Review of "Arms and Armour from Iran" by M. Khorasani

[Rivkin]

Since no argument was presented, I will try to conclude this story as I see it.

The study of weapons is a somewhat off-mainstread topic. The study of non-japanese and non-military patterns also requires navigation among the sea of rumors, incomplete information, old and new fakes and semi-fakes. Little should be presented as "truth", and the same research can be seen quite differently by different people.

Today, since reading Manoucher's book has influenced me to read a lot of papers and to speak with many people in the past two weeks, I think differently about my review than I did so mere two weeks ago. I would've soften some of the criticism in this review, but I would've also put a bigger accent on some other "issues". My conclusion remains the same - it is a good book, and the author did a good job distilling the information concerning Persian weapons from other books, while combining it with an extremely valuable opportunity for us to see the weapons from Iranian collections. I am thankful for this. However the research provided in this book is questionable. I do recommend it to everyone who is interested in Persian weaponry.

P.S. Just to give you some idea concerning how hard it is to collaborate with other researchers to get any reliable information, one of high level employees at a very good museum, which I visited many times in my life, has answered me publicly that he does not collaborate with "americanos-pedophilos".