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ariel · 18th April 2015, 05:07 AM

There was an article by Mahratt here on on this Forum postulating existence of an evolution of the Afghani khybers toward the "regulation" pattern illustrated by Jim.
I was always uneasy with the term "evolution", since the same or a very similar pattern was worn by an Afghani representative at the Treaty of Gandamak, well before the appearance of its alleged "evolutionary predecessors" marked with the Mashin Khana " Mazar-I- Sharif" stamp.

But be it as it may, the conclusions of the current topic strongly veer toward the existence of an unstructured hodge-pudge of Afghani weapons at the time of massive penetration of the Afghani military tradition by the Western influences: handles, D-guards , blades.

I fully agree with Tatiana: in that part of the world one finds contemporarily existing weirdest combinations of native Afghani tradition, British examples of various ages and patterns, German imports and Russian "regulation" pattern were thrown together without any centralized overarching idea. The same is happening even today, with the Khyber knife and AK-47 happily coexisting side by side. No evolution here: Afghanistan is an island that time forgot......

18th April 2015, 05:07 AM	#17
ariel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 5,503	There was an article by Mahratt here on on this Forum postulating existence of an evolution of the Afghani khybers toward the "regulation" pattern illustrated by Jim. I was always uneasy with the term "evolution", since the same or a very similar pattern was worn by an Afghani representative at the Treaty of Gandamak, well before the appearance of its alleged "evolutionary predecessors" marked with the Mashin Khana " Mazar-I- Sharif" stamp. But be it as it may, the conclusions of the current topic strongly veer toward the existence of an unstructured hodge-pudge of Afghani weapons at the time of massive penetration of the Afghani military tradition by the Western influences: handles, D-guards , blades. I fully agree with Tatiana: in that part of the world one finds contemporarily existing weirdest combinations of native Afghani tradition, British examples of various ages and patterns, German imports and Russian "regulation" pattern were thrown together without any centralized overarching idea. The same is happening even today, with the Khyber knife and AK-47 happily coexisting side by side. No evolution here: Afghanistan is an island that time forgot......