Krull said:
No offense,but I always thought that most dah's;patangs;and what not were always a bit outlandish looking!
And to me that looks like a khyber.
yataghans, flyssa, sumatran kalisan, kukhri -
they all are related of course, being recurved edge weapons and representing descendants of alexander's universally distributed kopis.
the flyssa is the african version of the yataghan, with a straight spine. with a lot of indo-persian and south east asian weapons, the lines between types blur & make the exact id difficult. one mans parang is another mans golok. sub-saharan african weapons are a bewildering mass of wierd shapes & not in my remit.
the flyssa however almost always has pretty much the same distinctively angular animal shaped & decorated brass covered wooden grip, the same blade shape, and similar brass or bronze blade decorations, and also the same style carved wood scabbard with the distinctive cutout for the baldric.
if you do a google image search on flyssa, you'll see what i mean. differences in length from daggers to long sword versions but overall look almost exactly the same. some wax lyrical about the tribal variants without brass on the grip, but the wood looks exactly the same shape.
khybers are again almost exactly alike, varying in materials or length, rounded birds head shaped grips of varying materials, a straight t-section blade tapering almost straight from the widest point at the grip down to a sharp point. all the ones i've seen have a leather covered wood scabbard where the grip is mostly hidden in it, and is designed to be shoved into a sash. all look like a big french chef's knife.
HI's Udda sword is very like a khyber & i hope to get one eventually when the sharks here finish their feeding frenzies every time one comes out.
the burmese dha, thai dha/darb, viet dha, and its variations is more like the japanese katana, being in general a curved drawcut designed blade with a long handle that can be used two handed or single handed, also come in short & long versions, with different point (or no point) styles. i've got 4, a burmese, a naga (rounded 'point'), and a matched pair of thai darb, not up to my katana's but honest killers. the burmese dha was taken off a dead japanese officer by a chindit in ww2 (maybe with the chindit's kukhri making him an ex-person?) - i got it from his estate...... the japanese valued it enough to carry in place of a katana or one of the mass produced ww2 'swords'.
for a good pictoral reference on ethnic bank-account drainers see:
Linky
