History, Mythology, Art and RPGs

[Galloglaich]

Yeah, that is a good book; the whole Crusade Texts in Translation series is a great resource, and there are some very interesting, and sometimes unexpected, nuggets to be found.

Yes this book is amazing, it reads like a series of "war stories" you would hear in a bar, except I know Usamah was a pious Muslim so I guess it would be more realistic to say, at the souk sitting around on pillows with tea and a hookah... anyway, lots of great, really surprising stories, very short anywhere from a couple of paragraphs to a page or two... more or less at random though he tries to string them all together to make some ideological points. Some of the more amusing ones I actually couldn't post on a family friendly site like this (lets just say, Usamuh was shocked by the behavior of the Franks in many respects, especially how liberal the Franks were with their wives and girlfriends... and they were not exactly shy about co-ed Public baths.... Medieval Europeans were a lot different than most people would think...)

I'm unfamiliar with the series you mentioned, sounds like I should look for it if the journals of the Franks are half as interesting as this one I have some good reading ahead of me. I've been reading the Princeton University Press edition.

Anyway a couple more which are appropriate to this thread:

This is a good one, a lot of people don't realize the Arabs had the equivalent of incendiary hand-grenades and artillery available during the Crusades. The Franks of Outramer probably had them as well once they got established in the region since they picked up pretty much all the other local customs.... this scene is from the siege of a small Castle:

"One of the Turks climbed, under our very eyes, and started walking towards the tower, in the face of death, until he approached the tower and hurles a bottle of naptha on those who were on top of it. The naptha flashed like a meteor falling upon those hard stones, while the men who were there threw themselves on the ground for fear of being burnt. The Turk then came back to us."

Here is another one from the same siege, testament to the effectiveness of mail armor, in this case it sounds like it was 'doubled' mail or kings mail.

"Another Turk now climbed and started walking on the same wall between the two bastions. He was carrying his sword and shield. There came out to meet him from the tower, at the door of which stood a knight, a Frank wearing double-linked mail and carrying a spear in his hand, but not eqquipped with a shield. The Turk, sword in hand, encountered him. The Frank smote him with the spear, but the Turk warded off the point of the spear with his shield and, notwithstanding the spear, advanced towards the frank. The latter took to flight and turned his back, leaning forward, like one who wanted to kneel, in order to protect hiss head. The urk dealt him a number of blows which had no effect whatsoever, and went on walking until he entered the tower."


Here is a greusome tale of a fight and the subsequent effective trauma medicine practiced by the arabs on a wounded warrior:

"There was in my service a man named Nuamayr al-'Allaruzi. He was a footman, brave and strong. With a band of men from Shayzar, he set out to al-Ruj to attack the Franks. When still in our territory, they came across a caravan of the Franks hiding in a cavern, and each one began to say to the other, "Who should go in against them?" "I," said Nuuamyr. And as he said it, he went in against them. As he entered, one of them came to recieve him, but Numayr stabbed him immediately with the dagger, overthrew him and knelt upon him to slay him. Behind the Frank stood another one with a sword in his hand and he struck Numayr. The latter had on his back a knapsack containing bread, which protected him. Having killed the man under him, Numayr now turned to the man with the sword, intent upon attacking him. The Frank immediately struck him with the sword on the side of his face and cut through his eyebrow, eyelid, cheeck, nose and upper lip, making the whole side of his face hang down his chest. Numayr went out of the cavern to his companions, who bandaged his wound and brought him back during a cold rainy night. He arrived in Shayzar in that condition. there his face was stitched and his cut was treated until he was healed and returned to his former conidtion, with the exception of his eye was lost for good."

Ouch! Thats a bit nastier than the typical wound description in an RPG. The cure sounds a bit more painful than a Cure Light Wounds spell too... but almost as effective apparently.

I have several more but I'm fed up with this post editor, enough for tonight. More to come later.

G.

 

[Matthew_]

I'm unfamiliar with the series you mentioned, sounds like I should look for it if the journals of the Franks are half as interesting as this one I have some good reading ahead of me. I've been reading the Princeton University Press edition.

Basically, it is a series of translated texts for undergraduate (and postgraduate) crusade students. Several of the texts are available via Amazon; I think I found a full list whilst perusing De Re Militari one time... ah Google worth its weight in gold: Crusade Texts in Translation. Hmmn, I could have sworn Usamah Ibn-Minqidh's memoirs were reprinted as part of that series, but it looks like the most recent reprint was by Columbia in 2000. Oh well, they are all good reads at any rate...

 

[Galloglaich]

here is an amusing and interesting anecdote about armor by Usamah Ibn Munqih:

"Salah Al din (Saladin) stood in his place until a part of the army joined him. He then said, "Put on your armor". The majority of those did so while I remained standing by his side. After a while he said again, 'How many times do I have to say "Put on your Armor?'' I said 'Oh my Lord, surely thou does not mean me?' 'Surely' said he. I replied 'By Allah, surely I cannot put on anything more. We are in the early part of the night, and my quilted jerkin (kuzaghand) is furnished with two coats of mail, one on top of the other. As soon as I see the enemy I shall put it on.' Salah al Din did not reply, and we set off.

In the morning we found ourselves near Dumayr. Salah-al Din (Saladin) said to me 'Shall we not dismount and eat something? I am hungry and have been up all night.' I replied 'I shall do what thou orderest.' So we dismounted, and no sooner than we had set foot on the ground, when he said 'Where is thy jerkin?' Upon my order, my attendant produced it. Taking it out from it's leather bag, I took my knife and ripped it at the breast and disclosed the side of the two coats of mail. The jerkin enclosed a Frankish coat of mail extending to the bottom of it, with another coat on top reaching as far as the middle. Both were equipped with the proper linings, felt pads, rough silk, and rabbits hair.'

The anecdote goes on to describe how Saladin awarded him a horse for having such impressive armor.

But two coats of mail! No wonder he didn't want to wear it until he absolutely had to. I guess this is what you might classify as a 'Heavy' kazaghand or jazerant....

G.

 

[Galloglaich]

Some interesting news about an Ancient Greek form of textile armor. Turns out ten layers of linen could save your life....

http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/linotho...armor.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linothorax#Unive...ax_Project
http://www.uwgb.edu/aldreteg/Linothorax.html
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ERSx1o8wwk[/ame]

 

[EroGaki]

Wow, that's really fascinating, Galloglaich. It's a shame that padded/cloth armor only provides a +1 AC bonus.

I am curious about something. Judging from the Linothorax Project, this stuff was pretty effective at blocking sword cuts and arrows at point blank range. What ultimately lead up to linothorax getting ditched for metallic armor?

 

[Galloglaich]

Wow, that's really fascinating, Galloglaich. It's a shame that padded/cloth armor only provides a +1 AC bonus.

Well, not in my game

I am curious about something. Judging from the Linothorax Project, this stuff was pretty effective at blocking sword cuts and arrows at point blank range. What ultimately lead up to linothorax getting ditched for metallic armor?

That is a good question, the truth is I don't think they know but I can shed a little light on the subject maybe.

I don't think it ever really went away*, iron armor just re-asserted metal as the top of the armor food chain.

The truth is textile armor (padded / cloth armor in DnD) remained in use through the Medieval period. For the Hellenistic Greeks, I think their Linothorax was almost as good as their Bronze cuirass and greaves, while being much less hot, heavy, and expensive to make. But by the late Iron Age other armor had appeared which was qualitatively better.

Later types of iron armor not available to Alexander, especially mail (chainmail in DnD) were markedly superior to Linothorax, though Mail was also worn with quilted padded (usually linen or silk) armor aketon, gambeson jupon etc. Plate armor during the Renaissance could actually be made strong enough to be literally bullet-proof. But the Gambeson et-al remained in use all along as 'light' armor (not that 20 layers of linen is light), especialy for infantry.

Another valueable feature of iron armor was that it was less succeptible to wear and tear. A textile armor worn on campaign for long periods is going to gradually deteriorate.

But the textile stuck around, one of the most popular forms of iron armor was the brigandine, which was essentially like a linothorax with small iron plates embedded inside it to harden it further. Eventually iron armor went away for a while, with only the helmet remaining. Then in the 80's with new synthetic fibers (kevlar) textile armor came back, and now it's being used with steel or ceramic plates. Maybe the whole thing will go full circle again when the mech-suits begn to appear....


G.

*Textile armor was around but the specific Linothorax type of hardened / laminated textile armor mentioned in those articles did seem to dissappear, replaced by quilted textile armor of roughly the same material. Why I don't really know....

 

[Galloglaich]

Cool video of some Viking Age weapons being used quite plausibly with Talhoffer (Renaissance) techniques. From a HEMA group in Austria.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI_yH-8swXQ&feature=related[/ame]

I like the transition from the long spear to the Sax particularly. Gives you an idea how brutal iron age combat really was.

G.

 

[Galloglaich]

Vegvisir The Viking Sun Compass

The Viking Sun Compass

" Hrafns Saga it says: "the weather was thick and stormy . . . The king looked about and saw no blue sky . . . then the king took the sunstone and held it up, and then he saw where [the Sun] beamed from the stone.""

Modern reconstruction of a Vegvisir, with an embedded cordierite (aka 'iolite')

Illustration of a vegvisir found in a Viking grave in France, 1906



VegvÃsir - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Vegvísir (compass) is an Icelandic magic sign intended to guide people through rough weather. Icelandic singer Björk has it tattooed on her left arm.
Vegvisir is not just a myth, however. A disk-like artefact was found in Greenland in 1947 by the archeologist C. L. Vebæk of Denmark. [1] A second artifact was found in 2000 at a viking site in Poland [2].

After being examined by Captain Sølver and by Søren Thirslund at the Nautical Museum at Kronborg Castle and by professor Curt Roslund at the University of Gøteborg, it was determined to be a 'sun compass'. The disk had different hyperbolas or gnomon curves inscribed upon it, and North is clearly marked with 16 small cuts crossing a long line, dividing the compass in 32 directions (before the magnetic compass had arrived in Europe). Counting the spikes from north and to the right we have 90° or due west, at spike number 8.

According to the analysis, the instrument works as follows: the sun´s shadow from the tip in the middle of a disk describes different hyperbolas at different times of the year. The hyperbola represents 62° and the four weeks around summer solstice, you don´t have to know the time of the day in order to find the general directions. All you have to do is rotate the disk until the shadow of the tip falls on the hyperbola, and the general directions are given with an accuracy of a few degrees. One of the ingenious things about navigating with this instrument is that if you should choose the wrong gnomon curve and get a course that is a little too much north in the morning, this will be corrected in the afternoon by a slightly south bound course-and your average direction will be correct.
Literary evidence indicates that the vegvisir may have also been used with a 'sunstone' (this was cordierite, not to be confused with the gem sunstone) which polarizes sunlight, allowing the location of the sun to be determiined even in heavy cloud cover, which was common in Northern latitutdes.
There was another type of vegvisir which wwas a flat tree-plate with four-five holes in it + a pin of wood approx. 20 cm high and a little wooden'button' which you can move between the holes + a thin rope and a 'sunstone', a crystaal which looks like mica and is thin. Held towards the sun-position it will show light even in cloudy weather or fog. You put the bigger pin in one of the end holes. On top of the pin a thin rope was fastened, and on the rope's other end was a 'tree-button' with which to messure the angle between the horizon and the reflexion point = where the sun is.
Minerals

Two minerals are possibly associated with the vegvisir. The crystal cordierite can be found as pebbles in the coast of Norway. It has birefringent and dichroic properties, changing color and brightness when rotated in front of polarized light. With an appropiately shaped crystal it is easy to tell the direction of skylight polarization: its color will change (e.g. from blue to light yellow) when pointing towards the sun. The Vikings also coloinzed Iceland, which was the original source of Iceland Spar (optical calcite), which has had such an important role in the discovery and study of polarization. Used today for many high-performance polarizers.

At high latitude the sun remains for a long time close to the horizon, which produces the best skylight polarization pattern for navigation purposes. Because of perspective, a bank of clouds of uniform density is squeezed together when looking far away. Thus, it is usually much easier to find a clear patch of sky towards the zenith, while crepuscular rays (the beams of light and darkness radiating from the sun when blocked by clouds) are difficult to see close to the zenith, as the line of sight crosses them through their thinnest section. The method would have worked even when the sun was several degrees below the horizon (but still illuminating the atmosphere). Note that at twilight, when the sun is below the horizon by about two degrees, its location is very difficult to ascertain. Although a bright twilight arch can be seen, it occupies a large part of the horizon and is of uniform intensity. A similar effect may conceivable happen when the sun is above the horizon and a thick layer of clouds covers it. Light fog and overcast of thin clouds don't eliminate skylight polarization.

The technique has been proven to be effective. A similar instrument was created in the 1950's for use by the US Navy and US Airforce, and several Scandinavian airlines used the Sun Compas for polar flights during much of the second half of the 20th Century.

 

[Undermountain]

Awesome!

 

[Galloglaich]

Check out this excellent longsword fencing, intermingled with some silly dancing. If you want to know what sword fighting looked like in the 14th Century, think this is pretty close to the real thing.

YouTube - Lichtenawer`s Kunst des Fechtens

G.