I was looking through my copy of Dr. David Nicolle's Arms and Armour of the Crusading Period. I have the second volume on Eastern Europe, the Byzantines, and the Islamic world. While digging through there I found a sword labelled as Figure 92. I found it to be absolutely stunning. Austere yet very clearly gigantic and powerful. It had an odd pommel shape so I went to look it up in Oakeshott and it turns out the pommel is a Type N. It seemed to me that the blade was a type XIIIA and Oakeshott mentions 1 of the only 2 Type N pommeled swords he has seen being a type XIIIA residing in Romania. This particular sword is from a museum, or maybe private collection, in Bucharest, Romania. I don't have a scanner with me and can't seem to track down an image but maybe somebody else has one handy. Regardless, I'd love to see Albion delve more into obscure pommel types.

I don't have that book. Would it be possible for you to get a scan posted of that sword?

To be more specific, it is from the Slatineanu Collection in Bucharest, Romania.

That looks similar to several swords found in river Ljubljanica at Ljubljana (capital city of Slovenia). Below is the picture. And yes, I've bought a scanner. :D

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Two swords from 13. and 12.th century, both have inlaid crosses (left one has a copper ones, right has bronze) [ Download ]

That looks like what Oakeshott called an XIb in "TSITAOC" -- a long narrow-fullered XI blade with a very spatulate tip. I wonder if Oakeshott stuck with that, or eventually dropped the "XIb" classification. Reason is, other than reading about it in TSITAOC, I've never seen a single mention of the XIb type on this board or any other online resource.

Brian M

I wasn't considering the pommel type. I was just looking at the fuller width, blade taper, and tip.

Brian M