Afridi Dagger ?

[Queequeg]

I just finished Death in the Silent Places by the late big-game hunter, Peter Hathaway Capstick. In Chapter 6, he wrote about Colonel Edward James Corbett, who killed an infamous leopard, dubbed "The Maneater of Rudrapayag". An excerpt on page 223 caught my eye:

The rifle was useless now, and Corbett knew it. With grim determination, he shifted it to his left hand and drew his knife, a wicked-looking Afridi stabbing dagger he had bought as a curiosity from a deputy commissioner in the north. With three notches in the handle, it had been the killing weapon in a triple murder, an old evidence tag attached to the hilt at the time of the purchase.

Does anyone have any idea what one of these looks like? I'm coming up short on google image searches.

[Lew]

Does anyone have any idea what one of these looks like? I'm coming up short on google image searches.[/QUOTE]


Afri (singular, Afer) was the Latin name for an ancient people located on the shores of the southern Mediterranean Sea near the city of Carthage, nowadays Tunisia.

A generic term for a North African knife I think?

[spiral]

Queequeg, Afridi is a comman term for Pathan tribsman of Afghanistan.

Rudrapayag is in Northen India therfore the standerd Pesh kabz or choora knife is the typicle Afridi stabbing knife {or dagger although strictly of course not double sided.}

Heres an old one of yours Louie.

Spiral

[Queequeg]

Spiral,

At first, I thought maybe you misunderstood me. However, after rereading your post, I think you're probably right.

I assumed that the author knew the difference between a knife and a dagger, so I was stuck looking for a double-edged blade. I now think it's most likely that he makes no difference between them and the picture you linked is what I was looking for.

Thanks!

[David]

Originally Posted by Queequeg

I assumed that the author knew the difference between a knife and a dagger, so I was stuck looking for a double-edged blade. I now think it's most likely that he makes no difference between them and the picture you linked is what I was looking for.

I just spent a bit of time researching the definition of dagger on the web. Just about all sources define it as a short, pointed knife used primarily for stabbing. Of all the sources i check only one (Wikipedia) mentions that it is "typically" double-edged, though it doesn't say always. The gist of all the definitions seems to be that daggers are intended for stabbing, not slashing. Seems to me that according to these definitions a Pesh Kabz could indeed be properly referred to as a dagger.

[spiral]

Thanks Queequeg, it seemed the logical choice to me given the Indian subcontenant rather than African location & use of the term Afridi in that case meaning Pathan & that the often interchageability of both descriptive knife/dagger terms in common usage. [As i thought!}

Great stuff David! Thank you! I live & learn, I was always brought up to belive a knife was single edged for cutting & a dagger double edged for stabbing{although obviously knives can still stab etc.} & must admit I have never actualy researched into it.

Those lessons mostly came from my father & other WW2 mostly Burma & Chindit or Royal marine veterans. I wonder if that was how the British army/Navy used to name them? or perhaps just commen usage in the area I grew up? {Thames Valley, England.] It would be fascinating to know!

Interesting that Queequeg had the same understanding too.

spiral

[fearn]

Hi All,

Stepped in late, but this discussion is sort of like the Spanish conquistadors, who, when writing about the Andes, called Llamas sheep and temples mosques, because those were the referents they had to explain the strange things they were seeing. They didn't have the categorical words to work with.

Similarly, dagger vs. knife is one of my three examples of areas where "everyone knows what the difference is," until you try to categorize something.

The three examples are: tree vs. shrub, sword vs. knife, and dagger vs. knife. We could also argue sword vs. saber, if we wanted.

I won't bore you with the tree vs. shrub, but a great example is a machete.

Is it a sword, a knife, or a saber (or is it a type of sword termed a saber)? We've seen all three used for a machete, especially in historical literature.

While I appreciate David's scholarship, I think we would be even better served by coming up with a term for these kinds of vague distinctions, just so we know when we're wandering into these poorly defined debates. Something that signals "Oh yeah, we're having on of THOSE discussions again" would be a good thing.

So far as this discussion goes, I'd heard the knife being single edge (often curved) while a dagger is two-edged (usually straight). I think that one may go back to Roman times, where the pugio and the gladius (straight and two-edged) were Roman and single edged and curved weapons (like the sica) were foreign.

Other thoughts on the concepts of knife vs. dagger:
--a dagger is a specialized knife, when it comes right down to it.

--Knives tend to be tools for cutting things, and often titled by their use. That's why we tend to talk about "combat knives" (it's a knife used for combat), utility knives, and survival knives. Daggers tend to be weapons, defined by who uses them (it's a commando dagger, not a combat dagger, for instance). Offhand, I can't think of a "utility dagger" or "survival dagger," although there are certainly straight, two-edged survival and utility knives. These are tendencies, with many, many exceptions among the knives.

--Purpose-built weapons tend to be linked by name to groups of warriors or soldiers (i.e. an Afridi stabbing dagger), whether they're knives or daggers. A Marine Raider's Knife is a pretty narrow category, even though it's a specialized clip-tip knife. Alternatively, they're given a specialized name (like a smachet).


We can go onto the differences between knives and swords, and swords, sabers, and cutlasses, but it's off the subject.

My 0.0000002 centavos,

F

[stephen wood]

...in the West Indies a machete is called a cutlass

[Norman McCormick]

Hi,
Dagger V's Knife, I have always differentiated these two by the following. A knife always has at least one cutting edge and is primarily designed as a 'tool' a dagger need not have any cutting edges and is primarily designed as an implement for stabbing. Obviously these capabilities can be adaptive e.g. stabbing with a knife and cutting with an edged dagger but this can be true of many things e.g. a wooden mallet and a steel hammer, both designed for different purposes but can be interchangeable and used for purposes other than those for which they were originally designed.
Regards,
Norman.

[Lew]

This is getting silly dagger,knife,shiv we are getting off subject it really does not matter what you call it if you are on the receiving end of it.

[fearn]

Stephen,

Yep. Do you want to start talking about whether a cutlass is a type of sword or knife, based on the fact that machetes are termed cutlasses ?

---

Ah, but Louie,

Remember, we're all about words here, not getting shivved.

If I wanted to know what kind of dagger the Marine Raiders used during WWII, how would I go about searching for it?

This is the problem with the "everybody knows that a knife is X while a dagger is Y" discussion without a well-known definition. You can label a weapon as a knife or dagger (or whatever) based on what you think it is, but someone else who uses your term won't be able to figure out what you're talking about, without additional knowledge or asking more questions.

As an example, is a cutlass a sword, saber, or knife, given that a machete is termed a cutlass in part of its native range?

NOT that I'm saying we should have our own definitions on this site. Maybe we should start talking about these as "machete debates," or something similar.

Best,

F

[Lew]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...aider_Stiletto


If I wanted to know what kind of dagger the Marine Raiders used during WWII, how would I go about searching for it?

Here you go

[Norman McCormick]

Hi Lou,
I'll take the guy with the Swiss Army pocket dagger and you take the guy with the large Khyber 'thingummybob'.
My Regards,
Norman.

[Lew]

Lets just call them sharp nasty pointy things that should cover it

[ariel]

Lou, don't be a party pooper :-)
I think it is rather interesting.
I think the distinction is not in construction per se, but in purpose: daggers always have some military tinge. Knives, on the other hand, can be anything, including, importantly, perfectly peaceful purposes: kitchen, cheese, butter, paring etc.
It so happened that English has two separate words for a short weapon: dagger and knife.
Russian, on the other hand, has only one: nozh=knife. Therefore, anything shorter than saber or sword was a "nozh". They realized that it was insufficient and utilized a (Caucasian) Kindjal as a matrix word. Thus, you see definition like " Jambiya, an Arabian kindjal", "Kris, an Indonesian kindjal", " Nazi SS kindjal", etc, etc. for any short weapon with military purpose. Exceptions are naval dagger "kortik" (probably modified "kortelas", a short naval sword), and sapper's "tessack" ( likely, from German "dussak" or a derivative of Russian verb "tesat'", " to chop).

Words get different meanings. I was told, for example, that in the Balkans, yataghans are knives/daggers, but a full size one is called handjar.
Jim's favorite example is kaskara that is known as such everywhere, except in ...Sudan. The Sudanese call it Sayf.

[fearn]

Good points Ariel.

It's fascinating that the sword/saber/knife/dagger/etc continuum of weapons seems so prone to this kind of linguistic weirdness. It shows up in other weapons (notably halberds), but outside of weapon terms, the best example I know of is the shrub vs. tree pair.

I suspect that swords, knives, and daggers get into this because there are issues of violence, power, and utility all coming into play. A knife is a fundamental tool, but a military knife is also a symbol of power and maybe that's why they get different names? Just a guess.

Best,

F

[Bryan.H]

Originally Posted by fearn

Good points Ariel.

It's fascinating that the sword/saber/knife/dagger/etc continuum of weapons seems so prone to this kind of linguistic weirdness. It shows up in other weapons (notably halberds), but outside of weapon terms, the best example I know of is the shrub vs. tree pair.

I suspect that swords, knives, and daggers get into this because there are issues of violence, power, and utility all coming into play. A knife is a fundamental tool, but a military knife is also a symbol of power and maybe that's why they get different names? Just a guess.

Best,

F

Years ago I read "The Book of the Sword" by Captain Richard Francis Burton. I think it must be one of the earliest ethnographic edged weapons treatise written. Even given it's British-centric, Victorian era cultural context, it's still an excellent resource from a man who used weapons in practice every other day. He explores the notions of edged weapons , from hunter-gathers tools through to swords of state, and the evolution of swords, along a 'spectrum'. He tends to use local names given to edged weapons, as well as notes the names given to swords/ daggers/ knives etc in french and spanish terminology, to differentiate between types. I enjoy reading this philosophy of swords very much! All very interesting.