Azande warriors. From “The Heart of Africa or Three Years' Travels and Adventures in the Unexplored Regions of Central Africa”, by Georg Schweinfurth, 1873. Engraving by Georg Carl Heinrich Dollmann.

Azande warriors. From “The Heart of Africa or Three Years' Travels and Adventures in the Unexplored Regions of Central Africa”, by Georg Schweinfurth, 1873. Engraving by Georg Carl Heinrich Dollmann. 

The Azande were pejoratively nicknamed “Niam-niam”, on account of their fearsome reputation as man-eaters in times past. Schweinfurth provides us with the following description of their equipment:

“The principal weapons of the Niam-niam are their lances and their trumbashes. The word "trumbash," which has been incorporated into the Arabic of the Soudan, is the term employed  in Sennaar to denote generally all the varieties of missiles that are used by the negro races; it should, however, properly be applied solely to that sharp flat projectile of wood, a kind of boomerang, which is used for killing birds or hares, or any small  game: when the weapon is made of iron, it is called "kulbeda." The trumbash of the Niam-niam consists ordinarily of several limbs of iron, with pointed prongs and sharp edges. Iron missiles very similar in their shape are found among the tribes of the Tsad basin; and a weapon constructed on the same principle, the "changer manger," is in use among the Marghy and the Musgoo.

The trumbashes are always attached to the inside of the shields,  which are woven from the Spanish reed, and are of a long oval form, covering two-thirds of the body; they are ornamented with black and white crosses or other devices, and are so light that they do not in the least impede the combatants in their wild leaps. An expert Niam-niam, by jumping up for a moment, can  protect his feet from the flying missiles of his adversary. Bows  and arrows, which, as handled by the Bongo, give them a certain  advantage, are not in common use among the Niam-niam, who  possess a peculiar weapon of attack in their singular knives, that have blades like sickles. The Monbuttoo, who are far more skillful smiths than the Niam-niam, supply them with most of these  weapons, receiving in return a heavy kind of lance, that  is adapted for the elephant and buffalo chase.” -The Heart of Africa or Three Years' Travels and Adventures in the Unexplored Regions of Central Africa, by Georg Schweinfurth, 1873.