The Swords of Oman and Zanzibar Inspired by Saaid The Great.
 

Saaid The Great ruled Oman and Zanzibar during the early to mid 19thC from about 1804 to 1856. Several well known design features entered the history books either invented by him or inspired through one of his wives...including The Royal Turbanand Royal Cammerbund, The Royal Hilt on his adopted 7 ringer Khanjarand given his name, and the same style of hilt given to the Royal form of the old Omani Battle Sword called Sayf Yemani. In addition a sword with sharpened on both edges and carrying a long almost tubular hilt was placed by him as an item for dancing showing off its flexibility and being included in the famous national treasureThe Funun This dancer also became a heraldic and military presentation appearing on march past gatherings and at weddings and adorned with the shield...The Omani Terrs ...It was given the honour of being present at important meetings and at bothe Eids and as well as occasionally being highly decorated in silver adornments it could also meet the demands of the mass market in a much less expensive form and was still loved by the people. Saaiid moved the Omani Capital city to Zanzibar in about 1830 and transformed the Islands into a collosal herb growing region...and removed with others the Portuguese invaders chasing them south to Mozambique etc. Zanzibar became a massive trading and slave Hub and in about 1840 another sword appeared which was a single crved blade which Saaiid The Great gave the same Omani Long Hilt and as a shield the same Omani Terrs. The sword had a multi role purpose not only as a formidable weapon but as a badge of office seen on the waists of Omani slave traders passing through the Omani friendly Bunyoro Kittarah which incidentally was where the blade had been noticed on swords probably of German origin ... Cavalry swords... It marked the Omani hunters and Traders from a great distance as having permission ...right of passage and safety from attack was thus assured. Pictures of Omani individuals are sketched in the Zanzibar slave markets equiped with these weapons often with the Terrs slung over their backs and armed with Omani Kittarah as they became known.

Meanwhile the Navy needing a cutlass weapon and having seen the Nimcha styles we know existed through illustration ; the hilts... stiched in with silver thread or hammered in on a hot anvil...Some delicacy is required as the minute floral decorations on the actual Tughra are repeated on the copied stylistic quillons on the anvil..These were dynastic swords and this is what he must have ordered... He wanted his name on them... In fact his Tughra .
And although not on all weapons there are certainly a great number that carry this insinignia. See below.

I have described the Cultural process on this thread... through the use of one singular Lingua Franka (Spoken Arabic.)..common to most players.

For Clarity here again is the detail...showing the Omani Dancer/ The Omani Sayf with the Rulers Tughra.

Attachment 235226

Attachment 235227

Just adding a few words about the applied decoration and what I have identified as a sort of Royal Signature on Omani and Zanzibari weapons... and this work applied using quite rudimentary equipment either stitched onto leather or hammered onto steel hilts/quillons though not onto all the examples
which suggests to me that those VIP richly decorated swords may well have been presentation items and or high ranking business owners or Officers in the Omani Navy. Those swords of a lesser grade / munitions grade probably not so lavishly adorned nevertheless a degree of transfer identified in common design style. I tend to see some potential copying from the main style in Ottoman style plus style from other previous Omani types as well as unusual additions such as the Turtle motiff...and with a regional probably inexpensive blades ...and the black leather Scabbards complete with a sworl pattern. The apparent horses head hilt when finished in Ivory and gold imported from African trade operations into Zanzibars artesan workshops Joins the array of incredible designs and the broadened bottom third points at Malibari style seen on Moplah.

Crowned Pi ...
 

The "Pi", as it is read, is a Greek symbol attributed to Milanese workshops, although some authors suggest that it might be a Styrian mark, as often found in blades of the Zeughaus at Graz in Styria. Not impossible to be seen in a number of centers as a (spurious) mark to indicate supposed quality, like Toledo or Andrea Ferrrara.


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Some touch ups.
 

The sword shown in post #39 by Peter is superb. An interesting feature is that the blade is marked (SIC) "four times on both sides"; way too many for what we usually see out there. Also in the main description we can read that the inscription on the blade is a "Spanish inscription in characters similar to cipher", but in the additional information it reads "Klinge Inschrift (spanisch): reyna de las espadas" = Blade inscription (Spanish): reyna de las espadas (read Queen of swords). Therefore the cipher was already cracked by or for the Museum.
Back to the main description, the Museum appears to suggest a Jewish connection with this sword details based on numerous Spanish Jews having left Spain after the reconquest, moving to North Africa in the dominion of the Ottomans.
According to Enciclopedia Judaica, from the 165 000 Jews that abandoned Spain in 1492, only 32 000 are 'estimated' to have gone to the North African coast, 20 000 to Morocco and 10 000 to Algeria. It happens that Morocco, the larger slice, despite numerous attempts, was never under Ottoman domain. On the other hand and, in a strict'er (?) translation, the Museum decription says that, after the conquest of Granada, numerous Spanish Jews left the country and moved, some of them via North Africa, to the Ottoman territory.
To say that the Jewish community in Granada were intimate with the Muslims, which worsened their situation by the time of their expulsion. Some of them were even craftsmen selling their services to the occupiers, sword smiths included. Who doesn't know the famous Julian del Rey, the Jewish sword smith master allegedly converted and baptized by the Spanish Catholic Kings, who was said to have worked for Boabdil, the last Nasrid King of Granada
I suppose that their mode to decorate swords would be rather different than the mode favoured by the Ottomans.



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In none of the blades ...Butin shows almost 50 examples, the designs copied are not of blades but of Hilts... Especially in the case of big broad highly decorated European blades too heavy for the task as Cutlasses...Much lighter blades were provided to both styles in Arabian and North African forms.. Zanzibar had access to Hadramauti, other Yemeni and Indian blade making centres...Nimcha in the Meditterranean had access to European blades...Because there are no broad blades in any Nimcha types thus I dont think this was ever considered...

Going back many years the puzzle over Nimcha has baffled everyone...likely because of the blade situation when in fact that is outside of the problem... It was a hilt quillons and scabbard that were needed not blades. Zanzibari form went further with expensive Ivory and gold hilts and the same may be said on some North African examples. Thus it may be that we will never identify the original weapon since that is irrelevant. What we can see is how a hilt form fits the equation but to that has to be added the regional oddities (In the case of Zanzibari Nimchas ) of The Turtle, The Hilt decoration,The D Knuckle Guard , the peculiar quillons, the inscriptions on the equally peculiar quillon endings and the scabbards....

However the design differences are understandable since this is typical of the Omani Ruler who only a few years before had altered the entire hilt of The Sayf Yemaani...adding instead the hilt form which one of his wives had redesigned ...and which also was the new hilt form for a new format Royal Khanjar.....AND of course the invention of a totally new Dancing Sayf with the very flexible blade sharpened on both edges..and presented it with the Omani terrs shield..AND then not only resetting a German curved Cavalry blade discovered in the African Great Lakes with an Omani Sayf hilt striaght from the dancer hilt design.......he struck it with the name previously unheard of calling it after the country in the Great Lakes in which Omani traders were operating...Bunyoro-Kittarah....The Kingdom of The Sword....thus a totally new weapon arrived; The Omani Kittarah..... also awarding that with The Omani Terrs.

From my perspective trying to find the original sword from which the Nimcha originated is impossible...but likely contenders may well be identified for some aspects of design flow..Likely contenders are probably Ottoman Spanish or Italian forms perhaps seen aboard some of the vast numbers of foreign Traders from as early as the 15thC in the Indian Ocean.but several aspects have nothing whatsoever to do with other weapons and are down to regional quirks...outlined above.

Other swords that may have influenced these design aspects include possibly shapes such as is seen on Kastane and broader Foible widths from weapons off the Malibar Coast such as Moplah.

Peter Hudson.

About algerian nimcha
 

Hi mates, here with you Khaled, your Algerian (France based) blacksmith, and collector to serve you (you probably read me before about bousaadi khodmi). Please pardon my poor english

Everyday, since maybe a year, I tell to myself that I have to make a REAL post about Algerian swords, and history (I'm also wtritting a book about that subject, but its a deep a long work, I hope to share with you soon.

Well, havent read everything, but I HAVE to add some details first, then I'll read the rest :D

WHAT ABOUT ALGIERS ??

As reminder, Algiers, was like TORTUGA in the famous movie.. For centuries (dont know really when it begun, but it ends with french colonisation in 1830), Algiers was one (may be THE) of the most feared, and protected area of all mediteranean see. Many famous "barbary" pirates, were europeans that flew to africa to escape a judgement in europe. One of them was "jack Asfour", "Asfour" mean "bird" in arabic... yeah, the same guy that inspired the fictionnal movie, in caribean see. I let you google that (I think this one was mostly based in morroco).
Well, just to notice, that for centuries (long time before ottoman period), Algiers was the principal port, from where goes many attack to europe, and where was based one of the most (and again, probably THE MOST, depending to the period) fleet of all mediteranean see. That lead to many things... Algerian weapons, are STRONGLY in relation with that. I'm not gonna talk about Flissa, that's very particular. But the ALGERIAN NIMCHA is an object that you can easily trace the origin, it you know what to look.

1/ THE HILT : a nimcha isn't a particular sword, this is just a name given (by europeans collectors, locals generaly call that "saif", that mean saber, and some rare models with a FLISSA sword confirm that use) to those kind of swords, showing that "arabic" hilt. However the origin of the hilt shape, the algerian model is truely different. Most of them show those "TWO SPINES" on the bottom, giving another shaper of pommel than morrocan, or other coutnry models.
The shape is close to the ZANZIBAR model, but straight, not a "falling pommel". Of course they are not on all algerian nimcha, but when you see one, it is certainly one.


3/ WIDE BLADE : The shape of the sword is probably the most effective difference between algerian, and other country (especially morroco, or tunisia) nimcha. What the culture took as "tipical pirate sword", is also mostly influenced by this period, when algerian was terrorizing the see, and the near coasts (many exemple of "razzia", and attack on european coasts, Corsica, Italy, Spain, France , etcc even in the north of europe, all of this, still before ottoman period of algeria). So what they was...? PIRATES AT BOATS, so their swords has to give the effeciency, for naval fights. A WIDE and CURVED sword, that gives the iconography of the "cimetar" in the modern folklore. As a comparaison, a morrocan nimcha is usually a straight sword, thiner but longer, more used for cavalery.

4/ BLADE ORIGIN : As you know, a nimcha isnt (in the most examples..) a full local craft. This is a foreign sword, adapted to an a local hilt and guard made for the occasion. First, there is many reason for that.
---> lot of war stock... Every ennemy boat beaten, and every coast ravaged, gives to algerian a lot of weapon, so why the algerian craftsman should forge, what their neighbour bring by the see everyday... Adding to that the commercial counter
(dont know the exact word) of Genovese, Venitian and other commercial kingddom, on the algerian coast. They trade with algerian for centuries, even when their country was in war. That big trade gives a lot of consequancies in algerian and north african crafts, as the well known morrocan JENOUI, or algerian AJENOUI (other name for a flissa in Kabyle), that refers in the acient time to the origin of the STEEL of the sword, and NOT the shape of it (sorry I talk too much :D:D:D ) .
----> Sword quality : Even if the algerian craftsman still do swords, we are in an era (ottoman period) when europeans forge great quality swords, in bulk, when algerian only craft by command, by piece (as for a flissa), not the same that the emerging industry in europe. So, of course, a european sword is at this era, a more qualititative, and less expensive solution, to algerian swords.
SOOOOOO, if you're still with me, you can have a good indication about how to know the origin of a nimcha, by the origin of it sword. For exemple, an italian sword, or a "SARDAIGNE" sword, has all the chance to define an algerian nimcha, more than any other. With the time, you will also notice some ottoman swords mounted on nimcha hilts (mostly in algerian, where was the ottoman..), some kilij swords for exemple. In that period, not only "nimcha" type hilt was used, but also some models more "persian", as for a shamshir handle.

Well, I hope those details will help to know a bit more about that great period of algerian history, and all the influences in relation with it.