19c Sudanese Sabre?

[ariel]

I think we have to distinguish between “attribution’ and “habitation”
The former indicates belonging to a certain ethnic military tradition, the latter to the place it was used.
We can see pulwars in Central Asian museums, British swords in Indian arsenals, Portugese, Spanish and French blades on Moroccan nimchas, one of the internet auctions recently sold a a classical Ottoman kilij with obviously latter engraved Sanskrit innscription on the blade. Egerton included Ottoman yataghan into the plate with Nepalese weapons ( likely, it might have been bought there).
How are we to attribute them? IMHO, we may desribe them as “ Moroccan nimcha with a repurposed French ( or other) blade’’, “ Ottoman kilij with ( later) usage in India “, etc.
It will be no different from “Afghani khyber made in India” or “South Indian sword with North Indian handle” etc.
Elgood taught us that a significant proportion of Indian swords were in fact repurposed and mixed creations of different parts and age The same likely appies to weapons from other parts of the world. Weapons traveled, had been repaired repeatedly, acquired new parts, all in different locations.
The only attributable part of Wayne’s sword is its Sudanese scabbard. The rest is a village blacksmith’s rendition of a “european” sword with uncertain atribution.
We can safely call it “ An impovised East African sword” ( simply because to its geographic proximity to Sudan) , but its accurate atribution is incredibly difficult and have a very high chance to be erroneous.

No critique or offence was intended, it was just an attempt to mark the boundaries of our ignorance. We see highly respectable and knowlegeable researchers and dealers dating their examples as “ 17-19th century” or “Likely Turkmeni- repaired Persian shamshir”. My minor quibbles are nothing in comparison.