A layer (or layers) of mail sandwiched between layers of fabric is called a jazerant.Ī waist-length coat in medieval Europe was called a byrnie, although the exact construction of a byrnie is unclear, including whether it was constructed of mail or other armour types. A shirt made from mail is a hauberk if knee-length and a haubergeon if mid-thigh length. A mail collar hanging from a helmet is a camail or aventail. The standard terms for European mail armour derive from French: leggings are called chausses, a hood is a mail coif, and mittens, mitons. The more correct term is plate armour.Ĭivilizations that used mail invented specific terms for each garment made from it. Since then the word mail has been commonly, if incorrectly, applied to other types of armour, such as in plate-mail (first attested in Grose’s Treatise in 1786). Medieval sources referred to armour of this type simply as mail however, chain-mail has become a commonly used, if incorrect, neologism coined no later than 1786, appearing in Francis Grose’s A Treatise on Ancient Armour and Weapons, and brought to popular attention no later than 1822 in Sir Walter Scott’s novel The Fortunes of Nigel. The modern usage of terms for mail armour is highly contested in popular and, to a lesser degree, academic culture. In the early medieval Europe “byrn(ie)” was the equivalent of a “coat of mail” / Photo courtesy British Library, Wikimedia Commons The first attestations of the word mail are in Old French and Anglo-Norman: maille, maile, or male or other variants, which became mailye, maille, maile, male, or meile in Middle English. The Arabic words “burnus”, برنوس, a burnoose a hooded cloak, also a chasuble (worn by Coptic priests) and “barnaza”, برنز, to bronze, suggest an Arabic influence for the Carolingian armour known as “byrnie” (see below). In modern French, maille refers to a loop or stitch. Another theory relates the word to the old French maillier, meaning to hammer (related to the modern English word malleable). One theory is that it originally derives from the Latin word macula, meaning spot or opacity (as in macula of retina). The origins of the word mail are not fully known. Mail continues to be used in the 21st century as a component of stab-resistant body armour, cut-resistant gloves for butchers and woodworkers, shark-resistant wetsuits for defense against shark bites, and a number of other applications. Herodotus wrote that the ancient Persians wore scale armour, but mail is also distinctly mentioned in the Avesta, the ancient holy scripture of the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism that was founded by the prophet Zoroaster in the 5th century BC.
Photo by DeFly94, Istanbul Archaeology Museums, Wikimedia Commons
Fresco of an ancient Macedonian soldier ( thorakites) wearing mail armour and bearing a thureos shield.
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