Origin of the kampilan?

[migueldiaz]

Here's more speculation on my part ...

In all of the eyewitness accounts of the Battle of Mactan, all mentioned about lances and bamboo spears. But it was only Pigafetta who mentioned a scimitar/cutlass-looking sword as having been used. And the mention of that sword specifically referred to Magellan being inflicted with a blow from one, just before he died.

Thus it looks to me that the use of swords among the Visayans then was not prevalent (at least in Lapulapu's men).

Perhaps this would be because metals and steel were hard to come by.

Which would then mean that only Lapulapu and some of the nobles would have had swords.

Hence, I cannot help but conclude that it must have been Lapulapu himself (or one of his royalties) who personally inflicted one of the fatal blows to Magellan.

Now as to whether it was a kampilan or a kris (per WH Scott's Barangay), we still have to establish that ...

[fernando]

Great input, Lorenz

I can see the legitimacy in doubting whether the sword/s used to strike Fernão Magalhães was/were a kampilan or a keris.
I had a look to the battle original narration by Piagafetta:

Quando visteno questo tutti andorono addosso a lui: uno con un gran terciado (che è como una scimitarra, ma più grosso) , li dette una ferita nella gamba sinistra, per la quale cascò col volto innanzi. Subito li furono addosso con lancie de ferro e de canna e con quelli sui terciadi, fin che lo specchio, il lume, el conforto e la vera guida nostra ammazzarono.

Interpretation is not so evident ... translation makes it worse (tradutore, traditore). Cutlass as being a curved blade (Alfanje-Alfange), versus terciado, a term which seems to have a castillian origin and, apart from the subjective (?) quotation from Piagafetta, is considered to be a short, broad straight sword (quoting Real Armeria and in general), therefore a sword with the shape of a gladius (if i may). In such case Piagafetta would not have been so "technical" in describing this weapon, by placing it between such a straight piece and a scimitar, a curved sword, again with a Castillian influenced name. On the other hand, could it be that, being envolved with Spaniards (and Portuguese) he tended to describe the weapons typology with an Iberian terminology?
Also peculiar is that, he expresses "un gran terciado, which is like a scimitar but larger", whereas the first should by all means be shorter than the late. Terciado (Terçado in Portuguese) derives from tercio (terço) meanning "third", reflecting that this weapon is one third shorter than a current (mark) sword.
If you find all the above to be nonsense, just please skip it over .
Fernando

[Rick]

Could I suggest that the peculiar slashing and chopping technique used with the kampilan may , (when described in action), due to the motions employed in use ; have been seen as a scimitar when in actuality it was not ?





Heat of the moment and all .

[migueldiaz]

Originally Posted by fernando

Quando visteno questo tutti andorono addosso a lui: uno con un gran terciado (che è como una scimitarra, ma più grosso) , li dette una ferita nella gamba sinistra, per la quale cascò col volto innanzi. Subito li furono addosso con lancie de ferro e de canna e con quelli sui terciadi, fin che lo specchio, il lume, el conforto e la vera guida nostra ammazzarono.

Interpretation is not so evident ... translation makes it worse (tradutore, traditore). Cutlass as being a curved blade (Alfanje-Alfange), versus terciado, a term which seems to have a castillian origin and, apart from the subjective (?) quotation from Piagafetta, is considered to be a short, broad straight sword (quoting Real Armeria and in general), therefore a sword with the shape of a gladius (if i may). In such case Piagafetta would not have been so "technical" in describing this weapon, by placing it between such a straight piece and a scimitar, a curved sword, again with a Castillian influenced name. On the other hand, could it be that, being envolved with Spaniards (and Portuguese) he tended to describe the weapons typology with an Iberian terminology?

Also peculiar is that, he expresses "un gran terciado, which is like a scimitar but larger", whereas the first should by all means be shorter than the late. Terciado (Terçado in Portuguese) derives from tercio (terço) meanning "third", reflecting that this weapon is one third shorter than a current (mark) sword.

Thanks Fernando, for taking us to the original language used! and your elaboration thereof.

I find it most helpful and I'm sure the others will find it like so as well.

Am not familiar with cutlasses and scimitars, but the little that I know of them is that they look like per attachment below.

Now on how to reconcile Pigafetta's descriptions of the sword used against Fernão Magalhães, can you please comment again based on the drawings below of scimitar-looking Tausug kampilans, as reproduced in The Sulu Zone, 1768-1898 (1975) by James Francis Warren?

We all know that Moros regard Lapulapu as a Tausug (a Moro group based in Sulu islands in Mindanao). We find this view for instance in the Wikipedia article on Lapulapu.

On the other hand, Lapulapu could have been an animist, like all ethnic Filpinos before the islands' Islamization in the 13th/14th century and Christianization in the 16th century.

But let's assume for the moment that Lapulapu was a Tausug (and perhaps that was also the reason why Rajah Humabon [the king Magalhães was able to befriend] and Lapulapu were not seeing eye to eye, i.e., on the further presumption that Humabon's tribe was an animist).

If Lapulapu was a Muslim Tausug, then couldn't it be that he and his nobles were armed with such curved kampilans, such that Pigafetta noted them as resembling a scimitar but only larger?

But on why Pigafetta used the term terciado [commonly translated as "cutlass"] to describe such a big sword still escapes me.

Perhaps in alluding to a terciado Pigafetta was not referring to the sword's size (hence he said "a large cutlass [terciado]"), but on some other feature of the terciado. What could it/they be?

PS -

Rick, what you mentioned is also possible of course. Given Warren's reference to highly-curved kampilans of the Sulu warriors, I'm now wondering whether the comparison with a scimitar was in fact on track. Hmm

[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

.

[migueldiaz]

Originally Posted by fernando

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, ...

Thanks Fernando for the additional info!

Still on trying to find out where Pigafetta was coming from when he described that large terçado of the ethnic Filipinos, I found the pics below of Spanish blades in Osprey's The Conquistadores.

The blades in the Battle of Mactan is truly an interesting "east meets west" kind of encounter

[migueldiaz]

Still from Osprey's The Conquistadores, images of 16th century Spanish soldiers ...

[migueldiaz]

Finally, some color plates from the same book.

I'm almost done reading Pigafetta's full account of the blades he saw throughout their landfalls in what are now Philippines and Malaysia (Borneo).

I'll post what I gathered as soon as my boss stops bothering me about some inconsequential reports that are due soon