Jordan · Metalwork / Blacksmithing
Shibriya (the traditional Bedouin dagger)
The forging of the shibriya, a traditional Bedouin dagger that has armed nomadic tribes across the Jordanian desert for centuries, carried on today by a small number of remaining family workshops. Nawwaf Khazaeeya, working from a tent near the livestock souq at the edge of the central Jordanian desert in Madaba, belongs to one of the last families of shibriya makers, spending his days pounding out steel by hand; directly describing his own trade, he has stated, 'This is more than a knife. This is life and death.' While Bedouins carried cruder versions of the shibriya for centuries, the specific dagger form recognized today traces to the 1850s, when the Ottoman emperor, then fighting the Crimean War, conscripted thousands of Arab men into his army; among these recruits was Mohammed Abu Mohaisen, from what is now southern Jordan, drafted into the Ottoman army's armaments division, where he spent years mastering Ottoman blacksmith skills crafting bayonets, muskets, and swords. When the war ended, blacksmiths including Abu Mohaisen returned home to what is today Jordan, carrying this specialized technical knowledge with them. His descendants, four brothers operating under the family name Abu Mohaisen, continue running the resulting 150-year-old family business today from a workshop in downtown Amman, where Abdulrazzak Abu Mohaisen directly demonstrates traditional Bedouin daggers of the type his family has produced for a century and a half. The craft today faces genuine documented threats: modern legal bans on carrying weapons, the Bedouins' increasingly urban lifestyle reducing traditional demand, and an influx of cheap Chinese imitation daggers, all directly undermining the market for authentic, hand-forged shibriya.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · Not independently inscribed
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