Mirror Armor

Origin

The form of mirror armor in earnest is held to have taken root in late 15th- and early 16th-century Persia. As the Safavid dynasty, set in place in 1501, raised the same suit to the standard of its army, the name char-aina took root at the same seat, and the same form soon flowed west to the sipahi cavalry of the Ottoman Empire and east to the Rajput cavalry and the imperial guard of the Mughal Empire. In the 16th to the 18th century, on almost every great field of the Islamic world, a single mirror armor stood paired with a suit of mail, and in the late 17th century the same form reached the Uzbek and Kazakh of Central Asia and the Deccan Sultanates and the army of Tipu Sultan of Mysore in the south. In Russia, in the Grand Duchy of Moscow and the Crimean Khanate, the same thought grew up as the bekhter and the yushman, which are two kindreds of the same line, in which small plates are riveted onto mail, and the char-aina belongs to the branch on which the largest plates are riveted in the fewest number.

Features

• Four great plates of steel covering chest, back, and both flanks
• A weave in which the plates were hung over the mail coat by straps and small hinges and moved with it
• A face polished as smooth as a mirror, gathering the sun to one point
• An eastern weave that set the softness of mail and the hardness of plate together at one seat
• A light single suit of about twelve to eighteen kilograms, including the mail
• Splendid decoration in arabesque and in koftgari, the gold and silver inlay

Stories

Mirror armor took its place as the mark of one seat of the elite cavalry of the Islamic world in the 16th to 18th centuries. Within it the man wore a thick padded coat, drew a suit of mail over his head onto the shoulders, and then hung four great plates of steel over the same mail by straps, so that chest, back, and both flanks were covered. The weight of the same single suit stayed at twelve to eighteen kilograms, hardly hindering quick movement on a swift horse, and on top of the same suit was set a small mail hood and a steel helmet, the khoula, so that the head was also covered at one seat. At the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514, when Selim I of the Ottomans met Ismail I of the Safavids, at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526, when Babur's Mughal guard met the Lodi Sultan, and at the Battle of Haldighati in 1576, when the Rajput cavalry of Maharana Pratap met the men of Man Singh of the Mughals at one seat, the elite cavalry of both sides struck with a single suit of mirror armor on, from head to knee. The same suit was also used as a single visual sign of the standing of that seat in the tournament and in ceremony.

Weakness

The greatest weakness of mirror armor lies in the grain between the seat that the four great plates covered and the seat that they did not. Chest, back, and flanks were firmly covered by a thick plate of one face, but the seat between plates, the shoulder and the armpit, the upper and lower flank, had to be left to the mail beneath, and so a narrow, sharp weapon driven exactly at the same blank place could break through the mail. The plates being smooth and heavy as they were, even when a single great axe or a heavy mace coming straight down did not split the face of plate at the same place in one blow, the full force of the shock passed straight through to the mail and the ribs of the man within. In the high sun of the desert the face polished as a mirror was heated by the sun itself, greatly cutting the heat-tolerance and stamina of the same man, and in the late 18th century, as the age of firearms took root, the hard plate of the same single suit could not make a sufficient wall against a musket ball driven straight from close range, and so it moved into the seat of ceremony in the 19th century.

Cultural Significance

Mirror armor is a tool at which protection of a suit and a piece of art stood together at one seat, and the face of which became a single painting holding the religion and the aesthetic of one seat together, beyond the grain of war gear. The warrior houses of the three empires of Persia, the Ottomans, and the Mughals in the 16th to 18th centuries often cut on the face of the same plate, in the gold and silver inlay technique called koftgari, the vine and flower of arabesque and the names of Allah and a verse of the Quran, and so the same single suit was at once a piece of armor and a sign of faith of one seat. At the Wallace Collection and the British Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Hermitage in Russia, and the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul, splendid Persian, Ottoman, and Mughal mirror armors of the 16th to 18th centuries are kept in many. The bekhter and the yushman of Russia, kindreds of the same line, carried the same aesthetic at the seat of the boyars of the Muscovy of the 16th and 17th centuries and became a single sign of the warrior houses of the East Slavs.

In Popular Culture

Mirror armor appears in films, period dramas, and games about the three empires of Persia, the Ottomans, and the Mughals as a single sign of the elite cavalry. The Indian films Jodhaa Akbar (2008), Bajirao Mastani (2015), and Padmaavat (2018) draw the single suit of char-aina worn by the Mughal and Rajput warriors in detail, and the Turkish period drama Muhtesem Yuzyil (Magnificent Century, 2011-2014) shows the same single suit worn by the Ottoman guard as the mark of one seat of its standing. The BBC-Indian co-production Empire (2012) and the British film Kingdom of Heaven (2005) also show the same single suit. The action game Assassin's Creed Mirage (2023), set in the Baghdad of the 9th century, sets a kindred of the same line, and For Honor and Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord set aside the same form for an eastern warrior house. At the museum, the Wallace Collection in London places a single splendid Mughal char-aina together with the elephant armor of the same age, making a single piece on which two armors of one seat gather at one place.

Trivia

• The name char-aina means 'four mirrors' (Persian چهار آینه, čahār āyīna), from the four great plates covering chest, back, and both flanks, polished as smooth as a mirror and gathering the sun to a single point at one seat.
• The warrior houses of Persia, the Ottomans, and the Mughals of the 16th to 18th centuries often cut on the face of the same plate, in the gold and silver inlay technique called koftgari, the arabesque, a verse of the Quran, and the names of Allah, and so the same single suit was at once a piece of armor and a sign of faith of one seat.
• The bekhter and the yushman of Russia are kindreds of the same line, of the branch in which small plates are riveted onto mail. The boyars of the Muscovy of the 16th and 17th centuries who wore the same single suit became a single sign of the warrior houses of the East Slavs, and the char-aina belongs to the branch on which the largest plates are riveted in the fewest number.