In 1991, the Adygeysk Museum of Local Lore received a decorative souvenir — a meu shield. The shield was made of black broadcloth. The outer edge of the shield is trimmed with leather, and the top part is decorated with a national ornament made of multicolored leather.
The maker of this shield is Yury Makhmudovich Stash, a famous artist and fashion designer, Honored Worker of Culture of the Republic of Adygea, winner of the State Prize of Adygea in the field of art, winner of the prize of the “League of Peace” organization, winner of the “Ethno-ERATO-2008” International Competition, the first national Circassian couturier of Adygea, who created a unique, amazing in beauty and identity exhibition collection “In the World of Myths and Reality. Achieving Peace through Design”, which includes dozens of original costumes and objects of decorative and applied art.
Most European records of the 13–19 centuries Circassia have no mention of shields when describing Adyghe weapons. Along with them, Sultan Khan-Giray, Ivan Fedorovich Blaramberg and Nikolai Fedorovich Dubrovin, who became classics of Adyghe historiography, also pointed out the absence of shields in the 19th-century Circassian warrior’s equipment.
However, Peter Simon Pallas, who visited Kabarda in 1793, pointed out that the local princes had coat-of-arms shields used for decoration. Based on the analysis of local folklore, Shora Bekmurzovich Nogmov — a public figure, educator, philologist and poet — pointed out that the early Adyghe used a large battle shield. Among modern researchers, the use of shields by the Kabardinians was confirmed by the historian and Caucasologist, Georgy Aleksandrovich Kokiev, who based this conclusion on the shield’s metal base.
The arguments made by Pallas, Nogmov and Kokiev are confirmed by archaeological findings. Remnants of shields were found on sights of several Adyghe burial grounds — Ubinsky, Vardanovsky, Khadzhokhsky, Medoveyevka-1, Kazakovo-1 and Kazakovo-3.
This means that the Circassians used shields until a certain point in time, after which they became obsolete. This is why, when describing the Adyghe armor, the absence of a shield is regarded as a unique trait.
