Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post - Show us your pesh-kabz

ariel · 10th October 2021, 06:19 AM

These are classical Indo-Persian Pesh Kabz: recurved blades. What is popularly ( if incorrectly) called "karud" is just Pesh Kabz with straight blade. Those were widespread in Central Asia: Afghanistan and Khanates. In fact, ch'hura is from the same family, just a local variant of the handle from the Khyber Pass Mahsuds. The second one might have been called " khanjar" due to its double edge construction ( can't see well from the picture)
And you are correct: " karud" is just a local phonetic epenthesis ( insertion of a vowel between the two consonants). As usual, multiple bladed weapons were locally known by very generic names: " sword' ( saif, tulwar, kilij, shamshir in Arabic, Hindi , Turkish and Farsi), " knife" ( ch'hura, bichaq, P'chak in Hindi, Turkish and Uzbek. Kard is just a "knife" in Farsi, and "kord" in Tadjik. The purely phonetic origin of " karud" as mispronounced " kard" was directly stated in the mid-19th century by Florian Gille, the Russian director of the Tsarskoe Selo collection of weapons, by the 1955 edition of the Moser collection, indirectly in the Buttin's and Holstejn's catalogues and finally directly by Elgood in his new glossary. The first hint comes from the Gilchrist's glossary, where the word is written in Farsi as " kard" but transliterated as " karud". It went into common circulation by G.C. Stone, who was relying on early Moser's notes.
We have broken a lot of spears over this topic in the past. There is no way to extinguish the use of " karud" from the vocabularies of e-bay sellers and amateur and naive collectors, and perhaps this erroneous name serves its purpose: right away it gives us an image of a dagger with a straight blade. However, most respectable weapon historians, dealers and collectors do not use it. Just like no professional self-respecting Oriental weapons guy will ever use "scimitar":-)

10th October 2021, 06:19 AM	#7
ariel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 5,503	These are classical Indo-Persian Pesh Kabz: recurved blades. What is popularly ( if incorrectly) called "karud" is just Pesh Kabz with straight blade. Those were widespread in Central Asia: Afghanistan and Khanates. In fact, ch'hura is from the same family, just a local variant of the handle from the Khyber Pass Mahsuds. The second one might have been called " khanjar" due to its double edge construction ( can't see well from the picture) And you are correct: " karud" is just a local phonetic epenthesis ( insertion of a vowel between the two consonants). As usual, multiple bladed weapons were locally known by very generic names: " sword' ( saif, tulwar, kilij, shamshir in Arabic, Hindi , Turkish and Farsi), " knife" ( ch'hura, bichaq, P'chak in Hindi, Turkish and Uzbek. Kard is just a "knife" in Farsi, and "kord" in Tadjik. The purely phonetic origin of " karud" as mispronounced " kard" was directly stated in the mid-19th century by Florian Gille, the Russian director of the Tsarskoe Selo collection of weapons, by the 1955 edition of the Moser collection, indirectly in the Buttin's and Holstejn's catalogues and finally directly by Elgood in his new glossary. The first hint comes from the Gilchrist's glossary, where the word is written in Farsi as " kard" but transliterated as " karud". It went into common circulation by G.C. Stone, who was relying on early Moser's notes. We have broken a lot of spears over this topic in the past. There is no way to extinguish the use of " karud" from the vocabularies of e-bay sellers and amateur and naive collectors, and perhaps this erroneous name serves its purpose: right away it gives us an image of a dagger with a straight blade. However, most respectable weapon historians, dealers and collectors do not use it. Just like no professional self-respecting Oriental weapons guy will ever use "scimitar":-) Last edited by ariel; 10th October 2021 at 06:34 AM.