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Originally Posted by kahnjar1
Sorry I do not agree as to Yemeni for this. Artzi attributes this to Zanzibar, although not conclusively, and I believe with the knowledge he has it is likely to be correct. I have never ever seen any reference to a "Yemeni Nimcha", with a hilt even remotely resembling this style. Any Yemeni swords I have seen, either "in the flesh" or in books are like the attached pic and are called Sayf.
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This may sound sacrilegious, but even Artzi, despite having forgotten more about swords than I will ever know, can be wrong sometimes. For example, there is a sboula that he attributed to Zanzibar, despite it being a Maghrebi weapon.
I am attaching a picture of a (rather ugly) hilt, which I believe is Yemeni in origin. The blade is Ethiopian, and we know that a lot of Ethiopian swords were imported in Yemen, because of their rhino hilts. The hilts were reworked to be used on jambiyas, while the blades were rehilted, sometimes in a very crude manner.
I acquired the sword from an Egyptian gentleman residing in Saudi Arabia, but the hilt style is unlikely to be Saudi, and I have to assume that it must have been imported there from a neighboring country. Again, Yemen makes a lot more sense than Zanzibar.
I do therefore believe that the hilts of this style with a straight grip, an a vestigial quillon are Yemeni and later, probably dating back to the middle of the 20th century.
Your sword Stu, on the other hand, has a slightly bent grip and its hilt looks to be of earlier and much nicer manufacture. Obviously, the above observations do not apply to it.