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Originally Posted by ariel
I remember a treatise on the origins of the Afghani " regulation khyber", where this and similar examples were presented as the very last step in the purported "evolution" and attributed to the very last years of the 19th century, the ultimate achievement of the Mashin Khana that was established in 1887. Ironically, the very same communication showed a photograph of a gentleman named Mohammed Yakub Khan dated 1879 carrying a similar sword. Thus, the supposedly final evolutionary step was in fact the earliest one
Darwin would have had a fit:-)))
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Obviously I know the treatise. Actually I have one of these Anglo-Afghan military swords, which has the familiar Mazir I Sharif (Mashin Khana) stamp and is dated 1893. It seems the date range of examples of these are in 1890s, and these were used even later.
I recall finding the image of Mohammed Yakub Khan in the book "Northwest Frontier" by Swinson many years ago, and indeed he is wearing a sword with remarkably similar hilt.
The paper sought to discover, much as I had, to find the origin of these distinctly European military styled hilts, and that date seemed to place the earliest, though the Mashin Khana examples seem not to occur until later than the 1879 date. So where did that hilt which is in the 1879 photo come from? and why did it not appear in production until advent of that Kabul armoury?
It seems that tribal 'Khybers' (salwars) occurred in the interim between 1879 and the noted inception of the Mashin Khana factory with these hilts, but likely quite near it as many of them have the stamp known used by it. At this time, the heavy channeled military type blades began being placed on these. It is believed these 'military' hilted Khybers were probably for some of the tribal levy's in British service in these times.
An interesting aside to looking more into the equally and often misperceived paluoars . I guess we here are sort of Darwinian sword whisperers
