Stephen,
The Darfur attribution comes primarily from the Graham Reed article on kaskaras from Darfur, in which this characteristic is seen on examples with other hilt features with some consistancy. The much more simple examples from eastern Sudanese regions, especially the Mahdist examples, have crossguards usually not quite as flared, no central X, and some even have brass crossguards.
I would suspect there may be more symbolism found in this feature, and this would be an interesting topic to discuss further.
Best regards,
Jim
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