Судан и Большой Ближний Восток

274 III. Судан и его соседи breast-plates similar to the European full armour of the 15th C. 1 Thus, this line of armour development stopped in the East on the stage of combined plate-mail armour and four-piece Persian chahār-ā’īneh chest armour (lit. ‘the four mirrors’), worn on top of a mail shirt- zirah . 3. Sudan “relict” area By the end of the 13th C. the curved blade became prevalent in the Middle East — though the straight sword did not disappear completely from arsenals of the region. In the Mongol Ilkhanid period the latter was still a major weapon of the Bedouins in Arabia, along with spear, as illustrated in the above-mentioned early 14th C. Mss. of the World History by Rashid al-din (see Fig. 10–11). In some areas of the Middle East and North Africa, the straight blade continued to be used for quite a long period, or even survived till the 20th C., as in the Sudan. Thus, in Maghrib , the traditional straight swords prevailed in the Sahara region, the most typical being the above mentioned takouba , primarily associated with Tuaregs of the Sahara, though also used by Arabs and some of their Sahara-Sahel neighbours (Fig. 14; see, e. g., a well-decorated 18th C. takouba from the Southern Sahara with a slightly tapering imported German blade, mounted locally, published by North together with kaskaras 2 ). Besides, some straight blades of a Pallasch/ backsword type were in use on the mediterranean littoral, along with famous Moroccan nimsha that combined mostly European imported blades and characteristic local hilt fitted with knuckle bow linked to curved quillons. 3 It had two main variants: one with a rather narrow slightly curved blade, the other had a shorter curved blade with a broaden heavy foible, similar to the European cutlass . The latter, 1 See Alan Williams comparison of the Eastern and the European techniques of steel-making [Alan Williams. Ottoman Military Technology: The Metallurgy of Turkish Armour: War and Society in the Eastern Mediter- ranean, 7th–15th CC. Leiden, Brill, 1997. P. 363–405]. 2 North A. Op. cit. Pl. 23.d. 3 See, e. g., North A. Op. cit. P. 29, pl. 22a; Elgood R. Op. cit. Pl. 2.1, 2.2, 2.4.