My Jezail and my Tulwar
With my Tulwar and my Jezail, I feel like a 19th-century warrior already. No, these are not women although their names sound like feminine. I am talking about a sword and a gun I acquired personally, together with two other items, last January. And today I have began the meticulous work of removing two centuries of dirt and rust that have accumulated on them.
My attention was called by Marivic Calderon, wife of Mayor Raymond Calderon of Samboan, late last December that someone was selling what looked like a bone-inlaid rifle that looked very Islamic, more like something coming out of Lanao or Cotabato. But this was from Samboan, from one of the old families there. Together with it was what looked like a scimitar or saber. I advised her not to purchase it for the Museo de Samboan because I suspected the objects to be from Marawi.
When I saw them for the first time, I was immediately captivated by their rarity and beauty and amazed at how they found their way to Samboan! So I wasted no time and purchased them outright for what I think was a bargain. Marivic and I have also decided to share the items for both the Museo Sugbo and the Museo de Samboan.
A jezail is a long rifle handmade in India and Afghanistan, with a matchlock or flintlock firing mechanism made from stolen Brown Bess rifles of the late late 1700s and early 1800s. In British lore, it was a jezail that wounded Sherlock Holmes’ partner, Dr. Watson, during the Battle of Maiwand in Afghanistan.
Wikipedia describes the jezail as “generally handmade weapons, and consequently they varied quite a bit in their construction… seen as very personal weapons, and unlike the typical military weapons of the time which were very plain and utilitarian, jezails tended to be very well crafted and were usually very beautifully and artistically decorated.
That is exactly how my Jezail looks like. A beautiful set of mother-of-pearl inlays dot the stock, which has a typical curve that allowed the grooved barrel of the rifle to be fired only when cradled against the body instead of the shoulder. This position allowed the gun to be fired while riding a horse. Current auctions price a jezail at between $800 to $2,500 depending on the quality. I most certainly got mine for a small fraction of that and with three others to boot, one of them a tulwar sword!
The tulwar or talwar is a curved sword designed in India and popular in the Islamic world. Sindbad, the intrepid sailor in Arabic lore, would surely have been comfortable using one as it was like the Persian shamsir or the Afghan pulwar sword. The only difference with the latter two is that the tulwar has a wider blade and is often inlaid with silver or gold on the blade. This one that I have has what seemed like rectangular silver appliques on them. The tulwar’s pommel has a short spike that projects from the center which, according to Wikipedia, is often pierced to secure the sword to the wrist. I still have to see this pierced section as the rust will have to be removed painstakingly using paste wax and scrubbing pad to avoid damaging the sword.
The greater task now is to trace the origin of these two items, and what I suspect to be a late 1800s Spanish infantry officer’s sword a with brass guard and a 19-inch grooved blade. How all three reached Samboan can be fairly conjectured this way: one of the ancestors of this old Samboan family was apparently in Mindanao during the Moro wars conducted by the Spanish to capture Balangingi and other Maranao, Tausug and Maguindanao enclaves around the 1800s. Gov. Gen. Narcisco Claveria even stopped by Cebu on his way to and and from Mindanao to conquer Balanguigui in 1848.
Most probably then, these are spoils of war, obtained from a slain Moro chief who had acquired this Afghan-made jezail perhaps from the slave trade in the Moluccas, where many Arab traders competed with the Dutch and the English. How, when and where these were acquired remains a mystery that I hope I can solve in my lifetime.
