it is sometime that I do not attend the forum and I missed the previous part of the thread that is very interesting as usual when Iain is showing his takoubas. All the examples are very interesting and this later Takouba is really a wondeful addition to the collection. I agree that most probably it goes back to the XVIII century. I already posted a takouba with a guard that strongly recall this one and although part of the cover was lost there are so many similarities. Just to have an idea look at this post
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=15322 Just putting together small information from different takoubas I hope, and I think Iain share this hope, to slowly reconstruct the history of takoubas.
The main difficulties is to have a chronological reference and the best way is to find a photo with a clear evidence of the characteristic of a sword at the time of the photo. The other way is to find a chronological indication on the blade such as a maker mark or a symbol. It would be also very important to have a very good description of the forms preserved in old collection that usually have a clear date of gathering. For sure there were so many differences from place to place, from tribe to tribe and also from time to time. It would be a nice goal to unravel it, at least partially