Description:

Dagger (knife) "chura". Afghanistan, first half of the 20th century. Original. Script.

Expertise.

Dimensions of the knife (dagger) chur:

Overall length - 283 mm
Blade length with handle - 275 mm
Blade length without handle - 172 mm
Blade width at the heel - 35 mm
Sheath length - 238 mm
Steel, gold, iron, bone, wood, leather.
Condition: No visible loss or damage.

Description of the dagger "chura":

Blade.
The blade of the dagger (knife) is steel, straight, bottomless, single-edged, with a point on the line of the butt, with a strong extension to the blade in the heel area.
The heel and the tip on both sides of the canvas are covered with decorative floral ornaments using the gold pick-up technique; the wide butt near the heel is decorated with engraved wavy lines stylizing floral motifs.


Hilt.
The handle of the dagger (knife) of the original form is formed by bone cheeks, fixed on a flat shank with two iron rivets. A separate pair of rivets attached upper pads in the form of T-shaped protrusions - "ears" with surfaces beveled to the blade, which protected the fighter's hand from slipping at the time of the cutting blow. On the end surfaces of the handle (between the "ears") there is a silver sheet salary, decorated with a chased ornament, rosettes and castes.


The lower part of the hilt, outside the bone cheeks, is covered with a silver sleeve - an oval-section clip soldered to the salary. Their surfaces are decorated with stamped and engraved round rosettes filled with yellow and red paint, leaf and cord ornaments.

Sheath.
The scabbard of the dagger (knife) is wooden, covered with brown leather and sewn up (the seam runs along the right side); the surface is decorated with embossing, the holes are fixed with a metal edging.

Examination conclusions:

According to the shape of the blade and handle, the methods of decorative processing, this product can be attributed as the national Afghan dagger "chura" of the first half of the 20th century. "Chura" is a kind of eastern (Persian) dagger "peshkabz", differing from it in a straight narrowed blade.
The dagger (knife) "chura" is of historical and cultural value. It is a collectible.

The attribution of the Afghan dagger "chura" was made on the basis of a visual examination of the object, without complete or partial dismantling.

Based on the list of categories of items subject to the law "On the export and import cultural property 4804-1 dated April 15, 1993 and the result of this examination, this item - the Afghan "chura" dagger of the first half of the 20th century - is a cultural value.

Afghan dagger - chura knife buy in Moscow, price 28,000 rubles.

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Reference: Khyber knife or kuber, also known as salavar scimitar. Kuber (Khyber Knife) - the name given to this type of weapon by the British on behalf of the area of ​​​​the Khyber crossing, passing on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The local population - Pashtuns used another name - salavar scimitar. Since cubers were distributed mainly in the mountains, where warriors usually moved on foot, the usual size of a cuber is closer to upper bound medium blade weapons 450 - 800 mm. This cuber size was suitable for hand-to-hand combat and for household needs. The characteristic features of the cubers are a powerful, T-shaped blade that expands significantly at the handle. The hilt usually consists of two bone or horn cheeks and a metal bolster. Simple wooden, conical in shape, the scabbard was covered with leather or fabric, often had a long metal tip. The scabbard did not have any special suspension, and the cubers were usually worn behind the belt. The handle goes into the sheath deep enough so that only the beak-shaped head sticks out, however, it is for this head that the cuber is easily and quickly removed from the sheath. It should be noted that many characteristics cubera are also inherent in other melee weapons of the region: chura, pesh-kabz, karud. Despite the simplicity of the design, the cuber (salavar-yatagan) was a very effective and dangerous weapon. The functionality of these knives was so high that after the Afghans invaded India, the cubers took root in the northern part of this country. Richly decorated or damask cubers were made, as a rule, in North India.
Description: Khyber Knife. Afghanistan. The end of the nineteenth century Such knives are typical weapons for the inhabitants of the Khyber Pass between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The blade is steel, straight, single-edged, T-shaped section. The handle is made of bone with diagonal grooves - notches and a steel knob with a hole at the top.
Overall length 455 mm, blade length 330 mm, blade width 37 mm.

More detailed information about the Khyber knife you can see in the article on the site website

A few years ago, an interesting site porco.ru was closed. It had many publications of chauvinistic male character, among which were cold weapons. What is surprising, but as for a non-specialized resource, what was written was reliable, but written in a very peculiar way. Latest article from the trilogy about knives and daggers of the Indo-Persian style was published on April 4, 2011. I decided to republish it, keeping the text and illustrations of the original, but adding navigation for convenience.

Let's start with geography. As a rule, in addition to India and Iran (Persia), the Indo-Persian region also includes the territories of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Note also that neighboring regions such as Turkey, the Middle East, the Caucasus and middle Asia are under strong cultural influence.

The population of the region is made up of many different peoples, which have long been associated with each other common history, as well as the closest trade and cultural ties. Such ethno-cultural diversity and interpenetration led to the appearance of an absolutely indescribable abundance of forms and types of edged weapons, which were used both in combat, and in hunting, and in the household.

And now we will try, after all, to understand this wealth. But not in everything, but, so as not to overstrain, only in knives and daggers.

So, knives and daggers of the Indo-Persian region:

Card

Let's start our review with the simplest, one might say, classic knife, which is also simply called -.

This knife is the most common in the region. Moreover, its distribution area includes the former Turkish possessions in the Balkans, Turkey itself, the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

For example, a Turkish card with an agate handle:


Kard has a straight blade, slightly widening towards the handle, with a straight, thick, often beautifully decorated butt. Cards are decorated, as a rule, with gold, less often with silver notch koftgari.


The crosshair is missing. The handle at the blade is narrower and widens towards the end. It is most often made of voluminous overhead horn or bone cheeks, riveted to the shank.


Indian karts, especially those from Rajasthan, are often all-metal.



The sheath is conical, leather, sometimes lined with silk. The card is immersed in them by almost two-thirds of the handle.


The size of the knife is on average up to 30-35 cm, but there are also longer cards. Despite its "peaceful" appearance and origin from the usual hoz. life. knife, the card is a serious combat weapon. In fact, this is a single-edged dagger, designed for stabbing. The combat purpose of some cards is obvious: in order to increase penetration, they were made with a reinforced tip of the blade, from which their thickened tip became similar in shape to an armor-piercing bullet.





Finishing the conversation about kards, I will add that for the manufacture of their blades (and not only them), as a rule, Damascus and damask steel, or, as it was also called in the Indo-Persian region, wutz were used.

Some advanced blacksmiths could make such a "chevron" Damascus:


to the begining

And now let's move on to a whole family of other equally well-known single-edged dagger knives, which are called pawns.


As Dr. T. Capwell writes, " the term "peshkabz" originally referred to the front of the belt worn by the Persians during wrestling matches. The use of this word for a dagger means that the peshkabz was worn in front, in contrast to the khanjar and qard, which were worn on the right and left sides, respectively.".

Basic distinctive feature of all pawns is a very wide butt of the blade, which is necessary so that this blade can deliver powerful piercing, piercing armor blows. After all, the main function of pawns is armor-piercing. They are designed to penetrate chainmail armor (plus at least a thick quilted robe) - the most common armor of the Indo-Persian region.

To achieve the desired width of the butt and at the same time reduce the weight of the knife, its blade was made thinner on both sides immediately below the butt so that its thickness was 1.5-2 mm


So the peshkabz blade acquired a T-shaped section. Otherwise, with such a wide butt and wedge-shaped section, the blade would be much heavier.



According to the existing tradition, knives with blades having a T-shaped section are referred to as pawns.

However, there are a number of differences, according to which such knives are divided into actually: peshkabz, karud and chura.

Actually peshkabz differs from others in a curved blade.




The butt of the pawns, like the butt of the cards, is often decorated with koftgari or engraving.


The long curved blade, wide at the hilt, gradually tapers and has a very narrow tip, and sometimes one and a half sharpening.


Often there are blades with a flared end.



The handle is made of two overlaid cheeks, usually made of bone, jade or horn. The back of the hilt is often arched, especially for pawns with strongly curved blades.



The notch under the fingers is quite deep, so that the knife is comfortable to hold even with a strong blow.


The sheath repeats the shape of the blade, the handle protrudes from them entirely. Average size 35-45 cm.

While I was looking for pictures on the topic, I came across such a peshkabz-multitool, in the hollow handle of which the Indian master placed a whole set of tools:



Moreover, each instrument fits snugly in its niche, so that when the "multitool" is assembled, nothing rattles anywhere.


Before moving on to karud and chure, I will provide one more picture. Very beautiful Damascus peshkabz from India:


He, along with two daggers zira-bouk (Zirah-Bouk - literally, "mail piercer", Mail Piercer), decorated in the same "elephant" style:


Karud and chura

to the begining

Now let's pay attention to the fellow pawns - karudu And chure.

Both of them are combat knives with a straight T-shaped blade in section. They are distributed mainly in Northern India and Afghanistan, as well as in Central Asia.



The blades of karuda and chura, wide at the handle, begin to narrow a couple of centimeters from the base, and this narrowing can vary from sharp, almost exponential (typical for chura) to smoother (found in karuds).





Both knives are also often decorated with floral or geometric ornaments using the notch method.


As a rule, karud is different from chura larger sizes(on average 35–50 cm versus 30–40 cm for the chura), and a massive thick handle, consisting of two cheeks, often bone.



The handle of the chura is thinner and ends with a large beak-shaped protrusion, which vaguely resembles the pommel of the handle of a scimitar or checkers.




The scabbard is wooden, covered with leather or velvet, most often with a metal mouth and tip. The handle of the chura "sits" deep into the scabbard, while the handle of the karuda remains open.



Here it should be noted that chura and karud were widely used among the Afghan tribes.

And it was with such combat knives that the British colonialists had to get to know quite closely, who experienced their sharpness in their own skin during the three Anglo-Afghan wars.

Let us give the floor to Rudyard Kipling, that selfless singer of the British Empire, who has a rather gloomy line in the poem "British Recruits", inspired, it seems to me, by such a deadly acquaintance:

"If you are wounded and abandoned in the Afghan fields,
And the Afghan women already got their knives,
Then all you can, tear your ashes
Put the barrel of a gun in your mouth and spread your brains.
To go to the Lord God as a soldier ... "

to the begining

But the “Khyber knives”, those very “three-foot” Kipling knives (3 feet = 0.9144 meters) were worse than any pawns and karuds for the English soldiers.


"And then the enemy came close, melee began; it was then that the soldiers learned in their own skin how strong and enduring the enemy was; this fight ended in screams and groans, and it’s better not to remember what the three-foot knives did. The formation crumpled like paper, fifty ghazis broke forward, and behind them the rest, intoxicated with victory and therefore fighting with the same fury as those. The soldier was beating a sledgehammer at the sight of dark, thick blood. They ran back, bumping into each other. The regiment ran wherever its eyes looked, just to escape from these ruthless knives. The officers of the last company met their death all alone".

The Pashtun tribes of Afridi, Waziri, Masudi, etc., the inhabitants of the territories near the Khyber Pass call it "salavar scimitar", the British call it "Khyber knife", and for brevity we will say " Khyber", especially since calling this, almost a meter-long miracle, a knife is somehow not very convenient. In fact, this is a single-edged sword.

Khyber has a heavy straight or slightly concave scimitar blade of considerable length (from 50 to 100 cm).





The butt is most often almost straight, T-shaped in cross section. The blade widens considerably towards the hilt, so that its lower part at the base plays the role of a stop or guard. The hilt is not very thick, as a rule, from two horn or bone cheeks, and if the cheeks are bone, then they are often recruited from several pieces of bone.



The handle pommel is different: simple semicircular, beak-shaped, like a chura, or in general, the handle does without a pommel. There are also such rather elaborate finials:



"If you want to know what weapons they are fighting with, I have a long knife under the bench, ”said the English cavalryman and pulled out a fearsome Afghan knife with a bone handle. They can easily take their hand off their shoulder. It's like cutting a bar of soap in half".

Rudyard Kipling. "Drummers of the Front-Rear" (1888).


It is probable that the Khyber came to North India during the Afghan invasions of Ahmad Shah Durrani of 1851-61 or even earlier, with the troops of the Iranian Shah Nadir, who had many Afghans serving, and who occupied Delhi in February 1739. Since then, Khybers have taken root in India, and richly decorated examples can now be found there.





The scabbard is conical, wooden and covered with leather or fabric, often with a long metal tip and a metal mouth. The hilt, as a rule, is sunk deep into the sheath, two-thirds of the length.

The origin of the Khyber is not entirely clear. Judging by the T-shaped butt, he was the development of a family of pawns, who, having increased in size, gained the ability to chop. Perhaps the evolution of the Khyber was influenced by the Turkish scimitar, and it is this moment that is reflected in local name"salavar scimitar". By the way, in Northern India there are scimitar-type blades - sosun-pata. And some of these blades also have a T-shaped butt.


In general, looking at these giant overgrown knives, there is a feeling of deja vu and one recalls the langsaxes and scramasaxes of the Germans Early Middle Ages(I begged for a photo from von_herrmana, for which I respect him a lot!).


Concluding the conversation about Khybers, let's consider a few more instances.




The last will be a Khyber with a secret...


which, with a slight movement of the hand, turns into ... two khybers!


to the begining

And now let's move from the cool Khyber to the hot Malabar on the southwestern coast of India. The Kurg people living there (self-name Kodagu) have such a remarkable knife, known as "".

The blade is heavy, wide at the base, at the end it expands even more and sharply descends to the “snub-nosed” tip. A sort of cleaver, no more than 30 cm long. In fact, the Kodagu themselves pronounce the name of the knife as "Peechekathi". "Kathi" means "knife" in Tamil or Malayalam (Dravidian languages). And "pichikatti" is " hand knife", in contrast to another fairly well-known "knife" of the Kurgs - "ayudhakatti", which means - "combat knife" ("ayudha" - "weapon" in Sanskrit).


Pichangatti was worn in front, in a beautifully designed scabbard, from which an elegant handle with a massive spherical pommel protruded. The handle was usually made of wood and brass. To emphasize the high status of the owner, the hilt and scabbard were often trimmed with silver.



A small set of toilet tools for caring for nails and ears was attached to the scabbard on a chain.


What is so special about this knife, you ask? It seems to me that in the following: the characteristic forms of this knife ...




...reminiscent of equally characteristic forms of the Central Asian pchak (aka pichak, pechak, pichok, etc.).


In this regard, and also given the strong similarity of the names of both knives, the question arises whether there is some kind of historical relationship. Perhaps the victorious warriors of the Iron Lame Timurlenga, who returned from the Indian campaign of 1399 to Samarkand or Bukhara, brought with them, among other things, this knife, which spread over time, acquired some local features and lost the ending "-atti" from the name. And so it turned out "picchak" ...


PS: This pchak, which is in the last picture, my eldest daughter found about 7 years ago. I wonder what is written on it? The name of the master or a saying from the Koran?