North African dagger....please can anyone help with script translation

[katana]

Hi everyone,
picked this up, the hilt seems to be bone with horn pommel and guard. The blade is 'flyssa' shaped, tempered steel with parallel ground fullers, overall length is 37.5 cms, blade is 26.5 cms.
I believe this is North African, the inscription on the blade will surely provide clues...only problem is I dont recognise the script and cannot translate it. The cresent moon with star motif is also on the other of the blade but the script is on one side only. There's no scabbard.

So please.... any ideas, comments etc welcome ...thankyou

[Lew]

Katana

You hit the nail on the head it is some form of nimcha or shula though and not a flyssa. It's North African or Morroccan the blade reminds me of a shulas I have seen.


Lew

[Raja Muda]

Hi

The words are in Arabic. I'm guessing that the first is 'silah' which means weapon, and the last 'lil aduw' which means for the enemy?
I can't read the middle word. For further help, I guess you need the good offices of M.Carter or S Al Anizi. BTW, the inscription is the wrong side up :)

[katana]

Thankyou, Raja,
Now you can see my difficulty..... I can't even get the script the right way round :) Uploaded another picture... this time the right way up!

Thanks Lew, the shulas I have seen have differing hilts to this example. Do you think it may have been re-hilted 'Nimcha' style? :confused:

[katana]

BUMP.....sorry, don't usually do this ....but my Arabic is about as good as my cooking......and If I cooked ....we would all starve... :D
So please, could someone help with the inscription....... thankyou

[Justin]

I believe that these are from Turkey although no one seems to have a name or any other specific info on them.Most seem to be fairly crude but I have seen a few on ebay that seemed to have decent blades,the blade on mine is flat and not really even sharpened.

[katana]

Hi Justin
mine also has a thin blade....but it is tempered and has a 'slight' edge. Thanks for your informative comments.

[fernando]

Hi Katana
I had a visiting Morocan coleague, and asked her for some translations i had in hand ... old weapons stuff. It ocurred to ask about the inscription in this piece of yours. She made a direct interpretation in Portuguese ... hard to revert in english.
Surely the middle terms relates to " keeping out" or "moving out". She went this far:
( With? ) Weapons ( They?) drive away ( the?) enemy
I hope it helps

[katana]

Thankyou very much for your help Fernando, please thank your colleague for me....... :D