wei jia broadsword

[oasis]

you know gene, i've always loved the jian and samurai style sword or the straighter daos. i don't care for regular daos at all. the wei jia dao featured in the current issue is probably the sweetest sword for me. it has chinese, japanese, and arabic/islamic influence in its making! :cool: i just wish you can give me a better pic of the arabic etching so i can try to decipher all of it. from what i can read, one of the words seems to be a certain arabic script style that says (IF i'm seeing it correctly) ﻋدﻠﻠﻪ

That means "Justice of Allah" ie Justice of God

:cool: a befitting name for a warrior's weapon, especially if it were used for defense against invaders. i'd definitely like this for my collection. i wish there were more history on it though

[Golden Tiger]

Is that the "Nick Berg " model? (sorry, couldn't resist)

[oasis]

:o i knew someone would go there. my comment was in the context of the article stating that such a sword was used during the antipiracy period in the 1600's (ie against the japanese)

besides, i think the inscription is lacking one letter needed for my translation ;) but i need a close-up pic

[GeneChing]

The pic we ran is about as close a shot as we could get for that character. As I look at it, it looks nothing like what you have posted above, but I don't claim to have the slightest understanding of that sort of script. I was really hoping that someone would try to figure it out - good on yo, oasis!

The Wei Jia Broadsword was an extraordinary example of cultural fusion in a sword - something very unique to that period of history. Martial artists often cite the anti-piracy campaign because of the role of General Qi Jiguang and the Shaolin monks played, but few really understand that many of the pirates were really Chinese and it was really about smuggling more than anything else. It's a fascinating piece of Chinese history and I hope to see more research on this for CMA since it had tremendous influence on our modern practice.

We ran the Wei Jia broadsword in our Jul/Aug 2005 issue (aka the NUMCHUK issue) (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=598). If you haven't been keeping up, we've changed our format for our featured weapons to showcase historical examples - if you've got a nice piece you want to show, let me know! (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=36807)

[oasis]

thanks for the info gene. there appears to be two words in the pic, and i'm trying to look at the one on the left, which is the 2nd word since arabic is written from right to left. there are various styles of arabic calligraphy in which you can break the norms of shaping certain characters, which are quite interesting but way beyond the scope of my knowledge...but i will try to see if a relative can read it better.