Khyber knife?

[Skiendubh]

I thank all of you people for your replies. So, on the whole, I take it that the consensus is that I do have an atypical Khyber knife?

Anyhow, for my replies.

Firstly, skien dubh is celtic for black knife/sword. I read that dubh can also refer to something hidden/covert, and it was a hidden/covert blade when worn in the sock of a Scot, and maybe Irish? It is usually written as sgian dubh, but this is usually already taken, so I use this alternate phonetic spelling as my nom de plume.

As for the hole in the blade, which is 0.125" in diameter, I was informed that it was used by the English to mount blades on their walls, so you say that it was also used by the Russians. Or was it just the Russians? Good to know anyway.

The bolt in the picture is used to mount my machine vice to a lump of wood, which gives a mobile and reasonably stable work place to hold pieces to work on. Not ideal, but a whole lot better than the Mark 1 mobile vice. a.k.a. Hand.

More measurements. The blade is 18” long, and 1.970” wide at the base. As seen, it tapers gradually towards the point, and the taper increases within the last inch or so, to the point. The cross section of the blade isn't really flat, more flat/oval ish, The edge is sharp and is the entire length of one side, and has a 0.250” bevel associated with it. It has a 'butter knife' sharp swage/false edge, is 5” long, which then tapers out to 0.100” wide at the hilt. The blade does have a distill taper, and starts at 0.150” at the hilt, going down to 0.125” measured at 0.500” [ where the bevels of both edges start ] back from the point.

The handle is 4.950" from the blade to the butt, and has a full profile tang with the bolsters attached to the hilt, don't know how, as I cannot see any rivets or solder. The wood is attached by 3 rivets. The wood also tapers, starting at 1.175” behind the bolsters, and goes to 1.375” thick, 0.750” from the butt.

It had a basic wooden scabbard, which followed the shape of the blade. which was covered in thin black leather, same as a Kukeri scabbard normally uses. It was in extremely poor condition, so I discarded it.

I have also heard that English doctors of the era commented about the normal habit of using these blades was to slash the enemies, and rarely, if ever, were they used to stab, though the shape cries out that they were really well designed to stab with. My opinion. And the fact that my blade is flat, as opposed to the normal 't' cross section blades, is why I wondered if it really is a Khyber knife or not. One time I cleaned the blade and thought that I saw it was patterned, like wootz steel. Though I haven't seen it since that one time. Imagination?

[ariel]

There is not much rhyme and reason to Afghani traditional weapons. Tribes had their local peculiar features, to which even their own village armorers subscribed quite loosely. And taking into account that similar swords were manufactured across the country, up north in various emirates in what is now Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, other “stans” , India and Persia, by everyone with a hammer and an anvil ( or even a more or less flat boulder), the variability must have been enormous. Indeed, some are straight, some are recurved, diferent sizes , widths etc. I have seen pictures of contemporary Uzbeki bazaars where similar items were sold from a knife stand as just butcher knives. However, a false edge you describe is another non=traditional feature. Usually, these “ khybers” had no false edges. Would be nice to be able to see it photographed. How thick is the blade? It is a modestly unusual “khyber”, but khyber it is. Age-wise it is likely between 1830 and 1930: not a lot of cultural revolutions happened in that bizarre part of the world,,,,
In general, better pics of the different sides of the handle might be interesting. Is it wooden? Any losses?

I have been to a couple of old British bars with Indian and Afghani swords nailed to the wall. Provincial Russian museums have no monopoly on such a way of assuring that the visitors would not hack each other to pieces. I do not think that this blade was ever mounted on a “khanda” handle: the hole is quite off-center and neatly drilled. I am with the nail croud:-), a

[Saracen]

I agree that this Khyber knife could have been nailed to the wall, since there are so many of you, supporters of this idea, and Ariel is with you )
Only the secondary use of the blade is really not uncommon.
In two photos from oriental-arms, the drawings around the holes show that they were made on a hot blade during its manufacture (thanks to the eagle eye of RenRen ).
And it is unlikely that anyone raised a hand to nail it to the wall of the bar with two nails.
And on a seriously resharpening, reformatted blade it is useless to try to understand whether there was a hole in the center.

[ariel]

In addition to being off center, the hole is far too close to the bolster to support the “ basket” khanda handle theory.
I checked my 5 “khanda” handle swords ; the rivets on all of them are 8-12 cm away from the base. That makes a good engineering sense: the farther away on the blade is the support point ( the rivet), the more forceful should be the blow to the blade to dislodge it. Also, I cannot recall ever seeing a “khyber” with the “ khanda” handle, although some modern Indian forgers might have created something like that:-)

[Saracen]

Alternatively: the khanda (firangi) blade was broken at the hilt, and the khyber knife handle was formed again closer to the hole.
And the bartender didn't even have to drill a hole to nail the khyber knife to the wall

[Jim McDougall]

I am just curious, WHY in the world would a 'Khyber' be mounted with a khanda hilt? or even a tulwar hilt?

The fact that this blade is a variant with the typical T-spine absent does not disqualify it as being of the form and probably from anywhere in the Afghan regions where these were used.

The only other Khyber blades that had 'other ' hilts mounted on them were the military style forms produced in the Machin Khana in Kabul post 2nd Afghan war (1879-80)..These were for the tribal forces serving in para military police character policing tribal areas, and while many of these had standard military blades.....many tribesmen preferred their own blades.

Throughout the Northwest Frontier and well into the Khyber Agency, there were many itinerant blacksmiths and metal workers who could have produced such similar blades following this profile, but without necessary means to produce the finer details such as the T back.

With the holes, on the examples shown with vestigial 'tunkou' as seen on yataghan blades etc. being filled with gold metal is a very old feature seen on some Islamic blades, and supposed to have certain talismanic associations. In the case of old Mamluk blades some had anywhere from one to seven holes filled in this manner.
While the other seems to have the hole in the tunkou and filled with silver metal.

There are cases of blades in the Sudan having holes drilled and filled with gold metal (probably copper) in this manner.

It is tempting to think of the British term for the Khyber as 'silliwar yataghan' and colloquially 'Khyber knife'. The Afghan term (not sure which dialect) for these is silliwar. The yataghan appellation seems odd and interesting to see examples with the tunkou feature.

The attached is an example of the 'military' style hilt as produced in Machin Khana mounted with tribal blade, the doves are a Persian affinity, which of course was prevalent in these regions.
Below that is an example of the 'military' style sword produced at Machin Khana, with the Royal Stamp and dated 1890.

[ariel]

The local name of the Afgani short straight or recurved sword T-bladed ( Brits called it “ khyber knife”) is Selavah.

There is a short sword in Dekkan ( straight or recurved, T-bladed) called Sailaba.

Short Kazakh and Kirghiz sword with straight or curved blade : Selebe or Seleve .

Old cossack side weapon with short and heavy blade was called suleba or (diminutive- affectionate form ) selyabka or sulebka.


One can not unreasonably hypothesize that all of these patterns and names stem from the Central-Asian source with Turkic roots and were brought to the Indo-Afghani areal with Babur in the 16th century.