To my eye, even on shitty photos that rifle was never made at Enfield ,nice Kyber Pass job.
Interesting markings…I wonder if the officer knew, or was misquoted by the journo.
As to its age…could be anything up to the late 80’s 1980’s that is.
Who writes that sort of sh*t?
quote “And here was the same Martini-Henry rifle, swaddled in 21st-century blue tape, fresh from use by the Taliban” end q
If it was used, it certainly was no time recently. The condition would vouch for that.
And, the action retainer pin looks just that; a pin. Not Martini type split. Martini buffs will know about the newbie trying endlessly to “unscrew” the pin 
It would most likely be one that was made by the Gahendra factory that was set-up and made exact copies unlike the Khyber Pass abortions that are still around.
A correct date stamp looks like this,
A Khyber Pass copy is like this,
As you can see there are differences in the markings, there are also other stamps/markings that are wrong.
It is a copy of a Mk 3 so unless it was incorrectly dated or re-chambered it would be in 577/450 as the Mk 4 was the common one chambered in 303, not sure where they would have gotten any ammo in 577/450 from as you can’t buy it anywhere and I don’t know if they would collect their brass to reload lol.
I did a really quick Google search for “Afghanistan Martini Henry” and there’s a bit of stuff, with different markings, etc. Maybe there’s something to it?
They have been copying them since they first got their hands on one. Different small workshops or one man operations for over a century.
Some will be good, a lot will be rubbish.
A bloke called Mr. Salter Pyne, English Mechanical Engineer, was employed by the Afghan Amir Abdur Rahman, to build and run a machine factory with the intention of building firearms, cannons and ammo for Afghanistan.
This was around 1886 and was done with the permission of the British government. This was known as the Kabul Arsenal and production started from 1894.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lsYZPhdxGZM
This doesn’t look like it was made at the arsenal, and from what Ian is saying 1880 would be pre afgan production.
I say it’s a Kybher pass knock off.
Most Australian soldiers wouldn’t know shit about historic firearms in my experience and they probably just took that 1880 stamp at face value.
We are a bunch of nerds here really.
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We very much are, but that’s very clearly a Khyber Pass knock-off that won’t have been fired since WWII, unless it’s in .303.
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…because?
Because proper Martini-Henry rifles don’t have markings on the left-hand side of the action, and there’s no manufacturer called “Byer”, and the official military/commercial manufacturer markings don’t look anything like that.
What is “proper”? Made in England? What about Afghan made? I had a brief look and seems like at least some were made in Afghanistan. Do you have a link maybe to MH known stamps and markings?
I’m not saying you are wrong, but usually there’s a database of emblems and stamps that help identify things.
“Proper” is English made; there were a few made in Afghanistan in the late 1880s and the Nepalese made some Gahendra rifles around the same time, which are similar but have different cocking levers and also don’t have a cocking indicator on the right-hand side. The Americans also made some Peabody-Martini rifles for the Ottomans in the 1870s to early 1880s which are basically also very similar to a Martini-Henry, but have Turkish markings on them and slightly different furniture.
The Martini-Henry Society has most of the information you’d want on British-made Martini-Henry rifles - Otherwise I’d have to direct you to Ian Skennerton’s Small Arms Identification Series book on the Martini rifles, and his three-volume Treatise on the Martini-Henry.
And the emblem is not in any of the volumes?
Where are you going with this? If it was a known emblem I’d have said it was listed somewhere as such.
Just interesting, like a little whodunit…