Martial arts manuals are instructions, with or without illustrations, specifically designed to be learnt from a book. Many books detailing specific techniques of martial arts are often erroneously called manuals but were written as treatises.
Prose descriptions of martial arts techniques appear late within the history of literature, due to the inherent difficulties of describing a technique rather than just demonstrating it.
The earliest extant manuscript on armed combat (as opposed to unarmed wrestling) is Royal Armouries Ms. I.33 ("I.33"), written in Franconia around 1300.
Not within the scope of this article are books on military strategy such as Sun Tzu's The Art of War (before 100 BCE) or Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus' De Re Militari (4th century), or military technology, such as De rebus bellicis (4th to 5th century).