[Tom Bancevich]

Can the normal light mail armor with leather Bazubands stand up to a one or two handed battle sword used by the european armies? In a book on richard the lion hearted, he is suppposed to have drawn his sword in a holly land battle, rode up to an islamic cavalryman and sliced his opponent from shoulder to waist with one blow of his sword. Is that possible?
And just how effective were the middle eastern saber, scimitars, shamsirs on european mail and plate reinforcements or the brigandine?

Im just wondering as im considering an islamic set of armor that ive read about (everyday shirt, gambeson/aketon, light hauberk of mail, leather arm guards)

[Hisham Gaballa]

[Ruel A. Macaraeg]

It should be pointed out that "Islamic" doesn't constitute a true category of armor or weapons. Much of what's called "Islamic" armor is identical to analogous armor in Europe. In fact, many of the terms are identical across the languages.

For example, Persian chahar aina 'plate of mirrors'/ Russian zertsalo 'mirror' plate; Turkish shishaq/German zischagge (helmet with visor, sliding nasal, and plate aventail); Turkish/Persian/Russian kalkan (round shield usually of wooden or rattan rings); Turkish/Russian yushman (mail shirt with horizontal lamellar plates); Turkish mec/Polish miecz/Russian mech (cavalry thrusting sword); Arabic khanjar/Russian konchar, kinzhal (large knife or dagger). These are just a few examples.

[Hisham Gaballa]

[Ruel A. Macaraeg]

[Hisham Gaballa]

[David R. Glier]

I think the quality of the soldier has much more to do with the results you're coming up with than the quality of the armor and equipment. At the time, in the East, everyone west of Germany was seen as bloodlusting, uneducated, savage barbarians. They thought "the Franks" -their name for everyone European- verily *lived* on warfare and bloodshed.
"The Franks" for their part thought of the Greeks and Arabs as weak, effete cowards who couldn't hold a battle line if their balls depended on it.

Think of the paradigms here. "Strike swift, and skillfully", vs. "Strike hard, and take a blow like a man". The equipment was virtually the same at the time -it was the PLAYERS who were different. It would be like throwing a World Cup Football team into a brawl with an NFL Football team, or a Tennis club against a Lacrosse team, a Foxhunt club against a company of Rebel ACW Cavalry reenactors, or the members of your local Dojo against a platoon of Marines. The Greeks thought of themselves as Romans, and their solders drilled and paraded proudly through Constantinople. The Arabs were proud of the empire their ancestors had conqured in the name of Allah, and thought of themsleves as hardy, indomitable desert warriors. And then the Europeans were people who fought mass battles on horseback -in which people were routinely killed and maimed- for FUN, who hit each other with spears at 50 miles an hour for relaxation, who drew steel at snickers or odd glances, who went to full-scale war with their neighbors if they married the wrong person, who hunted wild boar with spears and swords in their plainclothes because it wasn't sporting to wear armor... They were living in entirely different worlds.

When I read about the Crusades, and the reactions the various Eastern actors had to the Western Crusaders, I'm often called into mind of the early Republic. The Romans conquered their world in large part because Hellenistic armies prefered to vie for favorable battlefield positions over fighting. They would rather surrender than fight a battle they might lose. The Republic lost entire Legions at a time and kept on fighting -and before the Romans subsiquently conquered them, their enemies though they were downright bloodthirsty and just plain nuts. It wasn't their equipment that won their wars -especially early on.

Yes, on average I would say a european sword of Types X-XII was better ballanced and cut better than an arabic sword used during the same time period, but Crusader armor (other than their very good helmets) was probably inferior if you get right down to it. You'll be just fine in that suit.

[Ruel A. Macaraeg]

Hi David,

Couple responses here, intended primarily for conversation and clarification.

[Hisham Gaballa]

[Hisham Gaballa]

[David R. Glier]

Thank you Hisham, that was exactly what I was driving at. At the time of the most successful crusades -during the First, the campaigns of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the successes before the debacle at Hattin, and even (to a slightly lesser extent) during the Third- the arms and armor of the Europeans and the middle easterners they faces was supremely similiar. Differences are aesthetic and decorative at best. (again, to a lesser extent at the time of the Thrid.) After all, what is the difference between the protective value of Syrian maille and French maille? Or the difference between a conical helmet and an onion-shaped helmet?

Ruel, the points you raised would be -for the peoples of the East- very abberant behavior. We have people who do the same in our own countries today, but you'd hardly call them the norm! In Europe though, that behaviour was status quo.
The Byzantines had held on to Greek and Roman civilization -they had never fallen. The illiterate, fanatic Bedouins (I know that's not who they were, but that *is* what the looked like) who swept out of Arabia three centuries before had adopted Persian culture in whole cloth -they had become the image of the people they conquered. These were two groups of highly sophisticated, educated, mannered... civilized peoples who were suddenly thrust into conflict with a large group of comparative BARBARIANS who had exactly the same level of military technology. What would you *expect* to happen?

The Crusaders wrote at length about the institutional bravery but personal cowardace of their Greek allies and Arab enemies. I find it difficult to believe that men defending their homelands were that cowardly. On the other hand, I find it very *easy* to believe that the Arabs and Greeks were perfectly normal, stouthearted soldiers, but that their Frankish opponents were *so* hard-core (at the time) that they were made to look bad in comparison.
On the other hand, they found the Turks to be tough customers. Is it a coincidence that the Turks were a lesser developed people, with traditions of hard living and martial play? Rural Turks *still* ride around on steppe ponies, flinging blunt javelins at one another -for FUN. They don't wear armour in that game, either. I'm seeing some serious cultural correlations!

[Felix Wang]

Wow!

Many, many issues.

I will try to make my comments separate, and not too confused.

The very first issue is the effectiveness of armour (Muslim) against swords (Crusader). AFAIK, no one has done destructive testing, nor is anyone likely to have the chance. However, much is known about the strength of European armour against various weapons. The general concensus is that armour of the Crusading era - mail, aketon/gambeson underneath, and helmet - was not easily breached by weapons of the day. In particular, swords rarely cut through such armour. Of course, the literature of the day makes it sound like this happened fairly often - but the literature must be judged carefully. Most of it was written far away from the field of battle where the fighting occurred, and it was written for the fighting classes. Naturally the audience wanted to hear about something exciting, which means (among other things) something out of the ordinary. Hitting a guy with a sword, stunning him, and watching him fall off his horse and be trampled to death is a fine way of killing him. However, it lacks entertainment value compared to slicing his helmet and head into two pieces, with one eye falling left and the other eye falling to the right.

I don't have a lot of data about Muslim (Syrian / Egyptian) mail, but from what I can tell, it wasn't significantly inferior to European stuff. This implies that chopping armoured Muslims in half didn't happen all that often.

[Tom Bancevich]

The period im thinking on is the era of Vlad the impaler. Iadmit it wasnt good to be a turk who lost to his forces, but the turk offered death for those who refused to convert.

The last vlad fil was a 2 part series on tnt, they did pretty good and they show the same turkih armor as most drawings ive seen:
onion helmet, padded gambeson under a mail shirt, with pieces of courbulli on various parts and that is what i want to replicate as it could also be used to portray the byzantine troops from scandinavia, and even a 1300 ad european man at arms. even similar to a few pictures of rusian armor if seen that depict alexander nevskis armyfighting the muslim invasion.

I just wanted to see what historical records said about the usefulness of muslim armor agaisnt european swords.

[Gordon Frye]

Tom;

Check into the painting "The Battle of Orsha" of 1514 between the Poles and Muscovites. Here's a link to the wikipedia site on it, with a display of the painting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Orsha

The painting shows a LOT of interesting details, from the Pole's use of European Heavy Cavalry in Maximillian Armour complete with heavy horses wearing matching bardings, German arquebusiers and artillery, Polish light cavalry, and of course the various Muscovite forces.

Most of the Muscovites are shown wearing quilted coats with onion-helmets, but there are some (as I recall) in maille as well.

Anyway, as far as I know it's the only detailed artwork showing a battle between Eastern and Western armies that might be of some use to you. Earlier artwork is too stylized (and not exactly detail-oriented), while later artwork would involve too many later developments such as firearms. I would suspect that the clash between the Polish light horse and the Muscovites would be of the most interest to you.

I hope it is of some help to your study!

Cheers,

Gordon

[Ryan A. C.]

[Gordon Frye]

[David R. Glier]

Sometimes I wish that more of us sword fans would hang out with the armour fans, too.

Had this question been asked on the Archive, the answer would have looked like three or four short posts full of simple declarative sentences, ammounting to roughly the same conclusion we're reaching after twenty five posts.

[Hisham Gaballa]

[Felix Wang]

"The reasons I raise these points with you, David, is that they resemble the arguments made in Hansson's Carnage and Culture, which famously posited that Western military success in more recent centuries is due to some innate and unique characteristic in the European mind (basically a cultural determinist model). To me at least, his arguments don't hold up when placed against the much stronger contextual/environmental scenario offered in Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. I don't see a clear military-cultural boundary here, either during the Crusades or later. All the players involved were apparently shaped by proximal and environmental influences, and their shifting performances demonstrate that these influences were much more powerful than any culturally predetermined traits. I'd go so far as to say that talking about separate "European" and "Islamic" martial traditions is more a convenience than a reality."

I agree that Diamond's book is a ground-breaking work, looking at the development of different societies in ecological/economic terms. Hanson is interesting as a case in the development of a thinker, since his background is as a classicist. Most of his later writings are outside of his original field, and I have not been terribly impressed. However, his original two works are very interesting - Warfare and Agriculture in Ancient Greece, and The Western Way of War. The second book is mis-titled, and that twist is what took him off his foundation and sent him into celebrity. The book itself is extremely good, as is the first work. If you aren't familiar with it, Hanson's basic premise is simple, and hard to argue. The ancient writers make a great deal of fuss about invaders burning and destroying the crops and fields, and this has been understood to mean that hoplites went out, in their oddly formal battles, to defend the crops. Hanson is, I think, one the only classicists who has had any practical experience with Mediterranean agriculture. From his own experience and that of generations of farmers who relied on olives, grapes, and grain, he concluded that the damage which was actually done to Greek farms during the summer invasion period was relatively minor. The hoplite armies were not fighting about straight economic / agricultural survival, but in a considerable part about an idea.

The Greeks did develop a very intense form of warfare, and while it was limited, it was also very powerful in its way. They were not the only people to specialize in intense warfare - I believe that both Japanese warfare and the Zulu way of war were intense, and were disruptive to their neighbors. In all three cases, these fighters showed a willingness to seriously risk their lives en mass and in a disciplined fashion - which tended to shock and dismay their neighbors.

John Lynn's Battle is an interesting discussion of warfare as it varies from on society to another, based on their concept of what war is and should be. He seriously critiques Hanson's more generalized claims. Interestingly, he discusses one case which does seriously raise the issue of the importance of a Western society in military success. He discusses the sepoys of India, and makes the point that while European common soldiers were isolated from society (both at home and abroad), the sepoys lived in their society, which honored their role as soldiers - even ordinary infantrymen. The British understood that the social milieu which kept their own soldiers in order wouldn't work in India, and adjusted the social rules. The really intriguing part, which Lynn does not emphasize, is that the sepoys largely fought against the armies of native rulers. These native rulers quickly realized the effectiveness of European armies, and soon created similar units, equally well armed, trained by European mercenaries, and in larger numbers than the British forces. In fact, these forces were sometimes noticeably better armed than the Europeans and their sepoys. Yet when looking at the battle record, a striking fact emerges - that the British and their sepoys win again and again. Usually, they don't win by brilliant spywork, deft maneuvers, or sophisticated use of the terrain (which their enemies usually knew very well, since it was their own lands which the British were invading.). These battles were generally won by sheer grit, with numerically inferior force of sepoys and British regiments hammering straight into a larger force of equally trained, oft better armed (i.e. in artillery) men defending their own lands - and the defenders breaking up under the attack.

The Crusades offer something similar, which isn't clearly explained. We agree that technologically the Europeans had no advantage to speak of, but they adopted the heavy cavalry charge as a major tactic, and no one matched them. Frankish, Byzantine, and Muslim sources all agree that when a Frankish charge did manage to hit its target, the impact was devastating. TheTurkish method of war had a number of advantages, but did not have a direct answer to the Frankish charge - and no Middle Eastern ruler ever thought that they should create a unit to nullify the one great tactic of the Crusaders. The local rulers certainly had the technology, wealth, and a huge advantage in numbers of skilled fighters, but did not attempt this. It would seem there was something which could not simply be transfered from one society to the other.

[Gordon Frye]

In light of Hisham's posted painting of Mohacs, and Felix's comments on Frankish Heavy Cavalry's devestating charge, I would like to point out the rather interesting inclusion of some Turkish Heavy Cavalry in the lower right-hand corner (well, just above the lower right-hand corner, really) of the painting. Chaps wearing helmets and what looks to be maille (which most of the other Turkish Horse isn't shown with), carrying lances and mounted on barded horses. Hard to know if the bardings are quilted cloth, or coverings for heavier armour, but it's there never the less, and looks substantial.

My own knowledge of Mohacs is quite scanty, being limited to the single chapter the Oman devotes to the battle, but it is interesting to note that the Turks had their own "Cataphracts" as it were to counter the Hungarian's Western-style Heavy Horse. Whether they were used or not, I don't recall. Hisham, do you have more details on Mohacs?

Cheers,

Gordon