Personally, when I see these I tend to lean to the Victorian times souvenir hypothesis. The victory of Omdurman was well publicized at the time, and the abundance of trophies brought back soon created a market for souvenirs from the the defeated Mahdists. The locals were more than willing to meet this demand and I suspect that a souvenir industry appeared as a result, with some of the fancy 3-dagger sets with antelope horn hilts and scabbards made of juvenile crocodiles that we see every once in a while as part of the production.
When one examines the sword, which looks like it has a short blade made of sheet steel with no distal taper, it would appear that more effort went into etching the script on the blade than the blade's actual forging (if it was actually forged and not just cut out). The rough cast brass hilt is also something that was mass produced, and the crocodile skin (in other examples monitor lizard skin is used) is there to make the whole thing more exotic and aesthetically appealing to a Western audience.
While not actual militaria from the time of the Mahdists, these swords are antiques in their own right and an interesting example of the impact the Mahdists had on Western imagination, even after their destruction.
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