Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 159 h Archaeological Evidence for Mamlūk Archery both the limited remnants of feather flights and of slightly less fragile paper flights. The last major aspects in this aspect will be cresting, in other words, the painted markings around the nocks and rear parts of arrows which identified a specific arrow either as belonging to a specific archer or being of a specific type, and some miscellaneous fragments including what might be part of a bowstring, along with elements of what might be a quiver and a bow-case. Keywords: bow, arrows, bowstave, bow-case, bowstring, arrowheads, arrow flights, composite bow, crossbow, bolts, pellet-bow, qaws al-bunduq, quiver, siege bow, furusiyah, Ayyūbids, Mamlūk Sultanate, al-Andalus, Granada, Aleppo Citadel, Damascus Citadel, Asi'l-Hadath, Qal‘at al-Rahba. The Historical Context Archery is one of the most-studied aspects of medieval Islamic warfare, and this has been even more true of the Mamlūk era. However, such studies have focused almost entirely upon the written record which, again for the Mamlūk era, is particularly rich. Archery certainly enjoys high status in Islamic hadith , yet it is important to note that archery amongst the early Muslim Arabs was an infantry affair. It largely remained so until after the c Abbāsid take-over of the Caliphate in the mid-8 th century AD. Furthermore, this early infantry dominated archery tradition persisted in the western regions of the Islamic world, although even here the originally quite simple Arab bow was largely superseded by Perso-Turkish styles of composite bows. The traditional Arab bow was either made of a single stave of wood or was constructed from several layers of wood glued together. Written sources indicate that composite bows were also known, though normally being im- ported from elsewhere. Another distinctive weapon which made its appear- ance around this time was the arrow-guide which enabled an archer to shoot small, dart-like arrows. Its precise origins remain unclear, though the Mus- lims probably learned of it from the Byzantines and, like them, found it useful against Central Asian harassment horse-archery tactics. The Muslims simi- larly adopted the pellet-bow or qaws al-bunduk , though this was a hunting rather than warlike weapon. Meanwhile crossbows had either survived in the Middle East since Roman times or were reintroduced from China or, more likely, their reappearance re- sulted from a combination of both these factors. Substantial siege crossbows were clearly used in defence of, and during assaults upon, fortifications.