28mm Crusades Project – 1st Arab Cavalry

[Ken]

http://yarkshiregamer.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/28mm-crusades-project-1st-arab-cavalry.html

 

A standard “show off” post today for my first complete units for the Yarkshire Gamer Crusades Project. Probably had the figures for a couple of years now, so progress is quick 😉

 

I do like these Gripping Beast plastic sets, a good method of building up troop numbers at a reasonable cost.

 

Lots of pics via the link above

 

Must stop getting distracted…….. Oh that will be the postman with my new WW2 tanks…

 

Regards Ken

The Yarkshire Gamer

 

Http://yarkshiregamer.blogspot.co.uk

[Cerdic]

Lovely job….as always!

http://28mmreview.blogspot.co.uk

[Alexander Hay-Whitton]

There were few Arabs in the Crusades, they’re seldom that dark skinned in my experience, and the shaven heads and fezzes look rather Turkic. Is this Hollywood or history?

[Norm S]

nice animation for both horses and riders. I do like the plastic sets. I just picked up a book from the Library called The First Crusade – the Call from the East…… It is my first large print book!

[Ken]

Interesting responses, thanks Norm and Cerdic.

Alexander, these are the figures as sold by Gripping Beast in their plastic sets as generic Cavalry of “Arab States between the 10th and 13th C” perhaps you could direct your attack in that direction. Depends I suppose on your definition of Arab, are we going Arab League, Arab Tribe, Arab Language, Arab World or Arab Culture.

As for the skin tone being wrong I would disagree, persons born in the region have a darker skin tone than Europeans. It might just be the Light on the photograph as the paint is only one tone darker than my standard European skin paint trio of Beige Brown, Beige Red and Basic Skintone (Vallejo) with a Burnt Umber base layer and the Beige Red as the highlight.

Shaved head or bald ?

Hollywood or History ? No they are toy soldiers.

 

Http://yarkshiregamer.blogspot.co.uk

[Ken]

Let’s call them Saracens if that’s less controversial.

Http://yarkshiregamer.blogspot.co.uk

[Mike]

Caulk bases or similar?

[Ken]

Hi Mike, good olde Polyfilla or a cheaper supermarket version. Plus basetex plus tufts

Http://yarkshiregamer.blogspot.co.uk

[Guy Farrish]

Seems to be a range of shades to choose from!  Admittedly no fezzes. And what is the acceptable name for the population of the Levant in the 11th-14th centuries then?

[Alexander Hay-Whitton]

The racial composition of the Islamic states was extremely varied, so it’s impossible to give them an accurate racial label. Since even Runciman allows himself to use the term “Saracen”, the rest of us might as well adopt it as an acceptable equivalent of “Frank”. But Turkish stock was dominant, so “Turks” rather than “Arabs”. The glory days of Arab conquest and civilisation were long gone by the time of the crusades.

I’ve worked with quite a lot of both. Turks are often as fair-skinned as I (Celtic), Arabs marginally darker. Yes, they tan in the sun; I hope this admission will lead to the logical next step of painting northern European crusaders with chocolate skins.

Yussuf ibn Ayyub had some qaraghulam cavalry, meaning “black slave soldiers”. Scholarly opinion appears to regard these as probably Berbers, darker than Turks but certainly not melanistic, if that term steers away from PC touchiness. The Sudanese infantry of the Fatimid state were in major decline by his day following a failed insurrexion (though I admit I couldn’t resist three units in my own Ayyubid army).

[Guy Farrish]

Happy to go with a variety of groups and skin tones making up Islamic opposition to the Crusaders.

The whole thing of ‘racial type’ is fraught with problems of nineteenth century classification obsession,  understandable post WWII rejection of ‘race’ with added guilt via Said’s ‘Orientalism’ critique of the west, plus a touch of ‘pan-Arabist’ post colonial self determination (even if half the adherents are Arabic only by conquest and adopted language).

Saracen and Frank is probably the safest.

And as someone said – it’s a wargame.

 

(Still not sure about those fezzes though ).

 

[Cerdic]

Saracen and Frank are probably a good compromise. Both sides were a mix of people anyway and pretty much everyone will understand which side is which!

Oh, and “fezzes are cool”.

 

http://28mmreview.blogspot.co.uk

[Guy Farrish]

Well…if you say so

[Alexander Hay-Whitton]

Fezzes are sometimes cool.

[Author]

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