The KATAR: An Iconic AND Underrated Historical Weapon

you may have heard of a qatar it's a medical condition in which inflamed membranes in your nose and throat produce excess mucus wait oh wrong notes in fact qatar is a peninsula arab country whose terrain comprises arid desert and that might have been too much caffeine the actual qatar k-a-t-a-r that i'm going to talk about in this video is a weapon from india as you probably know the sanskrit word is katara the tamil word is khattari which i've seen translated as either dagger or the word for khat the origin is usually said to be the veget vijaynagar empire hope i got that right founded in 1336 which dominated for over 200 years however i found an article in which the author traces the earliest depiction of a qatar back to temple sculptures from the 10th century by the way there are even temple sculptures that show fighting with a qatar in each hand for your dual wielding rogue needs qatar's or kutara's also mentioned in written sources from the 11th and 12th century also the 19th century indian scholar rajendralala mitra shows a depiction of a qatar which is unfortunately not dated but it does look like quite an early form of it it's pretty simple it just has a handle perpendicular to the cutting edge and it doesn't have the side bars that you normally have on later guitars so it seems the qatar has been around for much longer than you might assume going by surviving fines which start generally in the 16th century from what i can gather so apparently at least since the 10th there's a variety of different sizes and shapes some are oddly stubby short and broad others have remarkably long and narrow blades in the late 16th century and after many guitars were fitted with european sword blades and also broken indian sword blades were refitted as katars as well there are also examples with wavy blades i don't know for sure if these were practical designs or if these had ceremonial purposes can be difficult to tell it seems generally the later ones are less likely to be designed for use some have rather strange shapes like this 18th century guitar with a blade that bulges outward at the base and has cutouts in it one of the most unique forms i was able to find is this triple bladed qatar from the 16th century apparently they developed the concept of a trident qatar further here is an 18th or 19th century version with expandable side blades so this is similar to spring-loaded parrying daggers with extendable side blades that you would find in 16th and 17th century europe and then in the 19th century you see a peculiar evolution of this idea which is the scissor guitar you might have seen this before some say that it's designed to stab an opponent and then deploy the side blades by pressing the handle to open up the wound and do damage to internal organs external organs almost said we're not fighting the tyrant here i hope anyway some say the center blade was coated in poison and then the two outer blades that cover it up would protect the user from the poison that seems more plausible to me than the idea of trying to widen the wound if you think about it if the blade enters the body there's going to be quite a bit of resistance particularly since we're not made of jello so if it contacts bones you're not really going to be able to generate enough force just by pressing the handle and engaging the spring that would force this open i can't really imagine that working too well and also you might risk getting it stuck again the poison version makes some sense for sure but on the other hand so this came up quite late and i'm really not sure whether this was ever really intended for actual use in either dueling or on the battlefield if that's not outlandish enough for you how about a scissor katar with an integrated percussion pistol in this picture you can see the hammer above the nipple where you would place a percussion cap to ignite the main powder charge in the barrel there are other gun guitars which are personally considered more practical which have the barrels attached to the side bars and the triggers within easy reach of the handle so this would work pretty well i imagine it would point naturally because now the barrel is in line with the forearm which also means that the recoil goes straight back into your arm as opposed to generating muzzle flip now muzzle flip is really only relevant for follow-up shots and you just have one at most if you fire one barrel first then you can fire the other it has come to my attention that in these dark and trying times hardly any of you who are subscribed have joined in the battle against the bell have you forgotten about the ancient warning [Music] the bell can't hold for you if you smash it now can it yes i'm talking about the notification bell because i have one point what six million subscribers and hardly anybody ever sees my videos because youtube deems it not worthy or something algorithm things or maybe i just make garbage content but if you don't watch it you won't find out right you gotta test for yourself you gotta convince yourself of the quality for that you need to see it in the first place so um hit that bell that's all i'm saying it also helps to go on binges i'm told if you just watch a bunch of my videos youtube's gonna keep throwing more of them at you and uh there's gonna be something you enjoy i mean i've made so many videos i've forgotten like 85 of what i've made but uh pretty sure there's something for you enough talk do it like so many other weapons over time the qatar developed into a status symbol for the elites and was adorned with fine metal work engravings and sometimes even covered in gold they're also depictions of hunting scenes involving guitars including tiger hunting you can imagine how excessively dangerous such an activity would be trying to kill an animal as imposing as a tiger with nothing but a melee weapon and not just that but even one with such short reach so it would be a way to show off your courage and fighting prowess or just get killed like a dumb ass that's also a possibility all right on to the functionality of the design unfortunately canada is among the countries that have banned push daggers and this falls under that prohibition the way it's worded the closest thing i have is this which is a synthetic practice version of a chinese deohorn knife so at least the handle position is right you just have to use your imagination and pretend there's a blade attached to it there's one thing of course that this design does better than a conventional knife which is thrusting you know straight forward like this because now everything is aligned with conventional knives or daggers by the way if you're wondering what on earth this thing is it's a parrying dagger with a guard removed so i can demonstrate things a little more easily so if you want to thrust straight forward if you wanted to do this in a hammer grip this would not work too well if you want to press straight forward because then you have to over extend your wrist which puts all the strain on it there are ways to work around it either in this hammer grip you would have to thrust upward or sideways like throw a hook basically or you have to change the grip you know tilting it forward as much as possible this way you can angle it a little bit better and you can thrust more effectively then of course also you have the ice pick grip so this is also quite effective obviously this is a very effective thrust this one from the sides as well upward is rather awkward forward is very inefficient so it all has pros and cons this is basically the most versatile way so if i want to stab creepy bob over here i can do it like this like this like this you know various angles are available this way but none are perfect because right here if i thrust forward like this it's technically well aligned as you can see but of course there's nothing really preventing this from sliding back other than my grip strength and if i have a guard i can push against it which you know if you slam your finger or your hand up against the guard with a lot of force it's not very pleasant this is more powerful but again same issue the limiting factor here is the grip strength because it wants to slide down like this particularly if you don't have a guard this on the other hand is as biomechanically efficient as it gets everything is perfectly aligned i don't have to flex my wrist in any weird way i can drive forward and just like a boxer's punch i can put my body weight into it drive forward and thrust very effectively this way so with a perpendicular handle this is an extremely powerful attack better than anything you can do with a dagger in conventional grip this is also quite powerful it's basically a hook and an uppercut like this would also be extremely effective of course but you're mainly limited to the weapon side it's like how are you gonna thrust like this uh you might be able to get get this sort of angle but this would be rather difficult so this is not great and you know rising thrust from the side doesn't really work too well either and forget about a downward thrust from there is not really happening whereas from the right side you can do that you can also cut with it downward cut from the dominant side no problem backhand cut from the opposite side is very easy horizontal obviously rising cot very powerful this would technically be very awkward but because you have a double edge you can simply do it this way so with a double edged blade you have basically all angles available so the way i see the guitar is simply a more specialized form of dagger it has less versatility and higher effectiveness for what it does it allows for exceptionally powerful thrusts and many guitars have blades with thickened points this makes a lot of sense to prevent bending or breaking especially against armor but also even an unarmored fighting i can imagine a very powerful thrust against a thick bone could lead to damage so reinforcing the tip makes perfect sense i also want to comment on an older video by snap jelly where he argues that katars are worse than other daggers instead of a blade that goes upwards i have a blade that goes this way right now if i punch somebody with that what is there to prevent the blade from doing this what prevents this from happening is the shape of the handle guitars usually have two smaller handlebars that have a bit of space in between and usually with a pretty pronounced palm swell so the further like the wider it is relative to its thickness the better you're going to be able to resist against such forces for example on this dagger you can see that it turns mostly around at the base here so if i were to hold on to this and then there's rotational force applied i'm not really going to be able to hold this very steady but up here it's flatter so this allows me to i don't like that sound but you get the point this allows me to hold against it better now same with this you know this is a a fairly thin flat and wide grip so i can push against this pretty hard and it doesn't really want to rotate in my hand yes it still has potential to shift sideways especially if you have a longer blade because the longer the blade the longer the lever and the more force is going to be applied on you sideways but of course conventional sort and dagger grips are not perfect either like there's always going to be ways in which things can shift around in which you can lose your grip or in which your your wrist can be forced in a direction that is not as strong unless the weapon is literally an integral part of your body like wolverine claws or cyberware forearm blades this is always going to be a potential risk to some extent but it can simply be compensated with proper technique and a good grip if you look at the tests that they did at fortune fire this also didn't seem to be an issue really i'd imagine you could improve the stability by attaching straps to the side bars on top and at the bottom even though i'm not aware of that ever being done so clearly it wasn't considered to be a problem the guitar has great potential as an offhand weapon especially the hooded guitar which has a guard protecting the back of the hand and of course also the sidebars cover the forearm so that means that you're able to deflect an opponent's weapon without really have to work without having to worry too much about your hand or your forearm being in danger there are still ways they could be targeted you know like the inside of the hand could be targeted things like this but if you displace out to the side then the hood is going to cover the back of your hand and i said you could also catch it on the forearm where the bars are so this would work quite well by the way if you like this concept also check out my video about wrist or forearm mounted weapons it's linked down below and there's also a card in the upper right corner which you can click there's an interesting shasta video demonstration with an axe and guitar where the axe is used to hook and control the opponent's limb or weapon and the guitar is used either offensively or together with the axe to trap and grapple so that's pretty interesting check that out as well that's about it i'm sure there's plenty more you could say but i that's pretty much all i've got for now hope you liked it found it you know entertaining informative what have you thanks for watching and have a good one folks [Music] the vagina empire i'm just going to double check how it's pronounced just vagina written sources in the 15th 15th 11th numbers who cares it's just numbers right nobody's gonna mind if i am off by several hundred years the indian scholar rajan dralala rajandra lala mitra [Music] it's not easy i'm sorry i'm doing what i can here they're also predictions petitions predictions yeah i'm gonna write a petition against my own brain to minimize such nonsense but it's probably not going to happen [Music] you

Channel: Skallagrim

Views: 251,053

Keywords: Skall, Skallagrim, historical, weapons, historical martial arts, powerful weapon, edged weapons, indian weapons, forged in fire, ancient weapon, push dagger, dagger, katar, assassin, Diablo 2 assassin, Indian katar, underrated, history, how practical is, weapon analysis, fantasy, rogue, sanskrit, tamil, vijaynagara, hooded katar, scissor katar

Id: VsS9p21Qd8E

Length: 17min 12sec (1032 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 01 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/RiverResponsible8166]

The Katar isn't as long and also it's made for aliens by aliens so it doesn't have to be practical for humans

[u/JamesTDG]

It literally is a double sword