SWORD FOR DISCUSSION

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Originally Posted by Taffjones

Happy Holidays everybody,
been routing through my collection trying to find an item for discussion and have found this sword. My personal opinion is that it African possibly Mandingo with Arab influences(straight kattara type handle) and the blade could be an english pipe back type blade maybe 1822.Total length in scabbard 91 cm

Thanks in advance.

Darren

Salaams Taffjones ~ Very interesting... This looks like a slavers sword perhaps carried as a badge of rank/office. Forget the plastic it is likely to be a replacement of an original leather corded decoration. I consider that the hilt transferred from the straight sayf in about 1750 a short while after its inauguration as the dancing sayf honorific to the Dynasty Al Bu Said which started in Oman in 1744.
I tie the strong trade link of slavery with the African introduction of the long curved blade across the region (really more to do with German and other European blades then flooding into Africa) For a look at Oman Slave Trading in East Africa please see post #25 on

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=10455

Kattara for comments ~ in which I quote Tippu Tip or Tib (1837 - June 14, 1905), real name Hamad bin Muḥammad bin Jumah bin Rajab bin Muḥammad bin Sa‘īd al-Murghabī, (Arabic: حمد بن محمد بن جمعة بن رجب بن محمد بن سعيد المرجبي‎) who was a Swahili-Zanzibari trader of mixed descent. He was famously known as Tippu Tib after an eye disease which made him blind. A notorious slave trader, plantation owner and governor, who worked for a succession of sultans of Zanzibar, he led many trading expeditions into east-central Africa, involving the slave trade and ivory trade. He constructed profitable trading posts that reached deep into Central Africa. One of the major slave hubs being Zanzibar.

I see no reason why swords traded along the slave routes didn't morph, switch and change and I see this as the most likely reason for the long handled Kattara developing from Africa into the Red Sea and Omani spheres because of this trade. I therefor attribute Kattara as African (European blades) coupled to the long Omani hilt after the Straight dancing Sayf(Saif) as a consequence of slave trading in Circa 1750 ad. That date an approximation based on the kick off date of the Dynasty Al Bu Said and the appearance of the dancing sayf.

It should be noted that Tipu Tib was probably not the instigator of the spread of this weapon because he was only born in the early 19th C. (1837)His parental portfolio, however, indicates a load of experience in that part of the world doing the same work and placing them right in the frame for this weapon structure, use and spread)..viz;

His mother, Bint Habib bin Bushir, was a Muscat Arab of the ruling class. His father and paternal grandfather were coastal Swahili who had taken part in the earliest trading expeditions to the interior. His paternal great-grandmother, wife of Rajab bin Mohammed bin Said el Murgebi was the daughter of Juma bin Mohammed el Nebhani, a member of a respected Muscat (Oman) family, and an African woman from the village of Mbwa Maji, a small village south of what would later become the German capital of Dar es Salaam.

"German" Dar es Salaam must have been a key centre through which many Solingen and other European blades passed onto the Arab and African traders, though, after 1887. (See note below.) However ~ tons of blades were already in circulation and Germany was the main provider.

Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.

Note; For further detail on Dar es Salaam see wiki encyclopedia which expounds ~ In the 19th century Mzizima (Swahili for "healthy town") was a coastal fishing village on the periphery of Indian Ocean trade routes. In 1865 or 1866 Sultan Majid bin Said of Zanzibar began building a new city very close to Mzizima and named it Dar es Salaam. The name is commonly translated as "harbor/haven of peace" or "abode/home of peace", based on the Persian/Arabic bandar ("harbor") or the Arabic dar ("house"), and the Arabic es salaam ("of peace") (cf. "Dar as-Salam"). Dar es Salaam fell into decline after Majid's death in 1870, but was revived in 1887, when the German East Africa Company established a station there. The town's growth was facilitated by its role as the administrative and commercial centre of German East Africa and industrial expansion resulting from the construction of the Central Railway Line in the early 1900s.

[Taffjones]

Thanks for the wealth of information supplied so far Gavin,Ibrahiim and Iain. I have noticed that there is some type of marking close to the hilt. Which I have tried my best to show in the photographs. But my camera goes out of focus if I go any closer.
Thanks
Darren

[Jim McDougall]

The blade on this Manding sabre is German, indeed pipeback, and produced from around 1820s well through the 19th century. It is well established that many blades used on these sabres are from French presence in these Saharan regions, and many French blades were actually German produced.
I am unsure of the mark on the blade but it does not seem European applied, looks like an arc but what the rest would be not sure.

Actually the connections between Zanzibar and these Mali regions in the Sahara seem fairly well established, though they were most certainly the result of networking these trans Saharan trade routes. The Manding were the merchants in Mali controlling these routes as I understand. There was prevalent slave trade activity from Zanzibar into the interior, which routes probably traversed Kenya then into Ethiopia, then to Darfur. In Darfur one of the centers of such activity was Sennar, where westward through Chad and Nigeria to Mali these traders went.

There is a type of 'baselard' form hilt sword/dagger found in Morocco known as the s'boula. However Demmin (1877) classified one of these as a Zanzibar sword. This misclassification was carried forward by Burton (1884) and the error noted by Buttin(1933). It seems clear these were notably present in Zanzibar from thier indiginous provenance from Morocco, most plausibly from being among merchants returning on trade caravans. These are known to occur in Ethiopia in degree, even being inscribed in Amharic, suggesting of course examples being left there by traders coming through.

With this instance of cross diffusion between Moroccan regions and the Zanzibar entrepot, I would suppose the possibility of the cylindrical hilt of the Manding sabre could be the source of the Omani kattara form, but I still feel the influence went the other direction. With the appearance of this hilt in Oman c.1744 as well described by Ibrahiim, more needs to be discovered on the possible origin period for these in Mali.
I would note that the Kenyan seme' also has this type of cylindrical hilt without guard, and as noted these regions seem to have been along some of these trade and slaving routes. As far as I can recall, these seme' appear to be fairly recent in most cases, mostly 19th century.

All best regards,
Jim