Article on Himyarite Knights, infantry and hunters

[davidb]

Came across this on Academia. (Mostly in English,some French)

https://www.academia.edu/37638288/_%E1%B8%A4imyarite_Knights_Infantrymen_and_Hunters_dans_Arabia_3_2005-2006_pp._261-271_et_fig._157-169_pp._358-363_en_collaboration_avec_Paul_Yule_?email_work_card=view-paper

[Duncan Head]

As a follow-up, there's "The Himyarite "knight" and Partho-Sasanian art" - http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/element/bwmeta1.element.desklight-5bc0b258-c896-4a41-a7ca-9e74901aee09/c/Skupniewicz_1409.pdf

[Tim]

Another very interesting article for me to work my way through. Thanks

[aligern]

Indeed very interesting and useful.
Roy

[Duncan Head]

Incidentally the "Himyarite knight" of these two articles should be compared with the very similar relief that is Photograph 3 in David Nicolle's "Horse Armour in the Medieval Islamic Middle East" article. He (pub.2017) seems unaware of the earlier Yule-Robin and Skupniewicz articles.

Both reliefs show an armoured, helmeted horseman with right arm raised (Yule etc has a spear, Nicolle doesn't unless it was added in paint) and a small oval shield, riding an armoured horse (assuming that the lozenge-hatched area in front of the Yule horseman's leg is in fact some sort of armour), and both are accompanied by a shield-bearing footman in a long-sleeved tunic. Nicolle's figure seems to have his legs inside the horse's barding, which as he points out is highly unusual.

Nicolle suggests that his figure dates to the 6th-7th centuries and may be one of the Sasanian Persian troops occupying Yemen; Yule & Robin date theirs rather tentatively to the 3rd-4th centuries. The two reliefs seem to me to have so much in common that they must surely belong to a very similar date.