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The jezail or jezzail (, ultimately from the plural form , "long barrels") is a simple, cost-efficient and often handmade long arm commonly used in Afghanistan in the past. It was popular amongst the Pashtuns tribesmen, who deposed Shah Shuja. Jezails were primarily used by Jazāyerchi troops of Nader shah during Afsharid Iran and in the First and Second Anglo-Afghan Wars by Pashtuns.
Jezails tended to have very long barrels. Such lengths were never common in European rifles (with the exception of the Spanish circa 15th century), but were more common in American rifles, such as the Kentucky rifle. The American rifles were used for hunting, and tended to be of a smaller caliber with being typical. Jezails were usually designed for warfare, and therefore tended to be of larger calibers than the American rifles, with caliber and larger being common. Larger calibers were possible because the long length of the typical jezail meant that it was heavier than typical of the time. Jezails typically weighed around , compared to for a typical musket. The heavy weight of the jezail allowed the rifle itself to absorb more energy from the round, imparting less recoil to the weapon's user.
Many jezails were smoothbore weapons, but some had their barrels rifled. The rifling, combined with the barrel's long length, made these weapons very accurate for their time.
The firing mechanism was typically either a matchlock or a flintlock. Since flintlock mechanisms were complex and difficult to manufacture, many jezails used the lock mechanism from captured or broken Brown Bess muskets.
The stocks were handmade and ornately decorated, featuring a distinctive curve which is not seen in the stocks of other muskets. The function of this curve is debated; it may be purely decorative, or it may have allowed the jezail to be tucked under the arm and cradled tightly against the body, as opposed to being held to the shoulder like a typical musket or rifle. The argument against this method of firing is that the flash pan would be dangerously close to the face and the weapon would be harder to aim. It is more likely that the rifle was only tucked under the arm whilst riding a horse or a camel. The curve may also have saved weight; by shaving away some of the heavy wood used for the stock through employment of the new curved shape, whilst maintaining the same structural integrity of the stock it could still be fired from the shoulder safely whilst also being lighter. The weapon was fired by grasping the stock near the trigger, like a pistol, while the curved portion is tucked under the shooter's forearm, allowing the rifle to be fired with one hand while mounted.
Jezails were often fired from a forked rest, or a horn or metal bipod.
In the First Anglo-Afghan War the British established a cantonment outside of Kabul with dirt walls approximately waist high. Surrounding the cantonment were several abandoned forts which, although out of range of British muskets, were close enough for jezail fire. When ghazi and other Pashtuns forces besieged Kabul and the cantonment, they occupied the forts and used them to snipe at British forces from a safe range.
A description from the British Library dating to the First Anglo-Afghan War:
The jezail is mentioned repeatedly in some of Wilbur Smith's books, most notably "Monsoon". It was also mentioned in the George MacDonald Fraser adventure Flashman, whose protagonist describes the awful slaughter by Pashtun jezailchis during the 1842 retreat from Kabul.
The weapon appears in Rudyard Kipling 1886 poem Arithmetic on the Frontier, where the low cost of the weapon is contrasted with the relatively expensive training and education of British officers:
Another reference to the jezail occurs in Kipling's novel The Man Who Would Be King, where the Kohat Jezail is mentioned along with the more advanced Snider-Enfield and
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P. G. Wodehouse in Jill the Reckless (1920) describes how the character Uncle Chris, in India during his first hill-campaign, would "walk up and down in front of his men under a desultory shower of jezail-bullets". The rifle is also mentioned by Brian Jacques in his adventure novel, Voyage of Slaves.
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