Islamic Arms And Armour

This is a lavishly illustrated presentation of the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art's collection of arms and armor. The items range in date from the seventh to the nineteenth centuries A.D. In avoiding the strictly typological classification of most previous catalogues of the subject, the aim is to give a full sense of the panoply of warfare: the stirrup, the drum, and the talismanic shirt were as important to the Muslim warrior as the sword and the mail shirt. David Alexander, the leading authority on Islamic arms and armor, has provided a detailed scholarly guide to this outstanding collection.

"Royal Armouries, arms and armour series"--Cover.

Armor and weaponry were central to Islamic culture not only as a means of conquest and the spread of the faith, but also as symbols of status, wealth, and power. The finest arms were made by master craftsmen working with the leading designers, goldsmiths, and jewelers, whose work transformed utilitarian military equipment into courtly works of art. This book reveals the diversity and artistic quality of one of the most important and encyclopedic collections of its kind in the West. The Metropolitan Museum's holdings span ten centuries and include representative pieces from almost every Islamic culture from Spain to the Caucasus. The collection includes rare early works, among them the oldest documented Islamic sword, and is rich in helmets and body armor, decorated with calligraphy and arabesques, that were worn in Iran and Anatolia in the late fifteenth century. Other masterpieces include a jeweled short sword (yatagan) with a blade of "watered" steel that comes from the court of Süleyman the Magnificent, a seventeenth-century gold-inlaid armor associated with Shah Jahan, and two gold-inlaid flintlock firearms belonging to the guard of Tipu Sultan of Mysore. Presenting 126 objects, each handsomely photographed and richly documented with a detailed description and discussion of its technical, historical, and artistic importance, this overview of the Met's holdings is supplemented by an introductory essay on the formation of the collection, and appendixes on iconography and on Turkman-style armor.

The book illustrates over 1,000 items of Islamic and Oriental arms and armour which represent the finest and most interesting examples originating from Islamic and Hindu cultures and beyond, including Russia, China, Tibet, Mongolia, Korea and South East Asia. All the items illustrated have passed through the hands of Robert Hales during the last 45 years. Divided into four sections: daggers, swords, firearms, and armour, with the occasional transgression, the publication also includes a useful glossary of terms. The text is concise and descriptive as well as containing information that is being published for the first time.

In the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, the Arab nomads who inhabited a great stretch of the Near East from Aleppo in northern Syria to the southern shores of the Arabian peninsula continued a way of life virtually unchanged from the time of the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century. Wars and raids were carried out by tribesmen armed like their ancestors with sword, mace and lance. Firearms came slowly to the Bedouin, and multishot weapons were very rare until the end of the 19th century.