Quote:
Originally Posted by werecow
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" ...discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought".
-Albert von Szent-Gyorgy (1893-1986)
For more years that I can say, while observing these swords with this distinctive and apparently unique wood hilt style , nobody (including myself) has made this connection to the historic Nasrid (jineta) forms, at least that I can recall. It has always seemed these were deemed Tunisian, but quite frankly most of them came up amidst takouba and kaskara study, so were not focused on other than North African anomalies.
This observation is really well placed, and exciting to look further into the history of these swords, which have as noted, virtually no literature or published research, and only have cursory presence in various references.
These seem most likely reflecting the Zenata Berber traditions in a revival or commemorative sense, and these Berber tribes were situated in the Tunisian/Tripolitania/Libya regions in the Granadan Emirate period. After the Reconquista in the 15th century they moved westward into Algeria and Morocco.
With the French cavalry blade, the Saharan potential is clear, but these blades were pretty ubiquitous with French colonial presence, so its hard to use that as a classifying feature.
The anachronistic influences of weapons from Europe and the Iberian Peninsula on native weapon forms in North Africa are many and intriguing, and seeing this instance added to the list is great!