Is this a scimitar? From where? When?

[Neivalf99]

Hello,
I have had this sword for many years and have never been able to get an idea of its origins. I think it is a scimitar might be Italian? bought 20 years ago in southern France if it helps.
it is 76 cm long total
blade 62cm long
width roughly 4 to 3 cm
Thank you for any help

[rickystl]

Not being a blade expert, it looks like a European hunting sword. Possibly from the late 18th Century. It will be fun to see if the experts here think I'm right (?). Nice piece.

Rick

[Ian]

Neivalf99:

I think this one would get more attention over in the European Forum, so I'm redirecting it there.

Ian

[Jim McDougall]

I agree this is likely a hanger from late 18th century, and probably in the spectrum of these kinds of swords used by para military and auxiliary forces in Eastern Europe modeled after the notorious 'pandours' of Austria. The note toward hunting swords is well placed, as these forces were often charged with foraging as well as skirmishing for the regular army forces, and often used hangers of 'hirschfanger' type replete with stag horn grips.

While I cannot read the script on back of blade, the motif is consistent with the oriental exotica type motif popular through Europe in these times on blades. The clipped point on this blade is actually consistent with these captioned as 'pandour point' by Gerhardt Seifert ("Schwert Degen Sabel", 1962) in a typology chart of blade point forms.

The shellguard seems much aligned with cutlass like forms known in Spanish colonial and thereby sometimes Italian contexts which counter diffused in these times as well, so basically this is a unique example of these hanger type forms which is probably from these irregular units around late 18th c.

[Ian]

Neivalf99:

I took the liberty of rotating and adjusting the picture showing an inscription. The best I can make of the name is

G Dimûsco

That perhaps sounds Romanian or Albanian--not too far away from where you found it.

Ian

[Jim McDougall]

Ian, thank you for the assist on that! Between my Luddite computer skills and this Fisher-Price keyboard, I was stuck there !!!

Now having that name, I would note that it certainly does align with those nationalities, and that the convention of script signature of either maker or supplier of blade in late 18th c. was at this location typically on blade back.
The forces I mentioned, were indeed of pandour type in French armies as well as certain other European armies, and their forces were often of Balkan and East European nationality, many Hungarian.

This style of oriental/exotic motif on the blade was well known in these times in Nantes in France as 'Caissagnard', and often had a 'Turks head' or a turbaned figure.

[Oliver Pinchot]

The blade is as you conclude, Jim et al.
The hilt is a recent fabrication.