Very odd Sudanese sword for discussion

[Iain]

Originally Posted by A.alnakkas

This is a very lovely piece. Imho, it could be similar to Rsword's type but with abit of added creativity? :-) it belonged to the same person so it seems.

Hi Lofty,

Could well be another piece out of the Ali Dinar group. It could be something collected earlier than that as well (Dinar died in 1916).

My first thoughts when I saw it were the odd brass hilt kaskara like this one: http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=14711 Which seem to be presentation pieces.

However this item seems to have a very good blade and the brass looks better aged...

It is a bit odd to me the auction had no provenance attached, yet it reached such a price.

The oddest feature to me seems to be the spikes coming off the guard - has anyone seen anything similar?

EDIT: Thanks Chris for the higher resolution image! Very helpful. I had also requested more images from Christies but never received any. I particularly wanted to see the lion mark.