Судан и Большой Ближний Восток

277 Alexander S. Matveev. A Case of Survival of an Early Medieval Straight Sword... brought in Sudan by the Arab Bedouins migrating from Upper Egypt, who in turn influenced the local tribes, like the Beja, who adopted their weaponry and also became very well versed in using Arabic broadsword. 1 The earlymedieval Arabiawith its limited populationwasmuch closer to the European pattern of warfare than to the Great Steppe nomadic system; the single combat prevailed in the Arabic tribal warfare. Though we should not always take the descriptions of purely single-combated encounters depicted in the pre-Islamic Arabic oral tradition, such as Ayyam al-Arab , at face value, but they are still closer to reality than it might look. Even the Bedouin pride, muruwwa , has a lot of similarities with the knightly one. On the other hand, the actual battles of the pre- Islamic period, as well as of the great Arab conquests, were conducted mostly by foot soldiers, because of the limited number of horses inArabia (unlike horses, the camel was a means of transport to bring the warriors to the battlefield, but the Arabs did not fight from the camel’s back). In the latter respect it resembled the Viking military system based on the mobile footmen, partially armoured inmail and relied on sword and also spear, as the Arabs did, only the means of transport were different (the Vikings used ships, as their desert to cross was the sea). Thus, the straight sword was quite efficient for the Bedouin warfare with its prevalence of the single-combat and fighting on foot of relatively small groups of warriors — as opposite to the cavalry warfare and continuous operating of large units in theMamluk-Mongol confrontation of the 13th–14th C., where the sabre had all advantages. The situation in the Sudan was quite similar to Arabia. Standard adversaries were not too sophisticatedNilotic, or neighbouring nomadic tribes, though not horsemen but cattle or camel breeding Bedouins, who also fought almost exclusively on foot. Some rulers in Sudan had picked cavalry units, including the heavily armoured, but they were small. In the inner conflicts the older traditions of the tribal warfare lingered, with a limited importance of cavalry— exactly as in the pre-Islamic Arabian society. The same was true regarding the neighbouring Sahara Tuaregs, 1 “The Beja, under Arab influence, abandoned the spear as a weapon in favour of thebroad-bladedCrusader [ sic! ] swordwithwhich theyhave sinceproved themselves such formidable fighters at close quarters”. [Paul A. A History of the Beja tribes of the Sudan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954. P. 78.]