al-Andalus, reaching its apogee in the Nasrid period.

This cavalry sword belongs to a category of a variety of swords, among which that in the Bibliothèque nationale de Paris[1], the swords in the Campotejar and Aliatar collections of the Museo Arqueológico Nacional de Madrid, the sword in the Real Armería de Madrid and the one in the Kassel collection[2]. There are also daggers of comparable construction from the same period, their production so famous that they are mentioned in a number of French inventories from the 15^th and 16^th centuries.

[2] Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Kassel, inv. B II 608.