Quote:
Originally Posted by Pertinax
Hi fennec!
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
|
Hi Yuri, about this quote, I unfortunatly have to make just a little politic, but I promise not too much !
You can really not compare algeria to its neighbours on those subject, that are the rests of our ancient history, craftsmanship, arts, etc.. Unfortunately, we had the most violent, and long, colonisation of north Africa, that practicly erased everything from our identity, for 130years. My algerian grand mother dont knew how to write in arabic, but send me a postal card in perfect french all my childhood... And, when Ive begun that searches, in my interest on ancient algerian weapons a decade ago, NO ALGERIAN was able to talk with me about a "nimcha", a "flissa", or anything else. Actually most of them, when I mentionned a saber was like "oh yeah a "samurai"" (algerian word for "katana"). The most "direct" ear to a real kabyle blacksmith (I mean, a sword maker, because its still ancient smiths in Kabylie) was given by a old men, talking about his grandfather, and not being able to really give me information about making, etc. Just some legends as the meaning of deco etc...
Well, all of that just to explain, that its logic, that peolpe who begon their analysis long time after was algeria suffered, didnt found in this country, a lot about its ancient crafts (Lacoste was born in 1929.. one century after algeria colonisation). There is also some "foreign" look to some thinks with all my due respect (because without Lacoste, and many french ethnologist or historians, I woundt know what I know... in a way, they "saved" what was aldeary desapearring for years, by documenting them). This is the case for the lenght of handles, or even meanings of decoration, that ALWAYS refer to "genital parts" or "fertility", wich is totally absurd when you know a bit of our culture (as mentionned before, much more about sky, stars, natural elements like montains, see, etc, or simply animals, even more on weapons). Just as an exemple.
So (and sorry for the lenght of my answers), I have many reasons, that have to be taken together to explain the lack of info on those daggers (and generally, algerian weapons) :
1/ Colonisation, lot of pieces lost, taken, real blacksmith turning to deco maker, jewelers of kabylie starting making "knives" too, but without same skills, etc.. (not only for tourists, but also because of many geograhic mooves, due to colonisation ---> Kabylie was the first destroyed, and "pacified", in algeria.
2/ Dont know if I told it before, but I presume that even if this knife existed before France, it was probably not the most liked. The same makers (or others, in this area) was making yatagans etc .. there is many "khanjar" (as written on the blade, but actually a "yatagan knife") with damascus blade and sylver handles and scabbard was madea also there. So I presume that most of the made knives, wasnt flissa daggers. Probably just this model survided in local peoples, and even Kabyles prefered more effective knives as seen on descritptions.
3/ it is also possible that this shape and inlays, became more produced under french era, for evident tourism purpose. But however, we have many other models, that can be called flyssa, even if they are clearly different, and way more older. So the idea of a "flissa dagger" used by the local is just obvious. How its shape and esthétic changed with the time is still a mistery even for me today.
Like this one, fully ottomanish style, but still a flissa for me.
https://www.invaluable.com/auction-l...20e284c7a9bb64
Well, all that speach just to explain why algeria is one of the african coutnry that suffered the most from info about its last century culture, and Im still today digging ancient ottoman archives that nobody can read ! May be will find an answer about that one day..