Судан и Большой Ближний Восток

260 III. Судан и его соседи the body. As it was said about the famous Japanese curved sword, it penetrates the body by itself, as if into butter. Moreover, it even could cut through the armour, in particular when the lamellar armour of the Steppes was involved, as lamellas were joint together by leather tongues. When this basic sabre feature was skilfully used by a swordsman, who applied a “back stroke”— i. e. dragged the sabre backwards after hitting his target — the result was overwhelming. A described by Doughty typical Arabic attitude towards such a stroke is quite characteristic: Of their side-arms the Persian scimitar and then the Indian, are of fine temper and so much arched as were lately our cavalry officers’ sabres: that is held the better shape in the East. They say with truth, “the effectual sword cut is the stroke with a sawing draught.” The hatchet stroke they think uncunning; it will not well bite and open. The plain-handed stroke is, they say, weak; but the back stroke is that wherein a man may assemble all his force, and with the finest blades in a valid hand, the neck of a mother's son may be severed at a stroke. 1 Seabrook describes a visit to the Al Khour Menzil in North Arabia, in the 1920s, where he happened to examine a ‘scimitar’, obviously a sabre, belonged to a tribal warrior named Dirdar: Dirdar was mild-voiced, gentle, with hands as delicate as a woman’s. I remarked them for contrast with his scimitar, which seemed heavier than most. I asked to see the blade and discovered the difference was in width rather than weight. It was an old blade, ground to razor sharpness, without ornament or inlay, but only the maker’s mark, rudely stamped, like a sun and crescent. My request to see the blade pleased him, for Dirdar was a famed swordsman. He had cut a Wahabi in two, clean through the waist, in recent fighting, and with this same sword, in his lifetime, had slain more than thirty men. 2 1 C. M. Doughty. Travels in Arabia Deserta. Vol. 1. P. 457. 2 Seabrook W. B. Adventures in Arabia: Among the Bedouins, Druses, Whirling Dervishes and Yezidee Devil-worshippers. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1927. P. 107.