What intrigues me the most on the kaskara, among many things of course, is how the traditions that became focused on these swords in their ersatz development in the mid 19th c. became so firmly emplaced in the 20th century from the form as it evolved during the Mahdiyya.
The familiar 'dukari' (dual crescent moons) seem to be native interpretations of the well known crescent moon seen in the cosmology of European blade motif of the 18th century. These kinds of astral symbols were of course well known in other cultural contexts, which included native folk religions, so they were easily absorbed in those in Saharan regions.
The native interpretation (Rodd, 1928) was 'magic' which was imbued into the blade. In the European sense these perceptions were 'quality', while to the native population it meant power, warrior strength.
As Briggs (1965) said, as far as he had known, no cases of these dual moons were of European origin, and if blades were imported, they were placed accordingly cold stamped by native artisans.
As stamps wore through and were broken from use, they degenerated and much as with coins having faulted imprints from degraded dies, often more recent examples of these 'dukari' can be identified in this way.
It appears that in more modern times, as well illustrated in Ed's research, as well as in some of Briggs et al, the character of these 'moons' became altered into stylized geometrics in like configuration and became essentially makers marks, as Ed discovered.
These two kaskara are of Mahdiyya era ,
The first, in acid etched thuluth script, with 'dukari' and brass guard, as found in these types of weapons produced at Omdurman post Khartoum. Many other weapon forms were also acid etched in this manner, and taken from the field at the battle site.
The next is an entirely crocodile covered kaskara, with the foot as hilt, clearly not conducive to combat use, but in my opinion likely to chieftains or holy men as more symbolic. The crocodile as I have been told was revered and feared, and while many have scoffed at these as 'souvenir', most evidence I have found shows this was not necessarily the case.
Note the cosmological motif on the blade.
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