[Lafayette C Curtis]

Try looking at this page:

http://users.actrix.co.nz/moyle/soldier.html

and this:

http://www.umich.edu/~eng415/topics/war/Islamic_Armour.html

They'd give you a fairly good picture of what Muslim equipment looked like in the time of the Crusades.

As for the power of the horsemen's bows, one important factor that we'd have to take into account is range; at the point-blank ranges that horse archers preferred to shoot from, an arrow might have enough energy to have a decent chance of penetrating mail, but the presence of foot archers or crossbowmen on the opposing side would have forced the horse archers out to longer ranges where their arrows wouldn't have been half as effective with little (if any) chance of penetrating mail and the padding beneath.

[Luka Borscak]

Thank you mr. Curtis, very good sites.

[Jean Henri Chandler]

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

[Shayan G]

Mr. Abbott, those sources sound like great reading. Where might I find them?

Thanks for sharing, and thanks for your time!

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

A translation of al-Tartushi's work can be found in "Medieval Warfare: The Unfriendly Interface" by David Nicolle in The Journal of Military History, Vol. 63, No. 3. I'm not sure about Gerard of Quiersy. Matthew Strickland cites it in The Great Warbow.

[Dan Howard]

Found the source about Girard of Quiercy: J. France, Victory in the East. A Military History of the First Crusade, (Cambridge: CUPress), 1994, 143.

Here is another. William de Beaujeu, Master of the Temple was killed by an arrow through the armpit.
The Templar of Tyre, The Deeds of the Cypriots, P. Crawford (ed.), Ashgate: “Crusade Texts in Translation,” 6 (2003).

[Shayan G]

Thank you both for finding those! I'll be raiding my university's library tomorrow, that's for sure.

[Hisham Gaballa]

I took part in a thread a years ago on 13th century Near Eastern arms and armour. Most of the links are dead now, but there is still some interesting stuff:

http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread.php?t=54732

I've also found this site of a group of French reenactors who are trying to recreate some Muslim warriors of the Crusader period:

http://www.1186-583.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=21

[Lafayette C Curtis]

[Gary Teuscher]

As far as the use of metal plates and lammelar corslets, I don't think it was a problem with the quality of Muslim and Greek Iron. I know Damascus was believed to be a manufacturer of high quality swords, though I'm not sure how much of a bearing this has on it.

But mails greatest weakness is arrows. Not that it is easy to penetrate, but from what I have seen Metal lammelar offers a better resistance. Of course one over the other offrers even better resistance! There was some testing of supposedly period draw weight bows against mail armour, and they could pierce at 50 yards on a regular basis. Take it with a grain of salt, I don't know many of the specifics. But if the Turkish bows were indeed stronder, they might penetrate from 75 yards or so. Of course how deep is the penetration I dont's know.

There were certainly accounts of knights in the crusades that might have a handful of arrows sticking out of them with no real injury of any magnitude. From what I have read, the Horse archers would often loose beyond their best range because of fear of the crusaders crossbows. Of course, this would vary a lot deoending on how many crossbows were used, where they were deployed, etc. etc.

Another thing to think about is european knights wore shields. Turkish heavy cavalry used a bow in addition to other weapons (even though the Mamluk dynasty began later in the crusades there were turkish mamluks in the army for years beofre this). So they had no shields to protect them when loosing arrows, a problem for all horse archers. So to me, wearing lammelar or lammelar over mail was important because it was a better form of defense against arrows, and they had no shield to protect them from arrows.

There is one thing though that perplexes me as well. Why were the knights charges if they closed so effective - the Muslims clearly had some of their forces wearing mail or similar armour, and weaponry was similar. A few ideas - the muslims percentage of troops wearing armour was not as high. I think this makes sense, though it's tough to tell even from contemporary illustrations as muslims often wore outer garment that would have covered their mail. Wearing turbans over helms was not uncommon among some. Abother possible idea is that the use of the couched lance was superior to the Muslims methods, though in the earliest crusades I believe the couched style was not the norm even among europeans. I don't fall for the knights bowling over their opponents smaller horses - everything I have read indicates the Eurpean horses were greatly improved when crossbred with middle eastern stock. The horses of the dau were probably in the 900-1100 range, not the weight of modern day draft horses.

Think about one thing - These "smaller" middle eastern horses often came from some of the breeding centers that had not fallen apart with the collapse of the Roman empire, and had been used to carry fully armoured cataphracts in addition to the horses having their own metal armour. The only Roman horse breeding area that continued relatively unharmed in europe was in Spain I believe - which is likley why Andalusians were such a prize mount of European Nobility for hundreds of years.

[Lafayette C Curtis]