04-04-2013, 11:47 AM
Damascus steel or "Damast" in German is jaust a modern word for an old thing. In spanish "damascinado" means what we know as "Tauschierung": inlaying precious metals into iron to create patterns.
So the word "Damascus" might stand for the pattern, not the city. We have no real evidence for a blade-making "industry" in the city of Damascus. Not in roman time, not in the middle ages.
It might be that in the times of the crusades there was a trading route ending in Damascus on which blades from central asia made of wootz reached syria and came in sight of the western warriors fighting there. For these, the blades came "from Damascus" and had a pattern that was (in this time) unknown in the west (european swords were constructed in other ways in that time, creating no special pattern).
It`s just a theory, but this might have led to the confusion we now have: patterned steel which is NOT pattern-welded (wootz) traded in a famous city (Damascus) comes in sight of europeans who do (at this point of history) not know about pattern-welded/otherwise patterned blades and call them "damascene blades".
The rest is just iron-technology.
As Robert has stated, forge-welding of blades exists in europe from the time when iron was first used for blades because it is a technical MUST! There is no other way to create any iron/steel thing out of bloomery iron.
The only thing we do not know exactly is the time when smiths recognised that there are differences in steels which can be used for making better tools/blades/whatever, when they began to combine different steels and when they discovered that there are techniques (etching or polishing, none is proved in europe for sure) which make differences of steels in a blade visible. The next step in such an evolution is to create patterns intentionally.
Romans did that from the 2nd - 3rd century onwards, the patterns getting more and more complex (as we can see in some blades from Nydam, Illerup,... where even mosaic-techniques were used).
The typical western-type blades of the migration period are a direct descendant of these roman blades. The evolution of the blade types and patterns is also, as ever ;-) in Miks`book.
So the word "Damascus" might stand for the pattern, not the city. We have no real evidence for a blade-making "industry" in the city of Damascus. Not in roman time, not in the middle ages.
It might be that in the times of the crusades there was a trading route ending in Damascus on which blades from central asia made of wootz reached syria and came in sight of the western warriors fighting there. For these, the blades came "from Damascus" and had a pattern that was (in this time) unknown in the west (european swords were constructed in other ways in that time, creating no special pattern).
It`s just a theory, but this might have led to the confusion we now have: patterned steel which is NOT pattern-welded (wootz) traded in a famous city (Damascus) comes in sight of europeans who do (at this point of history) not know about pattern-welded/otherwise patterned blades and call them "damascene blades".
The rest is just iron-technology.
As Robert has stated, forge-welding of blades exists in europe from the time when iron was first used for blades because it is a technical MUST! There is no other way to create any iron/steel thing out of bloomery iron.
The only thing we do not know exactly is the time when smiths recognised that there are differences in steels which can be used for making better tools/blades/whatever, when they began to combine different steels and when they discovered that there are techniques (etching or polishing, none is proved in europe for sure) which make differences of steels in a blade visible. The next step in such an evolution is to create patterns intentionally.
Romans did that from the 2nd - 3rd century onwards, the patterns getting more and more complex (as we can see in some blades from Nydam, Illerup,... where even mosaic-techniques were used).
The typical western-type blades of the migration period are a direct descendant of these roman blades. The evolution of the blade types and patterns is also, as ever ;-) in Miks`book.
Als Mensch zu dumm, als Schwein zu kleine Ohren...
Jürgen Graßler
www.schorsch-der-schmied.de
www.facebook.com/pages/AG-Historisches-Handwerk/203702642993872
Jürgen Graßler
www.schorsch-der-schmied.de
www.facebook.com/pages/AG-Historisches-Handwerk/203702642993872
