Kindjals, Quamas and Quaddaras

[Miguel]

Originally Posted by arsendaday

Hi Miguel

The kindjals that you posted are great ones and I love them all. The answer to the question: which part of the Caucasus they are from, is never going to be correct. Not only the styles and the designs have been borrowed and used everywhere in the Caucasus, but also every Caucasian will tell you that his country/region/town/village is the one that invented everything in the Caucasus, and sometimes in the world I can try to tell you my observations about the kindjals that you have. I call them kindjals, because this is what Russians call them (wrongly), but this way there will be no arguing about them being called a qama, khanchal or ghama.

#1 with the brass handle and modified blade. The blade could have originally been Caucasian, but was modified and the hilt was added most likely in Turkey, less likely in Persia, unless it is a fake one. Hard to tell from the photo.
#2, 3 and 4 definitely kindjals made in the Caucasus, the silver one most likely in Daghestan.
#5 is different. It is what could be called qaddara and most likely than not, made in Isfahan Persia. IMHO the reason it has a Caucasian handle, is because it was originally made by the Isfahan Armenians (who were deported there from Caucasus by Shah Abbas starting from AD 1604) and they kept the design i.e. continued making it the way they knew and just made it longer. (Also the shorter version is described as an Armenian kindjal/knife by Astvatsaturian in her "Weapons of the Caucasus" book, I will post a photo of the shorter Caucasian/Armenian version as soon as I get it.) BTW the name qaddara has an Indo-European root of of the word "cut". I.e. qaddara is the same as cutter-a (This is my own observation. All the other opinions are welcome, especially Farsi speakers'.)
#6 Kindjal made in Georgia (80%)
#7 Kindjal made in Chechnia or Daghestan 50% - 50%
As I said I can tell you if they were made in Caucasus (Including Transcaucasia) or not, but even that would not be 100% correct, as these daggers were very popular and even after the decline of the bladed weapon usage, they were and still are being made all over Caucasus, Middle East, Russia and even India out of all places. I am trying to gain a lot of information about the these kindjals myself and I will start a thread myself as soon as I am 90% certain about all the information that I have.

P.S. I will elaborate on the subject of the kindjals' origins separately, but one thing I can tell you for sure, these did not originate from Scythian akinakes.

Hi Arsendade.

Thank you so much for taking the time out to respond to my post it is much appreciated. Your comments and observations are most informative and valuable to me as I have little knowledge of these weapons or the Caucasus. I had been carrying out some research but seemed to be going round in circles as I found the information I gleaned from the many and various sites that I visited to be very conflicting so your comments were most refreshing. I do not know how the photos became out of sequence with my comments but Kindjal No 4 is shown before No 3 And two of No 6 are shown out of sequence also. I had made some guesses my self but without your obvious knowledge and am quite pleased that some of my guesses agree with some of yours, I guessed the following:-

No 1:- Fake or Tourist piece, No 2:- Chechen due to its long armour piercing point ? No 3:- Didn't know, No 4 :- I thought maybe Dagestan due to its having a similar style blade stamp to No 7 which I also thought may be Dagestan , No 5 :- I thought that this may be Persian or Kazakstan and No 6 :- I was not sure whether it was Georgian or Russian as it has the Don assay stamp.
It would be very nice now if someone in the Forum could translate the script on the blade and scabbard and if someone could shed any light on the blade stamps as I have spent a lot of time trying to find out without success.
Thank you again for your reply.
Kind regards
Miguel