Algerian dagger?

[Pertinax]

Originally Posted by fennec

Yep mate, actually, I guess that a lot of those staight knives, are clearly from before 1830, and many things can proov that. First of all, a lot where tooken in the very few times of colonisation on algeria, but the tourists models actually made a lot of time to exist, after algeria was "pacified" (for the north..).
You can also notice that set displayed upper, is a pure "ottoman era" work, probably for someone important etc.. but not a tourist. A tourist will buy a beautifull sword, and well deocrated set, but here, is a WAR sword, with two usefull guns. Clearly the habitual set of ottman era. So the knives are obvioulsy from same period (pobably not very old, but before france, and not decorative). Even the arabic sentences are directly in relation with battle war etc, mentionning Allah etc... not the kinds of things we made later for tourists.

However, I also have this beautifull baby, that I think is even older that those ones.. I'll try to find you some other models soon

Hi fennec!

I didn't ask about the Kabyle daggers for no reason.

K. Lacoste notes:

- Only a few types of bladed weapons fall into the category of daggers. Some of them are even practically unusable, the handle is not even the size of a small palm.

- As for the use of this weapon, it is undoubtedly a secondary or additional weapon. We can also ask ourselves whether they were created recently, in which case their small size would make them preferable to large ones, but this is only a hypothesis.

I completely agree with her on this issue. An example is my specimen. Total length - 395 mm, blade length - 300 mm, handle (from blade to head) - 70 mm. The blade is made of fairly decent steel, quite functional, well suited for both cutting and stabbing. But the length of the handle does not allow it to be used practically.

Kabyle daggers are not mentioned in the sources and this is very strange. Perhaps this is due to the fact that, unlike the khanjar, jambiya or kummiya, the fleece dagger/knife is not part of the national costume. But such a type of weapon must be!

Sincerely,
Yuri