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"The design was developed when the Norman Crusaders returned."[edit]
Or maybe it was copied from the Muslims in Syria? It is widely known that the European had much less advanced techniques of siege warfare in the Middle Ages, being more used to field battles, hence the importance and good quality of their standing army.
For the Muslims siege was the main type of warfare, and machicolations can be seen here:
I'm not sure how good Wikipedia is as a source(!) but further down on that page it also attests that machicolations were present in the Crusading period.
I will try and find some better proof but my feeling is that machicolations were not a 'Norman' invention. I'm fairly certain they would have been developed in the Middle East.Louboi (talk) 09:19, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You could be right, that the Crusaders borrowed it, or it could be the other way round, but either way Aleppo's citadel isn't necessarily going to be a great proof. It's a palimpsest, in that it was extensively worked on as recently as the 19th century. Unless you can find a contemporary account or illustration from its earliest construction, it won't help much. Best to avoid this kind of research, it's quite OR-y. What do the classic sources on castle development say of machicolations' origins? --Dweller (talk) 11:04, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As I came across multiple articles which used the French term "machicoulis" I went ahead and created a name redirect page "machicoulis" and then added the term to the lede of this (Machicolation) article. I'd forgotten the official template for noting that a word is in a specific foreign language so I 'fudged' it with...
([[French language |<small>French</small>,]] '''machicoulis''')
the article mentions "boiling cooking oil" and yet, I can find precious little evidence this was ever used. boiling water or the devastating mixture of boiling water and ale is attested to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 40.142.208.163 (talk) 22:12, 8 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
There is a bit of debate as to the correct pronunciation, and in all that argy-bargey someone discovered a reference to "matchicold" in the french Morte d'Artur. Note the "t".
