Trade blades in West Africa

[Rumpel]

I came across this in The Book of the Sword by Victorian soldier, polymath & sword enthusiast Sir Richard Burton (1884); I wasn't sure which thread to put it in, but thought it an interesting point of departure for speculation regarding, presumably, Takouba blades, whether or not it's accurate.

[Iain]

Originally Posted by Rumpel

I came across this in The Book of the Sword by Victorian soldier, polymath & sword enthusiast Sir Richard Burton (1884); I wasn't sure which thread to put it in, but thought it an interesting point of departure for speculation regarding, presumably, Takouba blades, whether or not it's accurate.

Yes, its a mixture of tidbits from other sources, Malta seems a likely spot for some blades to have come from but this does not mean we are talking about loads of old crusader Medieval blades. Rather we are talking about a trade from the usual blade centers of Germany and Italy facilitated via Maltese ports. It's a quite that I think has been a) not rigorously examined and b) taken out of context to imply some secret trove of Crusader swords turning up in Africa.

As for the 50,000 figure it comes from Barth with a little embellishment about the locals not being able to make their own which is more or less nonsense as other Hausa cities did, Kano had relatively poor iron ore (say compared to Sokoto) and was a massive regional trade center hence the focus on imports.