Spear ID - Niger or West African?

[colin henshaw]

Originally Posted by Iain

Hi all,

Just picked this up this evening. Not sure of an exact attribution. The head is similar to some forms of Tuareg allarh (L’Allarh Gerigéri) while the butt is also clearly Sahel work to me - although I could be wrong!

The wire wrapped shaft is a bit more of an unknown. Overall not a real big one - 163cm or a bit over 5 feet.

The head looks to be very thick and very well made.

Any ideas? I'll take more pics when I have it in hand hopefully next week.

Very nice spear Iain. There is something very similar in A C Tirri's book "Islamic Weapons" described as Indian, Maratha, known as a "Bhala".


Regards.

[Martin Lubojacky]

That is true. This Bhala spearhead is really very similar ! So isn´t this "javelin", after all, comming from Indian sub-continent ?

[Iain]

Hi Colin and Martin,

Unfortunately I don't have the book. Is there any chance you would have the time to take a photo or scan of the page in question? I'm quite curious to see it.

I'd actually asked around behind the scenes about the Indian aspect and from the couple folks I asked the consensus seemed to be that the shoe/butt with the square like decorative motif didn't seem very Indian?