Stamp on Aphgan saber
 

Hi folks.
I recently bought an Afghan saber. The ricasso has a stamp in the form of a lion's head. I've never seen such a stamp before. Can someone tell me about this stamp?

I have never seen a similar stamp either.
But I am not surprised: these sabers were manufactured from a variety of trade blades of a bewildering number of lengths, fullerings, curvatures and sources.
The only more or less unifying feature was the handle, a homage to British Baker and later Brunswick bayonets. These became used primarily as colonial models with some variations, and the Afghanis used them left and right.

There was a notion that these medium and longer versions should be properly referred as “ Afghani regulation sabers” or even as “Afghani regulation Khybers”.
Nothing could be further from the truth: their blades have nothing to do with Afghani National Choora ( Salavar Yataghan or, locally, Selaava). By definition, regulation weapons are highly standardized and their design is approved by a local Ministry of War ( or whatever those were called in different localities). Many of the locally-assembled ones carry a stamp of Mazar-i-Sharif Mosque, a national Afghani emblem. That led to a notion that they were all manufactured at the so-called Mashin Khana, a hodge-podge of workshops in Kabul. But many recorded examples were made well before the opening of Mashin Khana. Conceivably, that might have been a stamp of one of the Afghani arsenal’s, but the manufacture was performed all over the country. Afghanistan was not a well-organized industrial country, they had to rely on what was available on the market and on the small village workshops.

Yours is interesting exactly because of the stamp: nothing to do with
arsenal affiliation. Some small workshop managed to acquire blades from an unknown source and used them to create their rendition of a saber. Good find!

Still, even with such meager manufacturing resources and with backyard technological capabilities, Afghanis managed to successfully fight British and later Russian and American forces. What they lacked in their technology, was well compensated by their fighting spirit. Not for nothing Kipling admired and respected them.

It has been some years since research on these interesting Afghan military sabers, and images of my example, dated 1896 are attached. The stamped marking on the blade represents the Mosque at Mazir i Sharif, and we now now this was used as an Afghan state emblem.

I acquired this back in the 90s when quite frankly these were relatively unknown in the community, and often descriptions of them were pretty entertaining, one observer claiming the mark was 'the pillars of Hercules' and another said it was a Greek cutlass!

As more of these became known, it was found that this state seal stamp was on the blades of many, and while the European style hilt remained consistent, many had the tribal 'Khyber knife' (salawar) blades. ...but with the same stamp.
This suggested it must have been an 'arsenal' or government property type markings.
While clearly the Mashin Khana was not in full production mode until into the mid to latter 1880s, it remained a viable center for arms being issued so possibly weapons being assembled and produced there may have led to use of the stamp.

These and the Khyber knife examples are thought to have been provided for the tribal levys working with the British Army in Afghan regions as police forces.

The Mashin Khana factory was situated in Kabul, and in this area there were other native armorers working, possibly in accord with the factory. In discussions with sources some time ago, I was told of the lion head stamp seen on the locks of Snider-Enfield muskets, and it was thought there was an arms shop named 'lions gate' or to that effect. While I do not have images of this mark nor example, it seemed worthy of note that along with Mashin Khana, other shops were also involved in distribution of arms.

Maybe someone else out there has a weapon with a lions head stamp.