Ethnographic Arms & Armour

hi y'all;

i'm a newbie here, so please be gentle. i usually hang out at the HI Cantina over in Bladeforums, but have been reccommended to try y'all over here on this one. nobody so far in the cantina has any firm clues...

ethnic (?) mystery knife:

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/gladius/knife2.jpg

Scabbard is wood with quite heavy gauge brass ends, throat appears to be german silver. held to brass by a small silver flathead screw on reverse. Center portion is leather covered; wooden end of scabbard protrudes about 1/8 in. past the brass & is blackened. knife fits the scabbard perfectly though the scabbard looks older than the knife.

Knife grip is a well polished reddish brown wood, no carving but fits the hand nicely. There is a ¼” of either hard leather or horn seemingly held on to the grip by some hardened gunk at the blade end, there is a brass bolster of sorts with two 3/16” brass pins which may go thru the blade. The 8” x 1” x 1/8” partial tang double edged blade appears to be stainless steel in that it is only mildly magnetic, I thus cannot use the magnet to see how far the tang extends into the grip.. The edges are unsharpened but convexly ground to a dull but not flat edge. No engraving or markings. Has a substantial feel to it and does not shout ‘tourist decorator’ to me, but is not an old blade or an obvious ‘user’ either. putting some bend stress on it., I could not get any movement .

I got it real cheap from someone who had no idea where it came from, they got it at a car boot sale here in the UK (flea market for you US types).

Looks a bit Arabic/No. African or indo European to me….but?

p.s.- glad i found y'all - looks like an interesting place to hang out, like the thread on which edged weapon to defend the house with currently a few threads down from here.