[Jeton Osmani]

good day to you's

i have 2 questions regarding islamic ( and russian/indian) maille and plate armour?

1. how effective was maille and plate armour at stopping heavy crossbow/longbow and lance strikes, i know that maille by itself is very effective against peircing strikes(although i have seen maille being peirced by heavy longbow/crossbow attacks and lance strikes), but most maille and plate armours i have seen have plates protecting the stomach and neglect reaching all the way to the chest area, so how did maille and plate armour protect if heavy peircing blows missed the plate sections.

2. how much did it cost to make such armour and who could afford it, i heard that such armour was only affordable by the emirs and pashas?


thank you for your time

p.s this is my faviroute armour. so thats why i am asking

[James Arlen Gillaspie]

Hello, Jeton, the type of armour you are describing existed in the thousands. Though often shown in museums on horseback, I think it best suited light cavalry use, with the shield protecting the upper chest. I would not be surprised if it was common for infantry use as well, but hopefully someone more qualified than I can comment on that. I have one in the shop right now, and the plates in their present condition are not that thick; perhaps about 0.050" thick. The attachment I have added shows the sort of thing that the heavy cavalry would have worn, although some of the details look a little off to me, such as the lower legs and gauntlet/bazubands.

[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

[Daniel Staberg]

[Sean Manning]

Yes, Pedro, today there are whole wheeled racks of Ottoman armour in Istanbul, there is so much that some of it is rusting away. And keep in mind that a favourite kind of Central European cavalry helmet in the 16th/17th century, the zischägge, was copied from the Ottomans!

I would recommend reading some books by specialists in Ottoman, Mughal, and Safavid warfare. It sounds like you are projecting some of the stereotypes which arose when Frankish milites encounted Turkomen cavalry who fought on horseback but did it in a completely different way than the Franks. But in the 12th century Arab, Armenian, etc. cavalry were just as heavily armed as the Franks, check out the works of David Niccole.

Every culture with a militia had soldiers with just a staff and no iron armour, because those were the only weapons poor people could afford. You need to compare like with like. Saying that if metal armour was rare in Arabia in Mohammed's day, it must have been rare for all Arabs a thousand years later, is like saying that because ancient Germanic warriors used bone-tipped spears and shields with wooden bosses, stories of an armour industry in 15th century Innsbruck and Nürnberg and Augsburg must be exaggerated

[Niels Just Rasmussen]

[Sean Manning]

Also, remember that the Franks exported iron products to the Moslem world, but from the 12th century onwards they imported cotton by the shipload to stuff their aketons, gambesons, jupons, pourpoints, jacks, and doublets. Technologies like counterweight trebuchets and gunpowder probably came from the east as well. So its important to look at the whole picture, not just pick one technology that your favourite culture was good at.

[Jeton Osmani]

i will ask questions of how common armour was in the medieval islamic nations in another topic.


the question of how effective maille and plate armour was against crossbows and lances still needs to be answered fully.




i tend to think that becuase islamic armies where much bigger than european armies, that the ratio of soldiers wearing armour must be smaller than european armies, but then i could be wrong.

[Sean Manning]

[Bartek Strojek]

I have one period source about behter* armour saving wearer from gun shot.

From Mohylew, A.D . 1655, not Islamic or Russian, but Polish (Ruthenian?) officer Samuel Jan Januszkiewicz, but still:

[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

[Jeton Osmani]

after reading pedros post about the quality of ottoman troops i am quite surprised as to how they managed to conquer all that territory if most ottoman soldiers were lightly armed and armoured.

it just begs the question of how can ottoman and in wider cases islamic soldiers go to battle with with minimun or no armour at all. at least just make some brigandine or lammellar armour as munitions armour as its cheaper than maille or solid breastplates and equip your basic soldiers so that you dont have to suffer atrocious casualties or humiliating losses.

i can imagine most muslim soldiers being sitting ducks with their tiny shields and civilian garments, while being hacked by their superior european enemies.

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

Bertrandon de la Brocquière specifically described the Ottoman armor he saw, which was mail with some plate reinforcements. He did note that many Ottoman soldiers were minimally equipped, perhaps lacking even helmets.

Early 15th-century Ottoman soldiers probably were less likely to have armor than Western European ones of the same period, but the best Ottoman cavalry had equipment rather similar to European light/medium cavalry. & at least later (16th-century) Western European armies often contained significant numbers of troops equipped with no armor other than helmets. There's a lot of evidence that indicates it simply wasn't cost-effective at the time to equip all or even most infantry with armor in larger armies. Captains like Machiavelli & Raimond de Fourqueveaux ideally wanted to do so, but Fourqueveaux acknowledged that his arming scheme might not really be practical.

Also note that Bertrandon de la Brocquière, like many other Western European Christian observers, was making the case that Christians could defeat the Ottomans. While most everything he wrote seems plausible enough, he may well have downplayed Ottoman military strength for the purpose of his argument. In any case, he noted the impressive discipline & coordination of Ottoman armies. Numerical superiority & excellent organization can matter more than high-quality equipment. Additionally, the Ottomans rather quickly adopted firearms & artillery.

While certainly armor or more/better armor could constitute a major advantage against Ottoman troops, the Ottomans nonetheless defeated various armies that contained well-armored units, whether Western European, Eastern European, Persian, or what have you.

As far as general claims about Islamic soldiers go, keep in mind that Persian cavalry was famously heavy throughout the 16th century. (I'm not sure about earlier & later.) At the end of it, Sir John Smythe remarked that the Persians were one of the only nations to still deploy proper men-at-arms: fully armored riders on armored horses.

[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

[Jeton Osmani]

thanks pedro

at least question 2 is sort of answered, although i do think that maille and plate armour looks cheaper and quicker to make due the fact that the plate sections may have saved up the time compared to making a full maille haubark. maybe a maille and plate huabergon or byrnie should at least be affordable to a person with a modest amount of money, or maybe people in the ottoman and mamluke states might actually be poorer than the europeans commoners.

but i think the discussion of how common armour was in the islamic world should go to a different thread. i look forward to see the discussions their.

[Samuel Bena]

[Jeton Osmani]

for anybody still curious about question 1, i have done some research and i will try my best to answer my question that i posted earlier.


most of the maille and plate armours that i have seen usually have the plates protecting the stomach while the chest is protected by maille.

so the question is how did the maille sections of this armour protect the wearer from heavy crossbows and lance strikes. from digging around the internet and even on a ian heath book called "armies of the middle ages, volume 2", the maille sections where made from very thick or very small links to increase the protective power of this type of armour, according to what i read on the internet, smaller or thicker links were very protective against heavy peircing strikes, there are some theories that small or thick rings may have been double maille which was known for its protection against almost all types of peircing shots.


if i have put in wrong information, please feel free to correct me.

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

[Daniel Staberg]