Pesh-kabz

thumb|right|Modern pesh-kabz with scabbard made in [[India. Blade: steel; hilt: buffalo horn and brass.]] thumb|right|Pesh-kabz, 18th century. Blade: gilt steel; hilt: gilt ivory or bone, Louvre Museum, Paris France. The pesh-kabz or peshkabz (, ) is a type of Indo-Persian knife designed to penetrate mail armour and other types of armour. The word is also spelled pesh-qabz or pish-ghabz and means "fore-grip" in the Persian language; it was borrowed into the Hindustani language. Originally created during Safavid Persia, it became widespread in Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent during the Mughal period.

==Design== Most pesh-kabz use a hollow-ground, tempered steel single-edged full tang, recurved blade with a thick spine bearing a "T" cross-section for strength and rigidity. In most examples, a pair of handle scales are fixed to the full-tang grip, which features a hooked butt. The earliest forms of this knife featured a recurved blade, suggestive of its Persian origin. In all variants the blade is invariably broad at the hilt, but tapers progressively and radically to a needle-like, triangular tip. Upon striking a coat of mail, this reinforced tip spreads the chain link apart, enabling the rest of the blade to penetrate the armour. One knife authority concluded that the pesh-kabz "as a piece of engineering design could hardly be improved upon for the purpose".