Rick, The mark on the forte is for the year 1943, but not the quilion, they quilion just says year, next time I am out to I'll trying finding and looking at swords like yours to see if there was anything else on the quilion.
DOM in Persia, modern day Iran, to my knowledge it happened about the same time. Supposedly around the same time they changed the name from Persia to Iran (early 20th century), they change the yeah format as well. I could be wrong, since I have not read it in a book just have heard it from different sources. In Afghanistan the months are Arabic names of the Zodiac months, and in Iran they use the ancient Persian names. Today is the 14th day of Hoot (afg) Esfand (Ir) Pisces (Zd) in the year 1390, 14/12/1390 = 04/03/2012. Nawrooz (New year) is in 16 days
