Earliest Use of Paired Crescent Moons on Solingen Blades

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by DStirk

Hi Chris,
Thanks for confirming my suspicions. It looks like my stepdad bought a made-up sword I guess. When you say early for Kaskara blades do you mean 18th Century as opposed to 19th, or are they all relatively recent?

I've taken some measurements:
Blade length - 90cm
Full length (Blade & tang) - 98cm
Blade width at crosspiece - 43mm
Blade thickness 4.45mm
Three full length fullers on a flat blade.
Paired crescent moons on both sides of blade.

On the subject of the fire, yes a disaster, but it could have been much worse. Most of the collection was saved by repeated trips out of the house by the family while the burnt roof started to collapse. I will leave judgement about the wisdom of that to others. I was able to intervene as the burnt swords, lances, dirks and various WW2 firearms were being taken to the local dump. I have restored about half of them so far, and one more house-fire just adds to the history of the items in my opinion. Pics of restoration before and after attached.

Cheers,
Duncan

Hi Duncan,
In my opinion, most of the 'made up' knightly swords using the blades from the hoardes of souvenir kaskara blades dragged back from the Sudan after Omdurman (1898) were medieval in form rather than 18th century Scottish basket hilts. At least this was the scenario as described by the late Ewart Oakeshott. Typically these were medieval style hilts and often on what were authentic European blades, and sometimes genuinely early.

These triple fuller blades (termed 'masri' in the Tuareg and other tribal dialects) seem to have likely been Solingen exports which came into North African ports and there marked with the crescent moons (dukari). While it has been long held that these were native made blades, it has become more likely these were Solingen 'blanks' produced in the very active Solingen industry.

While it seems that a number of Scottish basket hilts appear to have had these kaskara blades installed in them, the hilts are generally quite older than these blades. The Scots were basically not carrying basket hilts after the '45 (1745) and the proscription of weapons.......the exceptions being the dirk daggers and numbers of dragoon basket hilts used in cavalry and others in some infantry units, all in British service.

By the time of these kaskara blades, these old Scottish hilts were long out of service, since c. 1800.
However, there are possibilities of later use of these heirloom Scottish basket hilts used in British colonial settings. I have seen Indian native offcials associated with the Khyber Rifles proudly displaying Scottish basket hilts in the late 1890s, early 1900s, about the period of the kaskara blades.
This could offer a plausbiility for the chronologcal disparity.

Many 'made up' swords were essentially authentic in degree using old hilts, or genuine old blades. Decoration in the stately baronial mansions in Victorian times was keenly important, so these 'composed' arms were well known and an area of collecting most interesting and established.