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Originally Posted by Iain
This finished recently at Christies, fetching an enormous sum well above the estimate.
It is a very unusual sword with odd finials on the pommel and guard, which if removed, would resemble very closely a viking style hilt.
Description from Christies as follows:
I am having trouble extracting a large image from the Christie's website, but here's the link.
http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/a...f-80e8fe6fde47
It is completely unlike the kaskara of the region and not particularly resembling anything else I can think off. There is perhaps a slight resemblance to the hilt in this thread: http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=12979 |
Salaams Iain, This is indeed a confusing issue. I only have one book on The Vikings so I had to turn to the web for details. There I discovered that they were marauding and trading in the Mediterranean between about 800 and 1000 AD. They even reached Baghdad. Perhaps their sword style migrated and was frozen in certain parts ...Its a long shot (from a longboat...ha ! ) It is not impossible for the Omani Battle Sword to have diffused or for designs other than the Omani style to have morphed from what I suggest was "from" the original blueprint seen at the Topkapi ... The Abbasid Sword.
Counter to that argument please see~
http://www.thisisgabes.com/images/st...per_lowres.pdf where the geometry of Taureg artefacts is discussed in particular tentpoles and the majic square system where it becomes obvious that such sword hilt geometry could indeed be present.
On the other hand we may be looking at a total fake.
Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.