Persian Tabar

Origins

Axes were weapons of the Iranian plateau from very early times, and the word tabar has been used in Persian for an axe for more than a thousand years. It passed into Arabic, Turkish and the languages of India, and related words appear in several other languages. In the medieval Islamic world the axe was a secondary weapon of cavalry, used alongside the lance, bow, sword and mace. The tabarzin, from tabar and zin, saddle, was a light axe carried hanging from the saddle for use at close quarters. Under the Safavid Empire, which ruled Iran from 1501 to 1736, and under the later Qajar dynasty, the tabar remained part of the equipment of horsemen and was widely made in decorated forms for men of rank. Similar axes were used in the Ottoman Empire, where it was called teber, and in the Mughal Empire.

Design & Construction

The typical Persian tabar has a crescent-shaped blade, broad at the edge and narrowing to where it joins the haft. Some have a single blade balanced by a small hammer, spike or knob at the back, and others have two crescent blades back to back. The head is usually of steel, and many surviving examples of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries are decorated with gold inlay, chiseled ornament or engraved inscriptions, often verses of poetry or religious phrases. The haft may be of wood or of steel, and steel hafts were sometimes hollow. In India some tabars had a small knife hidden inside the haft, screwed into the butt. Lengths vary widely, but the saddle axes used on horseback were fairly short and light so that they could be swung with one hand. Heavier and larger forms were also made, both for war and for show.

Combat Use

On the battlefield the tabar was a close-combat weapon for horsemen and some foot soldiers. Against armored opponents, an axe could deliver a heavy blow to mail or lamellar armor, and the spike or hammer at the back could be used to pierce or crush. It was usually carried alongside a sword such as the Persian Shamshir or the Indian Talwar, and was used when a mounted fight turned into a close mêlée. In Mughal India axes of the tabar type were carried by cavalry and by some foot soldiers. In the Ottoman palace, guards called teberdar, "axe bearers," took their name from the weapon, though their role was largely ceremonial by the sixteenth century. As firearms spread in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the tabar lost its military role, but decorated axes remained part of formal dress and of the ceremonial equipment of courts.

Legacy

In Iran the tabarzin became closely linked with dervishes, members of Sufi orders who wandered from town to town. Many dervishes carried a small ornamental axe along with a begging bowl called a kashkul, and nineteenth-century photographs and paintings often show them with both. In this setting the axe was a symbol of cutting away worldly attachment rather than a weapon of war. Collectors in Europe and America prize fine Safavid and Qajar tabars for their steelwork and inscriptions, and many are held in museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum. For the broader tradition of arms in the region, see Persian Arms & Weapons and Safavid Empire Arms & Weapons.