Period Photos of People with Ethnographic Arms

[estcrh]

Originally Posted by RobertGuy

Just noticed the ...bipod? in use here.I'm not a collecter of muskets and no little about them but how common were such attachments? I had somehow always thought of them as a modern development for automatic weapons.

I have seen bipods on Tibetan and Afghan long guns and on one Persian example.

The Afghan Joozaeel or Mountain Rifle.
On Stone by J.Bennett. T. Black, Lith Cal. 1840.
Lithograph, rare. Sheet 115 x 205mm, 4½ x 8¼". Narrow margins.
A very unusual illustration of a jezail, with the distinctively curved stock and a bipod. It has been suggested that the jezail was originally designed to be held like a pistol with the stock under the arm, allowing use on horseback. However during the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-42) it came into its own as a sniper weapon, fired down from high cliffs down onto the British Army retreating from Kabul to Jalalabad. Being heavier and longer-barrelled than the British Brown Bess musket, the Jezail outmatched the return fire. Most were hand-made: only a few were rifled.

[estcrh]

Indian Kuttuk horseman in armour, 1861?. The Khuttuk clans inhabit a tract of hilly country lying south and south-west of Kohat, and including spurs of the great Sooliman range from Dullun, on the Upper Koorum river, to Kooshalgurh, on the Indus, and from the Bungush valley of Kohat to the Wuzeeree lands in Bunnoo. He is holding a matchlock musket, and wearing a helmet covered in cloth, a tulwar sword, arm guards (dastana) and hauberk (zirah).

[estcrh]

Kazakh warrior wearing a helmet with mail aventail and mail hauberk, he is holding an axe, a matchlock with bipod and huge composite bow are in the backround. The Kazakh Khanate was a Turkic Kazakh state, the successor of the Golden Horde, existing from 1456–1847, located roughly on the territory of the present-day Republic of Kazakhstan. At its height the khanate ruled from eastern Cumania (modern-day West Kazakhstan) to most of Uzbekistan, Karakalpakstan and the Syr Darya river.

[estcrh]

Karbadian warrior, North Caucasus mountains, in armour, wearing a helmet and hauberk, with kindjal dagger and shashka sword, holding a whip in his hand, circa 1890's. Kabardians are the largest Circassian (Adyghe) tribe in Russia (over 600,000), Turkey, Egypt, and some other countries in the region, except for Israel and Jordan, where the Shapsug and Abzakh tribe are the largest tribes, respectively. The Kabardian tribe are also the largest Circassian branch in the world in general.

[Kubur]

Originally Posted by estcrh

I have seen bipods on Tibetan and Afghan long guns and on one Persian example.

Bipods or rifle stands are very common in Northern India.
My feeling is that is a Far-Eastern influence, probably from China.