Indo Persian Musket ?

[drac2k]

I just picked up this percussion musket and I was wondering if anyone could give a hint as to its origins based on the lock plate.

[corrado26]

I think the lockplate is from a flintlock of the EIC India Pattern musket badly transferred into percussion probably by an Afghan or Pakistan handyman.

[drac2k]

Thanks, Corrado26. Can you believe that it actually cocks and strikes? It is quite long(60"), & heavy and I would guess there once was a bipod where the sling is now.

[Jim McDougall]

Another amazing example of the Afghan 'jezail' using sometimes (but most often copies) of the East India Company balemark, the lion coming in after the quartered heart (c. 1810).

In the Khyber Pass regions in 1890s, the Pashtun tribes advanced their gun making skills in copying British weapons, primarily in the locations in Darra Adam Khel, with the British basically turning a blind eye in return for safe passage through the rugged pass.

The dreaded jezail was well noted by Kipling in his famed poetry on these regions, especially in his "Arithmetic on the Frontier" :
"....A scrimmage in a border station, a canter down some dark defile;
Two thousand pounds of education, drops to a ten rupee jezail".

These guns were deadly and Pashtun marksmen were skilled, later the frontier police levy which became the famed "Khyber Rifles" were originally known as the 'Khyber Jezailchi's'.

Gun making in Darra Adam Khel has been well known into modern times, but with the guns of course more the current types, but these 19th century muskets and the Afghan forms still into '30s.
This is the example I found, the same style lion and date 1815.

As noted, the 'Khyber Jezalchis' were formed in 1878, one of the first paramilitary units of the British Frontier Corps, and their rifles were indeed their own jezails. Soon after they were furnished the British Snider-Enfield; then the Martini-Henry.
When Talbot Mundy wrote "King of the Khyber Rifles" in 1919 (based on "Eighteen Years in the Khyber" by Sir Robert Warburton), the copy of the edition I have has a jezail on the face under the title.

[David R]

On a previous thread there was a comment as to what 10 rupees was worth in real terms, and being the sort of person I am I found out. In 1898 it comes out as £157 in modern UK money, and about $200, working from the gold standard as it was on at the time.

[drac2k]

Thanks, Jim for the informative and concise post in which I am always educated!
Thanks, David for your information as well; I would have wrongly inferred that 10 rupees were much less than what you found it to be.

[David R]

Originally Posted by drac2k

Thanks, Jim for the informative and concise post in which I am always educated!
Thanks, David for your information as well; I would have wrongly inferred that 10 rupees were much less than what you found it to be.

I often check up on what the real costs of stuff was back in the day, it's quite illuminating, and is sometimes a bit of a surprise as to just how much inflation has robbed money of its value.

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by drac2k

Thanks, Jim for the informative and concise post in which I am always educated!
Thanks, David for your information as well; I would have wrongly inferred that 10 rupees were much less than what you found it to be.

You bet! I just wanted to illustrate the intriguing history around these guns, and what compelled me to want one just for those reasons.
David, great stuff! and how interesting to see 'inflation' in those terms. Just to admit how old I am, I still remember gas at 19 cents a gallon