Судан и Большой Ближний Восток

271 Alexander S. Matveev. A Case of Survival of an Early Medieval Straight Sword... “relations” (see, e. g. extremely popular in the 13th C. Plano Carpini’s thorough description of the Mongol military system and especially his recommendations “ how to fight ” this invincible foe). Thus, what the Mongols brought with them so special? There were several aspects of those new features of warfare, which they invented, or rather introduced to the West and the Middle East. First of all, it was an unprecedented importance of horse-archery . The horse-archery in itself was not, of course, something new for their Eastern opponents who used horse-archers for centuries themselves —and even theWestern knights learned about it after their ‘visits’ to the Hole Land. Nevertheless, we should not be misled by the Crusaders’ descriptions of Turkish horse-archers. However strange and unexpected they seemed for the knights, they did not play so prominent role in the Muslim armies — except the troops of the Saljuks of Asia Minor. However, with the Mongols it was absolutely different, as they brought with them a tremendous army where horse-archers played a prominent part. But what was absolutely unprecedented, it was the scale and consistence with which the horse-archers were applied on the battlefield. It was not hit-and-run tactics of the Saljuk tribesmen who approached, shot arrows — only to disappear again, thus being more annoying than dangerous, 1 but waives after waives of shooting horse- archers, destroying the men- and horse-power of their opponents even before the hand-to-hand engagement started. This tactic, first of all,made imperative toproduce an efficient defence for the warriors who had to withstand this squall of arrows, and, not less importantly, to protect their horses. A traditional Western mail hauberk provided a very good protection against swords, but it was not efficient against arrows. 2 It could withstand shock of a relatively weak ordinary 1 See for example a battle of Dandanakan of 1040, when a perfect Ghaznavid army was utterly destroyed by the Seljuks. However, it was not one major encounter, but rather a series of skirmishes — “raids” of light horse-archers against marching columns of Mas‘ud’s army, which conitued for several days — until the army was ripe enough to collapse on its own after a relatively minor attack. 2 See, e. g., experiments and conclusion of Saxton T. Pope that “a bodkin-pointed arrow, shot from a heavy bow, can penetrate steel mail.”