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Originally Posted by kahnjar1
This sword has now arrived, and I can make further comment to what I had suggested above.
1.The skin used for the drag is not goat in my opinion, and could very well be lion as was suggested by the seller, as the remaining hair is quite thick. ....not like goat hair at all, which is much finer.
2.The fitting of scabbard to hilt is the same method as in Swedegreen's swords.....wooden tongue sliding inside the silver dressing of the hilt.
3. The hilt itself is impossible to grip securely so I would have thought that there was originally some sort of covering. Unless the users hands were VERY small the sword would slip easily in use.
Other than the above observations, the whole shows good age, and IMHO has not been artificially aged in any way... Why would one cover the scabbard with skin and then rub most of the hair off??
Regards Stu
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Salaams. The Yemeni Sword. (Long Hilt.)
This sword has nothing to do with the Yemeni items tuned up with backyard hilts to sell to tourists. That is not to say that it isn't a sword that tourists buy since many are sitting in Muscats Muttrah souk and being bought by tourists... The two, however, belong to different kettles of fish.
This sword which is related to the Ottoman type in the Istanbul Military Museum (thus Mamluke and Abbassiid) is attributed to Yemeni style of metalic longhilt in the general family of Red Sea Variants I have mentioned many times previously. It appears as a leftover copied design from Ottoman garrisons into the Yemeni armouries (probably "Askeri" equivalent palace guard or militia swords) I would suggest that these belong in the southern part of what is now Saudi Arabia but was Yemen pre about 1920. They ''seem'' to be late copies perhaps mid 18th to mid 19th C going by the blades and hilt finish. Being likely contenders of Yemeni manufacture I would suspect Hadramaut as the blade construction point... or even the other side of the water in Sudan or Ethiopia even? The blade style could conceivably have been supplied completely from late Ottoman sources. There is one picture of a man holding one such blade below... and that is on an Ottoman ~ Mamluke Hilt. Does your blade also compare with that?
They may be distantly related to the Wallace style but that is a huge step and further they may have some bearing upon the Omani longhilts both in the curved ( The Omani Kattara) and straight (The Omani Sayf) variety of blades now correctly discussed under their own separate banners.
I have seen several rehilted Ethiopian (German) blades on these hilts and have to report that most blades arrive into Muscat Souk without scabbards from Sanaa. The opener pictures at #1 puts that right immediately and the weapons can be seen as made deliberately as one unit along with the scabbard style. The blades in the Yemeni versions are not flexible other than a few inches either way.
The skin may be goat. It may also be wolf... which is far more likely as there was little credibility in decorating a scabbard with a goat piece. Wolf is the more likely from the talismanic viewpoint.
The hilt as you point out is far too thin to have no cover on it and the metal, being iron, would need to be covered since it attracts evil.
If my theory is correct these are indeed a separate breed of Sword and since they were probably militia weapons they are thus likely to be swords in the proper sense and this fact is firmly supported by the Istanbul and Yemeni museum pictures.
More interestingly they may be the trigger that influenced the design style in what I have earmarked as 18/19th C Omani Kattara and Sayf variants on long hilts since that region (specifically) was closely linked to sea trade with Muscat-Zanzibar and it was from Oman that they took their design for one of their Jambias (from either the Muscat and / or The Royal Khanjar style) in what I believe was the same period about 1744 to 1850.
Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.