Help pls. on 15th-17th C. cutlass & scimitar

[Gonzalo G]

Originally Posted by fernando

Assuming (then again) that the bracamarte is an equivalent to the falchion, i have just read in one of my humbliest books (Portuguese medieval war men), that such weapon is supposed to derive from the Vicking sax. How's that for an aproach?

Fer, that illustration from a portuguese book is just a falchion, so bracamarte and falchion are the same thing. I was reading the page from the AEEA, and I was wondering what is the word in english for "alfanje". Maybe your "unscholared" person can tell me, because I don´t know. The word "falx", from latin, designated a downcurved blade, something opposite of what we talk about. The scramasax was only a raw, usually straight long knife used by the german tribes. I cannot relate it to the alfanje.

Some authors indentify the scmitar with the alfanje, others deny this relation. In the article about the tipologic study of spanish weapons, German Dueñaz Beraiz denies that alfanje and scimitar are the same thing, but he does not explains what a scimitar is. Instead, he identifies the arab alfanje with the english falchion, the french badelaire, the italian cotellaccio or sttorta and the spanish terciado, and describes it as a "sword with a short, wide and curved blade, with a an austere hilt, normally with straight quillons". Also, he says that some of this swords were used exclusively for executions, in the decapitation of prisioners (German Dueñaz Beraiz, "Introducción al Estudio Tipológico de las Espadas Españolas: Siglos XVI-XVII", Gladius, Vol XXIV, 2004, p.219).

And, Miguel, history is not water under the bridge. History is condensed in our present, and it reveals the tendencies toward the future, the hidden currents which moves the actual world. And we have to take sides, or be dragged by the currents to an unknown destiny.
Regards

Gonzalo

According with Beraiz, the description of a scimitar in the way Covarrubias explains, corresponds with a shamshir, and this is the reason he does not accept Covarrubias description, because the scimitars were "more short" than a shamshir from his point of view. But this description also is valid for some kiliç, which in some cases, as in the type some persons call "pala", are short enough to fit in the description. Evidently, there are confussions and ambiguity on what those terms design, and there are not illustrations and secure references to have an unmistakedly ID. And other point: Dueñas Beraiz does not mentions the bracamarte in this article.

But I also think those terms were used in a more lax manner by the common folk, giving birth to this typologic problems. Even in this forum, I have read descriptions of a "dagger", which do not correspond to a double edged short weapon, but to a single edged weapon, and this is strange to me, as many dictionaries in english defines a dagger as a short pointed weapon with sharp edges used to stab or pierce, and in spanish it is of the outmost importance to precise that a dagger is a double edged weapon. Also, we differentiate the puñal and the dagger, being both of them weapons to stab (not excluding the cut), on the fact that the puñal has only one edge, and sometimes, also a short false edge. And if the blade is extremely narrow, we use another name. So, the problem is a little more complex, when entering to equivalences and traslations, as in the case of the question from Miguel.
Regards

Gonzalo