[Alina Boyden]

Actually, UCSB isn't that good for resources. We have an incredible medieval studies department, but the library is small and not very deep. However, we have a policy with every other UC school that allows us to get whatever we want from any UC library in a couple of days. Very useful considering how much bigger UCLA and Berkeley are.

Edit: In UCSB's defense, I'm a complete idiot and need to learn to check MELVYL instead of Pegasus. I'm going to be one busy girl. It turns out UCSB houses more art exhibition catalogues than any other school. Just now I found 9 Islamic arms and armor catalogues I didn't know about. Factoring in the 1 I did know about that makes 10. In addition I found 3 different books I hadn't seen yet on Islamic arms and armour. It turns out UCSB has more resources for Islamic arms and armor than any other UC.

[Jason Daub]

Alina and Gordon, first of all I have to say keep this stuff coming, with the strong central european flavor to much of the readily available published material I love coming across something different. As to the difference in the cavalry it may have to do with the fact that the Granadines built a large number of fortified towns and peel towers and used them as secure bases for classic border raiding warfare. This resulted in the Castilians raising a substantial siege train with heavy cavalry and bombards, which meant that the Castilians spent their summers trying to breach a town's walls before the Granadine jinetes or winter were able to cut the Castilians supply lines. If I am remembering correctly around 1450 the Granadines made the mistake of meeting the Castilians in open field battle where they had their heads handed to them. I guess this reinforces the fact that meeting heavy cavalry in an open level field without a nice muddy ditch to hide across and a clear exit to run to is a bad idea

[Alberto Dainese]

Hi all,
I've nothing to add to the jinete subject (thanks to Alina & Gordon & Jason for this interesting thead) but I'd like to mention the Stradioti (or Stradiotti), balkan/greek ligth cavalry of the Venice's army of the last years of the XVc. The Stradioti (perhaps from the greek 'stratiotai' that means more or less soldiers) are very similar to the jinete, similar arms and armours, similar tecniques and role in the army.

Ciao
Alberto...

[Alina Boyden]

[Gordon Frye]

Alberto;

Good call on the Stradioti. I had thought of mentioning them, but figured that I was throwing out too many wild information already, so restrained myself! The French of course hired large numbers of these Dalmatian/Balkan Light Horsemen, and the term was in use until after the middle of the 16th Century to denote such troops. The first few years of the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598) even saw their mention. They were in fact the only successful part of the Battle of Fornovo in 1494, when the Venetian/Milanise army was trounced by Charles VIII's Gendarmerie, and the Stradiots pretty much confined themselves to looting the French baggage train. Nevertheless, the French were impressed enough to hire them for future campaigns! They were, as you make note, used as the counter to the Jinetes, as they were quite similar in style and action, though they were considered complete barbarians, which the Spaniards generally were not. Well, not any more than any other soldiers, at least.

The first interesting detail is that there were three main riding styles current in Spain during the 16th Century, and each had it's own saddle: silla de arma (Arming Saddle, used by the standard Western Heavy Cavalry), silla de jinete (Jinete saddles) and the silla de estradiota. And it SEEMS as though the modern Western "Cowboy" Saddle is decended from the latter, the sillas de estradiota. I have yet to get a definitive answer as to just what that saddle IS, but it was very popular in Spanish military circles in the mid-to-late-16th Century. Funny thing is, that the saddle evolved into what is, to all intents and purposes, the Arming Saddle.

The second detail of note is that these same Slavic soldiers in the service of Venice were the recipients (to the best of my knowledge: if someone else has better information I welcome it!) of the Schiavona swords, beloved by most of the participants on this forum.

Talk about completing the Crescent! Going from Jinete swords used by Muslim Spaniards to Schiavona swords, used by Christian Serbs/Croats/Dalmatians. Pretty wild discussion here.

Gordon

Cheers,

Gordon

[Alina Boyden]

[Gordon Frye]

[Alina Boyden]

The picture was spanish but moroccan design.

I just found out all I ever wanted to know about mounted combat with lances. Apparently, the jineta style doesn't just involve throwing javelins. Instead, they use lighter and handier lances and little or no armor so that they become far more flexible than the couched lance knight. The can strike in front of themselves, to the rear, to either side, straight down, or throw the lance. They usually carry a couple of them in some kind of quiver device. The lance blades are also wider and suitable for slashing. This leads to a much more dynamic style of "fencing" with the lance.

Apparently, the tactics involved breaking up in front of the heavy cavalry charge and then attacking the sides and rear. Also, simply dodging out of the way of a knight and counterattacking worked well. The jinetas could ride rings around the heavier cavalry and could attack from almost any angle. In addition, they could throw the lances like javelins. They used their swords in the same hit and run manner, and swords tended to be preferred by light cavalry even moreso than heavy cavalry. From what I read, the heavier cavalry preferred maces in the islamic world.

Anyway, it was a good bit of information and I learned a lot. There were some great diagrams illustrating all of this as well as pics from period manuals and the like. I got it in an essay from the book "Warriors and their weapons around the time of the crusades" by David Nicolle.

[Alina Boyden]

Jackpot! This is a map of Jerez de la Frontera from a 1575 book of maps, well, part of a map. I basically cut out the nifty picture. Here is a perfect example of 16th century jinetes!

[Gordon Frye]

Alina;

That's a GREAT illustration! Perfect! It shows neatly the transition from North African Horse to the North American Presidial Horse of the late 18th/early 19th Centuries. I found a couple of nifty illustrations of some of Cortez's men "a la jinete" as well here:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/calderon/saddlesntack.html

Their article has some other interesting points as well that are of note. Let me know what you think of them.

Thanks again for following up on this subject!

Cheers,

Gordon

[Alina Boyden]

[Gordon Frye]

[Alina Boyden]

Gordon - Check out this link. It is another one of those maps. http://historic-cities.huji.ac.il/tunis/tunis...57_1_b.jpg

This one shows a battle of north africans in Tunis. Good stuff.

[Steve Grisetti]

[Alina Boyden]

[Daniel Parry]

A long time since i did Latin too (and in my office so absence of books) and it's medieval Latin so breaks all the rules of classical syntax. I think 'regia' is the adjective meaning 'royal' rather than a noun meaning 'queen', it's feminine form is because of its agreeing with 'sedes' as a feminine noun being 'seat' or 'royal base', 'royal seat of the Barbaries'. The position of the 'et' I think is following classical Latin syntax when the 'and' would be moved commonly after the noun and/or adjective it related too for better scansion .So not 'and the queen' but 'The town of tunis and royal seat of the (Berbers or) Barbaries'. . 'Maio' I think is the adjective from Maia for 'May' in the ablative masculine or neuter case agreeing with Ioanne ?? (is that an 'I' ? - a date in May perhaps ?).

I wonder whether 'pic fore' as you transcribed is actually 'pictore' the 3rd declention ablative of 'pictoris' meaning painter possibly. And the word before being 'facis' some medieval bastardisation of a form of 'facio' , 'make', though that would make the two letters similar to each other in the text represent an 'f' and a 't' seperately which is completely unsatisfactory. Delineatum is I suspect defineatum as you say, 'laid out' or 'drawn' and 'viuum' possibly again a medieval corruption of a form of 'via' 'streets' as in the streets of the town in the background ? I can see if i still have my big Latin dictionary at home when I get back (and brush the 17 years of dust off it).

Maybe ' The town of Tunis and royal seat of the Barbaries when taken by Charles V on that (eius) day xxxx of May 1535, the lay-out of the streets (town) shown (made) by the illustrator' ??? A bit thin I know but it's been a long long time.

Lovely map by the way, and where do you dig up all these pictures and Islamic arms examples ? The university library ? Great resource.

Daniel

[Daniel Parry]

Thinking about it the 'ad' may indicate a direction or aspect of the picture, i.e. the illustrator was showing the view towards the town. That is assuming of course that my assumptions above were correct which is highly suspect.

[Alina Boyden]

LOL. Thanks. I'm not even done with first year latin yet and I don't have much experience translating from the medieval manuscripts myself, so my medieval latin is definitely not the best. I get these maps from online. This website: http://historic-cities.huji.ac.il/ is a wonderful resource. I just love the 16th century maps.

All of the islamic pictures come from hours in the university library and the heavy use of a scanner. Sometimes I think I spend more time on Islamic arms and armour than on my classes. In fact, that's probably the case.

[Gordon Frye]

Great stuff here, thanks Alina and gentlemen.

There are a number of things about the N. African Campaign of 1535 that are really nifty. First it was a part of the continuing disagreement between Charles V (aka Carlos Primero of Spain) and both Francis I and Sulieman the Lawgiver (aka "The Magnificent"). Charles thought that sending an expedition against the Moors might take off some of the pressure on his brother Ferdinand's lands of Austria and Hungary (remember that the Turkish siege of Vienna had only been a few years prior: 1529). It wasn't particularly successful, but more because of the weather disrupting his lines of communication than any fault of his armed force there. Still it was a way of "Bringing the fight to the enemy", rather than simply awaiting the next Turkish (or French, for that matter) thrust at Charles' posessions.

Second, a "square", i.e. the first incarnation of the Spanish Tercio, marched across a rather large plain beset on all sides by Moorish horse... to no avail. The Spanish system of Pike and Arquebus proved too tough a nut for the lightly armed Arabic horsemen to crack. Had they been possessed of firearms it might have been different, but they certainly didn't have the heavy horse necessary to even slow up the Spaniards. The Spanish troops simply marched to where they wanted to go. I haven't read any serious studies of this campaign so I don't know how the Spanish Horse managed to deal with their Moorish counterparts, but I imagine that it was rather similar to their exploits of a hundred years before that.

Finally, one of the Spanish commanders (Spanish kings liked to keep things unbalanced to ensure that no single man could become a Great Feuditory, such as was seen in France from time to time) was a gentleman of wide experience in dealing with non-Western armies, by name of Hernan Cortez. Kind of interesting how things go full circle on this discussion board....

Cheers,

Gordon

[Daniel Parry]

I didn't realise there were so many scans of original maps and docs on the web. Good to know. Didn't know Mr Cortez was involved in the campaign either, Gordon.

The 'maius fatis' is solved I think. Looked at it on the train home last night because the case of 'eius' didn't agree and bothered me a bit. The suspect letter is a 't' as in the following 'pictore' : it's 'eius maiestatis' 'his majesty' I think. Perhaps Charles is one of the foreground group ? The Ioanne is still puzzling as the only thing I can think of is the ablative of Johannes or John, in which case the 'maio' afterwards may not be from the adjective for 'may' but 'maius' one of the later forms of 'magnus' or 'great'. Was there a John or Johannes involved in this campaign ? The rest is right I think though 'viuum' is an oddity. Could be 'alive' but that doesn't seem to make sense in context so would prefer a version of 'streets' or 'town'.

Anyway enough of these minor issues.

That's interesting what you say, Gordon, about unbalancing the power base of leaders so there was no clear leader. Was this a particular Spanish habit ?

Daniel