Qui-Gon Jinn's Lightsaber: Hilt, Fate and Legends

The Qui-Gon Jinn lightsaber is a single green blade on a cylindrical straight hilt of alloy metal, about 28.5 centimeters long, with a kyber crystal inside [1]. Qui-Gon uses it as a Jedi Master until he is mortally wounded by Darth Maul on Naboo, and his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi then uses the same saber to win the duel [1]. This page is about the weapon and its story. For why green is a Jedi color and who else carries it, see the green lightsaber page. A film by film list is on every lightsaber by film.

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Last checked: 2026-11-11.

Quick answers

• Blade: green, single [1].
• Hilt: cylindrical, straight, alloy metal, 28.5 cm [1].
• Crystal: kyber in canon [1]. Kaiburr and Adegan crystals in Legends [2].
• First appearance of the saber: The Phantom Menace [1].
• Fate: passed to Obi-Wan after the duel, returned to the Jedi Temple, and later back in Obi-Wan’s hands on Tatooine [1].
• Legends: Anakin Skywalker also used it for a time, and it ended up in a memorial in the Jedi Temple [2].

Who Qui-Gon Jinn is

Qui-Gon Jinn is a human Jedi Master born on Coruscant around 80 BBY who dies on Naboo in 32 BBY [3]. BBY means before the Battle of Yavin, the calendar Star Wars stories use. Count Dooku was his master, and Obi-Wan Kenobi is his apprentice [3]. Wookieepedia calls him a maverick who was offered a seat on the Jedi Council and chose his own path instead [3]. The Dooku story has its own page, Count Dooku’s lightsaber. Wookieepedia marks Qui-Gon’s page as partly out of date and notes that Lucasfilm has not set a cohesive timeline for him, so some details shift between books [3].

Where Qui-Gon Jinn’s lightsaber appears

The table covers the main screen appearances. Wookieepedia’s full list is much longer and includes comics, novels, audiobooks and games that this page does not attempt to cover [1].

Master and Apprentice, a novel about Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, also appears in the list [1]. These are fan wiki summaries, not a count of screen time.

The hilt and crystal

Wookieepedia gives the canon specifications as a cylindrical, straight hilt about 28.5 centimeters long, made of alloy metal, with a kyber crystal and a green blade [1]. The page lists the saber as single bladed and calls it a standard lightsaber [1]. The date it was made is given only as before a mission to rescue the son of a man named Dagonet [1].

Two retailer articles add that the grip is black and ridged, and that micro-power cells inside control the charge [4][5]. Neither names a source for the hilt details, so treat those as secondhand. The kyber crystals page explains what the crystal does, and lightsaber hilts covers how hilt parts fit together if you want to build something similar.

The duel on Naboo

In canon, Qui-Gon first meets Darth Maul on Tatooine, a duel Wookieepedia calls the first known encounter between Jedi and Sith in a thousand years [3]. The fight that ends his life comes in Theed, where Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan face Maul in a hangar and then through a palace generator complex [3]. Maul separates the two Jedi, knocks Obi-Wan down several levels, traps him behind energy shielding, and leaves Qui-Gon to fight alone [3].

The two are evenly matched until Maul counters with a strike from his saber hilt and then wounds Qui-Gon fatally [3]. Obi-Wan breaks through and fights Maul himself, but Maul disarms him and kicks his saber into a reactor shaft [3]. Obi-Wan summons Qui-Gon’s saber with the Force, leaps out of the pit and cuts Maul in half [1][3]. That moment is why this saber matters beyond its owner. The full Maul story is on the Darth Maul lightsaber page.

What happened to Qui-Gon Jinn’s lightsaber

The canon article says the saber was later returned to the Jedi Temple after the battle [1]. When the Great Jedi Purge came, it fell into Obi-Wan’s hands again, and he took it with him into hiding on Tatooine [1]. The page says he carried it through the desert with his former apprentice’s saber attached to his cloak [1]. Anakin’s weapon has its own page, the Anakin Skywalker lightsaber, and Obi-Wan’s is on the Obi-Wan Kenobi lightsaber page.

Both retailer articles say the return to the Temple is not shown on screen and point to the book Star Wars Lightsabers: A Guide to Weapons of the Force [4][5]. The Wookieepedia article cites the same book among its sources [1]. Nothing I read says what finally became of the saber after Tatooine. One of the retailer pages has a video headline about Anakin receiving it, but the article itself does not confirm that [5].

Canon and Legends

Wookieepedia keeps two articles for the saber, one per continuity [1][2].

Legends tells a more detailed story. The saber was built after the Telosian Civil War, to replace an earlier saber Qui-Gon lost on a mission to Telos IV [2]. It uses a Kaiburr crystal and a single focusing Adegan crystal, and the hilt has a scalloped handgrip made from several small power cells [2]. The page notes Qui-Gon was ranked a Jedi Guardian but used green focusing crystals instead of the blue ones typical of that rank [2]. It also lists the saber on many worlds before Naboo, including Bandomeer and Melida/Daan [2].

The Naboo ending matches canon: Obi-Wan uses it to defeat Maul [2]. After that, Legends says Obi-Wan used it for a time, including on Zonama Sekot in 29 BBY, before building a new saber identical to the one he lost [2]. Anakin wielded Qui-Gon’s saber until he built his own, and it was finally kept in a memorial in the Jedi Temple [2].

The handbook entry and what is unverified

The handbook card (handbook/sabers/qui-gon-jinn-green.md) lists green, single blade, canon, first appearance The Phantom Menace, and says outright that nothing was checked: no source was opened [6]. Today’s reading of Wookieepedia agrees on the color, the type and the first appearance [1]. It disagrees on two points. The card describes the hilt as long with open gears and a decorative cover, but the wiki gives a plain straight alloy cylinder [1][6]. The card also says the saber stays in the shaft after the duel, but the wiki has Obi-Wan carrying it away [1][6]. The card’s appearance list, The Phantom Menace and Clone Wars mentions, is a small part of what the wiki lists [1][6].

Sources

1. Wookieepedia, Qui-Gon Jinn’s lightsaber (canon), https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Qui-Gon_Jinn%27s_lightsaber (read through the public API, accessed 2026-11-11)
2. Wookieepedia, Qui-Gon Jinn’s lightsaber (Legends), https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Qui-Gon_Jinn%27s_lightsaber/Legends (accessed 2026-11-11)
3. Wookieepedia, Qui-Gon Jinn, https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Qui-Gon_Jinn (accessed 2026-11-11)
4. Ultrasabers, Qui Gon Jinn lightsaber (retailer article), https://ultrasabers.com/holocron/qui-gon-jinn-lightsaber/ (accessed 2026-11-11)
5. Theory Sabers, Qui Gon Jinn Lightsaber Breakdown (retailer article), https://theorysabers.com/article/qui-gon-jinn-lightsaber-explained (accessed 2026-11-11)
6. Handbook card handbook/sabers/qui-gon-jinn-green.md (marked not verified in its header)