Companion to Medieval Arms and Armour (review)

This volume consists of thirteen essays covering a wide span in space and time, from Western Europe to Persia and from the late Roman Empire to the appearance of gunpowder weapons in Western Europe. The essays, none of which are identified as previously published, vary greatly in their focus and depth, as one might expect in a work of this type.

In the introduction, the editor states that the anthology intends to look outside Europe to neighboring civilizations which had an influence "upon developments and changes within Europe." In this endeavor, the book is successful. Discussions of the influence of the Islamic world and the pre-Islamic Middle East and Central Asia on Europe, especially in the article by Helmut Nickel which focuses on this topic, are perhaps the strongest portion of the book. They may also be the most accessible and interesting to the general educated but nonspecialist reader. The contributions by Ewart Oakeshott, Claude Gaier, and Shihab al-Sarraf, by contrast, are so narrowly focused as to be of little value to the nonspecialist. Dr. al-Sarraf's work dealing with the close-combat weapons of the Abbasid Caliphate is, however, an example of the book's attempts to extend its reach beyond the usual Western European viewpoint as influences are traced even farther away from Europe, into the pre-Islamic Sassanid Empire and Central Asia.

The individual articles are well documented, with the exception of Dr. Michael Gorelik's piece on arms and armour in South-Eastern Europe, which lacks any footnotes or citations. I would have been interested to see his sources regarding the early history of the Magyars and the situation that prevailed in the present-day Ukraine prior to the founding of Rus by the Vikings. There is also a bibliography for the volume as a whole, and it is a pleasure to see citations of sources published in languages ranging from English to Arabic, Russian, and at least one in Serbo-Croat. The volume is well illustrated, although all illustrations are in black-and-white only and are grouped together at the end of the book. Some, but not all, of the articles have notations keyed to the illustrations.

The editor says in his introduction that this book is "intended for readers with an interest in medieval military affairs, particularly the social and technological aspects of this subject." This goal is not entirely met; little is said of military affairs, and the title's mention of "arms and armour" is a far more accurate description of the book's focus. With that caveat, those who are interested in the narrower topic are likely to find at least some of the essays interesting, and, given the wide range of cultures covered, will probably discover information new to them. Readers interested in how medieval arms and armour may have been employed or in their wider social aspects will not find this book useful.