View Single Post
Old 25th June 2006, 03:23 PM   #15
Rivkin
Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 655
Default

Dear All,

I believe I came by a reasonable explanation for this problem.

Let me start with a few comments - first of all most of our misunderstanding comes from the excessive use of a generic label "persian". While it has its uses in this cases since the question Caucasus/Azerbaijan/Persia involves specific tribes residing in Persia, in my opinion one must concentrate on tribal affiliation rather than on that based on a state. It is also unfortunate that unlike for example russian where russian means ethnic russian and rossian means a citizen of Russian Empire, in persian both members of fars tribe and non-persian citizens of Persian Empire are called Persia.

Second comment would be that to resolve the issue one rather than concentrating on contemporary field research, one must concentrate on archival sources. In my personal opinion, things told by local artisans, martial artists etc. tend to be heavily mixed with rumors, legends and interpretetations. Obviously, if one is capable to analyze them, they can be important sources as well.

Now to the problem at hand. What is qama/quadara ? Is it Caucasian, Azerbaijani (i.e. turkish-speaking tribes of Transcaucais and north-western Iran) or Persian (i.e. pre-islamic Persian weapon transformed into its modern form) ?

A month ago I would politely say that it is quite likely we have a simultaneous development in both Caucasus and Persia. Today I do not think so, for the following reasons:

a. We know that kindjals (qamas) in Egypt, Syria, Balkans, Russia and Turkey appeared as a result of connections with Caucases. While it is possible that Persia and Iraq are sole exceptions, one has to wonder why Persia with its colossal influence did not sucsed in spreading kindjals in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan ? Why all the countries that have kindjals are located in a circle surrounding Caucasus ?

b. It will be important for us later, so let me again state that Azeri weapons from Azerbaijan the state are very similar to that of Azerbaijan the province, with a little bit of extra caucasian influnce in the former. For details see “Oruzhie Vostoka” (Weapons of the Orient), Collection of the State Historical Museum of Azerbaijan.

c. One might say that since kindjals descended from akenakes, the weapon common to almost entire northern part of the middle east, it is possible that one has the same simultanous development, or even more - "persian" influence. To argue with that I would refer the reader to Gorelik "Weapons of Ancient East", page 19 "Development of akenakes type, i.e. dagger with a specific form of the guard and scabbard, happens in the middle of the seventh century BC, most likely in the north of pre-Caucasus, the center of scythian culture and state". One can check these statements against almost any public source, like wikipedia. In light of this I think one should be very careful when talking about the influence of persian akenakes on caucasian kindjals.

Now let us proceed to the first hand accounts of Qajar and pre-Qajar Persia.

c. 1998 Kibovsky and Egorov published series of article in a Russian journal Zeichgaus titled "Persia Army, first half of XIXth century", later incorporated in a book. They quote a number of western travelers, like Gaspar Druville (1813), specifically related to the army of Abbas-Mirza Qajar Shah, assembled in Persian Azerbaijan. Here is a quote describing its weaponry: “… Daggers were worn in the sash, both soldiers and civilians preferred the straight, “Georgian” kindjal, often with rich decorations”.

d. It gets even more interesting when we start talking about Ashura and its development. I would mostly refer to the article of Dr. Nakash from Princeton, in Die Welt des Islams 33 (1993), pages 161-181. Additional information can be gathered in a reach selection of literature he provides and some extra reading - Chenabi, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 29 (1997), p. 23, less so , for general information concerning caucasians in Iran I would cite the book by Babaie et al, "Slaves of the Shah", 2004, Tauris and Co, in Iraq - "Merchants, Mamluks, and murder : the political economy of trade in eighteenth century Basra", Thabit A.J. Abdullah. Virtually everything written by Dr. Minorksy is also can be of great use.

In the work of Dr. Nakash he tries to trace the origin of Ashura. I greatly recommend his article to anyone interested in this tradition, but for us the section on flagellation is of a certain interest. He says that while "Breast beating and flace slapping... were traditional ways of expressing grief in Muslim societies", however concerning the more violent ways to do so: "Both the accounts of European travelers and Shia sources point to Caucasus and Azerbaijan as the place of origin for flagellation. The earliest accounts of the travelers go back to the first half of XVIIth century (my comment - Evlia Chelebi and others)... In the southern cities, such as Isfahan and Shiraz, the travelers Della Valle, Thevenot, Tavernier and Le Brun ... did not mention any shedding of blood. In contrast, in the frontier like, Turkish speaking regions of the Caucasus and Azerbaijan in northern Iran, the travelers Karasch, Olearius and Struys wrote that devoteers struck their heads with swords... while flagellations as a form ... existed in the Caucasus and Azerbaijan at least from seventeeth century, the practice is not reported in the central and southern cities of Iran, nor among arab Shias until the nineteenth century". He links the practice with Qizilbash tribes from Caucasus and Persian Azerbaijan, and specifically points to the role of Sheikh Mulla Agha Abid from Derbent (Lezgistan, Caucasus) as someone who greatly popularized the flagellations. He talks about specific role of turks from Caucasus and Azerbaijan in bringing flagellations into Iraq. He also refers to very interesting material by Lassy and Monchi-Zadeh, concerning specifically caucasian rituals of Ashura, with kindjals being massively used.

Since at least in Iraq and probably to the smaller extent in Iran kindjals-qamas are used specfically for flagellations, one can make a solid guess (but nevertheless a guess) that the appearance of caucasian kindjals is connected with appearance of caucasian/azerbaijani Ashura practices, whether it is in Ardabil (Azerbaijan-Iran), Karbala (Iraq) or Isfahan (Iran).

Last edited by Rivkin; 25th June 2006 at 06:10 PM.
Rivkin is offline   Reply With Quote