Were knights in eastern europe a thing?

Were knights in eastern europe a thing?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zawisza_Czarny
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warfare_in_Medieval_Poland
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Polish_Army
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Army_of_Hungary
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hungarian_knights
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druzhina
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Yes, why would it be different?

Well I mean to be fair to OP it's usually very common for even a slightly different place to value different weapons or have a different general military strategy.

How could you have knights without chivalry?

What about Middle Eastern Knights?

They had cataphracts, but they weren't exactly knights in the European sense. They would still be nobility and wealthy-enough men to afford their gear, however.

No. Kingdoms like Hungary or Poland were backward shitholes well known for using clubs until 15 century and HRE didn't genocide them only out of compassion (that's it, only until they became mostly Protestant and abandoned such humanistic ideas).

Why wouldn't the Middle East have noblemen that liked swords?

Bogatyrs
Cataphracts

Define "knights".

Also
>cold war era definition of Eastern Europe

Hajnal line?

Mounted aristocratic warriors existed just about everywhere and these are often just called 'knights' out of convenience. In a more specific sense though, the concept of a 'knight' and 'knighthood' is only an aspect of Latin Christendom, and seemingly similar concepts in other regions like Russia should be distinguished from them. True knights did exist in places like Poland, Hungary and of course the Teutonic state, but not in the Orthodox world.

More like the halal line.

/thread

In most slavic kingdoms knights were known as Boyars, they weren't exactly the same, but were typically large landholders with a recognized title of nobility by the King/Czar/Ban and fought as heavy cavalry.

In the Byzantine empire, during the system theme system, they had the cataphract cavalry, but these were professional soldiers. After the collapse of the theme system, they begun to depend on pronoiars (rented land holders), and the dynatoi (provincial nobles), which is sometimes interpreted as a Byzantine semi-feudal system.

I am not sure if in the Islamic world knights filled the same economic role as in Europe, but in terms of being heavy cavalry units, they were called fāris for Arabs, and Timariots for Turkics.

Of course, why wouldn't they? Although im not sure about Kiev rus and orthodox world in general
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zawisza_Czarny

Knights did exist in the orthodox world,in fact they were invented there and were known for the Byzantines as Cataphracts but as I said here they were not a separate economic class like in western european feudalism though it slowly did creep in with the pronoia system. Slavic Boyars were about the same thing though the economic system was a bit different.

What you mean to say is that the idea of monastic martial warrior did not exist in the Orthodox world, and this is true because monasticism in Orthodoxy means living an ascetic, hermits life completely detached from worldly matters.

maybe Orthodox Christians

Yes you dumb westerner.
Fratres militiæ Christi Livoniae

>Define "knights".
Guys fighting on horseback that also happen to be a form of low nobility.

Knights originated in the Iranian cataphracts

Knights originated in the ownership of horses.

Wut?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warfare_in_Medieval_Poland
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Polish_Army
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Army_of_Hungary
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hungarian_knights
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zawisza_Czarny

I think he was being sarcastic.

Yes. What is now Eastern Europe (excluding Russia and the Balkans) used to be heavily influenced by Germans pretty much until WW2 and the military/feudal structure reflected that.

You have no fucking idea what you are talking about.

Not Him but what a fantastic argument, good job.

In the Western sense no, but you did have heavy (noble) cavalry that was functionally identical when it came to warfare.

bogatyrs.

read the byliny book

sarcasm yo...
the fucking autism

>How could you have knights without chivalry?

How can a door be a jar?

Because it's a different region with quite a distinct culture.

Noblemen on horse isn't really equivalent to knight. Atleast not in the medieval sense. If your talking about roman knights then they were originally a class which could afford to/had the right to fight in the cavalry which later on evolved into a powerful economical merchantish class which during the empire was turned into the primary bureaucratic class.

By that extremely useless definition Winston Churchill was a knight.

Sounds like the Mongol term baghatur

Churchill wasn't exactly low nobility.

Pompey the Great then.

The polish hussars were exactly that weren't they?
Also the ottoman sipahis were almost the same, they got a fief which would get redistributed after teir death from which they could get taxes and pay for their equipment with.
The european sipahis used mostly lances shields and javelins while the anatolian sipahis were horse archers.

>Pompey's father, Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, was a wealthy equestrian from Picenum
Sure.

Which is why the definition user gave is utterly meaningless.

Classic Western-European Style Knighthood stops at Poland/Hungary.

In Russian areas its more of a mix of landed nobles who were closest to Western European knights in addition to City State Elites who simply can afford horses.

There's also allied Nomadshit tribes whose nobles would show up as armored cavalrymen.

In addition cavalrymen in the Eurasian Steppes were horse archers.

The Middle East generally had no such thing as knights considering the lack of feudalism in Medieval Middle East.

The closest would be the concept of the Spahi, in which land was given to Cavalyrmen- usually of Turkic origin- instead of wages so they could remain as full time professional soldiers.

It was a carry-over from the Sassanid Savaran feudal cavalrymen.

Are you actually retarded?

>The polish hussars were exactly that weren't they?

No, they were a military unit. You didn't have to be a nobleman to be a hussar and we know many of them weren't. As a prosperous free peasant or burgher signing up and serving as a hussar towarzysz was one of the few semi-reliable ways to get ennobled after all.

> You didn't have to be a nobleman to be a hussar and we know many of them weren't. As a prosperous free peasant or burgher signing up and serving as a hussar towarzysz was one of the few semi-reliable ways to get ennobled after al
Sounds like bullshit.
>and we know many of them weren't.
So you can name few?

>but not in the Orthodox world.
I distinctly recall them being a thing in Wallachia.
Vlad loved knighting folk he liked.

Vlad the Impaler was a Catholic.

Debatable.
Besides, even if he were, his conversion would have happened before his second rule, which was short and didn't achieve much.
Also, we have records for the purchase of knightly amours by Radu Voda.

Speaking of the romanian states, Moldova had their own corps, the "viteji", which were knights in all but name.

Please elaborate on your reasoning.

Equites are standard in every civilisation

Classic irish eastern europe

they were in Bohemia and Poland don't know about the others

only rich nobles could become hussars
hussars were a thing in Poland since XVIth century, before that Poland had knights and even before them there was druzhina

>eastern europe
>civilisation

can you stop pushing "russia = entirety of slavdom" meme
boyars were only a thing in orthodox countries like moldova or russia, here in czechia and poland there were no such thing

boyars were a thing in wallachia too

what the fuck is wallachia
czechs are fags

>knows what moldova is
>doesn't know what wallachia is
wew

what the fuck is moldova

>only rich nobles could become hussars
Read less Ogniem i Mieczen and read more historical research (I recommend Marian Kukiel's work on the ethnic and social make-up of hussar units) and sources.

We know for a fact there were non-nobles among the hussars since we have records of Sejm ennobling them (based on a Hetman's recommendation) for their service.

Lad, just off yourself now, please

The Mongols fought knights in Hungary. But maybe Hungary is/was Central Europe.

They were literally the Eastern European equivalent:

> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druzhina

Knights originated in the combination of stirrups and Roman cataphracts.

>hungary
>anything but balkan

in case of Poland druzhina was not a knight equivalent but something that got replaced by knights later on

how the fuck could a commoner even afford armor, sabre, lance and two handguns required?

Nobles could be poor and commoners could be rich

It was literally the same everywhere

>richest and most powerful man had some guys protecting him
>he paid them by sharing some of his riches
>eventually the man became the king and the guys became the nobles (knights)

Hungary isn't Balkan by any means.

sounds like mafia

>commoners cannot be rich
>thinking all commoners are peasants
Are you American by chance?

if romania can be balkan, so is hungary

Romania is partially on the Balkan peninsula geographically, Hungary is not. Also Romania is overwhelmingly Orthodox. If Hungary is Balkan then so is Austria.

the mafia is a government

So why did cavalry function more as skirmishers/dragoons further east while the west focused heavily on shock tactics?

barely 5% of romania is in the balkans
and croatia is catholic and albania and bosnia are muslim while being balkan

I think they were called Boyars, yes.

Croatia is borderline Balkan, Hungary is not Balkan at all. What exactly does make them Balkan in your opinion? Is Slovenia also Balkan? Austria? Slovakia? Ukraine?

aren't Sipahi and Mamelukes the Turkic/Egyptian equivalent of knights? I think so...

>Russia = all of EE

russians used longswords?

slovenia is balkan because of yugoslavia
and hungary is balkan because of how hard they got turk'd
boyars existed outside of russia too

>how hard they got turk'd
You mean they got almost completely exterminated by the Turks and had to be resettled from the north.

>Slovenia is Balkan
t. retard

turks cant do anything right
>we wuz austrianz n sheeeit

Can't rich people become nobles?

You're a Serb aren't you.

Not really, that practice only emerged in the late 17th and 18th century, and was a total disaster because many Jews bought themselves into aristocracy.

no why

Because they're the ones claiming everyone in the world is Balkan.

>fucking slaves being the equivalent of knights

Sipahis are bit closer.

Boyars were a thing in Bulgaria as well, so pretty much MOST of Eastern Europe, and in case you haven't noticed most Slavs are orthodox

Not all Eastern Europeans are Slavs.

The east has flatter landscapes which enable them to maneuvre more.

The ottomans weren't attacking the common hungarian though.
What benefit could they get from killing random hungarians?

Those slaves had better lives than most egyptians though.
You shouldn't think that slavery=fucked up life full with whippings.

There was a kind of feudalism there, though, the iqta. It was just that it was often or usually a salary derived from land that you did not have any authority over beyond tributary taxation. The iqta would apply to any number of soldiery whether free fawaris, slave-warriors, or maybe tribal lords. Furusiyya or however you spell it had elements similar to the ideals of chivalry.

Equites aren't the same as the classic, medieval knight.
Equites is basically the default 'petty' noblemen who can afford to serve in the cavalry (which, as I've pointed out earlier in this thread, evolved into something quite different) while the concept of a knight is heavily dependent on the culture of feodal medieval europe. Not including the codes of conduct and romantic ideals that developed with and shaped what it meant to be a (chivalerous) knight is a huge error imo.

Trough trade, enterprise, heritage, spoils of war or just becoming the favorite of some rich fucker.