Although the horse armour shown here is fundamentally different from that seen in earlier Parthian or Sassanian art, or at Dura Europos, we can assume with reasonable confidence that the armoured cavalry elites of the final years of the Sassanian Empire -and those of the first decades of Arab‑Islamic rule- had a great deal in common in terms of their equipment.
These Dura horse armours are in Iranian rather than Roman style and may have belonged to Parthian refugees or to Arab frontier auxiliaries who were themselves clearly under strong Iranian influence.Ħ The most detailed representation of pre‑Islamic horse armour is at Ṭāq‑i Bustān in south‑western Iran (photographs 8a‑i), on an almost free‑standing rock‑cut statue which dates to within a few decades of the Arab‑Islamic conquest of the Sassanian Empire. This element is missing from the scale horse armours from Dura Europos, although neck protections are shown in relevant pictorial sources (figures 3a‑b & 5a‑c). Also found in the same context were two sheets of rawhide lamellae which are usually described as armour for a horseman’s legs, 5 but which may actually have formed a neck piece for horse armour (photographs 6‑7 figures 10a‑f).
#Medieval islamic army perian garb plus#
4 Two complete, and perhaps a third very fragmentary, metallic scale‑covered horse armours of essentially the same shape were found in the ruined Roman frontier fortress at Dura Europos in eastern Syria (photographs 4‑5), plus possible fragments of yet another (figure 9). 3 It is clear that horse armour had been a common feature in pre‑Islamic Iranian armies (figures 3‑8). It was nevertheless still called bargustuwān, a term also used for other forms of horse armour including that of quilted, felt, rawhide or hardened leather construction. 4 Scale horse‑armour is illustrated on a painted clay panel in the Parthian palace at Khaltchayan, 50 (.)ĥ According to Persian‑Iranian tradition, iron horse armour was first made by the ancient hero‑ruler Jamshid.Furthermore, it seems likely that the very unusual style of horse armour shown in the Hoysala carvings also owed its origins to the late Sassanian Empire, or to early Muslim armies which, having overrun the Sassanian Empire, adopted many aspects of Sassanian Iranian cavalry technology, before introducing these to early medieval India. I would therefore like to suggest that the man shown on the Shabwa carving was one of the asvārān ( asāwira ) who, having been sent by the Sassanian ruler to garrison Yemen, became the first known “heavy” or fully armoured cavalry in the Muslim army even before the expansion of Islam beyond the Arabian Peninsula. Indeed his horse armour is almost identical to that on otherwise seemingly unique Hoysala carvings from 12 th –13 th century south‑western India (figures 40‑44). A particularly interesting feature is the fact that the horseman is riding with his legs largely inside the horse armour. The style of carving suggests a late pre‑Islamic date and the presence of such a heavily armoured cavalryman surely points to the period of the Sassanian occupation of Yemen immediately prior to the coming of Islam (c. It shows a fully armoured man riding upon a fully armoured horse. The only areas where it might appear in primitive art associated with Arabic‑speaking pre‑Islamic peoples are those where there was an undeniable external military influence namely in the Syrian borderlands of the Roman Empire (figure 2), and in both Oman and Yemen which were for many years under Sassanian Iranian domination (figure 1).Ĥ Very recently I have been made aware of a remarkable stone plaque from the region of Shabwa in Yemen (photograph 3), now in the British Museum and described as Late Antique. 2 Horse armour then spread, along with many other advances in horse harness, to neighbouring China (photographs 1‑2), Iran and beyond, eventually including the Middle East.ģ Horse armour was not, however, associated with pre‑Islamic Arabs. 1 Thereafter horse armour became notably characteristic of Central and Inner Asia, not only amongst nomadic tribes but also amongst settled peoples such as the Turkish Uighurs of what is now called the Chinese autonomous region of Xinjiang (Shinjāng) where it was called kedımli. 2 The earliest widespread use of horse armour appears to have been in Inner Asia, perhaps more specifically in Khwarazm.