[Noah A. Sabouni]

Here's some mamluke, middle eastern armor. Any thoughts?[/b]

[Vasilly T]

One thought: why didn't they use full plate armour like europeans did? By the looks of this armour it's not a tiny bit less heavy, but certainly offers less protection than plates.

[John Hardy]

[Noah A. Sabouni]

Chain mail does a surprisingly good job at stopping damage

[Pieter B.]

[Noah A. Sabouni]

There was a report from a priest from the Crusade of 1101, describing in horror saracen heavy cavalry. Saying "they feared no sword, axe, mace, lance. They were covered in head to toe in steel and faces covered with mail and masks."

I don't really remember which priest described it, but I remember reading about it in an excerpt about the "1000 atabegs"

Many arab, turkish, persian, kurdish warriors kinda had a Mish mash of their weapons and armor, everyone chipped in. So Arabs wore persian ans armor and etc. I believe they had very heavy armor actually

[Philip Dyer]

[Vasilly T]

I do not think that this kind of armour allows more freedom of movement than a well-fit full plate armour, in fact I think it would allow even less, since the distribution of weight in the latter is made the way it's concentrated on the hips and lower back, thus freeing shoulders and legs from the extra weight.

But I do like the argument about overheating, full plate really is very prone to it. As well as the argument of taking this kind of armour on and off by yourself.

[Pieter B.]

[Noah A. Sabouni]

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

I don't know of any actual tests of the mail-and-plate armor worn by Mamlukes. While I doubt such suits gave the same level of protection against a couched lance as a 15th- or 16th-century Europe breastplate of hardened steel, at least if made of decent metal I suspect the often quite impressive protection.

It's interesting to note that in a 1594 military manual Sir John Smythe wrote that the Persians were one of the few nations that still field men-at-arms. (He wrote that they were only "orientall nation" to do so and also that men-at-arms at effectively fallen out of use in Christendom.) He defined men-at-arms as cavalry "all armed, cap a pie, and their horses verie puissant, and all barbed aswell behind as before." As far as I know, Iranian heavy cavalry at the end of the 16th century wore mail-and-plate armor, but apparently Smythe consider that sufficient to qualify as a man-at-arms. Iranian mail-and-plate armor probably wouldn't handle as pistol ball as well as Smythe's own Greenwich suit but he seems to have respected Iranian armor.

As further aside, historians typically remember Smythe as a stodgy English traditionalist hellbent on using bows in the age of the gun. There's truth to that position, but Smythe additionally took considerable influence from Eastern Europe and Middle Eastern armies, which he encountered in during his military career. He wanted horse archers and Eastern-style light cavalry for England along with the old-fashioned infantry bows and bills. None of that actually happened, of course, but it's fascinating that that was the direction Smythe wanted to go.

[Philip Dyer]

[Noah A. Sabouni]

[Dan Howard]

Heat is not an issue. It never has been. Never in the entire history of warfare has climate been a consideration of what kind of armour a soldier chose to wear.

[Noah A. Sabouni]

[Vasilly T]

[William P]

an interesting thing about warfare in eastern as opposed to western europe i have noticed comes when looking at the usage of precussive weapons like maces hammers and flails, and the design of axeheads found only in the eastern regions.

now im mostly speaking of areas i know such as russia ukraine the steppe nomads of the black sea as well as the byzantine empire

and what we seem to find is MUCH greater usage of precussive weapons in russia we see dozens of finds of maces in the earier centuries wheras in western europe we see only a handfull
in addition. we see axes that take on a more piercing design with small narrow heads that often feature fixtures like hammerheads and varying designs of backspike

and the flail was virtually unheard of in W europe until the 15th century as a knightly cavalry weapon but have a much more significant presence in russia with its own typology.

i would attribute this difference to the fact that in russia, the middle east, asia etc we see MUCH higher usage of small plate armour like scale and lamellar.

im takinlking about these areas in the 900-1200 year mark (my speciality is the early medieva;l period byzantine and russian warfare of around the turn of the milennium)

[John Hardy]

[Vasilly T]

To William P
That is a very interesting point of view, and I must say I totally agree with it.

To John Hardy
Now that point of view is very flawed, if you ask me. First of all, if those percussive weapons would be so effective against supposedly expensive suits of plate armour, then Europe would never go in that direction of adopting the latter.

The topic of weapons vs. plate armour is a matter of debate, and I would not like to start it here, but I will state that according to the data from the "pro armour" side a 2 mm thick hardened plate granted near invulnerability until the appearance of a musket in 16th century. That is partially supported by the data of maximum armour thickness, that wasn't rising until the 16th century and was around 2 mm.

On top of that, there is a thread nearby made by Pieter B., gathering some archaeological data, that shows that most wounds were inflicted to the head of the deceased, and those were not percussive or penetrative wounds, but instead cuts made with a sharp blade, which, along with scarcity of the body wounds, can suggest that the helmets were removed, either by the wearers themselves, or by their opponents, in order to inflict that kind of damage.

Now, about the "expensiveness" of plate armour; a note should be made that the most expensive part is not the material an armour is made of, but the amount of work went into shaping it to fit the wearer. That is supported by evidence: munition armour even made out of high-quality steel could cost less than 2% of the price of a full plate armour.

In fact, I do believe that lamellar armour required bigger amount of work than full plate armour, due to bigger amount of components one must stitch together. But that's just a claim, I can't support it yet in any way.

As to the "path of development", Williams in his book states that the development of plate armour is directly connected to the invention of the blast furnace, which appeared in Europe somewhere around 14th century, or even earlier, allowing to produce larger blooms of steel and thus larger plates, which supposedly led to the development of the full plate armour in late 14th-early 15th century. Whereas in Russia blast furnace only appears in 17th century. And by that time some full plate armours do appear on it's territory, at least that's what I was told in local museum.

So overall, I want to say that we should keep in mind that the development of arms and armour in different regions could and probably was influenced by the technology available at the time and not assume that everyone could do the same, but some preferred not to.