Petra
 

Brother Phil with a Jordanian policeman in Petra, Jordan. Fully dressed in official dress. Please note the shibriya. Authentic although not very old.

Interesting.Is the dagger merely for dress or are they used in their police work and if so,are they trained in any specific type of knife fighting style ?

I believe it is only part of the dress. Not for real use

Oh I would so love to go to Petra and Israel!

One of my pilgrimages in life. Quite envious........ :o

They are called "Badia" police and are the local, Bedouin police force dealing with local matters. Generally Jordan police force doesn't interfere in Bedouin communities unless a serious crime has taken place and leaves ordinary law and order matters to the "Badia." The dagger itself is often called "Badia dagger." Materials, workmanship and general quality of the daggers is low, and I simply didn't manage to find a good Shibriya dagger during my stay in Jordan. I attached a photo of the few examples displayed in the Amman Amphiteatre Museum.

PS: Petra is definitely a must see... at least once in a lifetime! :)

Nice image!

Have to agree with Marius on the general quality of Jordanian shibriyas. Always seem to be crudely made. Anyone has fine examples to share?

I have one with relatively good craftsmanship made in Irbid. Images included.

Way above the average! I wish I have found something of this quality! :)

Thank you for the sharing but can you show us the blade?

The blade is nothing special, I'll take images tomorrow in sunlight :-))

Hi Philip

Looks like a good time. Great pic.

Rick

I love seeing this particular blade being worn locally as part of an established kit.

A couple pics of an example I own. Modest, but a better blade than I've seen on many.

Good example!

Do you know what is written on the blade?

I'd love to find out what the inscription says. I have seen examples where a date is included in the cartouche (is it a cartouche?), so perhaps it contains that. I'd love if someone could translate.

Per member Motan, who provided comments in another thread about this piece: "There is no evidence it was made for anything but the local market and members of the Arab Legion carried very similar ones at the time. The coin impression is of king Ghazi of Iraq (see link http://www.chiefacoins.com/Database...ies/Ghazi_I.htm)."

Hello Oriental Arms,
Great picture. Good to see that the tradition is still alive. The whole attire has not changed much from around WWII.
The quality of Jordanian shibriyas is indeed not great, some rare exceptions aside. I think that it has to do with the lack of serious dagger-making tradition and the little money potential costumers could pay. The construction with thin metal foil over soft material like pine wood, held together by soft soldering of tin or lead is prone to damage. As cheap assesories, they were also not particularly well maintained.
The whole story of the rise of shibriya making and its peak in the 1940's and 50's is difficult for me to understand and I will not speculate here.
Shayde78, the writing on the your blade has no date and I think it is the makers mark because with my limited Arabic I can identify the word A'mal = the work of..=made by. I could ask someone to translate, but I am sure A.alnakkas can do it too. As I said before, your shibriya can be dated quite securly to the 1940's.

Very Good Shybriya
 

There are very good exemplars on the market: Good blade, horn grip, silver mounts and silver scabbard with nice niello decoration. 1960-1970. Collected in Israel.

I wish I could find something of this quality in Jordan!

Thank you for sharing!

Hey Artzi, when did you collect this shibriya? The date you mention between 1960 to 70 conflicts with the information I found. Supposedly these shibriyas are made in the 90's by an Iraqi silver smith who moved to Jordan after the first gulf war. His name is Abdulrazaaq. This silversmith moved to Australia in the early 2000's and I did not manage to track him down.

I have one identical to the one you have shown. Will try to show along with the blade of the previous one.

Work of Houshan. A workshop that still produces shibriyas.

Thanks for translating Lotfy.
I do not know the specific case of Abdulrazaaq, but this type of niello work is well known from Iraq and it has been used on Kurdish and Marsh Arab types of daggers. Funny, because the real origin of this type of niello work is Tbilisi Georgia and kindjals made with similar decoration and mounting in late 19th century. Other shibriyas with niello are different and in less "foreign" style, like the one in Mariusgmioc pic (middle, I also have a similar one)
Lotfy and Artzi, you have both shown examples of shibriya of good+ quality, but these consist less than 5% of the production and are not in a representative style, like those of Houshan, which are the most dominant and typical type.

As requested, image of the blade and as mentioned, images of niello shibriyas with one similar to Artzi's.