Armies of the Caliphates 862–1098

Osprey Men at Arms #320

by David Nicolle, Graham Turner (Illustrator)

The 8th century heralded the start of a golden age in the history of the Islamic world. At this time, the Sunni Muslim 'Abbãsid Caliphate, with its capital at Baghdad, ruled virtually the entire Islamic world. Islamic military power peaked in the 9th century, but by the end of this golden age in the 11th century, the 'Abbãsid Caliphs had little political and virtually no military power. Featuring numerous photographs of artefacts and eight full colour plates by Graham Turner, David Nicolle's book examines the recruitment, organization, weaponry and uniforms of the armies of the Caliphates from 862-1098.

Genres: Medieval, Middle East, Military History, History

48 pages, Paperback

First published November 27, 1998

About the author

David C. Nicolle is a British historian specialising in the military history of the Middle Ages, with a particular interest in the Middle East.

Reviews

[Richard Sisson · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is no doubting the depth of the author's knowledge of Islamic military history. He is a prolific writer on the subject and much published; I have several of his books published by Osprey. However, I suspect like many others, its the beauty of the artwork in the Osprey titles not the text which drew me in. This book, and several subsequent titles for Osprey by Nicolle, builds on the introduction to the subject provided by The Armies of Islam published in 1982 to go into more detail about the armies of the different Moslem caliphates and their successor states up to the eve of the Crusades. Alas, it doesn't do it well.

There is lots of interesting information, but, unfortunately, apart from a general organisation imposed by a few high level section titles (eg Recruitment, Organisation, Tactics) the book reads like a dump of information, with paragraphs containing a mass of unstructured, unrelated facts. Whether this is the result of the writing or the editing I don't know, but it is annoying. There are wonderful gems of information, but there is a lot of dross too. The book also assumes some knowledge of the different caliphates, but doesn't deal with them chronologically when providing examples, and, somewhat oddly given the title, at times seems to focus more on the successor states than the caliphates themselves. I learned more about the army of the Fatamid caliphs from Nicolle’s Saladin and the Saracens, which is much better organised and more informative, and was published in 1986, several years before this book.

In conclusion, a welcome work on a fascinating subject, but it simply whets the appetite and could have been so much better. The artwork is superb and saves it.