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Originally Posted by ariel
Our political leaders work very hard:-)
Pranguli is a Georgian way of saying Firangi, European swords being straight.
There is a Khevsurian legend that a band of Crusaders got lost on their way to the Holy Land and... you can guess the rest:-) That apparently explains the occurrence of blonde and blue-eyed Khevsurs, just like there are similarly-looking Afghanis who trace their origin to no less than Alexander the Great and his Macedonians.
Directionally challenged men rule! :-)
They are taller than other Georgians and at the old bazaars in Tbilisi carpets were measured as heigths of either regular men or of a Khevsur who was conveniently located nearby at all times:-))
There is a famous story about a sudden appearance of a band of mounted Khevsurs wearing chain mails, swords and shields in Tbilisi in the summer of 1915: they just heard that the Russian Tsar was at war with .. who knows whom ... and wanted to join his army. The news did not reach their mountain villages on time and the winter snows blocked the gorges. So, they came as fast as they could:-)
They had their peculiar weapons: satiteni ( fighting rings) and Dashna, short swords made of broken sword blades. Both were in active daily use as late as 1960s. Kind of, never leave home without it:-)
Splendid bastards. For Clauzewitz war was yet another instrument of politics, but for Khevsurs it was a way of life.
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Well said Ariel! and your years of experience in studying these arms is clear . The 'pranguli' explanation is compellingly reasoned, and makes perfect sense.
As you know, I have also been interested in Khevsurian arms and history since the early 90s, and acquired one of the straight blade swords of this form then. At the time, these were remarkably little known, and the only source for information was the 1930s adventure narrative "Seven League Boots" by Richard Halliburton. This was the source for the story of the Khevsur warriors coming out of the mountains when hearing of the war.
In the 90s trying to research further was difficult at best, and trying to contact Russian sources then even more so. They refused to even talk of the Khevsurs, at least the sources I reached.
I was told of the 'pranguli' term by Iaroslav Lebedynsky after I obtained his book on Cossacks and Caucasians, and that was I think possibly the source that Wayne refers to.
The blade on my example has linear arrangements of the 'gurda' (sickle) marks, which correspond to a similar blade from Ataghi (Askhabov).