Great interest has been generated by the excavations and investigative works on the citadel of Damascus undertaken in the years 1999–2006 by a Syrian–French archaeological mission under the auspices of the Syrian General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums and the Institut Français du Proche Orient. Some seven volumes are projected to result from this scholarly investigation, of which this, volume III, is the first to appear. What it catalogues and analyses is some wholly astonishing material found in the eastern end of a building in the south-west of the citadel. The finds consist largely of military material of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, suggesting that this building was used as an armoury in late Mamluk and perhaps early Ottoman times. The actual excavation was conducted by J.-B. Gardiol, who discovered most of the material in a light-well which had been covered by joists, and in the beaten earth floor. The discoveries had been sealed away from light and damp, and this enabled cloth and other materials to survive. In this volume the finds are catalogued and discussed by David Nicolle, whose knowledge of Middle Eastern military equipment is unrivalled. As befits a collection of such importance the book has been superbly produced, although it is a pity there is no index. However, there are almost 200 fine illustrations, mostly colour photographs. Some of these are of comparable material discovered elsewhere. Nicolle has chosen to divide the finds into seven categories which are contained in chapters 2–8 as follows: 2. Armour; 3. Soft armour; 4. Hardened leather and laminated armour; 5. Horse armour; 6. Archery; 7. Firearms; 8. Daggers and miscellaneous items. Each find is cross-referenced to the illustrations and their captions which comprise pages 259–69. The whole is introduced in chapter 1, “Military–historical background and context”, in which Nicolle carefully and succinctly explains the place of Damascus in the history of the Mamluks and Ottomans and discusses the likely influences upon arms manufacture in the city. In the process he skilfully introduces many of the kinds of objects and much of the language used to describe them which will recur in the more specialized chapters which follow. Some of the most important finds in the citadel were of armour. Islamic illustrations of the various kinds of mail, lamellar, scale and soft armours are rare and difficult to decipher, and the language used to describe them in written sources is imprecise, so to have real examples is very important. Perhaps the most spectacular piece found was half a qarqal, a short jacket of scales covered in beautifully dyed material, designed to be worn either with or without sleeves. This was clearly very like the western brigandine, of which a fifteenth-century example found at Xalkis in Greece is illustrated here. The discussion of armour types and their spread across Asia and Europe is very wide-ranging. It is remarkable that fragments of soft armour were unearthed and the short chapter on this illuminates a somewhat neglected form, stressing that European examples, notably the aketon, were described by words derived from Arabic. Leather, moulded or layered, was used intensively in medieval armour and much has been preserved in the Damascus material, though some may have been used to protect horses rather than men, as outlined in the next chapter. Archery remains figure large in the finds at Damascus and lead Nicolle into an interesting discussion of the importance of the crossbow, sometimes called “the Frankish bow” (p. 146). A substantial number of whole powder horns or fragments thereof were found in the citadel, and Nicolle's discussion brings out the importance of such weapons in Middle Eastern warfare in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The whole discussion of the Damascus Citadel finds is characterized by a brilliant grasp of the technicalities of production and use. The comments on the working and use of iron and other metals are particularly impressive, but Nicolle is equally at home discussing other, softer, materials, often in the finest detail. Nicolle has an impressive knowledge of arms and armour worldwide, and his ability to draw comparisons and suggest derivations is compelling. However, although Aketon is derived from the Arabic for cotton (p. 100), this does not necessarily mean that padded undergarments originated in the Middle East – they probably had a long existence before the Crusades. Similar needs can, after all, produce similar solutions to problems of protection in different cultures. But overall this is a truly remarkable book and a brilliant start to the sequence of volumes which will eventually describe all the findings of the Syrian–French archaeological investigation of the citadel of Damascus.