African knights - African armour collection thread

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by estcrh

Jim, what makes you say this? Riveted mail from Indian, Persia and the Ottoman Empire was some of the strongest mail ever made, and in hand to hand combat it would keep you from being cut to pieces by a sword, mail of any type was never meant to be a defense against firearms.

In Japan, when traditional armor had been stored away unused for generations, mail armor was still worn by samurai right up to the end.

Much of the fighting in the Sudan involved intense hand to hand combat, I am sure that good quality riveted mail was highly valued, even the locally produced Sudanese butted mail was a good defense against a sword.

Some very late Indo-Persian mail was butted instead of being riveted, but there was still plenty of the old riveted mail to go around.

I was referring more to the Sudanese instance, and even then of course it would defer a degree of impact from swords etc........so what I should have qualified was that while much of the mail was ceremonially oriented, of course there was substantial mail in the contexts you mention which could offer some protection. Of course whenever firearms came into the equation that was pretty much all bets off. Thanks for the correction.