Subject: szlachcic noble cavalryman
Culture: Polish
Setting: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, eastern Europe 1604-1696
Object: impact weapons
Buława
* Ostrowski 1999 p214
"The buława (a weapon of percussion consisting of a shaft and a spherical or pear-shaped solid head) was in Poland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a sign of the highest military rank, that of hetman. The lavishly decorated examples of this weapon that have been preserved in Polish collections, both those imported from the East or Hungary and those locally made, are frequently linked, on the basis of more or less reliable tradition, with concrete historical personages."
Buzdygan / Piernacz
* Ostrowski 1999 p215
"A buzdygan, a weapon of percussion consisting of a shaft and a head of vertical flanges, was generally used in the Polish army in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a sign of military rank, that of captain of horse and colonel. The buzdygans used in Poland were not only made locally but also came from Turkey and Persia as purchases or spoils of war. Moreover, they functioned as insignia of the elders in craft guilds, in which character they have been used to this day."
Czekan
* Paszkiewicz online
"Czekan. Originally a Turkish word, which found its way into Polish probably via Hungarian is already mentioned in Knapski’s dictionary of 1621. Its metal part consists of a hammer-head (usually with a square face) on one side and an axe with a short, slightly curved blade on the other. A good example of a czekan, typical in its construction although richly decorated, once belonged to king John-Casimir (1648- 1668) and was later part of the Krasiński family collection."
* Zamoyski 1987 p155
"[T]he czekan [was] a long steel hammer [? Nadziak or obuch?] which could go through heads and helmets like butter."
Nadziak
* Paszkiewicz online
"Nadziak. This was by far the most popular of the three types: the name is directly borrowed from the Turkish, despite its apparent, misleading 'Polish' clang: the verb 'nadziać' means 'pierce with something . . .'. Its hammer-head (usually with a square, but sometimes with an hexagonal face) which has a moulded neck, narrower towards the centre of the weapon, is balanced on the other side by a slightly drooping beak, usually long, often fluted, as in the example No. A 977 in the Wallace Collection . But there exists another type, less common, in which the hammer-neck and the beak form almost a straight line, of more or less equal thickness. The beak is shorter and its point is formed by cutting off the top side at an angle. An example from the National Museum in Cracow represents this group well. The 'nadziak' of Rembrandt’s Polish Rider belongs to this category."
Obuch
* Racinet 1988 p278
"In the 16th century and later, a gentleman rarely went out without carrying an oboukh. This was a cane with a pear-shaped metal ferrule at the top and a steel tip at the bottom. One half of this tip was like a hammer and the other like a falcon's beak or an axe head. Though it was carried for show it could, if necessary, be an effective weapon."
* Paszkiewicz online
"Obuch. This name is purely Polish and of great age. Originally: 'the blind end of an axe', but already at the beginning of the XVth century it meant 'a [unspecified] war hammer'. Later on it came to be used to describe a definite variation of these weapons (i.e. war hammers), similar to nadziak, the hammer-head on one side and the beak on the other, but the beak is curved to such a degree that its end points towards the haft. Dziewanowski remarks that such an object could hardly be used as a weapon but rather as a decorative walking-stick. The same author adds that the name 'obuch' was also used for a type of nadziak with the beak curved sharply downwards and up again at the end, in the shape of an horizontal 'S' . In a set of fourteen drawings by the Florentine artist, Stefano della Bella, depicting the entry of the Polish Embassy to Paris in 1645, the obuch is represented three times."
