[werecow]

I just bought a Zanzibari saif and I already had a Moroccan and a Yemeni one, so I thought I'd add my datapoint and resurrect this old thread. See pictures. The tape measure is in cm. First picture, top is the Zanzibar, middle is Moroccan, bottom is the Yemeni one. Sorry about the slight blurriness, my phone's camera has no manual focus option and it insists on focusing on nothing in particular.

A few things I found interesting: the Zanzibar one handles much more easily than the Moroccan one in spite of them looking pretty similar. It has a very thin blade (4mm at the base down to 2mm at 10cm before the tip). The Moroccan one is significantly thicker (6mm at the base down to 3mm near the tip) and a few cm longer.

You don't see a lot of straight blades on the Moroccan ones, whereas I've seen a few of the Zanzibar type now. It gives it more of an older type of saif look. I quite like it, as most of the swords I own either have curved blades or are much more thrust centric (it's the main reason why I decided to pick it up). I'm not sure whether the scabbard is original or something made later on, but it does look like it has some age to it. It seems intended for storage rather than wearing as there are no suspension rings.

I wonder if the little knuckle protecting side branch on the Moroccan one's guard (which AFAIK is not typical; see picture 3 which for some reason got flipped upside down during upload) was inspired by the side ring on the Zanzibar models?