Судан и Большой Ближний Восток

266 III. Судан и его соседи such a formation, it did not leave space for numerous full-trajectory strokes in principle. Thus, it is not surprising that first nomadic cavalrymen — the Scithian — chose a very short sword (40–60 cm) called akinakes . The fighting was rather a sort of melee, where it was essential to hit fast and without wasting too much energy (in order to be able to fight longer), and, simultaneously, to defend himself from many strokes, not from a single blow of one though mighty opponent. A powerful early medieval sword though had a large range of action, was relatively slow and cumbersome, thus inefficient under circumstances, especially taking into account that most of the enemies were unarmoured. On the other hand, the lamellar armour had also been developing, so the simplest solution—making the sword thinner and lighter —would not work satisfactorily against nomadic heavy cavalry. So, it was nothing but logical to start searching for some other, more efficient weapon, which in due course had been elaborated in the Great Steppe by the 9th C., then gradually spread out among settled neighbours. It was a slightly curved sabre, which on the one hand, was (1) lighter, more efficient and easier to handle than a straight sword, thus faster , and on the other hand, (2) it remained not less efficient against the armoured opponent — because of the higher penetrative power of a curved blade in comparison to the straight one, — and (3) even more efficient against unprotected warrior because of the ‘slicing’ effect of the ‘back stroke’. 2. 13th century: A crucial point A. Changes in the Middle East First variants of the ‘proto-sabre’ were known in the Great Steppe from the early medieval period (initially, it was merely an angular fixing of the handle to the blade, which remained straight, only later the blade began to curve), while ‘classic’ forms spreaded widely in the 9th–10th C. In the lands of the former Abbasid Caliphate, the sabres did not appear until the Seljuk period, i. e. in the middle of the 11th C.; though, as the written sources and pictorial record testify, the sabre was not used there in any considerable amounts — except, perhaps, by