[Pertinax]

Changdao provided a brilliant overview of the region from the 12th to the 18th centuries. But as we know, all empires have phases of rise and decline: some disappear, and new ones arise.

We have surviving examples of sabers called "Mandinka," dating from the late 19th to early 20th centuries. During this period, the Mandinka region and related tribes were in decline. According to 19th-century travelers, they practiced primitive agriculture and had primitive industry, including metalworking.

As I wrote above, in 1904 these territories became a French colony. The year 1897 proved fateful for the neighboring region, the Sokoto Caliphate. In January and February, a small, well-armed force, equipped by the British Royal Nigerian Company, invaded and destroyed the strategic southwestern emirates of Nupe and Ilorin, Adamawa and Kano in 1901, and Sokoto in 1903. However, after the Berlin Conference of 1884, the entire continent was colonized, leaving Liberia and Ethiopia as the only sovereign states in sub-Saharan Africa.

I've selected sabers that were freely available from the internet and offer them for discussion.

All the presented specimens date from the late 19th to early 20th centuries. The overall length ranges from 74 to 82 cm, and the blade length from 60 to 76 cm.

Almost all the blades are from European cavalry and infantry sabers. Judging by their overall length, these are blades with broken hilts. Based on this, one can conclude that these are not commercial trade supplies, but blades that accidentally ended up in the hands of good craftsmen for reworking.

The brass pommels of each specimen are different, but executed with great skill and taste. The same can be said for the leather work. The high-quality leather handles and scabbards are truly works of art. All this testifies to the presence of well-established handicraft industries, rather than isolated artisans.

I have no data on the existence of such industries in Malinke, but my neighbors did. Read J.P. Smaldone's "Warfare in the Sokoto Caliphate":

Page 139
This centralizing effect of war is clearly shown also in the organization of the various craft industries in the nineteenth century. In each emirate the craft industries operated under direct state control, each craft being organized under a chief responsible for quality and price control, tax collection, and production for the needs of the emir. The leather industry provided saddles, shields, sheaths, quivers, horse trappings, and baggage cases. Blacksmiths made swords, spearheads and arrowheads, horse trappings, flintlocks and shot for the gunmen; brass workers produced more exquisite and expensive varieties of these items. The weaving industry prepared "uniforms," blankets, tents, baggage, and suits of lifidi. As Nadel has written of Nupe, this organization of the craft industries amounts to a full control of the political system over all the more important industries
. . . this control was dictated by the needs of the state: based on constant warfare, committed to uphold the splendour of a huge court, the political system has to guarantee a dependable, uninterrupted supply of all that is needed - arms, tools, clothes, saddles, as well as the many symbols of wealth and status.

Looking at these specimens, one might speculate that these are not combat sabers. Ceremonial, status symbols, merchandise for tourists?

As always, questions, questions, questions...