What do we know about blacksmithing techniques in Africa ?
 

I've been trying to obtain information about the techniques of blade/sword smithing in Africa....but have discovered little. Limited resources in some areas, such as fuel for the forge, suggests that perhaps shortcuts were taken in the forging process. Spring states that the African blacksmiths had a very good knowledge of metalwork and forging. I found these black and white photos which are of interest.
The cultural customs and beliefs that surround African blacksmiths are also very interesting....many were segregated from the main tribes as 'unclean' and often feared for the 'powers' they possess.

Has anyone any information they would like to add ...or any book references they know about..........thankyou

Hello David, here are references for a very good book (in french):

Outils de forge du Congo, du Rwanda et du Burundi.

author Emma Maquet

Musee Royal de L'Afrique Centrale - Tervuren - Belgique
Annales - Nouvelle Serie In - 4° - Sciences Humains - n° 5, 1965

A.T. Bryant inThe Zulu People has 16 pages on the process. Bryant talks about the evolution of the process of iron making and iron working among the African people.

Eileen Krige The Social sytem of the Zulus describes the process ammong the Zulu.

Henri A Junod The Life of a South Africa Tribe describes the iron making process in the Tsonga tribe a close relation of the Zulu's. Nice picture of a furnace.

I wish to add my humble personal observations.

Here is a picture of a Dogon blacksmith in Mali (2005). I found him in a tiny village near a great cliff. The other picture is a knife bought to him (but clearly not new !).

The working boy is his son. His father learned his art from his own father. The young fellow is activating a typical forge made of two "drums", a "Y" pipe and a charcoal fire.

The Dogon are no longer using their own iron ore found by mining : they buy it in town from time to time.

The village's blacksmith is mainly forging utilitarian things, but occasionaly traditional knifes. The Dogons are not a warlike people, so swords are not made by those workers.

Sincerely,
Zan

One thing to note in the Zulu scheme of things is that the blacksmith makes the blade, the Spearmaker gets the blades and makes the spears.

I can find no specific reference to knife or sword making in these works, but it may be there. The problem is indexing.

In Junod there is no reference to knife or sword. While browsing the pages I found a picture of weapons and one is described as a dagger. Yep, there's dagger in the index. That illustration also shows some interesting axes.

Again a example of poor indexing, is this passage:

Nope no mikwa in the index either. There is no other details on this weapon or it's construction and no mention of such a weapon by the authors.

Shaka's iKlwa is about as close as it appears that the Southern tribes got to Swords.

Hope this helps. At least it might give you an area to not spend time researching.

Thankyou Gentlemen for your input, and extra thanks to Emanuel (Manolo) and Douglas (Double D) for the PDF's and word documents they e-mailed. :)
Please.....if anyone else has any info, pics etc please feel free to PM me or add to this thread..........all donations gratefully received ..