...well, going back to the multiple-marked sword from Anthony North's collection for example, where the wolf, the cross and orb, the lion, the pious text and the enigmatic "comet" coexist, I think we could break down Sudanese/Tuareg marks into types: some which are intended to show the quality of the blade, some which are pre-Islamic talismans, some - like koranic scripts - explicitly Islamic. And a single mark might move to and fro between categories. So we get to the point where, for example, a virtually unintelligable Thuluth phrase gets repeated around a blade like a mantra - text becomes talisman.
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