An interesting Oman Observer article notes QUOTE "The men carry a walking stick, called a Yurth (Jerz), rather than a khanjar, the distinguishing feature of which is the handle, which is a small axehead, about two inches long, and traditionally was used as a weapon. After a celebration such as a wedding, they frequently perform a nidhiba. This consists of a group forming a semicircle while the leader blows into a goat skull to produce a sound like a conch shell, while the rest of the group chant praises".UNQUOTE
http://williamtherebel.blogspot.com/...of-shihuh.html States QOUTE "The Shihuh, however, carry a jerz, the long-handled axe that is unique to Mussandam. The head is small (2-3 inches) and can either be very simple or might be decorated with intricate inlay. Prototypes date back thousands of years but predictably,
many of those available today are imported from India".UNQUOTE.
When I was in the Oman Army I met Major Mikey Wilson who sadly died recently but who was a great friend and he wrote extensively on the Mussandam Axe though I have yet to find a copy of his work . I do recal someone saying that Mikey never thought the item was used for fighting although others including a great Shihuh friend and expert stick maker did mention it had been used in the past and he had a fighting axehead much larger than the usual type seen today but I never got to see an example ...
I spent some time in the Desert Regiment and noted a few examples were carried by local men and assumed they were a sort of camel stick variant but they were of simple design with no carving on the hasp and of a lighter wood. The distance between the Wahiba Desert and Mussandam was long and arduous but I assumed that these items had come from there by camel train or herding episodes and had become accepted in the desert as accoutrement tools of the trade.
As a camel owner I knew that camels were trained to the stick therefor adopting a good camel stick would have been a likely development...As an antiques dealer in Oman I had up to 30 of these Jers and found them to be so interesting that I wrote this Thread !
When I was in Buraimi I was acquainted with the Al Ain Museum where the curator Dr Waleed had done a thesis on axe heads but I was never able to get in to view the collection....but eventually met a brilliant camel stick maker from Mussandam thus I learned much about this peculiar so called
Mussandam Axe.
Peter Hudson