A magnificent sabre by the Ottoman royal swordsmith Haji Murad ibn Khushqadam, Turkey, 16th century

Bonhams, San Fransisco, 20 June 2011, lot 9078

inscriptions

surah al-fath (XLVIII) 1-4 in cartouches along the length

'work of Haji Murad Khushqadam' in a rectangular cartouche by the forte

'I put my trust in God' in a roundel in negative space by the forte

sura al-saf 61:13 in a rectangular cartouche by the forte on the reverse

On the spine: buduh repeated

Eleven sabres bearing Murad ibn Khushqadam's signature are known today, more than half of which are in museum collections. These include a sword in the Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo (inv. no.3647; Mayer 1962, p.64); the Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin (inv. no.W 4170; Mayer 1962, p.65, pl.XVI); the Armeria Real, Madrid (inv. no.M18); the Military Museum, Istanbul (inv. no.I/4824), and two in the Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul (inv. nos.1/10467, 1/490; Ayhan 2011, p.71). Four sabres, excluding the present example, are in private collections, including one in the Furusiyya Art Foundation, Vaduz (inv. no.R-313; Mohamed 2007, p.64); two sold in Christie's London (15 October 1996, lot 203, and 27 October 2022, lot 136), and one in a German private collection (Haase et al. 1993, no.124, pp.188-9).

The career of Murad ibn Khushqadam (Hoşqadam) has been reconstructed from the inscriptions on these exceptional sabre blades. One of the Topkapi Palace Museum sabres (inv. no.1/10467) is inscribed with an inscription stating that it was made for sultan Suleyman, as is the sabre sold at Christie's, London, in 1996. Relatively rare Qur'anic inscriptions may point further to Murad ibn Khushqadam's illustrious patron. These include Qur'an XXVII (al-Naml), verse 30 ('Verily, it is from Solomon...') on the sabre in a German private collection, and the subsequent verse ('be not haughty with me but come to me in submission'), which is a direct citation from a letter written by Solomon, on the sabre in the Topkapi Palace Museum.

From an inscription on one of the Topkapi Palace Museum sabres (inv. no.1/490), we know that Murad ibn Khushqadam used the nisba 'ash-Shami' ('the Syrian'), but in the absence of secure dates for his lifetime, it is impossible to say whether he was born or raised under the Mamluks, or in early Ottoman Syria, after Selim I's conquest. Stylistically, his work fits comfortably within the corpus of sabres produced by late Mamluk swordsmiths for Ottoman imperial patrons, such as those produced by al-Hajj Sunqur, who made blades for the Mamluk Sultan al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghuri (r.1501-16) and for Bayezid II (r.1481-1512). The fine goldwork set into the deeply carved watered steel, an unforgiving material, attests to the exceptional skill of Murad ibn Khushqadam and seats it at the pinnacle of the sixteenth-century art of the swordsmith.