When looking at European heraldry in the 12th century we can quite clearly see different designs including items like crosses or animals like lions. However recently I've been looking into making an Arabic shield but I am struggling to find any designs that could have made their way onto shields.
I've been looking at some of the major dynasties and their heraldry seems to be a single colour flag e.g. green for the Fatimids and black for the Abbasids. The crescent moon seems to be the only heraldic element that I can see reappearing frequently so a simple shield design I was thinking of was a white half moon on a green field. How accurate would this have been at the time of the crusades throughout the Islamic world?
Any ideas and pointers would be very appreciated here.
This is a great question. The short answer is that most of the Muslim polities don't seem to have used Western-style heraldry until well into the 13th or 14th century. However, simple two and threee color designs, usually a solid or bended sheild with a simple roundel or "occupational symbol". Often there would be a line of Arabic caligraphy or two. The modern flag of Saudi arabia is actually a pretty fair represetnation of what many heraldic devices in the late middle ages and early modern period looked like in the Islamic Near East and Northern Africa.
Here's an example from the wiki of a 20th-century reconstruction of the shield of the 13th-century King of Grenada, Abu Abdallah Mohammed ibn Nasir. The original colors were probably white for the shield and writing and either green or black for the band.
The best book on the subject was published back in 1933 by L.A. Mayer, and entited, rather politically incorrectly today, Saracenic Heraldry. It was reprinted in the 1990s, but I have heard some say that not all of illustrations are entirely accurate.
