FRINGIA

[Samik]

Hello Jim,

Thats some fine research, you have done (and thus even answered your original question ). Now that the fringia origins have been somewhat cleared I hope you dont mind me jumping into some other points and discuss some other things in your last post.

Indeed the article from Encyclopaedia Humana Hungarica 05 is very enlighting and well-written
(albeit it also contains some minor errors , such as regarding martolos as being of souther slavic stock only , while other sources like the Encyclopedia of the OTTOMAN empire written by Ágoston/Masters (2009) points out that a great deal of them were also ethnic Vlachs), however I have been always been puzzled by the Handszar/Hançar "short-sword" you mentioned.

Traditionaly the area of balkans and south-eastern europe of the post-conquest era is associated with yatagans or sabres , but I havent seen a single speciment of the aforementioned Handszar. The only reference I have been able to dig up is a similar word in a wikipedia entry on a bosniak-croat SS division http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handschar
The article states that Handschar (Bosnian/Croatian: Handžar) was the local word for the Turkish scimitar a historical symbol of Bosnia and Islam which seem to confuse the matter futher. Also the coat of arms of the division reminds me of a shorter falchion-like hanger rather than a proper Turkish sword or yatagan.

The other point I would like to adress from your post is

Hungarian as well as East European, weaponry and military approaches to warfare developed from Turkish models, among clearly many cultural influences

Let me show a different POV on this one. Yes , it would be foolish to deny the great influence ottomans had on its surrounding regions and eastern europe in particular(especially in terms of arms and armour). However military approaches as such were not neccessarily developed/copied from the Turkish-Anatolian model. To put it into perspective, one such example are the ottoman Deliler/Deli horsemen that are regarded as a military unit having the greatest influence on EE hussars (the hussars being practically a copy-cat of them). The Deli horsemen however are according to sources such as Brzezinski, Nicolle as well as primary sources like French traveller Nicolas de Nicolay in his Discours et histoire véritable des navigations, pérégrinations et voyages, faicts en la Turquie, Anvers, 1586` , said to come from western balkan background ..the likes of Croats , Bosniaks , Serbs as well as Albanians. The particular example in Nicolay's book is even an Orthodox Serb , reciting a prayer in Greek and Serbian.

In essence they differed from the "traditional" central asian-turkish way of war. Turks traditionaly relied on composite bow , round "kalkan" shield and some lance work , either with shield , but mostly in a two handed fashion; Delis on the other hand used a combo of the assymetrical "balkan" shield and a couched lance as a primary means of offence. Actually, they remind me more of a traditional knightly lancer (as wierd as its sounds) , but changed by the foe he is facing (being sort of a "lite-edition" that has to fight/counter horse-archers). The assymetrical "balkan-rumelian" shield got also widespread among the Turks themselves , which reminds me that influence is often a two-way streets.

Hope you dont mind the rambling , I got sometimes excited about the topic

Cheers ,
Samuel