Here we have to ponder how much of the original Arab/Persian influence survived in the Nasrid society and art, and how much of the Bereber culture, which in turn was already quite influenced by the oriental traditions due to its own process of Islamization, was integrated into the Andalusian life. Although the presence of the Bereber culture can't be denied (together with others, like the Christian one), as far as a I know, the Art Historians seem to acknowledge a good survival of Oriental traits in the Nasrid art and culture, as can be seen in textiles, writings, iconography, etc. I won't deny that this is an area that needs a much deeper knowledge than the one I have of such details of the Al-Andalus history and culture to be able to put up a solid discussion, but fact is that there's some archaeological and iconographical evidence from 9th to 15th c. in the Andalusian context for swords that share typological characteristics with the pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arab swords. Not as many as one would like, sure, but so far, I think, quite enough to have the Arab influence as a good working hypothesis which I, at least, feel quite comfortable with.
Now, regarding the Qattara, I would like to see if there’s any more or less continuous archaeological/iconographical record of that typology in southern Arabia from early Islamic times to the 17th-18th c., from when exemplars of the Qattara we’re familiar with have arrived to us. Then we would have our answer.
Finally, regarding GALDIUS, as I mentioned in my post one can find online just the issues from 1999 (number XIX) onwards. Number XVIII was never published, and the earlier issues are not online right now. In a fairly recent conversation with one of the Editors of the journal this subject came up, and although the wish to put them online at some point was there, there was some lack of resources to do it anytime soon.
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