"Horses for Crusade era Alans" Topic

In their Feudal and Crusades range Minfigs gives their Alan horse archers (as Byzantine mercenaries) horses with cloth trappers.

Are these appropriate?

I don't think so. I believe Alans as Byzantine allies were earlier than the Crusades by quite a bit.

Lots of different horse gear. An actual barding is very old. The best, or rather most heavily armed, steppes cavalry always used barding of some kind. "Always", heh, from ancient times of course: Always, while horsed, armored archery was employed. Scythians, arguably the first, used armored horses. Something less, caparison, housing, "cloth trappers", are certainly in existence alongside the full set.

The Alans were around for a long, long time… Those Alans against whom the Catalan Company fought c.1300 were refugees from Mongol rule across the Danube who'd been re-horsed by the Byzantines, so Byzzie mounts might be appropriate for them – but cloth trappers do seem unlikely.

I forgot to mention the saddles – the horses also come with the same high cantles as the early Medieval knights.

Actually appear to be the same horse provided for the Teutonic Knights and Hospitalers.

Appreciate the confirmation – time to dig up some other horses and some knights to use these horses with.

GurKhan is correct as Alans were much used as mercenary horse archers up until very late in the Eastern Roman Empire. Probably mounted on steppe ponies would be my guess. The main reason for mercs is they come equipped!

The Alans came equipped but as GurKhan points out the Byzantines rehorsed them. They also gave them new equipment. Both equipment and horses may have suffered during the escape from the Mongols. The re-equipping is said to have led to resentment from native troops who had lost their horses and equipment for this.