Studies on Mounted Warfare in Asia I: Continuity and Change in Middle Eastern Warfare,c . ce 550–1350 – What Happened to the Horse Archer?

Abstract

In this article the author rejects the common model for the description of pre-modern warfare as a constant process of technological advances, and argues that both the sources and the pictorial and archaeological record seem to show that, during the period and in the region under consideration, warfare remained essentially unchanged. He postulates the existence of two military traditions, the ‘Turanian’ tradition of the pastoral nomads of Inner Asia and the ‘Iranian’ tradition of sedentary populations under the nomad influence.