Omani Sayf/Saif

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by TVV

Jim, in my experience, trade blades are all quite light and flexible. This refers not only to those mounted with a conical hilt in Oman, but also to takoubas, kaskaras, firangis, etc. All of them are more or less the same - they tend to be relatively long, thin and quite springy, which is all a function of them being made of post Industrial Revolution modern steel and fully tempered. The ability to mass produce them made them affordable and popular in a lot of places, where they replaced traditional shorter and thicker blades. It is hard to base an argument about functionality on whether a blade is stiff or flexible, because stiff and flexible blades have been used throughout history and they both have their advantages and drawbacks.

Thats true, and flexibility is a desired aspect of blades, with testing , one of the aspects is that and durability to return to shape. But I have difficulty imagining this flexing and moving enough to create audible sound, and with wrist action alone without application of force.

The differences in the conical hilt examples as I have understood, as far as the long straight bladed examples is that there were the examples indeed worn by merchants and officials which were mounted with the regular trade type blades. Then there were the rather munitions grade examples which had exceptionally light blades which were designed to provide the ceremonial actions performed in the 'funoon' which included mass vibration of sword blades in unison.

These were in effect, again as I understand, both conical hilt swords of the recognized Omani form, and of course outwardly appearing the same by the hilt.
There were the conical hilt examples with curved blades, of the cavalry type typically German, as noted by Burton in his explorations in the Great Lakes, which he further noted were termed locally 'kitara'. These examples came out of the interior into Zanzibar, with the Omani merchants and slavers. These types of conical hilt Omani swords seem to have been more used as far as combative circumstances.

I think these variances are the basis for most of the confusion regarding the combative use of these Omani swords, which has been the perplexing source of the contentions and debate. As with most swords, even those which were primarily for dress and parade circumstances, they could of course be used if a situation arose, but those would be exceptional I would think.

Thank you for reminding me of the flexibility matters, I might have worded that better