Mystery Inscription on Controversial Sword

[TVV]

Loma script on blades mounted in Morocco sounds fascinating, but unfortunately also totally improbable. The sboula that started the thread is probably from the end of the 19th century or early 20th century, predating the Loma script. Even if you somehow can get past that, why would anyone in Morocco inscribe a blade in some obscure Trans Saharan language and not Arabic?

I still feel that an illiterate smith/engraver putting something that visually imitates older European marks is the most plausible explanation. The vast majority of Sboulas (and Genouis) are from cut down European blades, and any local production apparently needed to at least look like the imports in order to be marketable.

[werecow]

Originally Posted by TVV

Loma script on blades mounted in Morocco sounds fascinating, but unfortunately also totally improbable. The sboula that started the thread is probably from the end of the 19th century or early 20th century, predating the Loma script. Even if you somehow can get past that, why would anyone in Morocco inscribe a blade in some obscure Trans Saharan language and not Arabic?

I still feel that an illiterate smith/engraver putting something that visually imitates older European marks is the most plausible explanation. The vast majority of Sboulas (and Genouis) are from cut down European blades, and any local production apparently needed to at least look like the imports in order to be marketable.

You're probably right that it isn't Loma, but I think we should be a little cautious before we assume that this is simply a meaningless imitation of European scripts. It's certainly a possibility.... but is it possible that Loma was derived from or inspired by an earlier form of writing from the general area that is a better match in symbols, time and space? It seems unlikely that it was just invented out of thin air. Unfortunately searching omniglot is not entirely trivial. Do we have any historical grammatologist around who specialized in 19th century North-West African scripts?

[TVV]

Is there any evidence of a form of non-Arabic writing that was widespread in Western Africa from the Mediterranean all the way down to the Gulf of Guinea?

When it comes to cut down blades and imitations, let me illustrate with a few sboulas I have. The first one is clearly a shortened blade, as you can see by the way the fullers terminate abruptly. It has a script very similar to the sboula Charles posted at the start of this thread, but to me it looks more like a random combination of Ds and Ns than anything else:




Then we have another one which looks like a cut down backsword blade, but may be a native imitation given how the fullers are not perfectly straight. Instead of writing, it has simple dots:




Finally, here is one that sports a flimsy, locally made blade. On that one we have simple decorative swirls:




In all three examples we have something added to the blade locally, ranging from imitation script to swirls to dots. It does not look like pure decoration, and it does not look apotropaic in nature, like the zig zag decoration on the hilts which was meant to turn away the evil eye. It looks very much like a conscious attempt to create a visual resemblance to markings.

I can imagine locals trying to imitate scripts like "Andrea Ferrara" or "Me Fecit Solingen". The artisan who is copying directly from an original may do a decent approximation, but then the next artist is copying from the copy, and so on and so forth. By the time we get to the second half of the 19th century, the 17th or 18th century originals are long gone, and the marking is devolved to what we see on the blades in this thread.

Just my humble opinion on this subject, and I am certainly keeping an open mind, as I have no way of knowing with absolute certainty what these inscriptions are meant to represent.

[AHite]

I am inclined to believe that the script on this blade is an imitation of Latin writing mainly because of the use of Sarif (winged) lettering, or an attempt at it. The blade smith stamped in wings that hit and miss on the letters. An interesting marketing ploy to give a product an unqualified provenance of quality, which continues to this day.