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Originally Posted by CharlesS
Jim,
I think the "zig-zags" you are referring to is Churchill's rendering of the cords that bind the top and bottom "heads" of what is often called the "talking drum" and is seen through large swaths of Africa. Of course, I may be wrong.
This is, again, the problem with artists' renderings. Much is left up to perceptions and even the imagination, especially in a drawing as generalized as that one.
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I agree the sketch is only a sketch...Pity Churchill didn't take a photograph of this scene. What I am trying to convey is the blades. these are curved and carried by African not Omani dancers said to be irregulars in the Zanzibar military contingent. I only show this to suggest that the curved blades were there in Zanzibar ...It may thus be logical that the weapons were arrived from interaction through trade with Manding...and the date( known from churchills time there) adds weight to the trade in slavery being at an all time high in the latter part of the 19thC and that Manding would have been there in large numbers trading ...when the artist was there.
My further hypothesis being that since the Manding were oral ...only passing down information not writing it down ...and since the Omani System The Funun was also similar ( here is where the problem exists...no written evidence), it is almost impossible to ascertain the copied direction or exactly when it was that these hilts moved from one tribal system to another wholly or in part. What I think is obvious is that they were copied and I would go with the East West concept or rather that the hilt moved in two directions concurrently encompassing Omani and Manding at the same time... What did this look like on the ground as a series of events?
I suggest that the Manding either copied the hilt form of the Omani Long Hilt on the dancing sword and put it to use on their curved Manding sabres and the Omani contingent absorbed the Manding curved blades and furnished them with the Omani Longhilt form copied from their dancing swords.