Interesting Kaskara from the Askeri Museum

[Jim McDougall]

It is a heck of a rabbit hole Ed!!! and it seems the deeper we go, the more intriguing and exciting, and more and more perplexing.....curiouser and curiouser !!!

However intrepid researchers like you specializing find the path.......this article is with brilliant insights into the Mamluk mystery. I seem to have had long held notions that due to the clear influences in aspects of Sudanese arms and material culture from Mamluk culture, that they had perhaps artisans in these areas in Dongola etc producing items.

I had felt that the acid etched thuluth conventions found in Mamluk metalwork led to the profuse covering of weapon surfaces with this was with Mamluk influence. The numbers of foreign blades and weapons coming into the Shendi markets probably through Suakin seemed to me likely blades and other items which would receive this treatment.

While my thoughts toward the kaskara (and other weapons) covered in thuluth at Omdurman were later, after the death of the Mahdi, I thought that perhaps the Caliph had seized on the notion as a means of effectively reinforcing his power and magic in these kinds of regalia. As has been noted, these were not intended necessarily as combative weapons, but votive elements carried by the religious figures who inspired and directed warriors while there to tend to the required attentions to the fallen. Also, these items reflected ecclesiastical authority.
This was of course a jihad, and these warriors were the 'Ansar'.

So it appears the processing and production of these weapons in the shops at Omdurman were from workers already established there, many were foreign, including numbers of Greeks who had been situated in Khartoum before its fall. So the production of these thuluth covered arms was not by Mamluks, though likely with influence from Mamluk metalworking traditions.

The volume of materials held in the shops at Khartoum was enormous, as Gordon had profound designs in building and the upkeep of infrastructure in Sudan. It seems the arsenal and affiliated shops were spared in the destruction of the city, with most materials and machines moved across to Omdurman.

There must have been some degree of sheet steel on hand, as many of the weapons known to other tribes who had conscripts and slaves in the Ansar forces seem to have been duplicated and decorated in thuluth are known, many of such commercial material.

This article that you attached is remarkable, and prompted a distant memory of a poem I saw many decades ago, and made an impression. I think it was called 'leap of the Mamluk' and I can still see the illustration of a Mamluk horseman in that action. In this article, it describes this supposed event, and the kind of hyperbole that becomes lore from an article in 'The Spectator' (16 Nov 1907) titled 'The Mamelukes Leap'.

It is complex history through this rabbit hole! but fascinating, and for those of us ever intrigued by the iconic and mysterious KASKARA!

All the best
Jim