Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

Rivkin · 27th July 2005, 08:11 PM

My memory was almost entirely right (with an exception of that I interchanged "persian" and "turkish" bows).
"The Mamluks in Egyptian politics and society" edited by Thomas Philipp and Ulrich Haarmann has an article on p.174 "The late triumph of the Persian bow: critical voices on the Mamluk monopoly on weaponry". It deals mostly with the issue that while descendants of the prophet were banned from carrying weapons, sons of idolaters (mamluks) were the only ones permitted to do so. On p.184 it discusses the crossbows - they had two names "qaws ak zaytun, qaws al jarkh, qaws al-rijl" (not bunduq) and "turkish bow". Some of these bows where possibly some sort of siege machines rather than ordinary crossbows (I can't exactly envision a crossbow firing a 90kg bolt ?).

The nomenclature of bows comes from religious discussions of Ibn al-Qayyim (d.1350) and others on whether a muslim can use weapons of non-muslims (since the prophet himself in principle did not use the weapons of kafir). Crossbows where seen as an introduction made by mamluks from the lands of kafir.

It's a very interesting article, unfortunately (or fortunately) it mostly refers to original sources in arabic with an exception of works I already cited here.

27th July 2005, 08:11 PM	#41
Rivkin Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 655	My memory was almost entirely right (with an exception of that I interchanged "persian" and "turkish" bows). "The Mamluks in Egyptian politics and society" edited by Thomas Philipp and Ulrich Haarmann has an article on p.174 "The late triumph of the Persian bow: critical voices on the Mamluk monopoly on weaponry". It deals mostly with the issue that while descendants of the prophet were banned from carrying weapons, sons of idolaters (mamluks) were the only ones permitted to do so. On p.184 it discusses the crossbows - they had two names "qaws ak zaytun, qaws al jarkh, qaws al-rijl" (not bunduq) and "turkish bow". Some of these bows where possibly some sort of siege machines rather than ordinary crossbows (I can't exactly envision a crossbow firing a 90kg bolt ?). The nomenclature of bows comes from religious discussions of Ibn al-Qayyim (d.1350) and others on whether a muslim can use weapons of non-muslims (since the prophet himself in principle did not use the weapons of kafir). Crossbows where seen as an introduction made by mamluks from the lands of kafir. It's a very interesting article, unfortunately (or fortunately) it mostly refers to original sources in arabic with an exception of works I already cited here.