Show us your pesh-kabz

[mariusgmioc]

I have one Persian and two North Indian.

Here they are:

[Bryce]

Beautiful examples! Unfortunately I don't have any to contribute, but I may have to put one on my Christmas wish list.
Cheers,
Bryce

[mariusgmioc]

So nobody wants to share their Pesh with us?!

[Battara]

When I grow up I might get one. These are beautiful!

[Interested Party]

Originally Posted by mariusgmioc

So nobody wants to share their Pesh with us?!

How could you follow these?

[Saracen]

Can I share a just karud?
I heard that in English "karud" and "pesh-kabz" are the same thing .
The first one is just "kard", and the second one is the same kard, that is worn "hilt (pesh) forward (kabz)" (but this is already a little bit in Persian )

[ariel]

These are classical Indo-Persian Pesh Kabz: recurved blades. What is popularly ( if incorrectly) called "karud" is just Pesh Kabz with straight blade. Those were widespread in Central Asia: Afghanistan and Khanates. In fact, ch'hura is from the same family, just a local variant of the handle from the Khyber Pass Mahsuds. The second one might have been called " khanjar" due to its double edge construction ( can't see well from the picture)
And you are correct: " karud" is just a local phonetic epenthesis ( insertion of a vowel between the two consonants). As usual, multiple bladed weapons were locally known by very generic names: " sword' ( saif, tulwar, kilij, shamshir in Arabic, Hindi , Turkish and Farsi), " knife" ( ch'hura, bichaq, P'chak in Hindi, Turkish and Uzbek. Kard is just a "knife" in Farsi, and "kord" in Tadjik. The purely phonetic origin of " karud" as mispronounced " kard" was directly stated in the mid-19th century by Florian Gille, the Russian director of the Tsarskoe Selo collection of weapons, by the 1955 edition of the Moser collection, indirectly in the Buttin's and Holstejn's catalogues and finally directly by Elgood in his new glossary. The first hint comes from the Gilchrist's glossary, where the word is written in Farsi as " kard" but transliterated as " karud". It went into common circulation by G.C. Stone, who was relying on early Moser's notes.
We have broken a lot of spears over this topic in the past. There is no way to extinguish the use of " karud" from the vocabularies of e-bay sellers and amateur and naive collectors, and perhaps this erroneous name serves its purpose: right away it gives us an image of a dagger with a straight blade. However, most respectable weapon historians, dealers and collectors do not use it. Just like no professional self-respecting Oriental weapons guy will ever use "scimitar":-)