A Khyber Pass Copy is a firearm manufactured by cottage gunsmiths in the Khyber Pass

Khyber Pass

The Khyber Pass, is a mountain pass linking Pakistan and Afghanistan.The Pass was an integral part of the ancient Silk Road. It is mentioned in the Bible as the "Pesh Habor," and it is one of the oldest known passes in the world....

 region between Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

 and Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

. The reason they are called that is because the Adam Khel

Darra Adam Khel

Darra Adam Khel is a town in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, located between Peshawar and Kohat, very close to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. It is inhabited by Pashtuns of the Afridi clan, the Adam Khel. The town consists of one main street lined with shops, with some...

 Afridi, who live around the Khyber pass, were historically the most active arms manufacturers on the Frontier.

The area has long had a reputation for producing unlicenced, home-made copies of firearms using whatever materials are available - more often than not, railway rails, scrap motor vehicles and other scrap metal

Scrap

Scrap is a term used to describe recyclable and other materials left over from every manner of product consumption, such as parts of vehicles, building supplies, and surplus materials. Unlike waste, scrap has significant monetary value...

. The quality of such rifles varies widely, ranging from as good as a factory-produced example to dangerously poor.

Models

The most commonly encountered Khyber Pass Copies are of British military firearms, notably Martini-Henry

Martini-Henry

The Martini-Henry was a breech-loading single-shot lever-actuated rifle adopted by the British, combining an action worked on by Friedrich von Martini , with the rifled barrel designed by Scotsman Alexander Henry...

, Martini-Enfield

Martini-Enfield

Martini-Enfield rifles were, by and large, conversions of the Zulu War era .450/577 Martini-Henry, rechambering the rifle for use with the newly introduced .303 British cartridge...

, and Lee-Enfield

Lee-Enfield

The Lee-Enfield bolt-action, magazine-fed, repeating rifle was the main firearm used by the military forces of the British Empire and Commonwealth during the first half of the 20th century...

 rifles, although AK-47

AK-47

The AK-47 is a selective-fire, gas-operated 7.62×39mm assault rifle, first developed in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov. It is officially known as Avtomat Kalashnikova . It is also known as a Kalashnikov, an "AK", or in Russian slang, Kalash.Design work on the AK-47 began in the last year...

 rifles, Webley Revolver

Webley Revolver

The Webley Revolver was, in various marks, the standard issue service pistol for the armed forces of the United Kingdom, the British Empire, and the Commonwealths from 1887 until 1963.The Webley is a top-break revolver with automatic extraction...

s, Tokarev TT-33s, Colt M1911s and Browning Hi-Power

Browning Hi-Power

The Browning Hi-Power is a single-action, 9 mm semi-automatic handgun. It is based on a design by American firearms inventor John Browning, and completed by Dieudonné Saive at Fabrique Nationale of Herstal, Belgium. Browning died in 1926, several years before the design was finalized...

s have also been encountered. A Khyber Pass Kalashnikov-style rifle usually refers to such a rifle composed of a mishmash of parts from various AK rifles. It is thus unlike any rifle produced by a factory or issued by a regular military force. The typical example of a "Khyber Pass AK" is a stamped receiver

Receiver (firearms)

In firearms terminology, the receiver is the part of a firearm that houses the operating parts. The receiver usually contains the bolt carrier group, trigger group, and magazine port. In most handguns, the receiver, or frame, holds the magazine well or rotary magazine as well as the trigger mechanism...

 AKM in 7.62x39 caliber, fitted with the triangular folding stock common to Russian AKS-74 rifles.

The Khyber Pass gunsmiths first acquired examples of the various British service arms during nineteenth century British military expeditions in the North-West Frontier

North-West Frontier (military history)

The North-West Frontier was the most difficult area, from a military point of view, of the former British India in the Indian sub-continent. It remains the frontier of present-day Pakistan, extending from the Pamir Knot in the north to the Koh-i-Malik Siah in the west, and separating the...

, which they used to make copies. During World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, some locally organised Irregular Forces

Irregular military

Irregular military refers to any non-standard military. Being defined by exclusion, there is significant variance in what comes under the term. It can refer to the type of military organization, or to the type of tactics used....

 were issued Khyber Pass made rifles - partly for financial reasons and partly because there was concern the troops would steal their rifles and desert if issued higher-quality British or Indian manufactured rifles.

Identification

Since Khyber Pass rifles are usually copied exactly from a "master" rifle (which may itself be a Khyber Pass Copy) markings and all. It's not uncommon to see Khyber Pass rifles with numerous errors and particular identifying factors, notably:

• Spelling errors in the markings (the most common of which is EИFIELD for ENFIELD)
• V.R. (Victoria Regina) cyphers dated after 1901 - Queen Victoria
  Victoria of the United Kingdom
  Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
  
   died in 1901, so any rifles made after this should be stamped "E.R" (Edward Rex, referring to King Edward VII
  Edward VII of the United Kingdom
  Edward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910...
  
  )
• Generally inferior workmanship including weak or soft metal, poorly finished wood, and badly struck markings.

Afghanistan was a point of conflict

The Great Game

The Great Game or Tournament of Shadows in Russia, were terms for the strategic rivalry and conflict between the British Empire and the Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running approximately from the Russo-Persian Treaty of 1813...

 between the British Empire and Imperial Russia throughout the 19th Century, from which it is reasonable to assume that tools and expertise relevant to both cultures were accumulated by native gunsmiths. Hence despite an untrained eye assuming that a reversed "N" or "L" in ENFIELD is simply a transcription error, a toolmaker or linguist will recognise that they are actually the Cyrillic

Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...

 "И" and "Г" characters, with the gunsmith using whatever letter punches he had available.

Ammunition

The ammunition used in the Khyber Pass region is often underloaded, being made from a variety of powders or even old film (which contains nitrocellulose, a key component of smokeless powder

Smokeless powder

Smokeless powder is the name given to a number of propellants used in firearms and artillery which produce negligible smoke when fired, unlike the older gunpowder which they replaced...

); Khyber Pass Copy rifles cannot be expected to withstand the pressures generated by modern commercial ammunition. A few collectors have made extremely mild handloaded cartridges for their Khyber Pass rifles and fired them, at substantial personal risk.

External links

• Vice Magazine, "Let's Go Pakistan!"