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Timurid Illustration

Three Metric Romances by Khwāju Kermānī
Painter - Junayd al-Sulṭānī, Baghdad, c.1396, British Museum, Add. 18113, folio 23r.



Plate 53 in: M. GORELIK, "Oriental Armour of the Near and Middle East from the Eighth to the Fifteenth Centuries as Shown in Works of Art", in: Islamic Arms and Armour, ed. ROBERT ELGOOD, London 1979
53 Three Metric Romances by Khwāju Kermānī, painter Junayd al-Sulṭānī, Baghdad, c.1396, (British Museum, Add. 18113, fol. 31v)
p.48:
Another source of information is the splendid work of the Baghdad artist Junayd al-Sulṭānī (53, 54), which reflects the originality of Iraqi arms. We observe true plate and mail armour for the first time (46), styled as a short waist-length coat, slit in the front, the upper part made of mail with the lower part laminated, and having steel bands attached to several belts or joined together by a mail juncture, rather than the former method of thin belts or laces. The mail shirt is also to be found here (54), being waist-length with a festooned hem and having a mid-forearm-length sleeve. Lamellar armour is retained (53) in fourteenth-century Iraq similar to that of Iran, except that the upper part is fixed to the shoulders instead of using straps. The gilded steel discs on top of the chest plates are of late fourteenth-century style. The shoulder guard consists of small plates as do the tassets (which do not quite reach the knees. These tassets are often made of plates similar to those on the body. Thigh guards are first portrayed in the works of Junayd al-Sulṭānī (fig. 183) and resemble the mail suspended from the belt under the armour with a big protruding metal disc at the knee. Round gorgets are still in evidence in Iraq, made only mail in the late fourteenth century (fig. 183: 53). The folding bāzūband vambraces are also featured (53, 54). The helmets resemble Iranian ones in shape and structure, but with lamellar aventails (53) and movable nasals (53, 54), precursors of the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century turban helmet nasals.

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