African Arm Dagger...finally!

[paolo]

Sorry, here is the pic.
Paolo

[FenrisWolf]

Nice examples, all! I too love these blades; they are among my favorites of the African pieces, both for the aesthetics of the hilt itself, and because for some rason the blades seem to be, if you'll pardon the pun, a 'cut above' the average african piece from that region. I have two of them myself, though neither have an inscription. Nor would I mind having Lou's problem, a whole drawer full!

[Tim Simmons]

"cut above" you cannot have been interested in African arms for much time.

[FenrisWolf]

Originally Posted by Tim Simmons

"cut above" you cannot have been interested in African arms for much time.

I should have been more specific, my mistake. I was thinking in terms of the often crude blades sees in Sudanese daggers, rough metal with file marks. Even the Tuareg pieces that often have elaborate layering and engraving on their hilts tend to have crude blades; functional, but not pretty. Compared to those, these disk-pommeled arm daggers are quite nice. I know that compared to some of the swords and daggers that come out of the Arabian pennensula they aren't all that spectacular (though I think they are vastly superior to the majority of Moroccan jambiyas you see proliferating on ebay, most of which are cheap tourist trash).

[Emanuel]

Warren's post on his Sudanese arm dagger got me looking back on my own daggers.

On one side it says "Al-Kartoum 1317/1900" (top pic).

The opposite side has "Umdurman", and then it has the Hijra date "1100", which would translate to 1688 or so. This doesn't make sense to me...help please.
Furthermore, there is the number 90 just on the other side of the fuller.

Emanuel

[Dom]

Originally Posted by Manolo

Warren's post on his Sudanese arm dagger got me looking back on my own daggers.

On one side it says "Al-Kartoum 1317/1900" (top pic).

The opposite side has "Umdurman", and then it has the Hijra date "1100", which would translate to 1688 or so. This doesn't make sense to me...help please.
Furthermore, there is the number 90 just on the other side of the fuller.

Emanuel

Bravo Manolo good translation

- 1st inscription => 1317 Al Khartoum (الخرطوم al-Kharṭūm) is the capital of Sudan and of Khartoum State.)

- 2nd inscription => 1(?)00 Omdurman (Standard Arabic Umm Durmān أم درمان) is the largest city in Sudan and Khartoum State

[Emanuel]

Merci, Dom!

I started using some reference sites to transliterate arabic. Slow going but quite enlightening.
For those interested: http://www.eiktub.com/
and http://www.omniglot.com/, a source for most languages and alphabets.

Could the 1?00 be used instead of words? What I mean is, can the pronunciation of numerals be used to spell out names or words?

Best regards,
Emanuel