Alan
The following answer is long and maybe totally wrong but this is what I see in this knife.
1. There are two categories of “tourist” pieces. In category A there are the massive productions. We are used to see these items in countries with raised tourism like Maroco. In category B there are the local hand made productions that they are in the same style of authentic weapons but they lack the aesthetic and funcional details of the old ones. This item belongs to category B. I will explain
2. The scabbard is kaskara type but it is very poor in the artwork. Old kaskaras have exelent leatherwork even if they are made from cheap material. Because leatherwork is easy to do. You don’t need expensive tools and you don’t have to be rich to decorate your weapon if you like it.
3. The choise of bone hilt is common, but bone has some more advantages: (a) it is cheap, practically free, (b) it is easy to work it, (c) it looks exotic – ethnographic in a tourist’s eye.
4. In real items the bone is boiled and worked to take a form and after this it is filed to be smooth. A hilt must be smooth, no? In this example it looks just carved. If is very possible after some time of use this hilt to broke in pieces and it is rather uncomfortable.
5. I cannot be sure about the quality of blade from the photo. What I see is a piece of metal that was not forged and it cannot be sharp or stay sarp after sort use. Plus this piece of metal was cut to fit on the hilt. Usualy the hilt is made after the blade not the opposite. But here the difficult part was to carve the hilt.
Finally figure looks like a Pharaoh. It is not what you expect from a muslim or paganist paysant to carve. So I still vote for Al Halili market in Cairo. A nice place to find little things like this for few dolars.
My advice: Smile for it. I know. My first fake was from there also!
