E. Ind. Also juzail. [Pers. jazā’īl, a large musket or rifle (used with a rest), a swivel-gun, wall-piece; according to Redman, corrupt. of jazā’ir: cf. jazā’irī a matchlockman, one of the guard of the Safawī kings.] A long and heavy Afghan musket.
1838–42. Gen. A. Abbott, Jrnl. Afghan War (1879), ii. 167. The assailants had flint locks to their juzails.
1862. Beveridge, Hist. India, III. VIII. iv. 414. The Afghan jezails carrying much farther than the British muskets, poured in a fire which could not be returned.
1881. F. T. Palgrave, Visions of Eng., Valley of Death, ix. 293. The one who out-slipp’d the jezail and the knife!
1889. R. Kipling, Departm. Ditties, etc. (1899), 67. Two thousand pounds of education Drops to a ten-rupee jezail [rhyme defile]. Ibid. (1892), Barrack-r. Ballads, 84. All night the cressets glimmered pale On Ulwar Sabre and Tonk Jezail.
attrib. 1892. Pall Mall Gaz., 21 April, 4/3. Colonel Durand himself receiving a very serious wound in the groin with a jezail bullet—a garnet enclosed in lead.
Hence ǁ Jezailchee [f. prec. with Turkī agential suffix chī], a soldier carrying a jezail.
1862. Beveridge, India, III. VIII. v. 434. It was deemed necessary ‘… to get rid … of the detachment of jezailchees.’
