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Old 25th October 2023, 05:26 PM   #3
Changdao
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Location: Spain
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It has indeed some nice details. It is also probably of a more common type in the region, without the extreme 90º bend that mine presents.

I crossed a while ago in an Evans-Pritchard article a source in which these swords (well, the choppy Zande versions, that is) appear in action.

"I have already quoted Schweinfurth's admiration of the Zande's skill in the use of his weapons. Another writer, Col. C. Chaillé Long, has described how in a fight with the Yanbari (? Nyangbara) he let loose his Azande (Adio or Makaraka Azande) on them : "I confess that I never saw a more perfect ideal of the warrior, not alone in muscular display, but in the bounding élan with which he flew rather than ran - the right hand grasping the huge knife, while with bouclier pressed closely to his side, he met the enemy. Covering his body with it with wonderful quickness from the deadly arrows, that his adversary in vain expended upon the broad shield, he threw himself upon him and cut and stabbed the defenceless 'Yanbari' to death." They burnt at least twenty villages and then ate enemy dead. The huge knife referred to is doubtless the scimitar the Azande of this region fought."

It includes the customary (and ridiculous) literary convention that the Zande were cannibals, but the account itself is interesting.
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