The earliest known illustration of an Afghan Pulwar

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by Turkoman.khan

Hello Jim. In the book "Edged Weapons of Afghanistan 19 - early 20th century", I read that for the first time the term "paluoar" is mentioned in the book of a Russian researcher in 1860. Col. Yule's glossary written before? At what year?

I'm not certain of the year of the Yule reference, but Egerton was compiling data for his book in the 1870s and of course the Russian reference you mention might have been seen by him or for that matter Yule, which I think post dated 1860. Naturally Russian resources have not regularly been well known to writers confined to the English language unless filtered through French or other sources.

Whatever the case, I am under the impression that Persian influence was certainly at hand in the paluoar with the downward quillon guard and the stylized dragon terminals etc. bringing to mind Safavid character. BTW, good reference to Dmitry's brilliant book, which I do not have on hand at the moment, but certainly wish I did!