It is generally held that the 'genoui' is a straight bladed 'koumyya' dagger of Algeria which is a variant if the Arab janbiyya from the Maghreb.
The apocryphal story for the term has always been that it derives from the influx of edged weapon blades coming from the state of Genoa in Italy.
The koummya itself is believed to owe its unique hilt design to the Italian cinquedea small sword.
Italian weapons and blades had profound influences not only in colonial regions but throughout Europe for centuries.
Many bayonet blades were found in North African edged weapons, notably the Moroccan s'boula, which later was misidentified as a 'Zanzibar swords' as well as even Amharic in Ethiopia, in both cases from diffusion from Morocco to these locations via trade caravan networks.
There were indeed many weapons taken as souvenirs during events in that 1960s conflict and I knew persons who had indeed acquired swords and other weapons from these times, most of course going to France
|