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Al Kindi asserted that the best wootz ( jouhar) was manufactured in Yemen.
However, where are these famous Yemeni blades?
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were wootz blades produced from imported ingots locally in Arabia, or was the blade a specially produced one for the Arab market?
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One thing I’ve noticed on Arabian blades (the ones that appear to my eye “pre-tourist” (pre-gun?) anyway), they are not finished to show a pattern, in fact they are pretty good at hiding pattern. Recently I did some work on a sabiki, the blade of which looked as if it were differentially hardened (hard edge soft middle/back), which would be somewhat unusual on a blade with such slender geometry. As soon as I started refining the surface finish of the blade to see what was up, those wootzy carbides stood out and it became clear that what I had assumed was a change in heat treatment was really the decarburized layer from forging the wootz ingot; it had not been completely removed in the finishing of the sword.
Interestingly, the wootz had been forged out almost unmodified by attempts to pattern it, so that large areas retain recognizable dendrite trees from the solidification of the steel. The original ingot had a very large grain size and good, well-defined banding, which indicates to me that the metal could have been forged into an appearance more in line with the more flowing waters of India or Persia. This in turn inclines me to think this is a blade that was forged locally from an imported ingot, I’ve seen Indian swords with very similar metal.
Perhaps those famous Yemeni blades are not lost- they are sitting on the shelf right behind you, hidden in your collection by the local finishing style!
...or maybe not, blades from the Arabian Peninsula that look like they were made for use rather than appearance are rather uncommon in my experience.