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They became to Islam a source of reinforcement and an enormous army, and to the Caliphs a protection and a shelter and invulnerable armour, they were as the mail worn under a cloak …
Amr’ ibn Bahr of Basra, known as al-Jahiz, ‘the goggle eyed’. writing in praise of Turkish Mamluks.
In Crusade histories one often finds the notion that the Turks were lightly armed and could be pushed from the field by the charge of mail-clad heavy knights, provided that the Crusaders survived the initial Turkish mounted-archery attack. This is true as far as the Turcomen were concerned, but in terms of an askari Mamluk it is far from correct. The Gesta Francorum tells us about these bodyguards that rode armoured horses, an unknown phenomenon in the West at this time. The problem for the Muslims was that, until relatively late in the Crusades, there simply weren’t enough of these askari Mamluks.
Chain mail was the standard protection for both Crusaders and Muslim troops. Usama Ibn Munqidh, an Arab warrior prince of the twelfth century, relates how the double-link chain mail of one of his Frankish enemies allowed the knight to survive what appeared to have been an irresistible lance strike. It was not impenetrable, however. Albert of Aachen, writing of the destruction of the People’s Crusade by the emir Kilij Arslan relates how the Crusaders, ‘when they had seen the Turks, began to encourage one another in the name of the Lord. Then Walter Sansavoir fell, pierced by seven arrows which had penetrated his coat of mail.’
Both Crusaders and Muslim troopers were protected by a knee-length chain-mail shirt that extended up to the neck as a coif. The hazagand, a jerkin of leather and mail that was commonly worn by Islamic troops in Syria. is definitely not light in terms of the protection it affords, but it is light in terms of the Syrian summer. It was taken up by the Crusaders of Outremer and spread to Europe as the hauberk jaseran.
The armour of the East never moved toward the total body coverage with plate that was a feature of the Western knight in the later medieval age as the technology and techniques of Islamic metalworking could create steel that was perfect for blades but it could not be formed into plates any larger than 25cm. Even in the Ottoman age Islamic troops therefore wore lamellar armour. It is this that has perhaps worked on historians’ minds and created the myth of the heavy Western knight bearing down on unprotected Turkish bowmen.
Certainly the Crusaders had an advantage over the Turcomen once they were in close contact and it seems likely that the generally more heavily-armoured Franks were able to press their advantage once they were within spear and sword length of their adversaries.
There was a growth in the number of heavily-armoured Mamluks in the armies of Saladin to meet this challenge, as well as the carrying of heavier axes and maces by Islamic warriors.
Technologically there was in fact near parity in weaponry and protection for the battlefield in the period of the First Crusade. What gave the Crusaders the advantage in the contest was something else; a fanatical drive and courage and a religious fervour that held them together in the direst of times.