AFRICAN???SWORD for ID and COMMENT

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by Kubur

Maybe it's time for me to introduce my Mandingo sword with a French blade end of 18th c.
As Professor Mc Douglas and I said your blade is probably older. Closer pictures would help.
Best,

'Professor McDouglas' !!! ???? Hey, I like that!!!
Very nice blade on your Manding sabre, indeed looks end of 18th French, with these type blades most common on these sabres.
On this West African sword in discussion, the grooves look remarkably uniform, and the reason I suggested 19th c. European is that in about that period there were a degree of 'blanks' out of Solingen into trade markets. At least that seems the case as the over inflated industrial sector struggled to keep up at end of Franco-Prussian war (1870).

The moons (dukari) were consistently on Hausa blades (masri) of the eastern Saharan into Sudanese regions. It seems that there were indeed 'kaskara' type blades on West African swords of Sierra Leone and others with cylindrical hilts, but hard to determine periods earlier than of course latter 19th c. These of course did not have the moons that were indicative of the 'masri' type blades (Rodd, 1928).