Mutilated Kaskara on Ebay

stephen wood · 3rd November 2010, 12:36 AM

...well, going back to the multiple-marked sword from Anthony North's collection for example, where the wolf, the cross and orb, the lion, the pious text and the enigmatic "comet" coexist, I think we could break down Sudanese/Tuareg marks into types: some which are intended to show the quality of the blade, some which are pre-Islamic talismans, some - like koranic scripts - explicitly Islamic. And a single mark might move to and fro between categories. So we get to the point where, for example, a virtually unintelligable Thuluth phrase gets repeated around a blade like a mantra - text becomes talisman.

3rd November 2010, 12:36 AM	#12
stephen wood Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 227	...well, going back to the multiple-marked sword from Anthony North's collection for example, where the wolf, the cross and orb, the lion, the pious text and the enigmatic "comet" coexist, I think we could break down Sudanese/Tuareg marks into types: some which are intended to show the quality of the blade, some which are pre-Islamic talismans, some - like koranic scripts - explicitly Islamic. And a single mark might move to and fro between categories. So we get to the point where, for example, a virtually unintelligable Thuluth phrase gets repeated around a blade like a mantra - text becomes talisman.