Reconstruction of Early Medieval-Medieval Turkic armors

**~~Altaylı~~** · 04-12-2021, 01:07 PM

Gokturk Era

A warrior depicted on a bone plate found at the foot of Mount Tepsei (4th to 6th century, Khakassia). Drawing by Yu. Khudyakov. Parts of the coat of armor (5th to 6th century) found near the village of Filimonovo, Krasnoyarsk krai, allowed us to understand the subject matter of Tepsei plates and to improve the techniques of reconstructing the Tepsei knights’ armor. Novosibirsk State University Photo by Yu. Filippovich. Experimental historical reconstruction of the “early” Turkic warrior of the 5th to 6th century. Photo by I. Petrov

https://scfh.ru/en/papers/the-wolf-s-armor/
Gokturk Clothing

Avar Era

Scholarly historical reconstruction of the helmet and armor of an Avar (Rouran) warrior of the 6th to early 7th century, based on an accidental find of an intact helmet in the Khomutovka district (Kursk region, Russia)

https://scfh.ru/en/papers/all-furnis...golden-coats-/

Kimak Turkic Armors

Scholarly historical reconstruction of the helmet of a 9th–11th century Late Turkic (Kimak) warrior, based on an accidental find of a helmet dome at the Multa River (Altai Mountains), finds of parts of bimetallic chainmail aventails in Altai and Khakassia, and frescoes from Afrasiab (Uzbekistan) and Panjakent (Tajikistan). Photo by S. Borisenko (left). Iron helmet found at the Multa River, a tributary of the Upper Katun River (Altai Mountains). Adapted from: (Gorbunov, 2003). Photo by A. Gribakin (top right). Photo by A. Pronin (Top left, bottom right)

https://scfh.ru/en/papers/all-furnis...golden-coats-/

Yenisei Kyrgyz Helmet from 12-14th

Scholarly historical reconstruction of the helmet of a 12th–14th century Yenisei Kyrgyz warrior, based on an accidental find of a helmet dome in the Minusinsk Basin, now kept at the Kyzlasov Khakass National Museum of Local History (Abakan, Russia), and a chainmail aventail found near the town of Sayanogorsk (now kept in Moscow, in a private collection). Photo by A. Bolzhurov (right). Photo by S. Borisenko (left)

In the 11th and 12th century, when the Khitan people conquered the Central Asian steppes, the Kyrgyz nation split into two spatially separate groups. One group remained in East Turkestan; the other moved to the Sayan and Altai Mountains, where the Kyrgyz culture went through a new stage in its development, the so-called Suukter epoch, named after the main type of monuments, i. e., mounds with a ring-shaped embankment.
The military–administrative system that emerged in the Kyrgyz state at the time of its greatest power grew obsolete when the state broke up into separate principalities, although some elements of this system remained effective. For example, the Kyrgyz retained the decimal principle in forming their armies: the main force unit was a tumen of ten thousand men. The core of the army was warriors, well-armed and well-equipped.
Kyrgyz warriors of this period were armed with sophisticated bows and a large set of arrows. In close combat, they used spears with rhombic tips and palma knives with triangular tips, and in hand-to-hand fights, broadswords and sabers with a straight or slightly curved blade. As the nature of the armaments and the number of troops changed, so did the combat tactics. Arrow flight distances became shorter, and the rate of shooting increased. Close and hand-to-hand fights became more important and also lasted longer. Warriors covered their bodies with kuyak cuirasses composed either of narrow plates fastened in a lamellar or scale-like manner or of wide plates riveted from the inside to a textile base. They also wore spheroconical helmets with a rim and a top piece to protect their heads (Butanaev and Khudyakov, 2000).
In the subsequent period, the Kyrgyz principalities lost their political independence, and in the 13th and 14th century, the Kyrgyz became part of the Mongol Empire. The loss of independence led to a stagnation in warfare.
The dome of the reconstructed helmet consists of six plates, joined with rivets. A narrow rim is riveted to the base. The top piece is a simple sleeve to fasten a plume. The mail aventail was reconstructed in two versions: open and closed. The closed-type aventail protects both the back and front parts of the warrior’s neck; only the face remains unprotected

https://scfh.ru/en/papers/all-furnis...golden-coats-/

Cuman Armor

Early Medieval Bulgars(Turkic Bulgars)

A Khwarazmian Helmet (from 12-13th)

Scholarly historical reconstruction of the helmet of a 12th–13th century Central Asian (Khwarazmian) warrior, based on an accidental find of a helmet dome in southwestern Kazakhstan and on images of helmets in Persian miniatures of that time. Photo by S. Borisenko. Drawing of a medieval helmet found at the Merke Village (Dzhambul region, Kazakhstan). Adapted from: (Smagulov, 1989)

The fullest representation of Khwarazmian armaments is given on the famous Anikov silver dish, found in 1909 in the Perm province and now kept in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. The warriors depicted on the dish “wear suits of armor, strapped with a gold belt, the whole body clad in lamellar or scaly armor <...>, reaching down to the ankles. The horse of one of the riders has its entire body covered with lamellar armor. The riders wear roundish conical helmets crowned with tall column-shaped cones, rounded on top. The leader wears a helmet of a more complex shape, with three horns (or rather, with two hornlike projections on both sides of the cone). The frontlets of the helmets form a downward triangular protrusion in the middle of the forehead. The helmets have neck flaps, apparently made of chainmail” (Tolstov, 1948).
The Khwarazmian helmet, which served as a model for reconstruction, had undergone severe corrosion. It had lost the top spire and a part of the forehead plate, but the good preservation of the remaining parts made it possible to identify all the main structural elements.
The base of the helmet crown is formed by a cross-like plate, shaped as a hemisphere. Four semioval plates are placed in the arch gaps between the “rays” of the main plate, which are put together by a dense row of rivets—the arc-like rows formed by their convex caps stand out in relief on the smooth surface of the crown. On top of the forehead section of the rim, three rivets fasten another iron plate, the lower part of which is missing (apparently, there was a nose plate).
The X-ray image of the lower edge of the rim in the occipital and temporal portions shows a row of small holes, which likely served to fasten a chainmail aventail. The dome of the crown ends with a top piece, riveted to the dome; the top piece has a four-pointed base whose ends point along the “rays” of the crown’s main plate. Apparently, this element was used to fasten a tube that passed through the center of a small hemisphere, also attached to the base of the top piece

https://scfh.ru/en/papers/all-furnis...golden-coats-/