Download PDF | J.D. Latham and W.F. Paterson, Saracen Archery: An English Version and Exposition of a Mameluke Work on Archery, The Holland Press, 1970.
273 Pages
INTRODUCTION
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
The rise of Islam and the rapid growth of the Arab Empire in the wake of conquests in Asia, Africa, and Europe need not detain us. The vital role of Persian and Turkish influences in the history of archery in the Middle East makes it more appropriate to begin with the overthrow, in A.D. 750, of the Umayyad Caliphate by the Abbasids and the transfer of the capital from Damascus to Baghdad where the latter first ruled (763-945) and then reigned as puppets until the fall of Baghdad in 1258.! With the advent of the Abbasids and the growth of Baghdad, whose position along the main trade routes to Central Asia favoured eastward expansion, new influences from the Iranian cultural orbit penetrated the fabric of the Empire, On the military side—our central interest—the Arab warrior class gradually lost its importance and Khorasanians (in the regional sense of the term) formed the core of the army until displaced, from the reign of al-Mu'tasim (833~42) onwards, by Turkish slave troops.
The courage and martial prowess of these new elements evoked the admiration of contemporaries who have left impressive accounts of their skill as bowmen and horse-archers. From the renowned Arab writer, al-Jahiz (776-869) we glimpse something of the Khorasanians’ military training in which, amongst other things, boys practised vaulting on to horses’ backs and men played polo, after which came ‘shooting at the sitting quarry, the hoop [birjäs: below, p. 83] and the bird on the wing’.* Of the Turks, he writes that ‘if a thousand of their horse join battle and let off a single bout of arrows, they can mow down a thousand [Arab] horse. No army can withstand this kind of assault.
The Khirijites [Arabian religious extremists hostile to the Abbasids] and the Beduin have no skill worth mentioning in shooting from horseback, but the Turk can shoot at beasts, birds, hoops, men, sitting quarry, dummies, and birds on the wing, and do so at full gallop to fore or to rear, to left or to right, upwards or downwards, loosing ten arrows before the Khárijite can nock one.'* In flight, he adds, the Turk spelt certain death since he was as accurate in retreat as attack.® To Ibn al-Fagih the Turks were skilled shots who could hit the pupil of an eye,* and in al-Ya'qübi, who interestingly records that their arrows were made of bone, we can readily detect an implicit recognition of their skill.”
The advent of the Seljuqs and the creation of the Great Sultanate in 1055 finally established the power of the Turks. During the Great Sultanate, which lasted about a century, they were no longer a class of slave or freed troops, and the period is marked by the occurrence of a new and important phenomenon in Middle Eastern history, namely, the westward migration of whole clans of free Turkmens.*
The Mongol conquest of Baghdad by Hulagu (Hüle'ü) in 1258 brought the Caliphate in Iraq to an end. In Egypt and Syria events took a different turn. At the end of the twelfth century the two countries had been welded by Saladin, the Ayyübid, into a powerful state based on military strength and capable of combating the Crusaders.* The régime founded by the Ayyübids became the inheritance of the Mamelukes who rose to power through the military policy of as-Salih Ayyüb (1240-49). Recruiting vast numbers of Turks from the Kipchak steppe and surrounding regions, he created from amongst them the Bakriyyah regiment, an élite guard of nearly 1,000 horsemen, whose formation led to the creation of the Mameluke sultanate which in 1261 established a nominal Abbasid Caliphate in Cairo.
During the first Mameluke period (1250-1382), commonly, but incorrectly, termed Bahri from the name of the regiment, the Kipchaks predominated.^, It was they who, under the command of Baybars at “Ayn Jalit signally defeated the Mongols in pitched battle (1260) and checked their advance into Syria and Egypt.!! It was during this first period, as Ayalon has shown," that the maydān, or training-ground, so essential for systematic drill and intensive training in the arts of war, flourished as never before or after. At its peak under Baybars I (1260-77), Mameluke training slowly but surely began to deteriorate, though, we suspect, much more slowly in Syria than Egypt.!? The role of the bow in all this was probably much greater than commonly appreciated by the orientalist, for in AH. 733 (1332-3) the sultan an-Nàsir Muhammad ibn Qalaün, probably fearing the strength of his amirs’ troops, ordered the demolition of archery ranges built by the amirs outside Cairo, closed dundug-makers’ (meaning probably in this context crossbowmakers)!* shops, and forbade the production of practice arrows. The prohibition extended to the whole Mameluke sultanate.1® After this ruler's death rot set in, and the very first symptom of decay appeared when al-Ashraf Sha'bàn (4.4. 764—78/1362-3—1376-7) tried to arrest the process by favouring and encouraging military experts such as our author, Taybughá. His efforts were in vain. The Circassian sultanate! established by Barqüq (1382-99) accelerated the downward trend. Generally speaking, training became more perfunctory, discipline lax, and adult relatives of the Circassian Mamelukes imported from the Caucasus began to infiltrate the corps without passing through the military school.1?
The skill of Mameluke archers in their heyday is legendary, and even after the advent of firearms the bow was not hastily cast aside; for not only was it quite some time before any kind of firearm was as effective as the bow but, as Ayalon so penetratingly observes, "To equip a soldier with an arquebus meant taking away his bow and, what was to the Mamluk more distasteful, depriving him of his horse, thereby reducing him to the humiliating status of a foot soldier, compelled either to march or to allow himself to be carried in an ox-cart."!5 In their cyes the importance of the bow was such that in the period of decline failure to pass tests in its use was used as the criterion for stopping the privileges of members of the non-Mameluke socio-military unit of the Halgah!* to which were attached the sons of amirs and Mamelukes debarred by the non-hereditary system of their society from making a career in the corps.??
One point remains to be made for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the history of the Middle East. The military servitude of the Mamelukes should not evoke a mental picture of illiteracy and degradation. After the completion of a primary education in religion and the rudiments of theology and Islamic law, the young adolescent underwent training in the use of arms and tactics.*! His protracted period of highly disciplined training in the military school formed his character and outlook for life. Upon passing out and gaining his freedom, he qualified for the remuneration and privileges of a full-fledged Mameluke and might, if outstandingly able, rise to the higher amirates or even the sultanate. From the nature of his education it follows that in the Middle East of his epoch the bow was widely used by the literate. The fact that the contrary was the case in the West accounts for the late appearance of Roger Ascham’s treatise Toxophilus in 1545. There would have been little point in writing for the illiterate, from whose ranks the average bowman was drawn.
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