[Peter Hudson]

The Kitara . Said the Great had an agreement to send in traders in the Great Lakes region and it is here that the hunter traders came upon the large curved blades of German Cavalry swords which originally had guards and a short hilt on a tang far shorter than the tang on their Sayfs. The blades were huge and curved with a substantial point but stiff not flexible. and with a heavy backblade. What they needed to do was to incorporate this blade, convert it to a style similar to the Sayf and to Omanise the item...thus The Kitara was born.

Bunyoro-Kitara The Kingdom of - The Sword

This was a difficult weapon to trace since the country of Bunyoro-Kitara decided about 10 years ago to cleanse its web sites of any reference to Omani traders slavery or anything related to swords etc...Luckily I got in among their old system before it was wiped clean. Kitara is or was not an arabic word and unless spelled exactly as Kitara it simply didnt compute when searching on the web for a country...however it was dredged up searching through Burton by Jim Mcdougall thus we cracked the problem by chance; The Country was Bunyoro- Kitara sitting in the centre of The African Great Lakes thus Kitara is an African word. tHE blade an adopted and adapted weapon given a long Omani Hilt and an extended tang and pomel and an Omani Scabbard plus The Omani Terrs.

Finally theses swords were very distinctively Omani... The long hilts unmistakeable on either a curved blade or straight and usually the Hunting Patrol accompanied by spear and gunpowder support plus Baluch mercenaries. They were given Carte Blanche to hunt and transport goods to and from Bunyoro-Kitara in a pact lasting probably about 4 decades...and as seen by the map below this shows the importance of the trade route to and from Zanzibar....The Trading Hub of Said The Great..