Yemeni Sayfs? Omani Kattaras?

[kahnjar1]

Originally Posted by kahnjar1

Salaams Ibrahiim. Thanks for the link to the modern dress on the Omani Battle Sword. I have taken the liberty to repost one of your pics to show how they look....
QUESTION....Do you have an irrefutible link to information that this is how these looked in the past?......or is this your impression of how they would have looked? Any photos I have seen of these swords has shown them with bare metal hilts.
The other comment which has appeared often in these threads is the possible reuse of rhino sword hilts for jambiyas. I would have thought that sword hilts would not be big enough to refashion into handles for jambiya.

Anyway...on to the subject of my original question which was to try and find out what, if any hilt covering was on the Yemeni/Saudi swords shown by SWEDEGREEN.

I read with interest your new "take" on these swords, even to suggest that they just might be a "genuine" type, rather than (as you put it) some knocked up backyard item.
There are "quite a few" of these around (as there are Omani Saifs) and it would be reasonable to assume that more would be in their country of origin than elsewhere. The four shown above, it is stated, came out of Yemen in the 1960s, and I have one on the way to me which also came from there about the same time. The actual year in this case was 1963, and I have well provenanced details of who bought it out.
Now to the scabbards. IF these were made as "tourist" items, then why would the maker bother to make a nice scabbard and then "distress" it so that it looked old. Elsewhere in this discussion on bedouin swords and the like, it has been stated that tourism as we know it today, was in its infancy in Arabia in the 1960s and the modern "skills" of aging to mislead, would not in my opinion have been thought of, or at least not widely practiced.

So......do we have a hitherto "unknown", or at least "undiscussed" line of swords? It will be interesting to see where this discussion leads.
Further to my comment above, I have posted some pics of the sword which is on the way to me. These are sellers pics but they show a couple of interesting features. This sword has silver decoration and the drag of the scabbard is well worn skin of some sort....purported to be lion, but I think more likely goat or suchlike. I really think it most unlikely that any maker would bother to use skin and then "distress" it just to fool an unwitting buyer.

Comments Gentlemen please

This sword has now arrived, and I can make further comment to what I had suggested above.
1.The skin used for the drag is not goat in my opinion, and could very well be lion as was suggested by the seller, as the remaining hair is quite thick. ....not like goat hair at all, which is much finer.
2.The fitting of scabbard to hilt is the same method as in Swedegreen's swords.....wooden tongue sliding inside the silver dressing of the hilt.
3. The hilt itself is impossible to grip securely so I would have thought that there was originally some sort of covering. Unless the users hands were VERY small the sword would slip easily in use.

Other than the above observations, the whole shows good age, and IMHO has not been artificially aged in any way... Why would one cover the scabbard with skin and then rub most of the hair off??

Regards Stu

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Originally Posted by kahnjar1

This sword has now arrived, and I can make further comment to what I had suggested above.
1.The skin used for the drag is not goat in my opinion, and could very well be lion as was suggested by the seller, as the remaining hair is quite thick. ....not like goat hair at all, which is much finer.
2.The fitting of scabbard to hilt is the same method as in Swedegreen's swords.....wooden tongue sliding inside the silver dressing of the hilt.
3. The hilt itself is impossible to grip securely so I would have thought that there was originally some sort of covering. Unless the users hands were VERY small the sword would slip easily in use.

Other than the above observations, the whole shows good age, and IMHO has not been artificially aged in any way... Why would one cover the scabbard with skin and then rub most of the hair off??

Regards Stu

Salaams. The Yemeni Sword. (Long Hilt.)

This sword has nothing to do with the Yemeni items tuned up with backyard hilts to sell to tourists. That is not to say that it isn't a sword that tourists buy since many are sitting in Muscats Muttrah souk and being bought by tourists... The two, however, belong to different kettles of fish.

This sword which is related to the Ottoman type in the Istanbul Military Museum (thus Mamluke and Abbassiid) is attributed to Yemeni style of metalic longhilt in the general family of Red Sea Variants I have mentioned many times previously. It appears as a leftover copied design from Ottoman garrisons into the Yemeni armouries (probably "Askeri" equivalent palace guard or militia swords) I would suggest that these belong in the southern part of what is now Saudi Arabia but was Yemen pre about 1920. They ''seem'' to be late copies perhaps mid 18th to mid 19th C going by the blades and hilt finish. Being likely contenders of Yemeni manufacture I would suspect Hadramaut as the blade construction point... or even the other side of the water in Sudan or Ethiopia even? The blade style could conceivably have been supplied completely from late Ottoman sources. There is one picture of a man holding one such blade below... and that is on an Ottoman ~ Mamluke Hilt. Does your blade also compare with that?

They may be distantly related to the Wallace style but that is a huge step and further they may have some bearing upon the Omani longhilts both in the curved ( The Omani Kattara) and straight (The Omani Sayf) variety of blades now correctly discussed under their own separate banners.

I have seen several rehilted Ethiopian (German) blades on these hilts and have to report that most blades arrive into Muscat Souk without scabbards from Sanaa. The opener pictures at #1 puts that right immediately and the weapons can be seen as made deliberately as one unit along with the scabbard style. The blades in the Yemeni versions are not flexible other than a few inches either way.

The skin may be goat. It may also be wolf... which is far more likely as there was little credibility in decorating a scabbard with a goat piece. Wolf is the more likely from the talismanic viewpoint.

The hilt as you point out is far too thin to have no cover on it and the metal, being iron, would need to be covered since it attracts evil.

If my theory is correct these are indeed a separate breed of Sword and since they were probably militia weapons they are thus likely to be swords in the proper sense and this fact is firmly supported by the Istanbul and Yemeni museum pictures.

More interestingly they may be the trigger that influenced the design style in what I have earmarked as 18/19th C Omani Kattara and Sayf variants on long hilts since that region (specifically) was closely linked to sea trade with Muscat-Zanzibar and it was from Oman that they took their design for one of their Jambias (from either the Muscat and / or The Royal Khanjar style) in what I believe was the same period about 1744 to 1850.

Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.

[kahnjar1]

Salaams Ibrahiim,
The blade does NOT resemble that shown above. The single SHALLOW fuller more resembles that in Swedegreen's pic at #1 (top sword). The one in the above pic appears deep and narrow rather than broad and shallow.
Stu

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Originally Posted by kahnjar1

Salaams Ibrahiim,
The blade does NOT resemble that shown above. The single SHALLOW fuller more resembles that in Swedegreen's pic at #1 (top sword). The one in the above pic appears deep and narrow rather than broad and shallow.
Stu

Salaams, It would be an advantage to show the blade would it not? I mean deep and shallow, broad and narrow are hardly indicative when a picture would be highly beneficial.. Do you think it looks like this one (The long hilted Yemeni Sword ) ?
Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.

[kahnjar1]

Originally Posted by Ibrahiim al Balooshi

Salaams, It would be an advantage to show the blade would it not? I mean deep and shallow, broad and narrow are hardly indicative when a picture would be highly beneficial.. Do you think it looks like this one (The long hilted Yemeni Sword ) ?
Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.

Here is a pic of the fuller. The blade is 41mm (1 5/8") wide at the hilt and 5mm (3/16") thick. Flexibility is as one would expect for a combat sword.
Regards Stu

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Salaams. Well we are nearly there... can you show the entire blade so that normal Forum inspection may be made and so the length of the fuller and blade tip etc. can be viewed ?

I'm not sure what you are implying with your flexibility statement ...For example; Are you saying that because it's flexible it makes it a combat sword? or its lack of flexibility? How much flex does it have about 2inch or a more full 90 degrees? These are normally quite stiff blades with a few inches of flex not more.

Personally I think that this is a separate Yemeni breed and that it was a combat sword, however, I think we first have to decide what level of flexibility these swords have and in denoting what the essential blade parameters are before embarking on that equation. What you may have is a Red Sea blade stuck on a Yemeni Hilt.

Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.

[kahnjar1]

Originally Posted by Ibrahiim al Balooshi

Salaams. Well we are nearly there... can you show the entire blade so that normal Forum inspection may be made and so the length of the fuller and blade tip etc. can be viewed ?

I'm not sure what you are implying with your flexibility statement ...For example; Are you saying that because it's flexible it makes it a combat sword? or its lack of flexibility? How much flex does it have about 2inch or a more full 90 degrees? These are normally quite stiff blades with a few inches of flex not more.

Personally I think that this is a separate Yemeni breed and that it was a combat sword, however, I think we first have to decide what level of flexibility these swords have and in denoting what the essential blade parameters are before embarking on that equation. What you may have is a Red Sea blade stuck on a Yemeni Hilt.

Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.

The blade is, as I said, what one would expect from a "combat" blade---about 2"....certainly not something that would wave around in combat. Your comment about 90 degrees suggests to me something so flimsy that it would be next to useless for fighting.
Attached is a full length pic of the blade. The fuller tapers out to almost nothing about 2" back from the tip. As you can see, the tip of the double edged blade has probably been reshaped at some stage in its life, perhaps due to chipping. I am not sure if I should have this reshaped, or leave it as it is.
As an aside to the blade, I attach a further pic of the hilt. On investigation, I found that the silver collar had slipped up and was covering further hilt decoration. The blade now fits the scabbard correctly.