Судан и Большой Ближний Восток

233 Alexander S. Matveev. A Case of Survival of an Early Medieval Straight Sword... the museums. Thus, for example, the above-mentioned collection in the Royal Museum of Scotland has never been exposed, nor studied. *** The first mentioning of the Sudanese swords in the scholarly lite­ rature goes back to the end of the 19th century, being connected — not surprisingly — with the above-mentioned English fighting against the troops of Mahdi. Lord Egerton of Tatton, amajor late 19th C. specialist in Indian and Persian arms and armour, had to add a new chapter to the 2nd edition of his book onOriental weaponry. 1 It concerns the Sudanese arms which became familiar to the British during the Mahdist war. Among other types of the military equipment, he mentioned straight swords and published two of them from his own collection (No. 191 and 195, the second one, characteristically, was bought in Assouan 2 ). It seems, however, that the interest to such weapons was exhausted by this publication, and afterwards they werementioned only occasionally. Specialists in the history of Middle Eastern weaponry usually just note them in passim as a late material not deserving a special attention. In fact, the only scholarly publication dedicated to the kaskara at the time I had been studying them in 1997, was a ground-breaking article by Graham Reed “ Kaskara from Northern Darfur, Sudan”, based on the field material collected by him in Darfur from April 1984 to March 1985, 3 though it has been published in a specialized journal with relatively limited circulation outside of theUK. Fortunately, in two widely known books dealing with the Arab weaponry, some examples of such swords were published — three in the book of Anthony North 4 and one in the book of Robert Elgood, 5 though no thorough analysis 1 Egerton, Lord of Tatton. A description of Indian and Oriental Armour. London, 1896. P. 155–159; P. 168–169. 2 Ibid. P. 168. 3 Reed G. S. Kaskara fromNorthern Darfur, Sudan // The Journal of the Arms & Armour Society . Vol. XII. No. 1. March 1987. P. 165–201. 4 AnthonyNorth. An Introduction to Islamic Arms. London, 1985. P. 30. Pl. 23a, b, c. 5 Robert Elgood. The Arms and Armour of Arabia in the 18–19th and 20th centuries. Brookfield, Vermont, 1994. P. 16. Pl. 2.12.