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#1 | |||
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Hi all, so while doing some very superficial google images research on our old friend the laz bichaq, I stumbled upon a DeviantArt post, of all things, that led me down a most interesting rabbit hole!
I suppose I should state that I've always found the claim of "laz bichaq" (or bichagi) being the proper name for this type of sword to be rather suspicious. This is primarily due to the fact that "bichaq" is just a blatant loan word from Turkish, meanwhile Georgian, a language that Laz is actually related to, uses terms like "khmali" and "khanjali" for their weapons, which, one will note, bear no resemblance to the term "bichaq". This is not intended to discredit or disregard the work that I know a number of old forum members here have put in to finding this term, but rather to point out what I see as a clear contradiction. As frivolous as some might find it to be, as far as the "name game" is concerned I've always been a staunch supporter of the notion of native terms above all others. "Laz sword" or "karadeniz yataghan", in my mind, will never be as accurate as any native terms, even if those terms ultimately translate to the aforementioned ones. Anyways, back to this deviant art post, it is simply a picture of what we have called a laz bichaq, but posted by someone who appears to be ethnically laz, and has added the following description: Quote:
Now, unless we are all to be overly skeptical here and claim that this person is *not* laz and in fact has just typed up gibberish, I think at a surface level there is no reason to believe that what they write is not true. Still though, as I figure there might be some skeptics that read this, I have done my best to substantiate their claims by defining the following laz words; Lazuri Didi Xami, which may very well be the native laz term for what we call "laz bichaq". "Lazuri" should really go without saying. The wikipedia article for the laz language itself gives the term "lazuri nena" as translating to "laz language", so clearly "Lazuri" is relating to its origin within the laz themselves. "Didi" is said to mean big or large. Given that there aren't that many Laz -> English dictionaries out there online, this word was at first hard to verify, but I found this page of a whole 500 laz proverbs (with english translations) that support pretty clearly the idea that didi means something to the affect of big or large. Here's one proverb that uses "didi" twice: Quote:
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#2 |
Arms Historian
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Route 66
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Fasten your seatbelts!
![]() Meanwhile, VERY nice work Nihl. |
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#3 |
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This is an excellent work and it certainly deserves attention and should be taken with all possible seriousness.
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#4 |
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#5 |
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#6 |
Vikingsword Staff
Join Date: Dec 2004
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Nihl:
Thank you for your careful work in defining what seems to be the local descriptor for the (so-called) laz bicaq. As others have noted, your findings deserve careful consideration. The main discussants of this topic have taken a short holiday from the Forum, so it may be a while before they weigh back in. Please feel free to expand on your ideas in their absence. ![]() Do we have any native-speakers of the Georgian/Laz language who might assist Nihl in his efforts? |
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#7 |
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#8 |
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Thank you all for the positive responses!
In regards to Ian's comment: I suppose it is true that without our most vocal members here things will probably be relatively quiet. In hindsight, there really isn't that much to add on to this here other than to perhaps have a discussion about whether or not "the community" should adopt this term. -My take, for the record, would be that the term should at least be recognized, given that the Laz are the most well known users of these swords. I also think "xami" is a cooler word for knife than "bichaq", but that's just personal preference ![]() Other than that, I have to admit that these Didi Xami are rather out of my area of expertise. I quite like them as aesthetically beautiful - and theoretically quite deadly - swords (my first antique actually was a laz sword), however aside from that I know very little about the intricacies of Caucasian and Caucasia-adjacent cultures. As such, I don't mean to try and forfit my role in this discovery here, but merely to express that I don't have an entire thesis-worth of information to provide beyond what I initially posted. Perhaps sometime in the future, when I next find myself haphazardly googling things about laz culture, I'll use my young person internet skills to try and find some laz forum or social media group that I can inquire further about these swords on. Or simply ask them what they would call a sword lol. |
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#9 |
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Nihl,
I truly applaud your research work and well presented aspects of the particulars of these terms as applied to these weapons. Also for sharing this here in what has been a rather formidable and often hostile theater on this topic. In the many years I have studied arms and armor, especially in the ethnographic areas, the 'name game' , as we have come to call it, has often been one of the most confounding aspects of study. It becomes a problem of transliteration, semantics, dialects, vernacular and colloquial use etc. which presents issue when particular forms are being discussed out of context or in early accounts or narratives when researchers are relying on those resources. For example, it is well known by historians that Magellan was killed by tribesmen in the Philippines in 1521, by many accounts with a 'kampilan'. We know what this sword type looks like now, and how they are believed to have looked over the past 150 or more years, but what exactly did a 'kampilan' look like in those times and in the Philippines rather than other regions of use? I have been told in many cases, ethnic terms for the same weapon type can vary either subtly or sometimes dramatically, almost from one village to another in a sense, in tribal regions of Indonesia and SE Asia. In the case of the transverse gripped daggers in India we know as the 'katar', these are termed locally jamadhar, but through an apparent oversight, Egerton (1885) transposed the term from the more conventional form dagger named katar. Subsequent writers followed suit and used the katar term without question, and as those references became venerable resources, the term for these changed to what we now term, a collectors term. The collectors terms used for it seems, almost countless types of arms as described by writers since the 19th century, have been classified by names which are often incomprehensible to locals in the areas they originate. Another example, in the Sudan and Ethiopia, the broadswords we know as 'kaskara' are simply deemed sa'if, nobody there has any idea what the term kaskara means! One tribesman I spoke with from Sudan, when shown a photo of a kaskara, said he called it a 'cross'. So the point is, it is not a matter of 'right or wrong' as far as what term is used to describe a weapon, except for the sake of convenience semantically in discussion or published work. However, it is essential to note the varied cases of alternative terms in a cross reference sense, so that further researchers using these references can move accordingly forward. Returning to my original comments Nihl, nicely researched, well presented and with staunch resolve. As someone always trying to learn on the history of these arms, I sincerely thank you, as do I am sure others reading here in the same manner. |
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#10 |
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Very interesting! Nice research!
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