Sergey Gorbatko

In recent years there has been a growing interest among historians, historical martial artists, reenactors, and those who are interested in Eastern culture as well as in Persian offensive and defensive weapons to have a more detailed study of armor. The change in the paradigm of defensive weapons throughout Western Asia (the last quarter of the 15th to the first quarter of the 16th century) has not yet been fully investigated. Reconstruction of mail-and-plate armor from a period between 1540-1650 CE is quite challenging as most museums or major private collections do not have a complete set. Based on a detailed study of existing sets of joshan armor and several technical assumptions related to the design of this type of armor, the present study tries to reconstruct a fully protective complex of a joshan armor that was worn by a noble Persian warrior. The purpose of the following article is to reproduce a Persian mail-and-plate armor from a period between 1540-1650 CE in its original size and design with its inherent properties and qualities. Different existing sets of this type of armor from museums are studied and compared to different miniatures and literary sources. Based on the collected information gained from theoretical and practical research, the article presents a historical armor design and provides advice on the practical reconstruction and production of such a set of armor. Armor masters were looking for the best combinations and ratio of plates and mail armor in one set. They were experimenting with the shapes and sizes of plates, the number of holes, diameters, geometry, and method of ring interconnections. Characteristic of the armor of this period is rather large plates and a small number of their rows (3-5 rows on the chest/back), a small overlap of the plates in a row, basically only the same standard plates are used, large mail rings (inner diameter about 10 mm).