The Armour Archive

Hello.

I'm trying to find scholarly information on major medieval armies. I feel I have a half decent grasp of Western European armies, especially from my favorite time period of late 14c. to early 15c.

I have almost no understanding of Mamluk or Seljuk infantry, or any contemporary troop categorizations of those two forces.

Also from what I can find both the Mongolians and the Byzantines of about this time period had heavy cavalry that used lances? I have not been able to discern if they threw these lances or if they charged with them under their arms.

Any pointers, insight, or book suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Hopefully this exact topic is not covered in another recent post. My searches yielded only SCA related threads.

Thanks a lot,

Will.

Check out the Osprey books, they are an excellent resource.

If you're looking for a quick intro, Cedric's on it. Anything past that you're going to have to start hitting the scholarly literature.

Thanks guys. Osprey tends to make broad generalizations, and I have been hitting up jstor quite a bit actually. But everything I'm finding tends to be so technical, and glosses over a lot that the author seems to assume the reader already knows.

Thanks for your suggestions guys.

For a period work on the structure of the Byzantine army, try Maurice's Strategikon.

Kenric

It's been awhile since I've read it, but for the Mongol's I'd start with "Devil's Horsemen"
http://www.amazon.com/Devils-Horsemen-M ... 0785815678

Give this a spin...

A Preliminary Bibliography of Medieval Arabic Military Literature
A. Rahman Zaky

http://gladius.revistas.csic.es/index.p ... ew/191/193