A Strange Discussion on Indian Weapons
 

hi,
i am not sure if this is acceptable to do, so please moderate as you see fit.
i would like to question and hopefully discuss this post from another forum.

http://forums.swordforum.com/showthr...threadid=54178

i definatetly dont want to talk about the initial enquiry. 'weapons vs mail' is way too loose a subject to corner any real information. however, it seems to have been diverted into indian arms, and i am very surprised of the outcomes and statements being made.
except jens' short but sweet point, the rest seem to flounder on a very strange tangent.
there is very little actually known about indian arms and armour, and not much more written and speculated. however, there are some facts that are accepted as a basis, from which many discussions can stem from and end up who knows where.
these few facts seem to be ignored here, and some very strange opinions have been offered and i cant seem to understand where them have come from.
the points i have picked up on as as follows, and i am sure there are more that others will question.
firstly, indian mail was as heavy and useful as european. this is a fact from the many surviving examples. ok, european plate was of a slightly heavier gauge, but the mail construction was of a very similar nature. ok, if you look at the 18thC examples they were light, but if you are comparing at a time when the europeans were wearing heavy armour (late medievel to early post medievel) then there was very little difference.
if anything, heavy mail was much more in use in southern india than it the north, where fabric was more often used.
mail and plate was not necessarily introduced by 'hindusthan' as it was a very islamic style, possibly borne from an ottoman influence. there were other people in india other than hindus and moghuls.
katars did not dominate in the middle of the 17thC, as their form, both in the north and south was fully developed after the middle of the 16thC, and possibly even earlier.
as for the use of the thickened tip of the katar, i am sure many members here will elaborate. the katar was made for use and commom sense would attibute a thickened point can steer to only one conclusion. why have a weapon, widely used, if it couldnt do the job. indian was a very martial country and the reason that indian wepaons have been almost ignored until relatively recently is because europeans could not understand their weapons, being so unlike their own.
it seems as always, critical thinking overtakes and ignores critical observation and discusions end up confusing all that try to join in with big words and little actual information.
speculation and opinion have a very valid place in any discussion, as long as this is clearly stated and stemmed from the facts known. this is critical.........i think :)

Gently
 

Speaking as staff I would not like to see any criticism of other fora on this site .

Hopefully those with enough interest will follow Jens advice and the link to this forum that he posted on SFI .

Feel free though to discuss the ideas expressed in that thread here or on SFI .

Rick

I used to be under the impression that Medieval Western European mail and Islamic/Oriental mail were virtually identical, however I recently received a gentle rap on the knuckle on another forum (which shall remain nameless and linkless :)) for daring to suggest this.

The consensus on that forum was that European mail was superior. This is probably true up to a point, there is an article on The Wallace Collection's website which suggests that there was a lot of variability in post-17th century Indian mail and that a lot of it was inferior to Western European mail. However I will cling to my belief that Ottoman and Mamluk mail at least was equal in quality to most Western European mail. :D

Link to that Wallace Museum article:
http://www.wallacecollection.org/i_s...truction.htm#1

hi aqtai,
you were not wrong in your initial assumption. most people judge indian mail by the later pieces. as david says in his article, his assessment changed when he examined the 'bikanir' shirts. these are of a much earlier date and the links were forged. the mail construction is different to european mail but the 'usefullness' is matched.
the wallace collection does not have any early indian or ottoman armour. the links he mentions in some camails that are riveted are of a different gauge than the mail/plate shirts. david does own an early shirt himself, and it is this examination that he takes his data from.
these shirts were similar in costruction to the earlier ottoman shirts and i am pretty sure this is where the influence had come from. people tend to ignore the deccan and the influences and ancestral history that dominated the ruling class. the bijapur dynasty owed its roots directly from the ottoman lineage, and it was during this dynasty that the shirts date from.
if i showed you a great example of an indian shirt, with exceptionally large links around the upper torso for extra protection, you would see the ottoman influence and soon forget the later, butted link shirts that people tend to refer to.

I believe it's a good rule of thumb that if I see a weapon and can't figure out a really devastating use for it, chances are that my martial knowledge sucks rather than the weapon... ;)

From what little I know of Indo-Persian martial arts I wouldn't want to mess with sincere practitioners much less armed folks... :rolleyes:

I guess the situation is similar with Southeast Asian weapons. Some of them may not look too impressive to the uniniated. But once you receive some decent hands-on knowledge, small side-arms like keris or tiny blades like kerambit become really scary weapons!

Same-o with other examples all over the world, I guess.

Regards,
Kai

IN MY OPINION THE TWO COUNTRYS WITH THE WIDEST AND MOST VARIED WEAPONS ARE INDIA AND AFRICA. I AM NOT SURE WHY THIS IS SO BUT SUSPECT IT HAS TO DO WITH THE NUMBER OF TRIBES AND BELIEFS IN THOSE AREAS AND THEIR LONG HISTORYS. I DON'T HAVE A LIBRARY ON INDIAN WEAPONS AND THE REFRENCES I HAVE SEEN USUALLY DEAL WITH THE VERY TOP OF THE LINE WEAPONS OF THE RULING AND WEALTHY CLASS. STONES LISTS A IMPRESSIVE AND VARIED NUMBER OF TYPES AND I HAVE SEEN SOME VERY UNUSUAL THINGS FROM INDIA OVER THE YEARS.

THE WEAPONS USED IN ACTUAL COMBAT MOSTLY APPEAR TO BE MORE PLAIN, I SUPPOSE BECAUSE THEY WERE SUPPLYED TO THE SOLDIERS BY THE RULER. THOSE CARRIED BY THE RULER ALTHOUGH FINE WEAPONS WERE MOSTLY FOR A LAST RESORT AS THEIR ARMYS AND GARDS USUALLY WERE SUPPOSED TO TEND TO THE REAL FIGHTING. THERE ARE MANY HONORABLE WEAPONS USED FOR WAR AND MANY FOR LESS HONORABLE PURPOSES SUCH AS ASSISINATION OR MURDER. SOME OF THE LESS HORNORABLE ONES WERE USED IN SPECIAL WAYS BUT WERE ONLY GOOD AGAINST A UNSUSPECTING OR UNPREPAIRED TARGET AND WOULD NOT STAND IN A ARMED CONFRONTATION.A WIDE RANGE OF VERY FANCY CEREMONIAL WEAPONS CAN ALSO BE FOUND. WITH ITS LONG HISTORY AND MANY TRIBES, RELIGIONS AND CULTS INDIA HAS A TRULY REMARKABLE RANGE OF WEAPON TYPES AND STYLES.

AS TO CHAIN MAIL I AM LIKE SHULTZ ON HOGANS HERO'S "I KNOW NOTHING" :D

Interestingly, the arrows were rarely lethal outright, unless they penetrated deeply into a vital organ: heart, head, major arteries etc. The main problem with them was that the barbs prevented their safe removal: pulling them introduced very extensive crushing damage to the surrounding tissues and pushing them through was also traumatic. Having an infected foreign body stuck within a dead tissue is a prescription for disaster: the wound got infected and the warriors died later of sepsis.
Mongols had an ingenious solution: every warrior wore a shirt made of silk. This fabric is strong, light and pliable. Thus, the arrow did not penetrate the silk but rather carried it into the wound. Since the arrowhead rotated, the silk got wrapped around it and "padded" the barbs. A skilled doctor could then safely remove the arrow by pulling and then use such powerful anti-infection remedies as cobwebs, dirt, boiled cow urine etc.

True what Brian writes, the katars were mail ‘openers’, and some of them were even specialised for doing the work. I doubt, that there was a mail shirt, which one of these specialised katars could not open. Unfortunately it has not been proven yet, as far as I know, as the museums and the collectors don’t want to deliver the test shirts – sadly, as it is in the interest of a scientific experiment;).

Dear All,

My opinion, as much as it ignorant, will probably be insulting to most of the members, for that I'm sorry.

It's one thing to scream on top of your lungs, madly shaking your hands, while hanging by nearly invisible threads on a movie set. It's a different thing to have a duel - a ritualized fight in between of two individuals. It's a completely different thing to have an effective army.

Nowadays it's believed that those cultures that are famous for martial arts had good soldiers. It's incomprehensible for many how precursors of shao-lin monks with their secret knowledge of chi used nomad mercenaries for their best units. How the all feared samurai had tremendous problems with their empire building in Korea (not to mention same old bad nomads).

On the other hand mongols were what is considered by modern standards complete loosers. They did not know how to kill people with their own hair (they preferred to use bows), they did not know about deep spirituality of the pose of five winds in the style of three monkies, they did not have elaborate weapons, all of the warriors carrying the same simple set of very basic weapons - bow, lance, mace and sword - when you know which weapons work, and which don't you tend to stick with the ones that do, rather than with the ones that don't but definitely 'cool'.

Hi Kirill, I'm not insulted by your post but I admit that I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here .

How does this relate to mail and katars and whether their purpose was to defeat mail or not ? :confused:

no relation :). Just seen a comment on martial arts and variety of indian weapons, and wanted to take a long held opinion from my chest.

Gentlemen,

Those of us who grew up in Western Europe or America learned from museums, books and films that European mail was stronger than that used in the Islamic and Hindu East, as were the swords. That isn't true unless, as I believe has been stated above, one is comparing European mail from the period when it represented a primary defense-- say 11th- 13th c., and Indian or Persian mail of the 19th century, by which time it hardly represents armor at all anymore, with rings often made of soft iron wire that have been butted together to close them-- a classic case of apples and oranges.
Worthier of comparison with the finest European mail was a coat of Mamluk mail which I had the opportunity to examine recently, dating between the 14th-15th century. A conservative group, the Mamluks maintaned arms and methods of warfare from at least the mid 12th c. down to the 16th, including the use of straight, double-edged swords and rather distinctive coats of mail (this is not of course, to ignore the introduction of sabers as well as occasional variations in armor apparent during the course of Mamluk history.) The coat I examined had rings 5/8" or 1.5 cm in diameter. These rings were relatively thick (approx. 2 mm) and stamped with 2 concentric lines which I suspect served to flatten as well as harden them. Each ring was closed with a rectangular rivet which was peaned on both sides. The shirt had a high collar laced with leather to stiffen it, a short overlapping opening at the neck which ran down about 20 cm and a hem with a single vent front and rear, which would reach to about mid-thigh on a man of average height. It had 3/4 length sleeves. It weighed roughly 25 pounds (12 kg.)
This coat, worn by a well-trained man who was likewise protected by a shield and helmet, arm- and legguards, could stand up to considerable force, by lance, bow, axe or hammer/mace or even katar. But I must stress that training, particularly for a horseman, would be at least as important in protecting a warrior as the quality of his mail, as was also true for the European knight. Such coats were likewise worn in Russia up to the 17th century, usually over yet another coat of smaller rings-- this may be a particularly Russian affectation or may provide some indication of how mail was used as protection in the Near East as well.
In all cases but the Japanese, the material record of Eastern weapons is far outnumbered by the European-- this inequity has led arms historians to make many errors in the past 150 years, particulary when drawing comparisons between the two. Such errors, sometimes so obvious as to be funny, should really remind us to be sure of our own comparisons... and comments.
Sincerely,

Ham

Removing arrows
 

I read somewhere that arrows can be removed by studying the wound and then inserting sticks of wood into the wound either side of the arrow shaft to locate onto the barbs and pulling the whole assembly out. I think this would only work with arrows designed for long distance or very accurate flight that have a simple head with the standard two barbs. Arrows shot at short range and for ambush as in the forests and jungles of Africa and other countries often have many barbs not just on the head but also on the shaft making the above mention process of removal impossible. Some people are just not very nice :( Tim

Thanks for that info B.I. and Ham, very helpful.

I have to admit I am still smarting after being dismissed with the following statements on another forum (which shall remain nameless and linkless :D) There was a whole lot more in the same vein. You could say I've come here to lick my wounds ;).

I have seen a fair bit of Mamluk and Ottoman mail in museums, superficially at least it looks equal to Western European mail. Indeed according to H. R. Robinson Mamluk mail rings were often double rivetted and had inscriptions! I was wondering though, have there been any metallurgical analyses of Mamluk and Ottoman mail? And have there been any studies published which compare pre-17th century Middle-Eastern mail to pre-17th century European mail?

Since this thread could do with some pics, I've got some pictures of 15th-16th century Mamluk mail which I took in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo many, many years ago. I was going through a black and white photography phase at the time.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y11...16th_C_001.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y11...mamluk_001.jpg

The mail shirt in the 2nd picture had a collar reinforced with leather strips similar to the one described by Ham.

The nastiest buggers made the joint between the head and the shaft deliberately weak. Any attempt to manipulate the arrow broke the joint and left the head (often deliberately smeared with feces ).
As to Aqtai's lamentations, the unmentioned (and unmentionable)- other-Forum-ite's claim that "Eastern" mail was grossly inferior to "Western" is just plain silly. In Europe, mail was affordable only to the upper crust of warriors and cost an arm and a leg (pun intended). In the East, mail was worn by the majority of the active armies. Of course, the one-of-a-kind mail might have been better than the mass produced one. But try to compare apples with apples, ie high class mails from both groups: Turkish, Caucasian and Russian mails will hold against any Italian or French ones.
Moreover, who said that the quality of mail should be the standard of military sophistication?
This is exactly what Rivkin was saying earlier: a Mongolian cavalryman had a minimalistic set of eqipment and superb military leadership and tactic. This allowed him to defeat lavishly equipped Western Knights (wearing ma-h-vellous mail shirts, no doubt). Mongolian bow beat German armour any time.

Gentlemen,

The photos above are very useful-- the upper image of a heavy coat appears to be Mamluk though it is hard to tell without seeing the rings in better detail. The second, however is clearly Ottoman of the latter 16th c. together with a misrka type helmet. These were popular until the latter 18th century, in more isolated areas (such as the Caucasus) they was used into the 20th. The Circassians valued coats of mail by the distance at which they could stop a rifle ball.
Mail was the standard of military sophistication to a great extent-- the best required as many tools, skills and technical knowledge to make as the finest blades did-- some examples have even come to light which were tempered.

Sincerely,

Ham

i must say, indian armour tends to draw the short straw in most discussions. instead, when refering to 'eastern' armour, we tend to fall back to ottoman armour, as if the indian armour was of no consequence. i completely disagree as early indian armour was every bit as useful and well constructed as turkish armour, as i am sure this is where the influence originated from.
in reference, early indian armour was pretty much overlooked as there were not enough of it around to make a proper study. instead, the more 'common' 18thC armour and later was discussed.
however, with the introduction of a 'hoarde' of early armour onto the european market 10 or so years ago, we have finally been able to see the true nature of early mail that was not known or covered before.
these shirts were dated (by inscription) to the end of the 17thC but a general consensus is to believe they were of a much earleir date, possibly and probably at least one hundred years earlier. these shirts held old repairs, done in there working life and the nature of bijapur seemed to hint at them being the development of the ottoman armour worn by the original rulers of the deccan, who owe their ancestry to the ottoman 'monarchy'.
these shirts told a wealth of information, as they ranged from relatively crude, to the highest quality.
on the higher end, the links were beautifully crafted, some with shamfered edges, still sharp 500 years later. some held 'theta' links which it has recently been clarified as being forged and not cut out from sheet, as was previously thought. this meant that a lot of thought and design (as well as time) was put into the construction of these shirts.
also, it has also been found that some of these shirts had 'galvanised' links, which was a big surprise as zinc was not introduced into europe until the 17thC (i believe) but was discovered and used in india a good few hundred years before.
i dont really get involved in 'data' so please excuse any innacuracies. i have compared (physically) indian and ottoman shirts and the construction was not that dissimilar.
also, indian 'heavy' armour was well used in the 16th anf 17thC. they were also used upto the 19thC, but not in general. the introduction of firearms did the same to india as it did to europe, and armour adapted itself accordingly.
look at the 'sind' armour. i put this in inverted commas as i am not convinced this style of armour originated from that region, as refered to by egerton and subsequently robinson etc. however, i cannot question the dating of late 18th and maybe even early 19thC. this was riveted mail. although the plates were of a lighter construction, the mail was still heavy. there are enough early accounts (verified by surviving examples) of the plates beings an outer coating, and the actual protection being the heavy padded lining, thought and proved (in 18thC accounts) to protect against sword blows by itself.
heavy armour was also seen at seringapatam, which was of a later date.
also, there are late 18thC miniatures showing heavy mail/plate shirts, but these were too close to the early deccani shirts to believe they were made at the time of the miniatures. these had to be old shirts, worn at a later time.
although in peacetime, this also happened by the camel corps of bikaner in 1903, who paraded in fully heavy armour at the dehli durbar.
as for the katar, i really dont know what to say. heavy spears had the same thickened point, as did some sword blades. there are enough illustrations and sculpture showing it as a lethal stabbing weapon. if not for armour piercing, then what is the point (no pun intended :) )

aqtai, please PM me your email address.

andrew, i have refrained from refering any more to the other post, out of respect for this forum, and i suppose because it would be a cheap shot to criticise people who are not willing to defend themselves here. however, i applaud your patience on that forum. i can only put this down to your work experience. i am constantly surprised how academically wrong a supposedly academic can be. i am glad i am just a lowly collector, not used to big words and books and things.

Ham, thanks for the additional info on those two mail shirts. They are both labelled as "Mamluk", although seeing as the mamluks continued to play an important role in Ottoman Egypt perhaps that's not totally inaccurate. It does solve a small mystery though. That medallion on the chest of the 2nd shirt has the name "Ahmed El-Gaabi" on it. The mamluks favoured Turkish names and Ahmed is an Arabic name, so I couldn't figure out what it was doing on the shirt. BTW El-Gaabi means "the tax-collector", judging by the fact he had to wear armour, it was a pretty dangerous job!

B.I. thanks for the info on early Indian armour, a subject about which I know nothing. These early Deccani armours sound fascinating. I will also refrain from any further criticism of people who aren't here to defend themselves.

Aqtai,

Regarding the medallion on the Ottoman shirt-- Arabic was the language of the Egyptian Province as you know. Mamluks were acquired from the Caucasus and Anatolia primarily, hence they spoke their native language, as well as Osmanlici and Arabic. Arabic titles were typical for Mamluks even under the Ottomans-- the Mamluk governor continued to be known as the Shaykh al-Beled until after Abu Kir. A Mamluk who went by the title al-Gaabi is not unusual. And tax collecting was a highly profitable position to which one was appointed as an honor there.


Sincerely,

Ham

What Aqtai probably meant that until 1517 Mamluk could not have an arabic name - only turkish (independent of his origins). After 1517 in order to "ottomonize" them their were required to take arabic names, so we have Ali-Bey etc.

Concerning titles, indeed they carried titles in arabic, for example an honorary title yaqtaq (sorry, don't speak arabic and cite by memory, but it's supposed to be the butcher ? The title of Murad, Ibrahim and Mehmed and all others who killed 72).

Now on mail - afaik the subject of armour is even less understood than that of weapons. During the last few days I had the opportunity to speak with a few historians of mamluk period and I've got a very certain impression that they know the words of furisiyya, but have no ideas how these "swords", "bows" etc. look like - well many historians out there certainly do, but it's not a very common knowladge. For example one can look at Ayn-Jalat by Smith and "Mongol-Ilkhanid war" by Amitai-Preiss. The latter one quite honestly admits that there is no depiction of Ilkhanid armor, weaponry or tactics of the time. The description they use is due to Marco Polo (!), who obviously did not have anything to do with Mongol-Mamluk wars. The rest (and it's like 100 pages in these manuscripts) is an open speculation. For example Smith claims that Mongols used georgian/armenian cavalry because of it's shock power, but Amitai-Preiss counteracts with the statement that there is not a single (!) depictions of georgian or armenian cavalry of the time.

One of the most puzzling things to me was that no one in the middle ages seemed to be interested in for example testing a typical "mamluk" armor against a bow in order for example to determine the effective range of their weapons, or may be no one was interested in recording this for posterity, which is not unusual, taking in mind that 90% of books on mamluks will reference same works - Maqrizi, Ibn-Iyas, Ibn-Khaldan, Bar Hebraus, Rash-Al-Din, Furisiyya and may be 5 to 10 lesser known volumes.

In light of this there is a lot of speculation when it comes to "what was the difference in armor between royal and amir mamluks ?" "Did halqa use mails ?" and so on.

Concerning katars - sorry, don't think it's gonna work - if one has a mail, chanse he has a horse. If one has a horse, chanse he has a lance/sword. Would not be wise to try to use a katar.

Additionally I would refer to mail-ripping kindjals - they are usually on the big side (20 inches) with a stiletto-like extremely thin "spike" on top of them. Unfortunately Astvatsaturjan does not have a picture, somewhere I had the one of my own...

[QUOTE=Rivkin]What Aqtai probably meant that until 1517 Mamluk could not have an arabic name - only turkish (independent of his origins). After 1517 in order to "ottomonize" them their were required to take arabic names, so we have Ali-Bey etc.

Respectfully Rivkin, I doubt very much whether that is what Aqtai meant; it is patently untrue. Mamluks regularly took Arabic names from the time they were brought to Baghdad under the Abbasid sultans in the bloody ninth century, to say nothing of the fact that literally every Egyptian Mamluk Sultan had an Arabic name as well. And as far as giving a Mamluk an Arabic name in order to Ottomanize him...? You'll have to explain that one.

Despite the scarcity of data on arms and armor of the Mamluks, Mamluk arms in Egypt are not entirely occluded by the mists of time. Excellent research has been done and continues to be done by European, Arab and Turkish arms historians. What Mamluk arms and armor were like is not the realm of Islamic, Ottoman, Egyptian or Mamluk historians, nor is it ever but rarely touched upon by military historians. It is arms historians who specialize in this esoteric area which requires a background in numerous languages, history, metalurgy and extensive experience with the artifacts themselves-- and while their research may be found in arms journals such as the newly revived GLADIUS, the best way to fill gaps in one's own knowledge is to examine the material record itself-- museums in both Cairo and Istanbul have numerous examples of Mamluk arms and armor identified by the names of their owners and the rulers under whom they fought-- for the present,the most reliable method of attribution known.

[QUOTE=ham]Not pretending to be a specialist, and being too lazy to go to the library and pick up the book:

Concerning the names, I can't say I remeber "literally every" Sultan, but from the names I remember : Baybars, Qutuz, Qautbay, Barsbay, Tumanbay, Qalawun, Yilbay, Temur-Buga, semi-sultan Khairbek do not sound to me anything like arabic names. Is Inal an arabic name ? I'm sure they had long, arabic titles and aliases, al-rachman, al-malek, al-dawla something (did they Abdallah to signify their way to Islam ?) and that's may be even the way ulema called them, here I'm at complete ignorance, but I don't remember, may be to my shame, any sultan who would have an explicitly arabic name.
As far as I remember the point was specifically that even Circassians (and their names are very unturkish) always took a turkish (atrak) name when becoming a mamluk. Btw it's a surprise for me that you say they used ottoman, I always thought they used more "classical" turkish.

P.S. may be I was not exactly correct in phrasing my statement - not that they could not have arabic names, titles and aliases, but one of the main symbols of being mamluk was being given a turkish name during the process.

P.P.S. After writing this I went through my books and indeed found Muhammed ibn-Qalawun. No turkish name, only arabic. Interesting, did he go through a traditional mamluk education ?

Rivkin, that is exactly what I meant:).

Mamluks during the Mamluk period used Turkish names like Baybars, Qalawun, Khushqadam, Qaitbay and Tumanbay. As Rivkin said this even carried on after mamluks were no longer Turkish and recruited from the Caucasus. I assume it was some kind of tradition. Indeed mamluks actually spoke the Qipchaq dialect, for example Sultan Qansuh El-Ghuri, who was of Circassian erigin, commissioned a Turkish translation of the Shah-nameh so that other mamluks could understand it! BTW this Mamluk shahnameh remains a useful source of information on the appearence of mamluks. During the Ottoman period, as Rivkin pointed out, the mamluks started using Arabic names.

With regards to Muhammad ibn Qalawun, the children of mamluks who were born and brought up in Egypt always had Arabic names and were excluded from military careers, although they may have been allowed to join the halaqa in the early Mamluk period. Yusef Ibn Taghri-birdi and Mohammed Ibn Ahmed Ibn Iyas were sons and grandsons of mamluks. However children of mamluks were entitled to a state pension, which is probably why these two had the time to become historians, they also had access to many mamluk emirs and even the sultan himself. AFAIK the only two mamluk sultans of mamluk origin, not the sons of a previous sultan, who didn't have Turkish names I can think of are Sultan Barquq (which means plum) and Sultan Al-Mu'ayyad Sheikh.

Ham, thanks for letting me know about the research carried out on Mamluk and Ottoman armour. Is any of it being published in English or available to the public?

Thank you Aqtai !
btw, since we are briefly at the subject of mamluk there are two things I could not clear up, no matter how I tried, so I would really appreciate:

1. There is a book by Hottko, which approaches the subject of circassian mamluk from prospective of circassian traditions (i.e. paganism). I have not read the book, but I've read the reviews. It claims for example that ordinary mamluks were not buried but their bodies were placed on trees (which is a circassian tradition). The book seems to be filled with things like these.

It contradicts everything I've read on Mamluk Sultanate, which seems to clearly indicate their strict adherence to sharia. However the same being said about neo-mamluks and its enough to read Rustam's autobiography to question it.

Did someone see something on this issue ?

2. It seems that pre 1250 mamluk history and weaponry is simply a dark hole. On many occasions I heard from historians that pre-mamluk sultanate mamluk history is not being studied. Is it true or there are some sources out there ?

Sincerely yours,

K.Rivkin

Hi Rivkin,

I'd suggest that, once you get someone off the horse, an armor-piercing knife is useful. After all, that's what the European misericorde was for.

On the other hand, I do agree with you: I don't know much about Indian martial arts, but I certainly wouldn't want to count on a katar as a main battle weapon. However, off the battlefield (i.e. in a dark alley, an ambush, a skirmish, or whatever), I suspect it was quite useful. After all, the thickened point doesn't prevent it from being used on unarmored foes as well as armored ones. I'd suggest we simply look at it as an Indian version of a cinqueda and go with it.

Otherwise, I'm quite enjoying the discussion of indian armor, so I'll fade back into the woodwork.

F

Small heavy bladed knives and katars would be very useful getting through heavy and padded cotton armour as Fearn says. By the mid to late 19th century some oriental metal armour had become quite light and only partially protecting the torso. These knives might well never have been expected to be in use against metal armour around the close of the 19th century. Tim

Hi Rivkin, I have never heard this story about Circassian mamluks being buried in trees, from what I know of the mamluks and the Mamluk sultanate, I think it would be highly unlikely. For all their frequent lapses (such as murdering each other, drinking wine and qumiz, love of fine clothing and over-taxing the native peoples of their kingdom :D) the mamluks were pretty orthodox and overall quite sincere Muslims. Those kind of pagan practices would simply not have been tolerated. I don't know were the ordinary mamluks were buried, but certainly Cairo is littered with the splendid tombs of emirs and sultans, many of which I have visited. I assume the tombs of ordinary mamluks would have ressembled those of their contemporary middle-class Egyptians. In fact there is a lot we don't know about mamluks.

I'm not sure what you mean by pre-Mamluk era? certainly until the reign of the penultimate Ayyubid Sultan Es-Salih Ayyub, Mamluks would have been a tiny elite minority in an army made up largely of free-born Turks, Kurds and the occasional Arab tribesman. Even during Ayyub's reign the Bahri mamluks would probably only have numbered a couple of thousand at most. What distinguished Ayyub is he promoted his mamluks over the heads of free-born emirs. Indeed by the time he died all the emirs seem to have been of Mamluk origin. What also distinguished the Bahris is that they were nearly all of Qipchaq Turkish origin and were extremely loyal to each other as well as their sultan, whereas previously mamluks came from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds and included Turks, Armenians and Slavs. With regards to Armour and weapon virtually nothing survives which can be positively identified as Ayyubid or early Mamluk. As far as I know the earliest swords and helmets, apart from the sword of Ayyub, date to the late 13th and early 14th century.

This picture of a helmet and aventail comes from an Arabic translation of L. A. Mayer's "Mamluk Costume", A book I would love to own but which is terrifyingly expensive. The helmet is early 14th century and is attributed to Sultan Muhammad ibn Qalawun. If that mail is genuine (which I doubt), then it is the earliest piece of Mamluk mail I know of. These 2 pieces were in the Porte de Hal museum in Brussels.
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y11...met_14th_C.jpg

I've not heard of Rustam's autobiography, what is it?

I was also puzzled by this tree story. I'll try to get my hands on the book and see if he provides any references.

Rustam's memoirs unfortunately have not been translated into english (to my knowladge), it's an autobiography by Napoleon's mamluk bodyguard. While it's relatively short it was extremely educating for me, for it's may be the only autobiography of this kind I know about. There is a french version:

Roustam Raza
"Souvenirs de Roustam, mamelouck de Napoléon", 1er.
Introduction et notes de Paul Cottin. Préface de Frédéric Masson (Paris, 1911) 302p.

Here is Napoleon with Roustam in the background:
http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/nap...g/8NIII058.jpg

That would be an interesting book to read. I think in terms of material culture however early 19th century mamluks would have been more influenced by Ottoman culture than 13th-16th century Mamluke sultanate culture. Certainly the costumes worn by the mamluks of this period were Ottoman.

I'll see if I can get hold of it. My French is bit rusty now, but hopefully i should still be able to read a book :D.

BTW what language were the mamluks speaking among themselves in Rustam's time? Were they still speaking Qipchaq?