Fig. 147.—The Dáo.
Fig. 148.—Sailor’s Cutlass.
Fig. 149.—Hindu Kitár.
CHELIDONIAN BLADES.
Before ending the subject of the point I must briefly notice the forked or swallow-tailed blade, a curious subject deserving an exhaustive monograph. The Greeks evidently derived their χελιδὼν or χελιδόνιος ξίφος,[445] and the Latins their bidens, from the two-ended chisels so common in Egypt. As will be seen, there was a true forked Sword in Assyria, and the form is commonly found in Indian daggers.
The Chelidonian sabre has two distinct shapes. In one the plates are welded together, and separate at the third or the fourth section near the end. Mr. Latham (Wilkinson’s) has a good specimen; the length of the fork, however, is greater than the united part. In the Prince of Wales Collection (Kensington) there is a two-bladed Sword, the fork only eight inches long, with the additional peculiarity of being saw-edged. In the other form, the Chelidonian proper, the fork is vertical, one prong being above the other. What use it could have supplied in cutting is hard to divine, but the Sword is essentially personal and eccentric. I know only one historical blade of this form, Zú’l-Fikár (Lord of Cleaving), the weapon given by the Archangel Gabriel to Mohammed, and by the latter to his son-in-law Ali bin Ali Tálib, who cleft with it the skull of Marhab, the giant Jew warrior of Khaybar Fort. It appears upon the arms of the Zeydi princes, lords of Sana’á in El-Yemen, Southern Arabia[446]: nearer home it may be seen upon the Turkish standard, some twenty feet long, taken by Don John of Austria from the Turk at Lepanto.[447] The weapon probably owes this honour to having been mentioned amongst the Ahádís, or traditional sayings of the Apostle of El-Islam, ‘la Sayfa illa Zú’l-Fikár wa lá Fatá illa Ali’ (there is no Sword to be compared, for doing damage to the foe, with Zú’l-Fikár, and no valiant youth but Ali).
