[Steven H]

The recent threads on mail-and-plate armour from the Middle East got me thinking:
Why such armour?
What advantage does it possess over the previous mail and lamellar?
Why not European style harnesses?

And on a related note: when did such armour become common?

Thanks.

[Dan Howard]

Once mass produced plate iron becomes available, this type of armour becomes cheaper and faster to produce than regular mail. It also offers better protection than mail. It is far lighter than wearing lamellar over mail. It doesn't require the intricate articulations that western European plate requires so can be made with a lower level of skill. It begins to appear in India and the MIddle East from the 14th century.

[Hisham Gaballa]

Dan beat me to it, but I was going to say pretty much the same thing anyway.

As far as I know this armour seems to have started appearing in Persian miniature paintings around the late 14th century, I believe the earliest surviving examples though date to the 15th century.

With regards to advantages over mail and lamellar, the plates provide extra protection against arrows. Lamellar armour is vulnerable to having the lacing cut. It also has a tendancy to get water logged in bad weather and on its own has much less coverage than mail. Mail-and-plate armour would seem to combine the advantages of mail and lamellar, flexibility, good coverage and protection against arrows.

As to why not European harnesses, well there is actually some evidence that the Mamluks did import brigandines from Europe. Full plate armour however would not have been used as it would be unsuitable for Middle-Eastern styles of warfare which relied heavily on horse-archery tactics and rapid cavalry attacks and withdrawals. Furthermore in the heat of the Middle-East, the lack of ventilation in European plate armour would probably be lethal.

[Steven H]

Thanks for the quick replies.

[Hisham Gaballa]

The short answers is I don't have the sources, or to be more precise I don't recall where I have read it.

However AFAIK from the mid-13th to the late 16th centuries nearly all Middle-Eastern and Russian (it's worth remembering that Muscovite warriors also used mail-and-plate armour) light cavalry and "heavy" cavalry used horse-archery tactics. I can't try this out myself, but it would seem that a plate cuirass with pauldrons and vambraces would be rather awkward for use by horse-archers. The great advantage of mail and plate armours is its flexibility.

Saying that though, a form of plate armour did appear in the Middle-East in the late 15th century and continued to be used until the early 17th century:



(Pictures from "Museo Stibbert, Firenze" No. 4, Turcherie.)

[William Knight]

I've only ever seen an encyclopedia-level summary of the history of samurai warfare, but didn't the Japanese drop the horse archer schtick around the time of the Mongol invasions?
-Wilhelm

[Lafayette C Curtis]

No, they clearly didn't. There are obvious references to horse archers all the way down to the Sengoku Jidai, and beyond in the Tokugawa era. What changed was that they were no longer as prominent as before, since the size of foot contingents grow--and even this was more a result of the increased incidence of warfare in the Sengoku era, which began more than two centuries after the Mongol invasion proper!

[Hisham Gaballa]

Going back to Japanese warriors, although some may have adopted plate cuirasses in the 16th century, AFAIK most Japanese warriors were still using more traditional armour. Furthermore even those with plate cuirasses would still have had more traditional protection for the arms and shoulders not European style pauldrons and vambraces. Once again I've never had the opportunity to try this out for myself, but I'm pretty sure it would be hard to use a bow on horseback while wearing full plate armour.

I think you also have to take into account tradition and fashion. Turkish, Persian and Rus warriors had their own styles and fashions, and they may not have adopted European styles armours because they liked the look of their own better.

[Jean Thibodeau]

Mostly with the arm armour the fan shaped protection on elbow cops would cause the most problems I think getting hit by the bow string !

I'm not sure how much a hindrance a breast plate would be to the use of a bow ? Not very much I think ?

Helm, helmet type would also be important: A wide brim Kettle hat might get in the way of pulling the bowstring fully back and other types of helms might obstruct vision too much.

Various types of Sallets or Barbute should cause no problem ?

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Yes. Fashion certainly played a part. Even the solid and horizontal-lame cuirasses of Japanese make were built according to their technical and artistic sensibilities, not European ones.

BTW, I've tried archery on horseback with a cuirass and it was not a substantial impediment. Pauldrons and plate arm protection would probably have been a great deal more trouble. Even the Japanese archery technique was specifically designed to get their shoulder defenses out of the way before coming into the draw!

[Steven H]

I agree that pauldrons and archery are imcompatible. I had't thought about the large couters though.
But still the basics of European plate could still be done. Cuirass, upper and lower cannon for the arm, spaulder, anything for the legs. All that without compromising the tactics.

Which is what leads me to speculate that other reasons must have been in play.
The weather is concieveable though I'm not sure how 'cool' mail armour is, especially properly padded.
A typical cuirass is bigger than the largest piece of plate in the above picture. Perhaps those chest plates represent the largest piece of iron they could make?

[Hisham Gaballa]

I think it's not so much about coolness as about ventilation. Ventilation is vitally important if you are overheating. Solid steel plates do not allow ventilation, where as mail is obviously full of holes. The padding also plays a vital part. Not only can it "breathe", but I pretty sure that other posters on the forum have mentionned that gambesons and aketons often provide good insulation cooliing down wearers in summer and keeping them warm in winter.

The different style of warfare is also important. After all Russia is bitterly cold in winter, yet the Rus also used mail-and-plate armour until the mid-17th century and the Poles and Hungarians also adopted Turkish tactics AND armour styles in the 16th century.

Finally don't underestimate the importance of fashion and tradition.

For what it's worth, European style cuirasses were adopted in India and used alongside Turco-Persian influenced mail-and-plate armour, but not until the late 17th century.