Congratulation on your nice collection of Abyssinian sabres, Wolf (nicely treated blades)!
As far as the group photo is concerned, I think the lowest sabre is "gile" ("jely"), allegedly used by Danakil before (I would say eastern part of Ethiopia - the scabbard used to have the same features like Danakil/Afar daggers). I do not think it is "sword common in many Eastern African countries" (description from Tirri´s book). Once it was common in "antique shops" in Addis, now it is becoming rare.... The handle is usually made of hard wood.
I know some authors describe Ethiopian sabres and swords as a group of shotels (which varies from straight shotels called saifs/seifs through normally curved shotels called gorades/gurades to deeply curved sabres called simply shotels). But when I discussed with Addis sellers, they always spoke only about saifs (straight), only about gorades (single edged mostly European blade). And shotel was name of a big "round" sickle weapon with double edged blade, nearly always of local production (based on this experience I would even call the sabre from Tirri´s book, fig 52, page 82 with Wilkinsom blade "shotel with the blade made by Wilkinson", not gorade). This is my personal opinion, but similar to the description in "African Arms and Armour".
Gorades and saifs often used to have rhino hilts, shotels mostly cattle horn hilts. I even saw something like bakelite hilts.
Regards,
Martin
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