In his fourth essay, the author describes the Turanian military tradition of Inner Asia and its relationship to the Iranian tradition, on the basis of topoi both from literature of West Asia, Europe, and China and from the very few ‘Turanian’ sources.

The author gives a description of the arms, armour, infantry, and servants of the Iranian military tradition of West Asia.

In this article the author models the Iranian military tradition of west Asia on the basis of the Roman literature of the early Byzantine period and the Arabic and Persian literature of the Muslim period.

In this article the author rejects the common model for the description of pre-modern warfare as a constant process of technological advances, and argues that both the sources and the pictorial and archaeological record seem to show that, during the period and in the region under consideration, warfare remained essentially unchanged. He postulates the existence of two military traditions, the ‘Turanian’ tradition of the pastoral nomads of Inner Asia and the ‘Iranian’ tradition of sedentary populations under the nomad influence.