Nimcha markings

[Philip]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

It seems that there must have been certain entrepots in North Africa which applied these kinds of markings copying European ones onto the blades which came in as trade materials, From there they went to trade clients and into the networks.

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Interesting point, Jim. In the case of the blade under discussion, maybe the letters aren't supposed to mean anything, like a specific name. Could well be that the workers at these entrepots, who may or may not have been literate, just put what could pass for Roman letters on a blade to add cachet to a product.

I'm sure you are familiar with the blades and, more commonly, barrels on weapons made in the Balkans with similar dodgy markings. Like badly misspelled versions of the name Lazarino Cominazzo. Or the cryptic sequences of capital letters repeated in sequential patterns done in imitation , albeit more crudely executed, of similar sequences seen in the fullers of rapier blades made by smiths in the town of Caino, in Lombardy. I've seen some of these letter patterns in which the characters appear to be derived from both Roman and Cyrillic letters.