Recently a friend aquired this dagger as part of a trade on some Japanese swords. I think this is an important historical item although he feels it just Militaria......
The blade is crudely inscribed to a Russian General of the cossack brigade that surrendered to the British. They seem to have collaborated with the germans and were returned to Russiaia by the british in 1945, where they were slaughtered by Stalin.
Any information on this man and the history of the blade would be most appreciated. :eek:

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Roy, looks like an original Qama. I don't know anything about this type, other than what you can read here: http://www.atlantacutlery.com/webstore/showproduct.asp. Perphaps an online search for "Qama" will give you some results. :)

P.S. Sorry, the link just takes you to their home page. Type in Qama in their search bar. :)

P.P.S. You might want to refine your web search by adding "sword" , "dagger", etc. after qama. If you just type qama or Qama, you get a bunch of wierd religious sites! :eek: :wtf: :lol:

The writing on the third picture reads "master bahmistr Shkeredov" I think the first two words are the rank and the last is the name of the guy. the word "bahmistr" is unknown to me (provided I even read it correctly).

If you post close-ups of the other side of the blade, i may be able to read/translate it. Admittedly my russian is rather rusty :)

Alexi

Roy that i'm aware this is a khinjal, the Georgian quama being of identicle form but the scabbard and hilt covered in silver sheet and usually heavily tooled with decoration on the front but just some puch marks on the back(a feature shared with the khinjals usually much sparser use of silver decoration when present). These came in a wide range of sizes and pretty much every male carried one. The khinjal when silver was present would be at the throat and tip of the scabbard only .

There is an Indo-Persian weapon of identicle form as well and if I recall correctly the belief is that the form traveled west through the Cuaccus mountains to end up being used in parts of eastern Europe.

Thanks for the feedback chaps. One translation that I have received is.....

To Major General TL Dolanov of the Cossack Army campaign , in recognition of his administration of the Cossack base at Kuban,Covano,Italy. 25th December,1944.

This seems to tie in well so it now remains to try and confirm the translation {Which came from a collector in Chile,Thanks Roger} and then search out the General mentioned.
The inscription is obviously amateur and probably done in the camp prior to their despatch back to the USSR,It does seem an unlikely present to a General though.

Added here are the enlarged photo.s as requested.
Many thanks
Roy

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here is what I make of it sentence by sentence:
" In good name from the directory section (upravlenie otdela) of the cossack station of Kuban"
" Leader of the ground (literarlly walking) cossack army" The word in that sentence ("ataman")I think means leader but I might be mistaken.
" General Major Domanov T. I." (not Dolanov)
"City Kavaio (Kavano?), Italy. 12-25-1944" (Christmas)

the writing is in cursive which makes it hell to read as "m" and "i" look so similar. this is my understanding of the text. It might be useful for some native Russian speaker to verify it.

I hope that helps.

Alexi

Thank you very much Alexi, that just about sews it up.
I spent some of the evening researching the Cossack situation and Had just about settled on General Domanov so your translation settles that for me.

I am not a military history buff and so pretty ignorant re this period apart from some years ago reading how both the British and US governments treated these people. Easy to be critical in retrospect but at the time and with the dubious history of some Cossack regiments who fought with the German army, I suppose you have to some degree excuse the allies..............

Anyway many thanks, I will now wrap up the two translations and my research for my chum.

Regards
Roy