"Arabs in Skirmish Review" Topic

"Strelets don't put a date on this set, so we need to look for clues to place these warriors in the appropriate setting. The dress is traditional Arab and almost timeless, but the rifles are much more helpful. They are all much alike, being between 16mm and 17mm in length (115cm to 122cm), and all have a magazine forward of the trigger. From this we would say these might be the Lee-Metford or the later Lee-Enfield, or other similar weapons of the time. This dates these figures to the last decade or so of the 19th century, and well into the 20th. The ammunition bandoliers some of these men carry seems to confirm this sort of dating.

At the end of the 19th century many Arabs lived under the Ottoman Empire, and while the Ottoman's used them as ordinary uniformed infantry, they also used them as irregulars, when no uniform was worn. Famously many rebelled against the Empire from 1916, when they received assistance, including rifles, from the British, and such weaponry would have been kept in use long after the war came to an end in 1918. So these figures have a good long period when they could reasonably be used, including inter-tribal conflicts and anti-colonial actions, but particularly alongside the previous sets of Arabs made by Strelets for the Arab Revolt…"

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