Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

ariel · 20th February 2007, 01:48 AM

Wayne,
I appreciate your inquisitiveness, but this is not Cyrillic: just a poor and worn out G that looks like C and A that lost (or never had) a horizontal bar. Not a Cyrillic L. And, please, remember the absolute need for a letter Yat (see my earlier post) that is not there. It is like a famous dog: the absense of barking was the decisive evidence...
Genoese blades were very popular in North Africa. Moroccans even had a straight-bladed Koummya named Genoui ( or Janwi, depending on transliteration) meaning "Genoese"
What you got here is a classic Moroccan Nimcha (or Saif, if one prefers it) with a Genoese or pseudo-Genoese blade . Many of those were made in Germany or Styria and just marked Genoa to uphold the tradition and the value: market analysis was used even then! Yes, shashka blades marked Genoa were made in Circassia and marked as such. But the blade of the Nimcha in question has nothing to do with shashkas: it has a vestigial Yelman, "Indian" ricasso ( most likely an imitation of European military sabers) and a single, centrally-located, narrowish and deep fuller. None of those are features of a Circassian or any other Caucasian or Transcaucasian shashka. We do not need to know the history of this particular sword: the blade tells us the entire story.
There were Caucasian blades in Arabia proper and you can see 2 here:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=4137
See the difference?
I have a Nimcha with an old blade marked (very illegibly) O N I N I and sporting the markings of "eyelashes".
The bottom line: nice Moroccan Nimcha, definitely not a "clunker', but nothing unusual about it. Born and bred in North Africa

20th February 2007, 01:48 AM	#39
ariel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 5,503	Wayne, I appreciate your inquisitiveness, but this is not Cyrillic: just a poor and worn out G that looks like C and A that lost (or never had) a horizontal bar. Not a Cyrillic L. And, please, remember the absolute need for a letter Yat (see my earlier post) that is not there. It is like a famous dog: the absense of barking was the decisive evidence... Genoese blades were very popular in North Africa. Moroccans even had a straight-bladed Koummya named Genoui ( or Janwi, depending on transliteration) meaning "Genoese" What you got here is a classic Moroccan Nimcha (or Saif, if one prefers it) with a Genoese or pseudo-Genoese blade . Many of those were made in Germany or Styria and just marked Genoa to uphold the tradition and the value: market analysis was used even then! Yes, shashka blades marked Genoa were made in Circassia and marked as such. But the blade of the Nimcha in question has nothing to do with shashkas: it has a vestigial Yelman, "Indian" ricasso ( most likely an imitation of European military sabers) and a single, centrally-located, narrowish and deep fuller. None of those are features of a Circassian or any other Caucasian or Transcaucasian shashka. We do not need to know the history of this particular sword: the blade tells us the entire story. There were Caucasian blades in Arabia proper and you can see 2 here: http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=4137 See the difference? I have a Nimcha with an old blade marked (very illegibly) O N I N I and sporting the markings of "eyelashes". The bottom line: nice Moroccan Nimcha, definitely not a "clunker', but nothing unusual about it. Born and bred in North Africa Last edited by ariel; 20th February 2007 at 01:59 AM.