African chain mail shirt

[estcrh]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

Estcrh, very well explained deductions and assessment!
Thank you for explaining these in detail so we can better examine other examples using these guidelines. Mail is something not particularly in the mainstream in arms and armor study, so that really helps.

Jim, while I am certain that this particular hauberk was not made in Africa I can not rule out entirely that some riveted mail could not have been manufactured in African countries. Currently though I do not know of any research which mentions this.

For anyone who may think that the riveted mail hauberks found in various African countries may have originated in Africa I suggest reading this PDF about the making of mail hauberks in the Sudan, it is very informative. I have posted some significant sections below.

THE MAKING OF MAIL AT OMDURMAN, by A.J. ARKELL, Reprinted from KUSH, vol. IV, pp. 83-5, 1956
http://www.erikds.com/pdf/tmrs_pdf_9.pdf

THE MAKING OF MAIL AT OMDURMAN

When I was Commissioner for Archaeology and Anthropology in the Sudan, Sir
James Mann, the distinguished curator of the Wallace Collection, suggested to me in 1939 that I should try to find out the origin of the suits of mail used in the Sudan, of which a number had been brought to England as trophies from the battlefield of Omdurman. I soon discovered that the expert on Sudanese mail was Hamid Idris, then a venerable figure of well over seventy, but with all his wits about him. He had worked for the Mahdi and his successor Khalifa Abdullahi as silversmith and craftsman, and, unless my memory deceives me, he told me that he had first made mail as a young man under the Egyptian
Government before the Mahdia. In February 1940 I went with him to the Khalifa’s House Museum in Omdurman and examined all the suits of mail there. These are all made up of individually riveted rings, and for that reason Hamid Idris pronounced them as all having been made outside the Sudan and imported into it ‘from the north’, i.e. via Egypt before
1885—some of them possibly many years before 1885. He had no idea where they were made. He told me that in the time of the old Egyptian Government there were very many of these suits of mail in the Sudan, every important tribal chief or melik having 200 to 300 of them.


Although mail had been made in Omdurman during the Mahdia and before, no-one in the Sudan knows how to rivet rings, and Hamid thought that they never had had that knowledge. Sudanese craftsmen had usually used butted rings, which were imported and which they bought by weight from the merchants Kyriazi and Sirkis. About 10 kilograms of rings were needed to make one suit, and a good suit of that kind sold for £E25 in Omdurman, and more in the provinces. Suits of riveted mail fetched no higher price—which shows clearly that by that time mail was worn merely for show and not for serious,defence. There was also a third kind of mail called ‘Huksawi’ after the ill-fated GeneralHicks who fell at Sheikan early in the Mahdia. This was made out of imported split rings.

Subsequently, I made a number of enquiries aimed at ascertaining whether the riveted mail which had been imported into the Sudan ‘ from the north ’ had been made in Egypt,Tripoli, Tunis or elsewhere in North Africa ; but everywhere I drew a blank, and am now of opinion that it was not made anywhere in Africa (or in Europe, where it would have been too expensive for the Sudanese market). I am, therefore, inclined to think that it may
have come from India, for I am told by Sir James Mann that Lawrence of Arabia failed to trace its source anywhere in Syria or Arabia, although he sought hard for it. I hope that this article may encourage someone else to track this riveted mail down to its source. A.J. ARKELL

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In order to understand European and Indo-Persian riveted mail, the methods of riveting the individual links together needs to be understood. BOTH sides of the mail needs to be seen / photographed as there are important clues as to the origin that can be learned by seeing the outer and inner side of the links.

In Europe somewere around the 13th to 14 th centuries, the age old method of using aternating rows of round riveted links and solid links started to change to a new method. Rivets made in a wedge / triangular shape started to be used. At first the wedge shaped rivets were substituted for the round shaped rivets but the solid links were still used.

At some point in time, possibly around the late 14th to early 15th centuries, European mail makers in increasing numbers started to leave out the solid links, they started to manufacture hauberks with all wedge riveted links. Eventually most if not all European riveted mail makers used this method right up until the last makers of European riveted mail hauberks went out of business.

Below is a graphic which shows the difference in looks between a wedge shaped rivet and a round rivet. You can see the riveted link profiles from both sides. The round rivet heads can be seen from protruding from BOTH sides of the link......while the wedge riveted links are smooth / flat on one side with only the tip of the wedge shaped rivet showing were it was peened over. The wide end of the wedge shaped rivet fits into a slit / slot punched into the link, it is not peened and eventually over time this side of the wedge riveted link can actually be burnished smooth leaving no trace of the rivet to be seen.

[estcrh]

On European wedge riveted hauberks that were not heavily used the wide end of the wedge shaped rivet can be seen, here are some examples, you can see the back side of the links which would be worn up against the wearers clothing, the wide end of the wedge shaped rivet can be seen sitting in the slot that was punched into the link.

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Now here is a European wedge riveted hauberk, probably around the 16th century, the red arrows show the front of the link, you can see that after many years of use the rivet head has been burnished smooth and is now just a bump, while the yellow arrows point to the wide end of the wedge shaped rivets on the inside of the link, they have been burnished smooth with no trace visible of the rivet showing.

[estcrh]

Now on to the typical Indo-Persian riveted mail which in the vast majority of examples will be made with alternating rows of solid links and round riveted links. The use of round rivets mades identifying most mail from India, Persian and the Ottoman Empire rather easy.

Since most European riveted mail was not made with round riveted links since around the 13th century to 14th centuries, if you encounter a riveted mail hauberk with round rivets you can be fairly sure that it is Indo-Persian. There are some examples that were not made using solid links but if they have round rivets then for the most part you can assume that it is Indo-Persian.

Until very recently it was assumed that if a hauberk was made with wedge rivets that it was automatically European but recent examples of some Indo-Persian riveted mail have been shown to be made with wedge rivets, some of these examples are in the Met museum collection. These examples have been attributed to Ottoman Circassian mail makers. The links of these are very uniform in size and shape and the overlap, which is the flattened area were the rivet goes through is very neat with no overhang. So no longer can one assume that any wedge riveted hauberk is European.

Below is an example of Ottoman 16th century round riveted mail, it is used to connect the steel plates of a cuirass together, these are typical Ottoman alternating solid and round riveted links. Both sides of the links are shown and you can clearly see the round rivet head on both sides of the riveted links. You can also see that the solid links are not perfectly round, they almost look faceted, this seems to be fairly common on Ottoman solid links from that time period unlike the Ottoman Circassian solid links which are round.

What you are seeing here is both sides of the steel plates and the attached mail. The red arrows show the round rivet heads, there are clearly visable on boths sides of the links, these links are over 500 years old and you can still see the details, you can also see the overlap on the links were the rivet goes through is quite flat and long. The solid links are shown with yellow arrows, they not round at all but have flat edges on the outside, I have no idea how they were formed.

[estcrh]

Here is a typical example of Indian round riveted mail, probably from around the 17th century. Again it is made from alternating rows of silod links and round riveted links. No need for colored arrows here, the round rivet head are clearly visible, while this shows only one side of the links I can attest that the other side is pretty much a mirror image.

Most Indian solid links are very easy to identify, as you can clearly see they are not make from round wire. In the past it was assumed that these were punched from sheet metal, but this is not the case, they are actually welded strips of sheet metal, recent photos show some of the welds delaminating, proving that they were not punched.

[estcrh]

This photo is from a European wedge riveted hauberk which I believe is from around then 14th century, it shows a wedge shaped riveted link that has failed. The head of the rivet was not properly peened and it allowed the overlap to seperate.