Omani Saifs...

[Rivkin]

What puzzles me in qattaras, in particular in straight ones is how many of the blades actually look western european. Take for example Caucasus or India - in both we have a huge influx of western made trade blades that actually look 100% western (hussar, venitian gurda, smallsword, rapier) with very few exceptions of special order swords. What follows is that locals start to rip off western trademark, deforming it in the process until it barely recognized, or not recognized at all.
With straight Omani kattaras we have a different story - the sword is very different from anything western past I would say 16th century, yet we see the blades that can quite clearly be dated to the 17th or even 19th centuries, in addition bearing perfectly recognizable and well done wolfs, stars and moons, I mean we see a few obvious local (or indian, persian ?") rip-offs here and there, but the majority of swords still has quite western looking symbolics.

If these are all locally made, while the wolf is by far less deformed than in Caucasus? Why we see so many moon and stars, wolfs, hands with swords, most of them with such a good quality of engraving? If these would be locally made we would expect a slightly broader distribution of skills and styles? And why they would emulate western swords, if at least at some time they were not buying such swords in masses? But then, if these blades are western, why go to such difficulties producing swords specifically for Oman? Or could it be that some of these swords are actually very old western swords, but then again - most of kattaras are somewhat thinner than a typical medieval western sword with a much more "roundish" point. But yet again one can try to blame it on extensive use.