Origin of the kampilan?

[fernando]

Hi Lorenz

Originally Posted by migueldiaz

... can you please comment again based on the drawings below of scimitar-looking Tausug kampilans ...

Indeed the earlier you pick on Kampilan examples the more they look like scimitars. The one you posted is perhaps a specimen latyer to the discussed period, with its knuckle guard provision.
On the other hand, the terçado remains a bit ambiguous, concerning its early form. Not that it is seldom mentioned; i have found a zillion quotations, in the works of Portuguese chronists, Castanheda, João de Barros, Fernão Medes Pinto. You have mentions on short terçados, naked terçados, adorned terçados with golden scabbards, even the ones carried by pages for their masters (like the King of Cambay), as also carried by women; all of these mostly belonging to the "Moors", but never a description on their form. Exception for the travels of Ibn Batuta (1346) who, when in the Maldives and according to the Portuguese translator (1840), saw the instructions of some Gadija being written in palm leaves (ola) with a curved iron, similar to a terçado. At a certain point i think the term was even used genericaly for sword ... a curved sword ... basicaly Moor. And maybe Pigafetta was used to see the the large version of it ... larger than the scimitar versions he had seen. Or he was hot minded with the event, which would be no surprise.
If i am not wrong, somebody mentioned the Moluco islands in a prior post.
I am inserting here an interesting picture, for general apreciation.
Fernando

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