Kindi on swords and iron

Jens Nordlunde · 17th November 2008, 01:46 PM

In Medieval Islamic Swords and Sword making, Kindi’s treatise ‘On swords and their kinds’, by Robert G. Hoyland and Brian Gilmour, 2006, there is something interesting when Kindi describes the Frankish sword – here is a quote.

Page 42 ……[And] on their foreparts are crescent moons filled with yellow copper or gold, or a cross likewise filled [with yellow copper or gold]. And among them are some that have an incision in one part of their structure into which a nail of gold or yellow copper has been worked. Sometimes in the most well-formed [ancient] Yemeni swords that nail was also nailed with gold into its structure or tip. ……

Kindi is assumed to have lived in the first half of the 7th century AD, so the use of copper/gold nails is very ancient, as I suppose it is older than he is, and we both know that using the crescent moon is far older than Islam, but it is interesting that he mentions it. I wonder what Kindi means when he refer to ‘ancient Yemeni’ swords – how old would they be? Worth noticing too is, that he describes swords from ten different places, but it is only on the Frankish swords he describes markings like this.

Page 21 ……The Sri Lankan [swords] is divided into four categories. Among them are those forged in Sri Lanka. And among them are the Khurasani, which are those brought from Sri Lanka and its iron worked in Khurasan. And among them are the Mansuri, of which the iron is brought from Sri Lanka and they are forged at Mansura. And among them are the Frasi, of which the iron is brought from Sri Lanka and forged in Fars, and they are called imperial. The latter is itself divided into two categories: those bearing figures and trees and other images, and the plain swords.

Interesting to read about the early iron export within India, but they did of course also export iron to the Arabian Peninsula and to other places – we are in the early 7th century AD, so this export had been going on for centuries.

Gonzalo G · 18th November 2008, 05:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jens Nordlunde

Kindi is assumed to have lived in the first half of the 7th century AD, so the use of copper/gold nails is very ancient, as I suppose it is older than he is, and we both know that using the crescent moon is far older than Islam, but it is interesting that he mentions it. I wonder what Kindi means when he refer to ‘ancient Yemeni’ swords – how old would they be? Worth noticing too is, that he describes swords from ten different places, but it is only on the Frankish swords he describes markings like this. Interesting to read about the early iron export within India, but they did of course also export iron to the Arabian Peninsula and to other places – we are in the early 7th century AD, so this export had been going on for centuries.

Al-Kindi lived on the 9th Century, according with the sources. It is hipothesized that Yemen was a main productor center of wattered "procesed iron" (wootz, probably) and swords, which also were made there from the "procesed watered iron" form Sri-Lanka. It also is hipothesized that this production reached it´s peak in pre-muslim times, and that the end of the iranian rule, the demise of the Himyarite dynasty and the shift to the northeast (Baghdad) of the political and ecomical mainstream, finished this production. As you know, this points are expresed by Robert G. Hoyland and Brian Gilmour.

The exports of watered "procesed iron" in fact mentions Mansur, but Mansur was at that moment on arab hands, if I recall correctly, as it was part of the Sindh. Mansur was probably located in today´s Brahmanabad, on Pakistan. More interstingly, the watered "procesed iron" was exported to Bukhara. It is also said that the frankish swords probably were known from the trade with the Viking-Rus, the oriental commercial colony vikings established in today´s west Russia, but it is also known that the franks used the swords as one of their main export products during the Middle Ages. Before and after the settled on France.

Jens Nordlunde · 18th November 2008, 12:43 PM

Gonzalo, Thank you for the correction. Kindi is supposed to have been born around 800 AD and died around 860 AD, so it should of course have been 9th century. Mansura was the chief city of Muslim Sind, founded in the 8th century, now a ruin some 45 miles northeast of Hyderabad in Pakistan.

RhysMichael · 18th November 2008, 12:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jens Nordlunde

In Medieval Islamic Swords and Sword making, Kindi’s treatise ‘On swords and their kinds’, by Robert G. Hoyland and Brian Gilmour, 2006, there is something interesting when Kindi describes the Frankish sword – here is a quote.

Page 42 ……[And] on their foreparts are crescent moons filled with yellow copper or gold, or a cross likewise filled [with yellow copper or gold]. And among them are some that have an incision in one part of their structure into which a nail of gold or yellow copper has been worked. Sometimes in the most well-formed [ancient] Yemeni swords that nail was also nailed with gold into its structure or tip. ……

.

Could this be the first written reference to the origin of the half moon or cresent moon mark we now see on kaskara and such even today ?

Jens Nordlunde · 18th November 2008, 01:22 PM

I don’t know if it is the first written reference, but it is the oldest one I have seen, that is why I found it interesting.

It has now and again been discussed if the round gold/copper/braze marking on blades would make the blades weaker. However the mention of nails made me think that the hole in the blade does not have to be very big. A small hole in the blade for the nail to go through would be enough, and the head of the nail and the rest of the nail could be hammered flat on either side of the blade, so both would look like if the hole had been bigger. Maybe that is how it was made.

olikara · 18th November 2008, 03:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jens Nordlunde

A small hole in the blade for the nail to go through would be enough, and the head of the nail and the rest of the nail could be hammered flat on either side of the blade, so both would look like if the hole had been bigger. Maybe that is how it was made.

Yes, Jens. Your hypothesis makes sense.

Gonzalo G · 19th November 2008, 04:21 AM

Jens, that point of the location of the city interests me. I have a document from M. H. Panhwar which states that: "Capital of Sindh was shifted from Alore to Mansura Yazid Ali Kalbi. Archaeological evidence so far collected shows that Brahmanabad and Mansura are two names of same city." Could it be another Mansura? Also, "The Arabs did not destroy Brahmanabad and therefore it should have survived side by side. Arab travelers Ibn Haukal and Istakhri who visited in 951 AD have said in Sindhi, Mansura is called Brahmanabad, (Bamiwan, which is close to Babanwa or Brahman, Bamra or
Banbhriya) showing thereby that the town had retained its earlier name among the local populance, but Arabs called Mansura." I don´t have more information, so if you can, please give me more references to check. I have many black holes in this area.
Regards

Gonzalo

Jens Nordlunde · 19th November 2008, 12:19 PM

Gonzalo, I have tried to Google, and there seem to be quite a number of places called Mansura. I don’t know anything more than I have told you so far, as it all comes from the book I quoted, but I have a map showing a town called Mansura. If it is this town, I doubt very much that it is a ruin town any more.

ariel · 19th November 2008, 10:54 PM

What is interesting to me, is the open statement of al-Kindi that wootz was coming to Persia from India.
We are accustomed to the statements about wootz being a genuinely Iranian invention, that Indian masters learned their craft only late (16-17th centuries) etc, etc. In fact, the noun wootz is always preceeded by an adjective Persian, implying the purely Iranian origin: from the beginning to the end. The contribution of Indian metallurgists is not even glossed over; it is buried in silence. Al-Kindi's book is cited very frequently, but the passage cited here is usually conveniently omitted.
In fact, what we learn from here and from Indian sources
http://materials.iisc.ernet.in/~woot...tage/WOOTZ.htm
is that wootz was manufactured in India and that Iranians just bought the output en masse and re-sold it elsewhere. No doubt, Iranians achieved the highest levels of proficiency in manufacturing blades from Indian wootz, but the honor of inventing and manufacturing wootz should rightly belong to India.

Gonzalo G · 20th November 2008, 08:36 PM

I agree, India and probably Central Asia. Though, there are latter sources on the manofacture of wootz. I can´t still put my hands on books like Persian Steel and Persian Metal Technology. Jens is decades ahead of me on this readings. But I think we cannot be conclusive about iranian wootz production, and archaeometallurgy is still in it´s beginnings. I still do not read Manouchehr´s book..too expensive for me, taking on account the caravan post services EUA-México additional cost.

Jens, thank you very much for your input.

Jens Nordlunde · 21st November 2008, 04:50 PM

Somewhere I read that the ingots could have different forms and sizes - up to two kg, but most seem to be roundish, although some of these are not ingots, but 'balls' use to smash the ore.

Gonzalo G · 21st November 2008, 10:39 PM

Even a little heavier, and egg shaped, from the for of the crucible. Enough to make a sword.

ariel · 22nd November 2008, 04:54 AM

As per that article
http://materials.iisc.ernet.in/~woot...tage/WOOTZ.htm
the average weight of an ingot was 2.3 kg. The ones I saw advertised for sale ( Artzi's site and other) were 300-800g.
Khorasani wrote that less than 300 g of iron was put into the crucibles and did not mention any variability. Anosov made ingots as heavy as 5 kg, but recommended not to exceed 3-4 kg limit, as it compromised the quality.
So, if the blade of a shamshir weighed ~600-800 g, and assuming even a 50% loss, a 3 kg ingot was sufficient for 2 blades. Of course, smaller ingots were used for kards, khanjars etc.
The article I cited above indicates that tens of thousands of ingots were shipped annually from the Coromandel coast ( only one source of origin !) to Persia.
It should have been enough to produce all the blades manufactured in Iran and still leave plenty for re-sale. Thus, there was no impetus for the Iranians to develop their own metallurgy. This also explains the sudden cessation of wootz blade manufacture in Iran as soon as the British killed the wootz industry in India.

Jens Nordlunde · 22nd November 2008, 04:30 PM

Yes Ariel, it is fascinating reading, and the amount of ingots exported to other places in India, Persia, Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Rome and other places – not to speak about the places whey sold some of them to, must have been very, very big. Like you say, enough to make swords for hole armies, and the export went on for centuries. However, we must not forget, that when an army had lost a battle, the winner took all the arms and emptied the armouries, if possible, and brought it all home, either to enter their own armoury or to be changed into weapon types, which suited them better, so the looser would have a very big need for ‘new’ ingots to arm their soldiers.

Another thing, which I also find fascinating, is, that to keep up en export of spices, fine cotton textiles, metal ware and a lot of other things, they would have needed very big ships, and the knowledge of navigating. It is known that the first compasses used by them, was a hollow fish made of magnetic iron swimming on oil, but it takes a lot more than that to sail for days when you cant see land. No doubt the first sailors sailed close to the coast, but it must have taken a long time, and not seventy days as someone describes it at one point, when he was on a boat with a lot of horses for export to India.

Gonzalo G · 23rd November 2008, 11:23 PM

On the other side, wootz was not used only to produce weapons. And also, the archaeological discoveries in Central Asia had shown that there were other wootz centers of production, not mentioned by the old known written sources (at least, the sources known by occidentals), which makes me wonder about the limits of the antique sources taken individually. It must be pointed Gilmour references the strange fact that, being Al-Biruni a native of the southeast Central Asia Area, he did not mention Khorasan area as a center of production of wootz. I think the only ultimate source of knowledge grounded in solid facts about this point, is archaeology.

Also to be noted, is that modern scholars who have access to muslim sources in several languajes, rarely traslate them, so they remain as a de facto monopoly of the scarce reesearchers interested on this subjects. We need more occidental arabian-iranian-indian speakers interested in the traslation, publication and study of this texts.

ariel · 24th November 2008, 01:31 AM

"Also to be noted, is that modern scholars who have access to muslim sources in several languajes, rarely traslate them, so they remain as a de facto monopoly of the scarce reesearchers interested on this subjects. We need more occidental arabian-iranian-indian speakers interested in the traslation, publication and study of this texts."
I agree, but there is such an appalling scarcity of academic endeavours there! Perhaps, there are some local texts for the "internal market", but even Pant's mammoth 3-volume set relies heavily on ... Rawson! At least in the weapon volume~50% of all illustrations are from the Rawson's book. Iran is even worse: the first attempt to properly catalogue swords in Teheran was made by the Russian Romanovski; he died soon thereafter and no attempt was made by the local museum keepers, university staff or anyone else to continue the work. They had to wait until Manouchehr Khorasani came from Germany to teach them and to publish a book. Arab countries.... The Saudi exhibition ( the "Islamic Weapons" catalogue) is acoffee table book and is the only one before the Furussiyya Foundation book.
What would we do without Elgood, Gorelik, Astvatsaturyan, Nicolle etc?
The only true research in the area is going in Europe ( including Russia).

Gonzalo G · 24th November 2008, 09:07 AM

There is so much talent wasted. To be a good researcher on this area, you need passion, talent, money, time and knowledge. Beign a collector helps a lot. I believe there is such passion, talent and knowledge in some of the forumites, but not enough of the other factors. Things are more complicated when you need to access difficult sources, written in oriental medieval languajes.

Accessing primary sources has it´s own problem. Sometimes you need special academic credentials to get permissions, or to have some nationality. In Mexico some archivists in the national historic documentation centers, monopolize certain documents, because they want to be the only researchers on certain areas of their interest, but the worst thing is the fact that they do not have any formal education in history, they only are chroniclers who stack facts and anecdotes. It is just a way of making money with an "academic" aura, tough we have also some good historian. And researching on the military archives to make a study about the history of the mexican sabers, for example, is just impossible, as NOBODY can access military archives in Mexico, historical or not, but the members of the military caste, who will never do that kind of work, nor have the education to. Those archives are always "reserved" or "confidential".

Historical research has many prosaic problems, apart from those derived of the inner nature of this work, depending of the type of research, country, etc. I can imagine what facilities would be given to an USA scholar in Iran or Syria, for example, trying to make a research on a subject in which those countries ultimately have some national image interests, even if the subject is related to arms, armour or archaeometallurgy. Making a cientifically neutral rsearch on history matters has some problems, as history traditionally has been manipulated and biased.

Jens Nordlunde · 30th November 2008, 04:44 PM

Gonzalo, I can follow you a long way of the stony road called amateur research. There are, however a few lights on the road, one is stubbornness, and another is enthusiasm – and both counts, when it comes to research, Besides, I know several amateur collectors, with a bigger special knowledge than many museum people. However most museum people cover a very big area, while the amateurs mostly work within a very narrow area.

The key questions to the rest you mention is a network, as big as possible, with the masks a small as possible, and to specialist amateurs. If you can build up such a network you are a well down the road – although there will still be far to walk.

17th November 2008, 01:46 PM	#1
Jens Nordlunde Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Europe Posts: 2,713	Kindi on swords and iron In Medieval Islamic Swords and Sword making, Kindi’s treatise ‘On swords and their kinds’, by Robert G. Hoyland and Brian Gilmour, 2006, there is something interesting when Kindi describes the Frankish sword – here is a quote. Page 42 ……[And] on their foreparts are crescent moons filled with yellow copper or gold, or a cross likewise filled [with yellow copper or gold]. And among them are some that have an incision in one part of their structure into which a nail of gold or yellow copper has been worked. Sometimes in the most well-formed [ancient] Yemeni swords that nail was also nailed with gold into its structure or tip. …… Kindi is assumed to have lived in the first half of the 7th century AD, so the use of copper/gold nails is very ancient, as I suppose it is older than he is, and we both know that using the crescent moon is far older than Islam, but it is interesting that he mentions it. I wonder what Kindi means when he refer to ‘ancient Yemeni’ swords – how old would they be? Worth noticing too is, that he describes swords from ten different places, but it is only on the Frankish swords he describes markings like this. Page 21 ……The Sri Lankan [swords] is divided into four categories. Among them are those forged in Sri Lanka. And among them are the Khurasani, which are those brought from Sri Lanka and its iron worked in Khurasan. And among them are the Mansuri, of which the iron is brought from Sri Lanka and they are forged at Mansura. And among them are the Frasi, of which the iron is brought from Sri Lanka and forged in Fars, and they are called imperial. The latter is itself divided into two categories: those bearing figures and trees and other images, and the plain swords. Interesting to read about the early iron export within India, but they did of course also export iron to the Arabian Peninsula and to other places – we are in the early 7th century AD, so this export had been going on for centuries.

19th November 2008, 12:19 PM	#8
Jens Nordlunde Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Europe Posts: 2,713	Gonzalo, I have tried to Google, and there seem to be quite a number of places called Mansura. I don’t know anything more than I have told you so far, as it all comes from the book I quoted, but I have a map showing a town called Mansura. If it is this town, I doubt very much that it is a ruin town any more. Attached Images

23rd November 2008, 11:23 PM	#15
Gonzalo G Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Nothern Mexico Posts: 458	On the other side, wootz was not used only to produce weapons. And also, the archaeological discoveries in Central Asia had shown that there were other wootz centers of production, not mentioned by the old known written sources (at least, the sources known by occidentals), which makes me wonder about the limits of the antique sources taken individually. It must be pointed Gilmour references the strange fact that, being Al-Biruni a native of the southeast Central Asia Area, he did not mention Khorasan area as a center of production of wootz. I think the only ultimate source of knowledge grounded in solid facts about this point, is archaeology. Also to be noted, is that modern scholars who have access to muslim sources in several languajes, rarely traslate them, so they remain as a de facto monopoly of the scarce reesearchers interested on this subjects. We need more occidental arabian-iranian-indian speakers interested in the traslation, publication and study of this texts. Last edited by Gonzalo G; 24th November 2008 at 02:56 AM.

18th November 2008, 12:43 PM	#3
Jens Nordlunde Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Europe Posts: 2,713	Gonzalo, Thank you for the correction. Kindi is supposed to have been born around 800 AD and died around 860 AD, so it should of course have been 9th century. Mansura was the chief city of Muslim Sind, founded in the 8th century, now a ruin some 45 miles northeast of Hyderabad in Pakistan.

18th November 2008, 01:22 PM	#5
Jens Nordlunde Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Europe Posts: 2,713	I don’t know if it is the first written reference, but it is the oldest one I have seen, that is why I found it interesting. It has now and again been discussed if the round gold/copper/braze marking on blades would make the blades weaker. However the mention of nails made me think that the hole in the blade does not have to be very big. A small hole in the blade for the nail to go through would be enough, and the head of the nail and the rest of the nail could be hammered flat on either side of the blade, so both would look like if the hole had been bigger. Maybe that is how it was made.

19th November 2008, 04:21 AM	#7
Gonzalo G Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Nothern Mexico Posts: 458	Jens, that point of the location of the city interests me. I have a document from M. H. Panhwar which states that: "Capital of Sindh was shifted from Alore to Mansura Yazid Ali Kalbi. Archaeological evidence so far collected shows that Brahmanabad and Mansura are two names of same city." Could it be another Mansura? Also, "The Arabs did not destroy Brahmanabad and therefore it should have survived side by side. Arab travelers Ibn Haukal and Istakhri who visited in 951 AD have said in Sindhi, Mansura is called Brahmanabad, (Bamiwan, which is close to Babanwa or Brahman, Bamra or Banbhriya) showing thereby that the town had retained its earlier name among the local populance, but Arabs called Mansura." I don´t have more information, so if you can, please give me more references to check. I have many black holes in this area. Regards Gonzalo

19th November 2008, 10:54 PM	#9
ariel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 5,503	What is interesting to me, is the open statement of al-Kindi that wootz was coming to Persia from India. We are accustomed to the statements about wootz being a genuinely Iranian invention, that Indian masters learned their craft only late (16-17th centuries) etc, etc. In fact, the noun wootz is always preceeded by an adjective Persian, implying the purely Iranian origin: from the beginning to the end. The contribution of Indian metallurgists is not even glossed over; it is buried in silence. Al-Kindi's book is cited very frequently, but the passage cited here is usually conveniently omitted. In fact, what we learn from here and from Indian sources http://materials.iisc.ernet.in/~woot...tage/WOOTZ.htm is that wootz was manufactured in India and that Iranians just bought the output en masse and re-sold it elsewhere. No doubt, Iranians achieved the highest levels of proficiency in manufacturing blades from Indian wootz, but the honor of inventing and manufacturing wootz should rightly belong to India.

20th November 2008, 08:36 PM	#10
Gonzalo G Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Nothern Mexico Posts: 458	I agree, India and probably Central Asia. Though, there are latter sources on the manofacture of wootz. I can´t still put my hands on books like Persian Steel and Persian Metal Technology. Jens is decades ahead of me on this readings. But I think we cannot be conclusive about iranian wootz production, and archaeometallurgy is still in it´s beginnings. I still do not read Manouchehr´s book..too expensive for me, taking on account the caravan post services EUA-México additional cost. Jens, thank you very much for your input.

21st November 2008, 04:50 PM	#11
Jens Nordlunde Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Europe Posts: 2,713	Somewhere I read that the ingots could have different forms and sizes - up to two kg, but most seem to be roundish, although some of these are not ingots, but 'balls' use to smash the ore.

21st November 2008, 10:39 PM	#12
Gonzalo G Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Nothern Mexico Posts: 458	Even a little heavier, and egg shaped, from the for of the crucible. Enough to make a sword.

22nd November 2008, 04:54 AM	#13
ariel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 5,503	As per that article http://materials.iisc.ernet.in/~woot...tage/WOOTZ.htm the average weight of an ingot was 2.3 kg. The ones I saw advertised for sale ( Artzi's site and other) were 300-800g. Khorasani wrote that less than 300 g of iron was put into the crucibles and did not mention any variability. Anosov made ingots as heavy as 5 kg, but recommended not to exceed 3-4 kg limit, as it compromised the quality. So, if the blade of a shamshir weighed ~600-800 g, and assuming even a 50% loss, a 3 kg ingot was sufficient for 2 blades. Of course, smaller ingots were used for kards, khanjars etc. The article I cited above indicates that tens of thousands of ingots were shipped annually from the Coromandel coast ( only one source of origin !) to Persia. It should have been enough to produce all the blades manufactured in Iran and still leave plenty for re-sale. Thus, there was no impetus for the Iranians to develop their own metallurgy. This also explains the sudden cessation of wootz blade manufacture in Iran as soon as the British killed the wootz industry in India.

22nd November 2008, 04:30 PM	#14
Jens Nordlunde Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Europe Posts: 2,713	Yes Ariel, it is fascinating reading, and the amount of ingots exported to other places in India, Persia, Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Rome and other places – not to speak about the places whey sold some of them to, must have been very, very big. Like you say, enough to make swords for hole armies, and the export went on for centuries. However, we must not forget, that when an army had lost a battle, the winner took all the arms and emptied the armouries, if possible, and brought it all home, either to enter their own armoury or to be changed into weapon types, which suited them better, so the looser would have a very big need for ‘new’ ingots to arm their soldiers. Another thing, which I also find fascinating, is, that to keep up en export of spices, fine cotton textiles, metal ware and a lot of other things, they would have needed very big ships, and the knowledge of navigating. It is known that the first compasses used by them, was a hollow fish made of magnetic iron swimming on oil, but it takes a lot more than that to sail for days when you cant see land. No doubt the first sailors sailed close to the coast, but it must have taken a long time, and not seventy days as someone describes it at one point, when he was on a boat with a lot of horses for export to India.

24th November 2008, 01:31 AM	#16
ariel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 5,503	"Also to be noted, is that modern scholars who have access to muslim sources in several languajes, rarely traslate them, so they remain as a de facto monopoly of the scarce reesearchers interested on this subjects. We need more occidental arabian-iranian-indian speakers interested in the traslation, publication and study of this texts." I agree, but there is such an appalling scarcity of academic endeavours there! Perhaps, there are some local texts for the "internal market", but even Pant's mammoth 3-volume set relies heavily on ... Rawson! At least in the weapon volume~50% of all illustrations are from the Rawson's book. Iran is even worse: the first attempt to properly catalogue swords in Teheran was made by the Russian Romanovski; he died soon thereafter and no attempt was made by the local museum keepers, university staff or anyone else to continue the work. They had to wait until Manouchehr Khorasani came from Germany to teach them and to publish a book. Arab countries.... The Saudi exhibition ( the "Islamic Weapons" catalogue) is acoffee table book and is the only one before the Furussiyya Foundation book. What would we do without Elgood, Gorelik, Astvatsaturyan, Nicolle etc? The only true research in the area is going in Europe ( including Russia).

24th November 2008, 09:07 AM	#17
Gonzalo G Member Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Nothern Mexico Posts: 458	There is so much talent wasted. To be a good researcher on this area, you need passion, talent, money, time and knowledge. Beign a collector helps a lot. I believe there is such passion, talent and knowledge in some of the forumites, but not enough of the other factors. Things are more complicated when you need to access difficult sources, written in oriental medieval languajes. Accessing primary sources has it´s own problem. Sometimes you need special academic credentials to get permissions, or to have some nationality. In Mexico some archivists in the national historic documentation centers, monopolize certain documents, because they want to be the only researchers on certain areas of their interest, but the worst thing is the fact that they do not have any formal education in history, they only are chroniclers who stack facts and anecdotes. It is just a way of making money with an "academic" aura, tough we have also some good historian. And researching on the military archives to make a study about the history of the mexican sabers, for example, is just impossible, as NOBODY can access military archives in Mexico, historical or not, but the members of the military caste, who will never do that kind of work, nor have the education to. Those archives are always "reserved" or "confidential". Historical research has many prosaic problems, apart from those derived of the inner nature of this work, depending of the type of research, country, etc. I can imagine what facilities would be given to an USA scholar in Iran or Syria, for example, trying to make a research on a subject in which those countries ultimately have some national image interests, even if the subject is related to arms, armour or archaeometallurgy. Making a cientifically neutral rsearch on history matters has some problems, as history traditionally has been manipulated and biased.

30th November 2008, 04:44 PM	#18
Jens Nordlunde Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Europe Posts: 2,713	Gonzalo, I can follow you a long way of the stony road called amateur research. There are, however a few lights on the road, one is stubbornness, and another is enthusiasm – and both counts, when it comes to research, Besides, I know several amateur collectors, with a bigger special knowledge than many museum people. However most museum people cover a very big area, while the amateurs mostly work within a very narrow area. The key questions to the rest you mention is a network, as big as possible, with the masks a small as possible, and to specialist amateurs. If you can build up such a network you are a well down the road – although there will still be far to walk.