Scimitar

A scimitar is a single edged sword with a convex curved blade about 75 to 90 centimeters long, a European umbrella term for a family of curved swords used across the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa rather than one specific design, including the Persian shamshir, the Arab saif, the Indian talwar, the North African nimcha, the Turkish kilij and the Afghan pulwar. These blades derive from earlier curved swords developed among Turkic peoples in Central Asia, with the earliest archaeological evidence dating to the ninth century among Khurasan soldiers who found that a curved edge cuts better because its arc matches the sweep of a mounted rider's arm. The design spread through Islamic lands after the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century and remained widespread from the Ottoman period until firearms made swords obsolete in combat, while continuing to carry deep symbolic weight in Arab culture, appearing in titles, flags and cultural metaphors.