Robert Hales Book
 

Does anyone have a copy of "Islamic and Oriental Arms: a lifetime's passion"? Can you recommend it? Thanks.

Harry

I would certainly recommend it highly. See
http://roberthales.co.uk/
for some details.

Yes I definitely agree. Well worth having. Any well researched book featuring our interests is IMHO a must to add to the library....and sooner rather than later, when some of these publications become too expensive.
A recent example of this is Elgood's Arms and Armour of Arabia, now asking huge prices.
Stu

Well noted, and indeed references like David Harding's four volume work on arms of the East India Company, are now priced completely out of reach of the average collector! The same is true of Christian Aries long series of books on French swords.

Mr. Hales in as long as I can remember in collecting and the study of arms, Islamic in particular, was always the 'go to' guy. I recall several issues of catalogs issued by him and Jonathan Barrett back in I think it was the 80s. Those relatively simple, but well photographed and thoroughly described catalogs have become expensive collectors items themselves today!

The reason is that even then, Robert Hales was a powerful figure in the study of these arms. Thus, I would highly recommend any reference by him!

For me, it's a beautiful catalog with very nice photographs.
But it's not a research or a scientific book.