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Spanish knight of the early i2th century with a shield and banner based on illustrations in a manuscript of c. 1109 from the monastery of Selos near Burgos. The other figures are also Spanish, the upper one from an nth century reliquary, the lower from a miniaturę of 1280.

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Baghdad could command 120,000 horsemen, presumably including a large percentage of merce-naries.

The feudal levies were only called out in times of emergency and most fighting was done by the askars and mercenaries. Another force was the territorial reserve, troops who were maintained by grants of land. They were also called out only in emer-gencies. Both the feudal levies and the territorial reservists were mounted but were armed with spear and sword, not the bow. They normally provided their own weapons and horses, but were sometimes equipped from the arsenals, wherein were stored the arms for the askars.

The infantry was formed from townsmen and countrymen pressed into service, volunteers seeking religious reward, and camp followers, etc. Their role was usually limited to garrison, camp and siege duties, though some bodies of infantry—notably the citizen bands of Aleppo, Damascus and Hama—appear to have achieved a high State of discipline and were well eąuipped.

The proportion of the different types of troops within an army varied from campaign to cam-paign. At the battle of Baban on 18 April 1167 the Seljuks fielded 9000 askaris, 3000 archers and 10,000 Arabs armed with spears. When Shirkuh, the commander of the Ayyubid army, entered Cairo in 1169 he had with him an askar of 2000 men and 6000 mercenaries led by their own chiefs.

In the field the army was accompanied by a large supply and siege train, and by physicians and surgeons with hospital equipment.

THE FATIMID ARMIES

Because of its great wealth, unity and organi-zation, the Fatimid caliphate of Egypt was able to field enormous armies. However, the Egyptians were not a martial nation and therefore the armies were for the most part formed from an assortment of nationalities, mercenaries hired with Egypt’s wealth. The elite of the army, as always, was the caliph’s bodyguard, composed of wbite slaves from various Turkish tribes, who providcd the mounted regiments, and the morę unusual Sudanese guard of foot soldiers, for, unlike other Islamie powers of the Middle East, Egyptian armies contained a good proportion of well trained and well equipped