The earliest known illustration of an Afghan Pulwar
 

Here is a fascinating drawing from 1835 that is the earliest known depiction of a pulwar.

It was drawn in Dir, and the map should illustrate its approximate geographic location

A beautiful painting too. It does predate famous artists like Rattray who I do not think actually presented a Pulwar specifically.

What's the provenance with this one?
I see the museum stamp, is that where it is retained?

Awesome data, thanks for sharing.

Illustration by Imam Bakhsh Lahori for the memoirs of General Claude-Auguste Court (French general of Ranjit Singh).
This illustration and several others are kept in a museum in Paris.

These are outstanding insights toward the distinctive saber form known as the Afghan paluoar. The actual history of these swords has always, in my impression, been elusive. For some time the styling of the hilt was in degree regarded as having influences from the Deccan, and given the connections between Pathan presence in those regions that does seem likely. However it is hard to place the exact directional trend given the paucity of illustrations to gauge such provenance, and this illustration is so incredibly important....thank you for sharing it here!

While Egerton (1885) includes the paluoar in one of the color plates of illustration with a grouping of tulwars, he does not specify it as other than a variant of the tulwar. The actual term 'paluoar' seems to derive from Rockstuhl and Col. Yule's glossary and to have a Persian root (which seems plausibly correct) and Rawson (1967, p.86) suggests that the Indian term 'tulwar' was derived from the term 'paluoar'.

What I am wondering is if there was an actual colloquial term locally in these Afghan regions for this distinctively styled saber we know as paluoar. In the case of the well known 'Khyber knife' (from British 'Hobson-Jobsen) we know that it was locally termed 'silliwar' (sic) and from there the curious term 'silliwar yataghan' evolved.

Also, it seems that the Dir regions (in now Afghanistan) located in the Khyber Pakhtunkwa (between Chitral and Peshawar) was inhabited by tribes of the Yousafzai Pathans. Perhaps this illustration gives us a prevalence of the form as used regionally?

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!

Egerton not only knew the Russian edition, which is mentioned in the book I wrote about. He used fragments of illustrations from the Russian edition as a color insert for his book, published in 1880. He himself writes that the swords are from Zarskoye Selo (this is how I found out the vicinity of St. Petersburg, Russia)

https://archive.org/details/indian-a...b?view=theater

In the Drawings British artists made during the 1810s-1840s in Afghanistan, all the swords worn by Afghans were either Shamshir or Tulwar variants, yet in the photographs from the 1870s onwards Pulwars appear to be extremely common and ubiquitous, worn by regular footsoldiers, to tribesmen, to Generals, all the way up to the Emir himself.

So why would the sword hilt that is uniquely Afghan skyrocket in popularity during the late 19th century, which was a time of profound outside (European) influence in Afghanistan? Of course this could be simple coincidence and the British simply happened to draw people who weren’t wearing pulwars.

I think the drawings made in 1810-1840 are just more primitive. The arms on them are shown more schematically.

Precisely what I was thinking!

The early drawings of Afghans focus on their dress and overall appearance and not necessarily on detail of accessories such as the sword they were wearing. And since the Indian Tulwar was much better known to the early European travellers and looked very similar to the Afghan Pulowar it might have been depicted instead of it for convenience and familiarity. Besides, the Tulwar was also quite popular with Afghans so the Pulowar might have been seen as an insignificant variety of Tulwar.

Just my speculation.