Perforated slaves in Damascus?

Factual Questions
1

So, I was sitting in the bath last night, singing an appropriate ditty from the oeuvre of Flanders and Swann, and musing on the metallurgy of Dark Age and mediaeval sword blades, as you do…

Anyway, I started thinking about the places that had notable reputations for steel in general, and sword blades in particular, and I remembered, from somewhere, the story of how blades from Damascus were supposed to have a special keenness and general high quality, because they were tempered by being thrust, while still red-hot, through the (briefly) living body of a slave. And it occurred to me to wonder whether this story had any particular credibility to it.

On the one hand, our forefathers had a, well, robust attitude to life and death, and I could imagine them thinking that one slave was a small price to pay for a decent edge. And I do know that metallugists have, over time, experimented with a wide range of tempering processes.

On the other hand, the mediaeval Middle East wasn’t that barbaric a society… reasonably enlightened, in fact, by the standards of the times. And slaves, though deprived of freedom, still usually retained some rights under many legal systems. Not to mention that a slave often was a valuable commodity, surely (one would think) too much so to be sacrificed on such a one-shot basis.

So. Any authenticated accounts of this? Are we dealing with a fascinating but gruesome phase of the history of metallurgy, or a gross libel upon a civilised ancient culture? I welcome any incisive comments upon this particularly pointed question (oh, come on, you knew I was going to do that…)

2

The reason blades from Damascus were valued so highly is that they were (and are: Damascene blades are still made, just not in Damascus) comprised of many thin layers of steel, giving them greater flexibility than a single-bar blade. They could also be made thinner without loosing as much strength. I doubt the story, just because I don’t think thrusting a blade through a living body would temper it.

3

Actually, pattern-welding using repeated folding and differing grades of alloy was pretty much a standard for Dark Age sword manufacture - the Saxons used four different grades of steel for a single sword. There’s a replica of a Saxon blade in the British Museum which has been acid-etched to bring out the resulting pattern (which is referred to, obliquely, in Beowulf, where a sword is described with an adjective which one translator renders as “wave-patterned” - I’ll have to look up the original Old English).

4

Arabs knew their metallurgy and their blades from several palces, including Damascus and Toledo, gained fame. I have never heard the slave part which sounds like UL and BS to me. I believe it was Anthracite who has some specific knowledge on this topic so I’ll wait for her to drop by.

5

Hmmm, well my knowledge of this subject is strictly limited to what I read in Terry Pratchett’s Interesting Times, and the associated Annotations:

http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/interesting-times.html

6

I heard a similar (dubious) story about how the Samurai used to test the sharpness of their swords: a slave was suspended upside down, with legs tied well apart. The sword was brought down between the slave’s legs, and if it sliced them entirely in half, from nether regions to the top of the skull, then it was deemed sharp enough.

Do I believe either story? Not really. They both sound like good marketing ploys for martial weapons sales. YMMV.

7

There’s an Iowa State University professor and a blacksmith who claim to have recreated the Damascene blades (bottom line - trace vanadium):

http://www.rense.com/general12/damas.htm

I’ve heard the slave story also. That article only mentions it in passing:

I vote for it being BS, promulgated either as romantic embroidery, or deliberate misdirection.

8

I cite my GF on the couch who has a Masters in East Asian studies and she can confirm that katana were tested in two ways, the “official” way which was to test by chopping into a pile of corpses of executed prisoners and seeing how deep you went. The “unofficial” way was for young samurai, on recieving their first blade, to stand by a crossroads and attempt to slice in half the first passer-by. Sure reminds me of the ul of gang members driving with their lights out!

She is too lazy to go to the bookshelf, so I can’t provide a direct cite. If I can convince her to look it up later I will come back in.

9

There’s a theory that one of the reasons Damascene steel was so prized was because of the ores used. They had trace amounts of certain minerals, and the impurities in the ore led to a stronger steel.

10

I take it, then, that the feeling of the meeting is that this is a legend, put about to show how macho and potent Damascene blades are? (Or, just possibly, as anti-Moslem propaganda - “see how lightly they treat human life”, that sort of thing?)

So, it looks like I can’t stab the ISO 9000 guy in the stomach and claim that it’s just the way they used to do Quality Control back in mediaeval Syria… damn.

Informative as always, though. Vanadium, huh? Thanks for the responses, folks!

11

Interestingly, Henry Ford used vanadium steel in the Model T, which was why, spindly as it looks, it’s really a very rugged car…

12

A slight hijack, but these guys have been doing some interesting things in the realm of metallurgical research. So far, they haven’t stabbed anyone with a sword to temper it, but you never know!

13

This is absurd. The credulity of modern man knows no limits. BSOmeter pegged.

Convicted prisoners maybe, but not slaves. Slaves are expensive to obtain and maintain. You don’t go around hacking the head off your plow horse to make a point about how sharp your sword is, and you wouldn’t kill an even more valuable slave.

14

BTW, my summary of “bottom line - trace vanadium” for the Iowa professor’s theory may be a bit glib, if you didn’t scan that article. It also hinges on the process of manufacture which distributed the vanadium unevenly, and resulted in a banding of steel with differing characteristics.

Vanadium is a common component in many modern steel alloys.

15

Seems like total BS to me. On top of what’s been said before, I don’t see how you could temper the whole blade in a human body. Even if it works, part of the blade would be sticking out and not get the same tempering as the rest. And I don’t see how a human body could possibly temper as well as a trough of ice cold water.

16

Water makes a poor quenching agent as rapid boiling makes a steam layer between the hot metal and liquid water causing the metal too cool too slowly for the bath to be effctive. Oil is much preferred for that reason. Many modern blade forgers use tallow or other combinations of grease and oil. Blood would likely be as poor as water but if you had a really fat slave… uh oh.

I read the article in Scientific American which detailed the discovery of the process and metallurgy behind it. Really interesting stuff such as hydrogen inclusion from the leaves put into the kikn with the Wootz cake and how the vanadium impurities are crystallized during the repeated hand forgings. Ironic that “Damascus” has been used as a synonym for laminated steed such as old shotgun barrels when true Damascus swords aren’t laminated at all. Samurai shotgun barrel doesn’t sound right at all.

17

It does sound like the sort of thing that a merchant might say in order to maintain a high price.

18

OK, OK, it’s just a legend. Unlike the slaves, I get the point.

Just thought I’d amplify that bit earlier about Beowulf. (I spent half an hour shifting piles of books around to get at this stuff, I’m blowed if I’m not going to use it.) The relevant word is at line 1564, the Old English is hring-mæl, translated as “wormloop-patterned” (Seamus Heany), “wave-patterned” (Michael Alexander) or just “patterned” (prose translator whose name I’ve forgotten already). It’s the bit where Beowulf grabs an ancient sword in order to off Grendel’s mother, and I think it demonstrates that the Saxons expected a decent blade to have a fair degree of metallurgical complexity.

A pedant comments: Of course, the sword in question is described as the work of giants, which typically implies a Roman relic. Therefore the Beowulf-poet is being inaccurate, since the typical Roman gladius was not metallurgically sophisticated…

Exit pedant, rapidly, propelled by Steve’s size twelve boot.

19

a couple of metallurgy books I have browsed suggested that quenching the swords in urine was done because it caused very hard metal nitrides to form. Now a body would be an even richer source of nitrogen, so perhaps there is some sense in it

20

India was known for the quality of it’s steel, even without patern-welding. Indian iron ores had high trace quantities of vanadium, and made for very strong steels, which could then make lighter, thinner blades for the same strength. All other things being equal, a lighter, thinner blade will move faster, cut more deeply and cleanly. It’s not unreasonable to believe that Damascus recieved a fair bit of Indian iron in trade, thus leading to higher quality blades, a reputation, and much mystic BS attached to that reputation.

A good steel blade had an almost mythic quality to it, a quality which attracts much uninformed speculation, which speculation becomes ‘common knowledge’, which then becomes recorded as ‘fact’.