Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

Oliver Pinchot · 15th January 2015, 06:45 PM

There was a substantial, in many cases overwhelming, Arab military presence in Western Asia by the late 8th century. This included wars with Byzantium and several of the Caucasian kingdoms. One of the words which was adopted from Arabic was khanjar: rendered kindjal in Russian and khanjul in Armenian. There were probably distinct characteristics to the weapon itself which accompanied this adoption, such as its form or mode of wear. In Russian, kindjal means generically, a dagger.

Kindjal is an odd term to use for the well-known Caucasian dagger, one which was applied by Imperial Russian soldiers serving in the Crimea and Caucasus and later by arms specialists. It was adopted thereafter by collectors who came in contact with it through Russian sources. Local groups did not use the word "kindjal" until after the Caucasian Wars. Each culture has at least one name of its own; Adighea and Georgian, among others, have a number of terms, each relative to the characteristics of the weapon.

One of these terms in Adighea is kama. Kama is a loan-word from Ottoman قامه, (kama in modern Turkish) meaning a wedge or tapering double-edged blade*. Together with the term, this form of dagger was introduced via Black Sea trade to the Adighea-speaking groups we know as Circassians. It spread very quickly through the rest of the Caucasus, assuming subtle but distinct regional variations in form and embellishment. (The distinctive Circassian tunic and cavalry saber, called by the Russian military, cherkesska and shashka but actually tse and shash'huwa in Adighea, were also adopted throughout the Caucasus during the 19th century; again, with regional distinctions.)

(*The Ottoman term قامه can be found here: https://archive.org/stream/Dictionna...up/search/kama )

The terms kilic, shamshir and seyf (or saif) refer generically to a "sword" in Turkish, Persian and Arabic, however pala, a Turkish word, was used to refer specifically to the curved and back-edged saber we think of as characteristically Ottoman from at least the 18th century. Interestingly, the Turkish word for a straight-bladed broadsword or thrusting sword (an estoc or tuck, in English) is meç (metch,) a cognate with the Russian word меч(mietch) and by extension, the Finnish term, miekka.

15th January 2015, 06:45 PM	#21
Oliver Pinchot Member Join Date: Sep 2012 Posts: 456	There was a substantial, in many cases overwhelming, Arab military presence in Western Asia by the late 8th century. This included wars with Byzantium and several of the Caucasian kingdoms. One of the words which was adopted from Arabic was khanjar: rendered kindjal in Russian and khanjul in Armenian. There were probably distinct characteristics to the weapon itself which accompanied this adoption, such as its form or mode of wear. In Russian, kindjal means generically, a dagger. Kindjal is an odd term to use for the well-known Caucasian dagger, one which was applied by Imperial Russian soldiers serving in the Crimea and Caucasus and later by arms specialists. It was adopted thereafter by collectors who came in contact with it through Russian sources. Local groups did not use the word "kindjal" until after the Caucasian Wars. Each culture has at least one name of its own; Adighea and Georgian, among others, have a number of terms, each relative to the characteristics of the weapon. One of these terms in Adighea is kama. Kama is a loan-word from Ottoman قامه, (kama in modern Turkish) meaning a wedge or tapering double-edged blade. Together with the term, this form of dagger was introduced via Black Sea trade to the Adighea-speaking groups we know as Circassians. It spread very quickly through the rest of the Caucasus, assuming subtle but distinct regional variations in form and embellishment. (The distinctive Circassian tunic and cavalry saber, called by the Russian military, cherkesska* and shashka but actually tse and shash'huwa in Adighea, were also adopted throughout the Caucasus during the 19th century; again, with regional distinctions.) (The Ottoman term قامه can be found here: https://archive.org/stream/Dictionna...up/search/kama ) The terms kilic, shamshir and seyf (or saif) refer generically to a "sword" in Turkish, Persian and Arabic, however pala, a Turkish word, was used to refer specifically to the curved and back-edged saber we think of as characteristically Ottoman from at least the 18th century. Interestingly, the Turkish word for a straight-bladed broadsword or thrusting sword (an estoc or tuck, in English) is meç* (metch,) a cognate with the Russian word меч(mietch) and by extension, the Finnish term, miekka.