Recently made Omani Kattara / Saif

[Iain]

Originally Posted by David

As for the other question at hand, i admittedly know very little about these swords, but to my untrained eye i cannot see how the hilts on these so-called "dance swords" would be at all practical in a battle situation. Not only is there no cross piece to protect the hand, but also no pommel of any substance to keep the blade from slipping out of the hand in the heat of battle.

Same set up can be seen on a variety of other swords, biggest example would be Manding sabres. That's not to say I claim to know the function of the Omani sayf, but the configuration isn't necessarily something that makes it entirely impractical as a weapon.

As for the other issue of rehilting... I have always maintained we should preserve what comes into our possession. When you are putting something entirely new onto a piece, rather than preserving what exists, or carefully restoring missing pieces to an already existing hilt, it ceases to be restoration.