Hi, Jim. Glad to see you on this thread.
Yes, i do agree with your position.
As regards Zanzibar, on one hand, it was always the terminus of the vast commercial current created from the Arabic peninsula towards the African coast, Ceylon, Malaysia, Indonesia up to the South of Filipinos. The Arabic dhows took advantage of winds of the monsoon to reach Zanzibar and of their inversion to go back up towards the peninsula.
On the other hand, the peninsula is very poor in iron ore, while Zanzibar stocked up without problem with Tanzania or Rwanda.... It became an important center of forge of the blades of saïfs which it supplied in the peninsula (Oman, Yemen). These blades are usually of good forge.
This commercial current is more important than the around 30 years of dominion of Oman on Zanzibar.
Yes, the generic word for all these weapons is Saïf, the specific to Morocco is Nimcha.
As for the guard,you noticed the special guard which protects the hand against the knocks sliding on the flat of the blade. This defence which is very real on Tulwar and Pulwar is missing on Saïf / Nimcha. This circular guard replaces it. I suspect that it was able to exist on certain Nimcha. Spanish finalized another system called pitones to resolve this problem.
See please
http://blade.japet.com/NIMCHA/N-protection.htm
end of my chat.
Friendly.
Louis-Pierre