#takouba

Takouba

I was nosing through Pinterest looking for interesting pictures, as you do, and saw this sword, captioned “An interesting kaskara with inscriptions, Sudan, 19th century”.

Whereupon I went Wait, what? WTF? NFW! and numerous other abbreviations along the basic lines of I Don’t Think So.

I know what a kaskara looks like, and this wasn’t it by a very long chalk. I also know what this sword looks like in its original form. So I used Google Images to reverse search who was playing Silly Buggers, and when the trail led me to a page on vikingsword.com I got a bit of a surprise.

Back in 2012, it seems this sword was listed at auction, as follows…

A LONG SWORD IN THE NAME OF MUHAMMAD AL-MAHDI

SUDAN, 19TH CENTURY

With straight blade inscribed in loose naskh script with the Profession of Faith and the name of the Sudanese leader Muhammad al-Mahdi (La Illah allah Muhammad Rasul All Nasr min allah wa Fath Qarib Muhammad al-Mahdi Khalifa Rasul Allah "There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is his Prophet, help from Allah and present Victory"), one side engraved with a lion within a roundel and pseudo-calligraphic medallions, the hilt with an engraved lattice of quatrefoils, the leather sheath with cowry tassels

43¾in. (111cm.) long 

There’s no mention of any specific sword type, kaskara or otherwise, and that’s good, because the correct name is "fake”. “Forgery” implies far more effort to look like the original than this thing, and I wonder why the posters at Vikingsword were so reluctant to use either F-word.

A post at the bottom of the page suggests that this sword went for £12,000 Sterling (!!) (and it or another from the same source was back on sale in 2014 at a different auction house, with an much-reduced catalogue value of €1000-1500. Even the lower estimate is way too high.

I haven’t been able to track down either auction reference and I wonder about that sale, since people interested in unusual or ethnic weapons tend to know a great deal about them. I know very little about North African pointies in the wide world of shiny sharp things, but I know enough to have pegged instantly that This Is Wrong (just as you don’t need to be a petrolhead to see that putting fake fins on a modern car won’t transform it to a 1959 classic.)

Yet the Vikingsword discussion went well down the page before someone said out loud what I thought at first sight. Cutting a bit of slack is all very well, but there’s such a thing as cutting too much of it.

First, here’s a real 19th century Kaskara from Sudan.

Second, here’s a 19th century Takouba / Takoba from Morocco.

Third, here are a few 15th century Jineta swords from Moorish Spain.

Though all are “straight, cross-hilted swords from Islamic cultures” the shapes of guard and pommel are quite distinctive for each type.

Fourth, here’s the hilt of the sword from the auction and Pinterest. It’s not a kaskara, and the guard and pommel extensions are IMO an attempt to look like a Jineta.

But without those extensions it looks like this.

That’s a modern 20th-21st century reproduction Viking sword by Del Tin.

Here’s the original Viking sword which inspired it, from the National Museum in Copenhagen.

The DT 2102 is discontinued AFAIK (it’s no longer on the website catalogue) but you can still buy one from Kult of Athena.

Takouba

Takouba, Late 19th - Early 20th Century

Takouba, c.1900