15mm Ghaznavid Palace Ghulams

After a year and half painting 28mm AWI figures I thought I'd get stuck into one of the 15mm DBMM armies I have in the pile as a nice change of pace. After seeing Phil of Toy Soldiers Studio's beautiful Ghaznavid army (Toy Soldiers Studio) I was keen to make this my next project and started off with three command elements and six stands of Palace ghulams:

The Ghaznavid empire was centered on Ghazi in modern Afghanistan and covered large parts of Iran, Pakistan and north western India between 977 and 1186 AD. I wanted to put together an entire army of Forged in Battle figures and found these to be true 15mm figures rather than the larger 18mm often associated with other manufacturers. There is enough variety to cover most troop types in the list, but no dedicated general figures so it was a matter of picking a few commander-type figures from the cavalry packs and nominating them as generals:

Ghulam means slave or servant in Arabic, and the Ghaznavid ghulams were either mercenaries, prisoners of war or sometimes slaves who had been purchased as young boys. Many Turkish soldiers were employed in the ranks alongside Afghans and, later, Indian soldiers following seventeen individual campaigns over a fifty-four year period. The Palace ghulams were responsible for protecting the royal family and were the most elite and heavily armoured so again I selected the most appropriate-looking figures from the packs:

I splashed a bit more colour on these than I am planning to do with the regular ghulams, and attached some Little Big Men Studio banners to more easily distinguish them:

I didn't have enough of the banners I originally wanted to use and thought I'd have to purchase some more. I noticed in the course of doing so that they have gone up from £3.50 a year ago to £12 which is quite a jump in twelve months (although still worth the money at that price in my opinion), but a quick search in my stash of flags and transfers unearthed several sheets I had forgotten about and so I was able to apply them immediately without holding things up:

That's the first nine elements completed:

Next up will be fifteen elements of the regular ghulam.