The title of this book is slightly misleading because, while the subject area includes the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria, it excludes the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. The Islamic west and Africa are, of course, excluded, but so is the Arabian Peninsula. In fact the Eastern Swords of the title are the weapons of Eurasian steppe cultures, China, Japan and to some extent Korea, plus those of cultures directly influenced in terms of military technology by steppe culture; namely the eastern and central regions of the medieval Islamic world (with the notable exception of the Arabian peninsula) and, to lesser extent, Eastern Europe.
Kirill Rivkin is the primary author while Brian Isaac is described as a science editor who also contributes a great deal to those chapters dealing with the Islamic world. Special thanks were given to the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and the importance of the Hermitage Museum's collection of bladed weapons is clear when looking at the photographs. However, this is not a book about the remarkable collection of eastern weaponry in the Hermitage Museum, nor indeed in other museums and private collections in Russia and the Ukraine, though these feature prominently. Instead, this work puts such weapons in a broader context, in terms of the collections which the authors have drawn upon, and the cultures from which these objects came. Furthermore, Rivkin and Isaac do this very successfully.
The authors' focus is almost entirely upon swords and sabres, with an occasional look at stylistically or technologically related daggers. As far as the historical timeframe is concerned, their primary focus is on the medieval period, with an occasional look at the late centuries bc and first centuries ad. However, the authors also continue into the early modern period because, where swords and sabres are concerned, this represented a continuation of the same technological, military and aesthetic story.
The review copy of the book was from a First Limited Edition, which had a print run of only 800 copies. Such a limited print run may result in the book becoming a rarity, even in terms of major libraries and those specialized libraries which are attached to major museums.
The text of this book is well written, academically sound, clearly argued and clearly presented. The footnotes are useful, if somewhat meagre, and are used to add explanation or justification. However, references to sources of information or theories are inserted in parentheses within the text.
The captions to the illustrations are also excellent. In fact, the photographs are superb, and are accompanied by a number of drawings where photographs were unobtainable, though the photographs dominate, and include both colour and monochrome. A few manuscript illustrations are also included, but because the primary focus of the book is upon swords and sabres as artefacts, these supplementary pictures remain few.
Nor are the authors shy of occasionally querying the accepted dating or cultural provenance of some objects, or of accepting the validity of a few objects which other scholars have suggested might not be genuine. Yet the authors have justified their opinions, which this reviewer finds by and large convincing.
The bibliography is adequate, but seems intended to provide information about the sources mentioned in parentheses within the text rather than being a further reading list for those who might wish to study this subject in greater detail.
A huge number of archaeological excavations, the publication of objects thus found, as well as the scholarly discussion of these finds in their cultural-historical contexts was done in the Soviet Union. It continues to be carried out in countries of the former USSR, reflecting the former Soviet Union's preoccupation with “material culture”.
Unfortunately, the bulk of this extremely important work has only been published in Russian, often in a cheap form with poor quality photographs, though excellent drawings. In fact, it remains difficult to find many of these publications outside Russia, and in some cases it seems that it was only by making personal “book exchange” links with colleagues in the USSR and its successor states that it proved possible to obtain such books, articles and reports. I therefore suggest that the major contribution of Rivkin and Isaac's book is to bring some of the objects found during the Soviet period – with their associated studies and reports – to the attention of a wider readership outside the former Soviet Union.
On a less positive note, since the disappearance of the Soviet Union and Soviet bloc, those involved in illegal excavations and the smuggling of the products of illegal excavations, have flourished. The result may have been good for private collections and may have brought a wider array of important swords, sabres, etc. to both public and scholarly attention but the fact remains that a great many historically important objects have been torn from their archaeological contexts, resulting in much less being known about them than would otherwise have been the case. On the other hand, greater interest has been aroused in the subject of medieval “eastern” and Islamic military artefacts. Furthermore, objects which might otherwise have languished in poorly maintained, poorly documented and poorly conserved provincial museums have ended up in some of the world's major museums, or in serious, properly funded and properly published, private collections.
