Khutu was the name given to a material used by medieval

Islamic Golden Age

During the Islamic Golden Age philosophers, scientists and engineers of the Islamic world contributed enormously to technology and culture, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding their own inventions and innovations...

 Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

ic cutlers

Bladesmith

Bladesmithing is the art of making knives, swords, daggers and other blades using a forge, hammer, anvil, and other smithing tools. Bladesmiths employ a variety of metalworking techniques similar to those used by blacksmiths, as well as woodworking for knife and sword handles, and often...

 for knife handles. The ultimate source of the material has been a matter of conjecture for more than a thousand years; Islamic polymath

Polymath

A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...

 al-Biruni was among the first to investigate it and debate about the material—especially its source—continues to this day. The hypothesized sources for the material have included narwhal

Narwhal

The narwhal, Monodon monoceros, is a medium-sized toothed whale that lives year-round in the Arctic. One of two living species of whale in the Monodontidae family, along with the beluga whale, the narwhal males are distinguished by a characteristic long, straight, helical tusk extending from their...

, walrus

Walrus ivory

Walrus tusk ivory comes from two modified upper canines. The tusks of a Pacific walrus may attain a length of one meter. Walrus teeth are also commercially carved and traded. The average walrus tooth has a rounded, irregular peg shape and is approximately 5cm in length.The tip of a walrus tusk has...

, and mammoth

Mammoth

A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus. These proboscideans are members of Elephantidae, the family of elephants and mammoths, and close relatives of modern elephants. They were often equipped with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair...

 ivory, the frontal bone

Frontal bone

The frontal bone is a bone in the human skull that resembles a cockleshell in form, and consists of two portions:* a vertical portion, the squama frontalis, corresponding with the region of the forehead....

s of bulls, goats, and birds, the teeth of snakes, fish, and hippopotamus

Hippopotamus

The hippopotamus , or hippo, from the ancient Greek for "river horse" , is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae After the elephant and rhinoceros, the hippopotamus is the third largest land mammal and the heaviest...

es, and the root of a tree. The most recent investigation, by natural historian

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

 Chris Lavers, has pointed to the frontal boss of the horns of the muskox.

Khutu has been ascribed properties other than those of a work material. It was, for example, described as an alexipharmic—a property that eventually was attached to alicorn, the supposed horn of the unicorn

Unicorn

The unicorn is a legendary animal from European folklore that resembles a white horse with a large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead, and sometimes a goat's beard...

.

Abu Rayhan Biruni

Islamic polymath al-Biruni (973–1048) was among the first to investigate khutu, which he referred to as al-chutww. He described it as being from the land of the Kirgiz in the northern part of the Turkish territory and mentioned that it was in great demand in Egypt. He noted that the material came in a variety of colours, with yellowish-green being best, followed by those coloured camphor

Camphor

Camphor is a waxy, white or transparent solid with a strong, aromatic odor. It is a terpenoid with the chemical formula C10H16O. It is found in wood of the camphor laurel , a large evergreen tree found in Asia and also of Dryobalanops aromatica, a giant of the Bornean forests...

, white

White

White is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light that stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the human eye in nearly equal amounts and with high brightness compared to the surroundings. A white visual stimulation will be void of hue and grayness.White light can be...

, "like the sun", and dark grey. He also mentioned the beliefs that the material came from the forehead of the roc (an enormous bird from Arabic and Persian myths which was said to carry off and eat elephants) or the forehead of a hippopotamus, but did not seem to attach much weight to these ideas, noting that it was much more similar to the frontal bone of a bull or goat. He wrote: "It originates from an animal; it is much in demand, and preserved in the treasuries among the Chinese who assert that it is a desirable article because the approach of poison causes it to exude."

In another work he described it as "bigger than the hand in size" and "thicker than two fingers" and mentioned that "Amir Abu Ja'far bin Banu has a large box-like case made of long and broad khutu planks." Because the material gave off a fishy smell when burned, he felt that it was probably a marine creature of some kind, but he specifically noted an instance where someone was able to pass off walrus ivory for proper khutu, strongly implying that the two materials were distinct – at least to him.

Ibn al-Husayn Kashgari

Writing shortly after al-Biruni, Kashgari mentioned khutu in his work Diwan Lughat at-Turk (c. 1075):

"Horn of a sea fish imported from China. It is (also) said that it is the root of a tree. It is used for knife handles. The presence of poison in food is put to the test by it because when broth or other dishes in the bowl are stirred with it the food cooks without fire (if poison is present in it), or if the horn is placed on a bowl it (the horn) sweats without steam."

Ibn al-Akfani

The next investigation of khutu was by Ibn al-Akfani (1283–1348), who called the material chartut. Although he cited al-Biruni's earlier work, he disagreed with a number of Al-Biruni's conclusions. For example, he favoured the theory that khutu came from the forehead of a large bird. He also offered a slightly different spectrum of possible colours for khutu (yellow, red, apricot

Apricot (color)

Apricot is a light yellowish-orangeish color that attempts to represent the color of apricots. Actually, it is somewhat paler than actual apricots....

, dust, black), though he did agree that the quality of the material varied with the colour.

Berthold Laufer

The era of modern scholarship on the identity of khutu began with the work of the orientalist

Oriental studies

Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...

 Berthold Laufer

Berthold Laufer

Berthold Laufer was a German-American anthropologist and orientalist.Laufer was born in Cologne to a Jewish family. He attended the Friedrich Wilhelms Gymnasium from 1884-1893. He continued his studies in Berlin and completed his doctorate degree at the University of Leipzig in 1897...

. The first paper was titled "Arabic and Chinese Trade in Walrus and Narwhal Ivory" and published in the journal T'oung Pao in 1913. Laufer provided a brief overview of the medieval scholarship and provided detailed information regarding the trade of narwhal and walrus ivory on the basis that khutu referred to one or both of those items. A second paper, titled "Supplementary Notes on Walrus and Narwhal Ivory" was published in 1916 in the same journal and provided some corrections and clarifications of his earlier work.

Richard Ettinghausen

While Laufer had detailed the Chinese end of the narwhal and walrus ivory trade

Ivory trade

The ivory trade is the commercial, often illegal trade in the ivory tusks of the hippopotamus, walrus, narwhal, mammoth, and most commonly, Asian and African elephants....

, Richard Ettinghausen focused on the Arabic side. Like Laufer, he felt that khutu was probably walrus ivory, with perhaps some samples being narwhal ivory.

Chris Lavers

The most recent work on khutu has been done by Chris Lavers. In contrast to the early 20th century scholars, Lavers does not believe khutu to have been either walrus or narwhal ivory, but rather the frontal bone and associated horn material of the muskox, with some specimens perhaps coming from mammoth ivory. His primary evidence for this was the work of al-Biruni, particularly where he mentions that knowledgeable people could differentiate walrus ivory from proper khutu (a fact that Laufer could not have known in his earlier work, as the al-Biruni text mentioning it had not yet been translated). In The Natural History of Unicorns he acknowledges that Asian muskoxen were supposed to have become extinct about a thousand years before al-Biruni's investigations (see muskox for information regarding their extinction and reintroduction), but points out that there could well have been an isolated refugium of muskoxen existing in Asia until more modern times, that it was possible that there was trade in material goods between Asian arctic and North American arctic peoples, and also that frozen or fossilized muskoxen material could have been harvested in the same way that mammoth ivory was.