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Originally Posted by Ibrahiim al Balooshi
Salaams Iain ..Yes you are partly right since I thought I would let people have a go at this without too much prompting from me.
Its odd because the blade marks are as you say undecipherable with a peculiar W and weird looking D and another D then a 1 then a very odd looking S or 5 .... So it looks like W D D 1 5 or rather 5 1 D D M
The hilt is an extended job. It looks like an Omanified sword particularly with the pommel of a type I am not familiar with in terms of the 6 pointed star decoration.. Thus, odd, from that standpoint.
I would say this was a European export blade which has had the Omani hilt extension and therefor likely to have journeyed along the Africa(Ethiopia) to Sanaa to Muttrah route (though oddly this came in as a photo only so I cant give it the bend test) ...and having ended up in a large private collection.
Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.
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Right, well hopefully Jim or one of the other more European oriented members will have a go at the inscription. There are myriad versions of these, often spelled differently and making it a bit of a challenge at times. In any case the format and the anchor at the top of the inscription correspond to a number of blades I've see in the past that fall into the 16th century. So certainly a nice old blade I think.