Babenberger Stammbaum 1492AD - bridles

 Salvete Omnes,

a short but with plenty of imagery - the bridles from the late XV century Holy Roman Empire, more precisely from inside of the Roman Catholic  Klosterneuburg Abbey, where Hans Part and other painters painted a family tree triptych known as the  Babenberger Stammbaum (the Babenberg Family Tree) circa 1489-92.

The bridles - a whole array of curb-bits, double reins and headstalls:

.

enjoy 

Valete

Horsemen from Li Chongrun or Prince Yide of Tang tomb c. 706AD

 Salvete Omnes,

our prayers are with the people of Western North Carolina, victims and survivors of the September 2024 Hurricane Helene. 

***

a peacock  feather crested lamellar helmet

it has been a while we visited the imperial Tang China and their horses -

within the famous Tang Qainling Mausoleum   there was a tomb of one unlucky Tang prince Li Chongrun, named posthumously Prince Yide of Tang. 

In his tomb they found   figurines of an imperial cataphract or heavy rider on some finely caparisoned horse with their heads protected with gilded  chamfrons. They were perhaps from the guard cavalry unit.  No bows, but perhaps they had lances.

..

.

Valete

How Did Roman Cataphracts Go To War? DOCUMENTARY

 Salvete Omnes,
a short entry

I would like to invite you to watch this production  on the ancient  Roman Cataphract, his horse and  equipment .
From Invicta - How Did Roman Cataphracts Go To War? 

comparable armored riders aka cataphracts (albeit with much different saddles) from across the Eurasian continent of the Chinese Northern dyansties -
the Northern Wei

 

and Nortehrn Qi 

 

and the Parthian and  Sassanid Persian Caathracts:

 

valete!

Chamfron - Islamic exmaples

Salvete Omnes,

 the chamfron - let us take a look  at this special piece of horse armor, perhaps one of the earliest pieces of armor invented to protect valuable war horses, this time horse's heads from injuries in combat -arrows, spear points and just blows to the vulnerable head. Even the latecomers to the horse warfare, that is the American Indians used their own chamfron-like horse masks well in the XIX century.
This time we will look at the Islamic chamfron used by the elite horsemen, used by the faris spahi, gulam or mamluks from Islamic states spread fromin Indian subcontinent like the Mughal Empire etc, Central Asia, Persian Western Asia, Mameluke Egypt, North African states and finally across the Ottoman Empire. In the Islamic context this part of horse armor was used until the XIX century in some parts, but the Ottoman spahis stopped their use already in the XVII century, while the Persian continued using it into the late XVIII century or laters (perhaps just for parade purposes. The chamfron saw the longest use in the Indian subcontinent.

One observation that immediately comes to mind is the narrowness of the chamfron - does this imply that the horses had more or less narrow pr narrower foreheads unlike today's Arabians from the Western Asia and Egypt?

 


 

 




 

 

From the Wiki galleries , nota bene on Wiki Commons someone decided to name the horse head armor gallery a shaffron[sic!] - God knows why? when chamfron is mostly used in scholarship (eg dr David Nicolle's books on the Mamluk(mameluke) warriors and other Islamic warriors). Why they decided to use a noun chanfron instead of chamfron on Wikipedia entry also beats me?
But then Wikipedia is full of strange names and arbitrary selections when come to history and art history etc.
Valete!
ps
one day soon I will gather here some of the Christian European chamfrons from the heyday of its use in Europe and Spanish colonies in the Americas.