The saintie is an Indo-Persian parrying spear. It is a staff weapon that can be used both for offensive and defensive purposes. They have been produced since the 16th century and were used up to the 19th century. The use of saintie is extremely scarce today. [1]
Since swords remained expensive items affordable only to affluent officers, staff weapons or polearms or even simple blades fixed to long shafts were developed as a cheaper alternative with highly effective use. Staff weapons were given for the ordinary foot soldier to equip them with powerful and effective killing tools. The Indo-Persians innovated a wide range of staff weapons e.g. iron maces, long-handled battle axes, and long shafts with pointed spearheads at the point e.g. the spear-like saintie. [1]
Staff weapons may have evolved from agricultural implements or from simple clubs. They could be as effective as swords in face-to-face combat. Following the gunpowder revolution, the staff weapons were gradually rendered obsolete. Despite the condition, many staff weapons remained in use and the shape is virtually unaltered up. Some Asian armies in the 18th-century and even in the 19th-centuries still use staff weapons in a battle. [1]
The saintie is used as a parrying weapon. It is a versatile weapon with both defensive and offensive function. The shaft, with its ribbed or ringed design, could be used like a staff to deflect hostile blows. The spear point was thickened to allow an offensive thrust to penetrate the enemy's thick clothing or armor. [1]
Saintie usually measures between 26.75 inches (67.9 cm) to 35 inches (89 cm). [2] The saintie is an all steel or all iron weapon. It consists of a spearhead and a ribbed shaft. The spear blade is thickened and may be serrated to help penetrate stronger armor. The shaft is similarly made of steel or iron and is designed with ribbed hafts or with ring-like features that goes along the length; this is used for parrying swords and other weapons. In some examples, the ribbed hafts are replaced with an intricate and complex pattern, perhaps indicating that the owner of the saintie was an affluent officer or the saintie is merely a display object. Some saintie are found with a thin layer of gold and silver.
The center of the shaft is usually smooth, designed to be strongly gripped. A loop handguard made of strong iron is attached to the center of the shaft to protect the hand. This iron handguard is often elaborately shaped, despite its protective use as knucklebow. [1] Sometimes there's a second spear point placed on the iron handguard. [3] The bottom end of the saintie has a kind of finial, which is used to deliver non-lethal blow to the enemy. [1]
The shaft of the saintie sometimes concealed another dagger. [3]
A polearm or pole weapon is a close combat weapon in which the main fighting part of the weapon is fitted to the end of a long shaft, typically of wood, extending the user's effective range and striking power. Polearms are predominantly melee weapons, with a subclass of spear-like designs fit for thrusting and/or throwing. Because many polearms were adapted from agricultural implements or other fairly abundant tools, and contained relatively little metal, they were cheap to make and readily available. When belligerents in warfare had a poorer class who could not pay for dedicated military weapons, they would often appropriate tools as cheap weapons. The cost of training was comparatively low, since these conscripted farmers had spent most of their lives using these "weapons" in the fields. This made polearms the favoured weapon of peasant levies and peasant rebellions the world over.
A spear is a polearm consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head. The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with fire hardened spears, or it may be made of a more durable material fastened to the shaft, such as bone, flint, obsidian, copper, bronze, iron, or steel. The most common design for hunting and/or warfare, since ancient times has incorporated a metal spearhead shaped like a triangle, diamond, or leaf. The heads of fishing spears usually feature multiple sharp points, with or without barbs.
A mace is a blunt weapon, a type of club or virge that uses a heavy head on the end of a handle to deliver powerful strikes. A mace typically consists of a strong, heavy, wooden or metal shaft, often reinforced with metal, featuring a head made of stone, bone, copper, bronze, iron, or steel.
A halberd is a two-handed polearm that came to prominent use from the 13th to 16th centuries. The halberd consists of an axe blade topped with a spike mounted on a long shaft. It can have a hook or thorn on the back side of the axe blade for grappling mounted combatants and protecting allied soldiers, typically musketeers. The halberd was usually 1.5 to 1.8 metres long.
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A kusarigama is a traditional Japanese weapon that consists of a kama on a kusari-fundo – a type of metal chain (kusari) with a heavy iron weight (fundo) at the end. The kusarigama is said to have been developed during the Muromachi period. The art of handling the kusarigama is called kusarigamajutsu.
An arrowhead or point is the usually sharpened and hardened tip of an arrow, which contributes a majority of the projectile mass and is responsible for impacting and penetrating a target, or sometimes for special purposes such as signaling.
A guisarme is a polearm used in Europe primarily between 1000 and 1400. Its origin is likely Germanic, from the Old High German getīsarn, literally "weeding iron". Like many medieval polearms, the exact early form of the weapon is hard to define from literary references, and the identification of surviving weapons can be speculative.
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Hafting is a process by which an artifact, often made of bone, stone, or metal is attached to a haft. This makes the artifact more useful by allowing it to be launched by a bow (arrow), thrown by hand (spear), or used with more effective leverage (axe). When constructed properly, hafting can tremendously improve a weapon's damage and range. It is estimated that hafted weapons were most common during the Upper Paleolithic and Middle Paleolithic. It was one of the first tools where hominins took separate elements and united them into a single tool. The development of hafting is considered by archaeologists to have been a significant milestone. It was not only an improvement in the technology at the time; it also showed the progression of the human mind toward a world of complex tool-making.
Listed here are the weapons of pencak silat. The most common are the machete, staff, kris, sickle, spear, and kerambit. Because Southeast Asian society was traditionally based around agriculture, many of these weapons were originally farming tools.
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