Curious Tuareg "Telek Dagger?"

[figs999]

Hi Everyone,

This is my first post on this forum, but I've been a periodic lurker here for quite some time.

I have in my collection a little dagger that just recently came to my attention. It has been in my possession for about 5 years, and I had no idea that it was authentic. I got it out of a storage unit auction, which was for a unit that had not been visited by its owner for 10+ years, so I knew that it was at least "somewhat" old. My first impression of it was that it had been made by an amateur, since the tooling of the leatherwork and engraving was a bit haphazard.

I just recently found a remarkably similar dagger on an auction site and realized that it was a Tuareg Telek, or at least in the same style as one. The curious parts of this dagger, in my opinion are:

1. The ornate (but somewhat sloppy) embellishments on the scabbard. Other similar examples seem far more plain. This even has a section of engraved silver on the handle.
2. The length of the dagger is unusual. From my understanding, telek are meant to be strapped to the forearm, but this "dagger" is about 2 ft long!
3. The Section of the handle that appears to be fashioned like a Billao handle, using strips of bone/resin/horn spaced with flat bronze spacers. I haven't seen this on any non-Somali weapons. And since the Tuareg are rather far away from Somalia, it seems unlikely for this kind of technique to be used in Tuareg daggers.


I wanted to see if anyone else found this weapon interesting, and if anyone had an explanation for the strange traits that it has. It seems to not quite fit the Telek label, and I wonder if anyone else knows what this could be. If anyone has any input I'd love to hear it.

The dagger also appears to have been used in combat, or was seriously mistreated. There are numerous nicks in the blade, as if it were used to parry blows. I would have thought this would be a stabbing weapon if used in reality, which is why one of my earlier theories was that it had been used as a stage prop. My current guess is that it is 25-50 years old since it looks most like other daggers I have found from that period. Telek older than 100 years don't appear to share the particular scabbard style that is exhibited. I suspect it is possibly towards the older end of that estimate, because the scabbard is lined with undyed felt, instead of a synthetic fiber.

For something sitting at the back of my collection for a long time, I have been very pleased about it's new found authenticity.