Origin of the kampilan?

[migueldiaz]

Originally Posted by fernando

Quando visteno questo tutti andorono addosso a lui: uno con un gran terciado (che è como una scimitarra, ma più grosso) , li dette una ferita nella gamba sinistra, per la quale cascò col volto innanzi. Subito li furono addosso con lancie de ferro e de canna e con quelli sui terciadi, fin che lo specchio, il lume, el conforto e la vera guida nostra ammazzarono.

Interpretation is not so evident ... translation makes it worse (tradutore, traditore). Cutlass as being a curved blade (Alfanje-Alfange), versus terciado, a term which seems to have a castillian origin and, apart from the subjective (?) quotation from Piagafetta, is considered to be a short, broad straight sword (quoting Real Armeria and in general), therefore a sword with the shape of a gladius (if i may). In such case Piagafetta would not have been so "technical" in describing this weapon, by placing it between such a straight piece and a scimitar, a curved sword, again with a Castillian influenced name. On the other hand, could it be that, being envolved with Spaniards (and Portuguese) he tended to describe the weapons typology with an Iberian terminology?

Also peculiar is that, he expresses "un gran terciado, which is like a scimitar but larger", whereas the first should by all means be shorter than the late. Terciado (Terçado in Portuguese) derives from tercio (terço) meanning "third", reflecting that this weapon is one third shorter than a current (mark) sword.

Thanks Fernando, for taking us to the original language used! and your elaboration thereof.

I find it most helpful and I'm sure the others will find it like so as well.

Am not familiar with cutlasses and scimitars, but the little that I know of them is that they look like per attachment below.

Now on how to reconcile Pigafetta's descriptions of the sword used against Fernão Magalhães, can you please comment again based on the drawings below of scimitar-looking Tausug kampilans, as reproduced in The Sulu Zone, 1768-1898 (1975) by James Francis Warren?

We all know that Moros regard Lapulapu as a Tausug (a Moro group based in Sulu islands in Mindanao). We find this view for instance in the Wikipedia article on Lapulapu.

On the other hand, Lapulapu could have been an animist, like all ethnic Filpinos before the islands' Islamization in the 13th/14th century and Christianization in the 16th century.

But let's assume for the moment that Lapulapu was a Tausug (and perhaps that was also the reason why Rajah Humabon [the king Magalhães was able to befriend] and Lapulapu were not seeing eye to eye, i.e., on the further presumption that Humabon's tribe was an animist).

If Lapulapu was a Muslim Tausug, then couldn't it be that he and his nobles were armed with such curved kampilans, such that Pigafetta noted them as resembling a scimitar but only larger?

But on why Pigafetta used the term terciado [commonly translated as "cutlass"] to describe such a big sword still escapes me.

Perhaps in alluding to a terciado Pigafetta was not referring to the sword's size (hence he said "a large cutlass [terciado]"), but on some other feature of the terciado. What could it/they be?

PS -

Rick, what you mentioned is also possible of course. Given Warren's reference to highly-curved kampilans of the Sulu warriors, I'm now wondering whether the comparison with a scimitar was in fact on track. Hmm