Saracen Warrior
12th Century
(St. Petersburg Collection 6122)
Saracen warriors were typically lighter troops than their crusader counterparts. Cavalry and infantry wore minimal armor and sometimes no body defenses at all. Quilted or padded fabric body armor, some lined with a layer of mail, seems to have been a standard among light cavalry contingents and better-equipped infantry.
The Seljuk Turks introduced the use of lamellar armor made of overlapping rows of small rectangular plates of metal, horn or stiffened rawhide. Later Muslim warriors wore a lamellar cuirass over their mail hauberks. All this went with the Saracen tactical emphasis on speed and mobility.
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