15th century Furusiyya sword practice

[John_Clements]

From David Nicolle's new book on arms & armor, an image from a 15th century Persian fighting text or "Furusiyya", it shows test cutting on mounds of clay and fencing practice with reeds. Cool.
I wonder how any sand grains in the clay would affect the sword blade?

JC

[Randall Pleasant]

John

Is there any additional information about the state of the clay mounds (ie. wet, dry, packed, etc.) used in the test cutting? I wonder if they felt that wet clay was similar to a human body?

[Matt Easton]

I am very curious as to how much technical information on fighting is actually contained in these texts, as I have a small pamphlet of a 14thC Mamluk cavalry combat treatise, but it seems that there is quite little practical information in there.

Is it possible to find out from Nicolle, John?

Matt

[John_Clements]

This is from the article by Shahab Al- Sharraf in Nicolle's new "Companion to Medieval Arms and Armour."
He comments that these texts have never been fully examined or anlayzed and contain a wealth of info.
There's no detail in the book about the clay tests.
Will be interesting to see what eventualy develops in time.

JC

[Guest]

Carefull about getting any clay from an art supply house. I have a few years pottery experiance and your average 50lbs
box of clay will have a large amout of whats called grog, its to help give the clay stiffer body while throwing on the wheel, and it helps in the vitification process when heated. Ask for a low grog, low fire clay, or even porcelien. It has almost no grog at all, which is why it is almost translucent when fired.
Its not cheap but it is infinitely reusable. Just be sure to rebag it after cutting practice.

[JeanryChandler]

Someone asked if the Persians may have felt that Clay was a good simulation of the human body. Perhaps they were using it to test armor, i.e. armor over clay? They use clay in this manner to test modern ballistic body armor against both bullets and knives. I recently saw a documentary about this where they were comparing ballistic armor used by policemen in both the US and the United Kingdom. Interestingly, knives, much more of a common threat in the UK, are considered a greater penetration risk than all but the largest caliber bullets, and a much more difficult problem to address from the point of view of protective gear. Several of the solutions they were experimenting with included types of Mail and something which looked like hexagonal lammellar armor.

[Matt Easton]

Incidentally, this mesh was patented by an independent British home inventor, and is now used to make our Cops' body armour knife-proof (I don't know how widespread it is though).

Matt