Where Does Damascus Steel Come From? A Short History

Damascus steel is known for the flowing, watery pattern on its surface. The original blades were forged in the Near East from wootz, a steel made in India, and prized for centuries. The method behind them was lost, and the Damascus sold today is made a different way.

Where the name comes from

There are three common explanations. The blades may be named after the city of Damascus, in Syria, where they were made and traded. The name may come from the Arabic word for water, after the watery pattern, which is why Damascus is also called watered steel in several languages. Or it may simply mean steel worked in the Damascus style.

Wootz: the original steel

Wootz was a crucible steel made in southern India and Sri Lanka and shipped west as small cakes. Smiths in the Near East forged it into blades whose pattern came from the structure of the steel itself. Weapons made from it were famous well over a thousand years ago. By around the 18th century the knowledge of how to make and forge wootz had been lost, and with it the original Damascus.

Modern Damascus: pattern welding

Today's Damascus is pattern-welded. Two steels are stacked, heated and forge-welded into one bar, then folded again and again until the bar holds hundreds of layers. An acid etch at the end darkens one steel and leaves the other bright, and the layers show as the pattern. It is a different route to a similar look, and the pattern still runs through the metal rather than sitting on it.

Every Bigcat Damascus blade is 288 layers of 15N20 and 1080, handcrafted in Wazirabad, Pakistan. Read what a Damascus knife is and how to tell a real one, or see the Damascus knives.

Written by the Bigcat Knives team. Last reviewed 28 September 2026.