Taureg(?) knife for comments

[Iain]

Originally Posted by colin henshaw

I think Iain is on the button here - to describe this knife as "Taureg" is the same as calling any spear from Southern Africa "Zulu"...

A nice real piece certainly.

Hi Colin,

Glad you agree - this issue is a bit of a pet peeve with me, which probably stems from the frustration of seeing all takouba labelled as Tuareg but I'm digressing...

Even if this knife was in use in a Tuareg area in an earlier period, it would be unlikely to have been carried by what most people would recognize as a Tuareg - a Imajaghan caste member who would more likely carry a telek. The Tuareg had many client castes and many were not of the same ethnic background as the upper class Tuareg (see Ikelan).

On top of this styles across the western Sahel seem to have been shared across quite large areas - for example takouba, or cross hilted teleks (the all brass examples being often ascribed to the Tuareg but were mainly made far away in Bida Nigeria).

I hope this gives a little more background Russel on why I'd give a generalization rather than an exacting attribution in this case. If I owned the piece I wouldn't consider this a bad thing at all.