True Combat Value of Wootz

[S.Al-Anizi]

Thank you I did not know what the correct term was. Yes, I am well aware of the ban of non-muslims having weapons during some periods of time (and place). However, sometimes (depending on the time and place) non-muslims were in the military (as mercinarys, slaves etc). I have forgotten the reference

.

As in the Ummayad emirate of al-andalus, the palace guard, the 'saqaliba' (slavs), were christians in the service of the emir, and *I think* were allowed to carry weapons.

[Chris Evans]

S.Al-Anizi,

I was muzing over your original question and in particular the replies given by Jeff Pringle and Gt Obach.

Of course one of the problems is that we we do not know, or at least we haven't defined, the lower limit of acceptable mechanical properties for a war sword. Nor have we established what significant advantages and in what context can be obtained by exceeding this lower limit. I suspect, that for a cavalry sword made from conventional martensitic steel, that is not likely to encounter heavy armour, a hardness of 45Rc is adequate, as long as it is not brittle.

Be that as it may, it will do us well to remember that pearlitic steels can be work hardened to a surprising degree, as exemplified by piano wire, which is usually made from hard drawn pearlitic 0.8% carbon steel. It is both very tough and hard. Now, going back to that paper by prof.Verhoeven's, A.H.Pendray's, and W.E.Dauksch's, I suspect that had they Brinell tested the blades they would have obtained a higher hardness reading, perhaps in the low to mid 40s and as well, I don't think that they tested top class swords. Additionally, the part of a sword where hardness counts the most is at the edge and that part cannot be tested by either the Rockwell or Brinell, but only by Vickers, which makes such a small indentation that with wootz it could be misleading,

I think that it would be a fair bet that the very best of the of the woots swords had much harder work hardened blades.

Just some thoughts
Chris

[Rivkin]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

1. Wootz and practicality: it is interesting that Mubarak-Shah in "Kitab adab al-harb va'shudzhaat" right after saying that indian wootz swords are the best, speaks about "abnach" - indian sword made from copper and silver and according to Mubarak being one of the prized indian swords and very beautiful.
So the beauty was important.
2. Non-mulsims in muslim armies - by memory there is a lot in hadith about Mohammed using jews in his raids until certain point (I remember how they come to him and ask whether his attack plan is from Allah or of his invention and if it the latter they don't care about the spoils they wan't go). Concerning ummoyads - they did not really apply the law, they even had statues. Indeed the presence of semi-muslim ex-christians in muslim armies was overwhelming (mamluks, yanissarians, ghulam etc.), but at the same time the presence of openly christians was limited to episodes like early Osman army (lots of armenians and some western knights) and later - military advisors (usually in "modernizing" islamic armies).
3. Fencing with shamshirs - actually they did so, despite the lack of protection for the hand. Napoleon selected mamluks for his guard based on how horrible they hands looked, so I assume experienced fencers had many,many scars.
4. Concerning western vs. eastern swords - after looking through the literature I think everyone had his own preferances. Hudud al'alem for example liked european swords - he says that they bend much better than local. Mubarak-Shah liked indian swords like nothing else, yet I have read in one of the mamluk manuals (sorry, had it on my hard drive somewhere) that such swords should be hanged around women who can't give birth to boys, while the best swords are made in yemen and have golden dots.
For example Kolchin in his work "Black Mettalurgy and ironwork in ancient Russia" believes based on Ibn-Hordadbech, al-Mukaddasi and Abu Hamid that early "oriental" swords were brittle and too hard tempered had no buyers in Europe but where sold only to savages in the north who liked pretty and hard tempered metal (??) (whih is sort of suggested by abu-Hamid), while western swords were well prized in the East.

And you to try to figure out in this mess who is right and who is wrong, and what exactly do they mean.

5. I am sorry for repeating myself, but after reading all these literature I think that everyone has his own biases; victorians had their own, but everyone else seem to be also guilty as well, some are more and some are less.

[Chris Evans]

Rivkin,

You are a marvelous source of information. Thanks for this interesting contribution.

Originally Posted by Rivkin

Ladies and Gentlemen,

1. Wootz and practicality: it is interesting that Mubarak-Shah in "Kitab adab al-harb va'shudzhaat" right after saying that indian wootz swords are the best, speaks about "abnach" - indian sword made from copper and silver and according to Mubarak being one of the prized indian swords and very beautiful.
So the beauty was important..

I think that we should remember that until the appearance of national armies, late in the renaissance, only the nobility could afford expensive and comprehensive arms and armour - And for them beauty=status. The peasant foot soldiers were often armed with nothing else than slings and sticks (siege of Belgrade) . I imagine that for some of the orientals, this state of affairs lasted longer.

In fact, it has been observed that the remarkable success of the Turks and Mongols in Eastern Europe was in no small amount due to the inability of feudal societies to field large and consistently well equiped armies.

Do you know if and when and the Ottoman Turks introduced regulation pattern weapons?

3. Fencing with shamshirs - actually they did so, despite the lack of protection for the hand. Napoleon selected mamluks for his guard based on how horrible they hands looked, so I assume experienced fencers had many,many scars...

Well, their wounds couldn't have been too serious as in those days they couldn't repair severed tendons and wire together broken hand bones. Incidentally, I once saw a Middle Eastern mail gauntlet that weighed, at my estimation, around 1.75Kgm, so they must have understood the need for better hand protection.

Cheers
Chris

[tsubame1]

This thread really grows, more and more interesting.

[Rivkin]

Chis:

Thank you for your praise.

Concerning "oriental" armies there are two opinions that one can find in most of contemporary literature:
In the "orientalist" period easterners where often seen as people whose purpose was to prolong the 7th century lifestyle as much as possible. They would spend their life walking around, beating themselves with chains, screaming "la allahu ilh Allah". Their weapons were inept, their tactics was savage. Typically this is attributed to the racism of victorian englishman, but one can sometimes find much harsher words in the works of ataturkists.
Then in 80's everything was reverted - christian were now seen as dirty people who burned the jews and lived in huts, while muslims became great philosophers who fought for poetry, tolerance and preservation of classical studies. Each and every invention of the western world was seen as stealing of something eastern - american constitution was seen as an inept copy of Cyrus' cylinder, universities a flawed imitation of great medreses and so on.

I think that one should read as less as possible recent literature and direct his/her attention to the original sources. You will find that "orientals" and "westerners" actually respected each other and were quite able to find numerous flaws (perceived or real) both in their own society/military and that of their opponents.
Here is my personal opinion:
There were numerous differencies between east and west - east had a poweful export of spices, opium, sugar, silk, precious stones and so on, while west was in general more poor. In the east the money spending and power was more concentrated in the hands of the military elite (as Macciavelli points out among turks one just has to be liked by the military). As a result eastern military was much more expensive than their western counterparts. Mail, decorated with gold, beautiful swords, numerous horses was a typical pocession of a warrior in the east, but far more scarce in the west. Easterners praised bow and horse above all and had little infantry, while it was the opposite in the west. Even in XIXth century a frenchman who would kill a mamluk typically would gather 2000-10000 franks worth of gold and weapons from the body, an outstanding sum. Easterners also had far better intelligence - they were used to Steppe warfare where cities would move overnight and the victory was achieved by knowing where your enemy is, while in the west everyone knew where is the castle and where is the bridge.
However while in the west the military balanced between local militia, professional nobleman and foregin mercenaries (Macciavelli "History of Florence" tries to illustrate the whole fragility of such balance), eventually resulting in a formation of an army which to some extent incorporated all these elements, imbued with not nessesary the best, but common training and tactics, in the east the situation was radically different. The history of the east is that of power of usually nomadic "savages" over settled communities. Iranic hordes destroyed Assyria, arab nomads devastated now "culturized" Iran, Turks replaced "culturized", but per Ibn-Khaldan now "lazy and decadent" arabs and caucasian "savage" tribes de facto replacing or at least partially substituting turks.
As a result islamic army consisting mostly of two parts - kochari, tribal nomads who were paid per operation and given the spoils and mamluks/ghulams/yanissarians who were taken mostly as slaves from "martial nations", i.e. turks, caucasians, later - balkans, given more or less standard training and formed their own, usually somewhat elite units. There was time during early mamluk reign or among mongols where islamic armies would be highly disciplined, but this typically did not last for too long being replaced by "tribalism", for example among mercenary units of different origin or commander.

There is a very good book by Ibrahim Muteferrik, "Usul al-fikam fi nizam al-umam", loosely translated as "the basics of nations", which tells about the inability of Ottoman army to reform - it is a long book so I will not quote but it tells that in old time arabs, turks, franks (i.e. westerners), hindus all would just bring the whole bunch of people who essentially never trained with each other before (since being taken from different lords or, in the east, tribes) split them roughly in three, put some officers over them and march onto each other. Now westerners have an army, i.e. units which train together with the same tactics, with well defined "line" and so on, but in the east besides yanicheri (ochagi) units the rest of the army is still tribal, with no perception of cohesiveness. He says that firearms are not as important as that these tribals are unreliable and see their tribal interests above all, live by plundering the settled people (btw a lot of areas in the middle east became nearly completely unpopulated by the end of XVIIIth century since the "tribals" lived by spoils, i.e. would kill all the cattle, burn cities and sell locals into slavery). The "tribals" are brave and vicious, they despise danger and therefore always charge the enemy, even if it is a stupid thing to do. They can not coordinate their forces and have no idea during the battle what other units are doing (interestingly the ancient persian army seems to suffer from the same flaw - some of their units could break Alexander's line but spent their time plundering his camp, while the rest would be slaughtered on the battlefield). He also says that in the army one should not rely on quality of armour or weapons, since the most needed things are discipline and organization.The book is filled with curses towards christians, but yet praises them for their thought and knowledge. It ends up with a typical late ottoman phrase that Osman family instead of studying sceinces spends time fueling ignorance and religious fanaticism.

Concerning "pattern" swords - one can find some uniformity in the weapons of eastern armies since very old time, however patterns per se is a "modernization" phenomena and mostly occur as a blind imitation of western weapons (i.e. XIXth century).

All related here is my personal opinion.

[Andrew]

If Ann doesn't have a problem with how her work was characterized in the book, neither do I.

Let's move along, please, and get back on topic.

[ariel]

Originally Posted by Andrew

If Ann doesn't have a problem with how her work was characterized in the book, neither do I.

Let's move along, please, and get back on topic.

I do not have a problem how her work was characterized in the book. I do have a problem, however, whether the content of her book was faithfully cited or misrepresented to the point that the origins of crucible steel were attributed to Iran rather than to proper inventors.
This bears direct influence on the topic of our current discussion on wootz.

[Andrew]

Originally Posted by ariel

I do not have a problem how her work was characterized in the book. I do have a problem, however, whether the content of her book was faithfully cited or misrepresented to the point that the origins of crucible steel were attributed to Iran rather than to proper inventors.
This bears direct influence on the topic of our current discussion on wootz.

This thread is not about the origins of crucible steel, nor is it about the book. Therefore, this discussion is off-topic.