Harvard-Yenching Institute
Ayn Jālūt: Mamlūk Sucess or Mongol Failure?Author(s): John Masson Smith, Jr.Source: Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Dec., 1984), pp. 307-345Published by: Harvard-Yenching InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2719035 .
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CAyn Jalit:
Mamliuk Success or Mongol Failure?
JOHN MASSON SMITH, JR.
University of California, Berkeley
Plus grant pens6e avoient les
Tartars de leur chevaus que de soi
meismes....
Haithon, p. 200.
THE battle of cAyn Jalit, where the Mamluiks of Egypt defeated the invading Mongols on 3 September 1260, is usually presented
as the turning point in the tide of Mongol conquest. This, it is usually suggested, was the Mongols' only opportunity to complete the sub- jugation of the Middle East, and the opportunity was lost. Hulegu had to withdraw most of his troops from Syria owing to the death of the supreme khan, Mongke, and the incipient struggle over the suc- cession; the small army he left under Kedbuqa to secure and extend his conquests in the Levant was then overwhelmed by the numeri- cally-superior Mamluiks. Thereafter, because of the divisive outcome of the succession struggle, the hostility of the Golden Horde prevented the Mongols of Persia from using their full power against the Mam- liks.1 Examination of the Mongol campaigns in detail, however, will show that these interpretations are inaccurate or inadequate.
1 R. Grousset, The Empire of the Steppes (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,
New Jersey, 1970), pp. 363-366; S. Runciman, A History ofthe Crusades, 3 vols. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1951-1955) 3:309-313; C. Brockelmann, History of the
307
308 JOHN MASSON SMITH, JR.
Let us look at first into the numbers of troops engaged in the cAyn
Jaluit campaign, and into the sizes of the Mongol and Mamluik
armies. The Mamliuk victory is usually attributed to superior num-
bers. This supposed superiority seems to derive from Howorth's
mistranslation or misprinting of information from D'Ohsson, that
makes 120,000 Mamlfiks out of "douze mille."2 This mistake has in
turn escaped notice, I believe, because most modern scholars have
concluded that the Mongols were often, if not usually, outnumbered
by their enemies.3 However this may have been, at cAyn Jaliit they
Islamic Peoples, J. Carmichael and M. Perlmann, trans. (New York: Capricorn, 1960),
p. 251; B. Spuler, The Muslim World, vol. 2: The Mongol Period (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960),
p. 20; 0. Lattimore, "Chingis Khan and the Mongol Conquests," Scientific American
(August 1963), pp. 55-68, see p. 55; L. Kwanten, Imperial Nomads (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), p. 160.
2 H. H. Howorth, History of the Mongols, 4 parts in 5 vols. (London: Longmans, Green,
1888), pt. 3:167; C. D'Ohsson, Histoire des Mongols, 4 vols. (The Hague and Amsterdam:
Van Cleef freres, 1834), 3:334. 3 This conclusion stems from misunderstandings in, and misinterpretations of, the
sources. The Mongols made estimates (and in conquered lands took censuses) of the adult
male enemy population, and these data were sometimes understood as meaning military
manpower (as they did for nomads). This is why Rashiduddin, in The Successors of Genghis
Khan, J. A. Boyle, trans. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), p. 57, claims that
the Mongols in Eastern Europe faced Hungarian forces of 400,000 men. The 400,000
troops of Khwarezm, cited originally by Rashiddudin, according to H. Desmond Martin,
in The Rise ofChingis Khan and His Conquest of North China (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1950),
p. 333, n. 15-although I have not tracked this down-probably also derive from a
Mongol estimate or census of the nomads of the Tien-shan/Chaghatai region that is
reflected in Haithon, Flos Historiarum Terre Orientis, in Recueil des Hiutriens des Croisades,
Documents Armeniens, 2 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1906), 2:214; all of these were
then retrospectively and mistakenly made subjects and soldiers of the Khwarezmshah.
Modern scholars have made similar misinterpretations. Martin has Chingis facing superior
forces, first of Hsi-hsia (p. 115), and then of Chin (p. 126) because he counted their useless
infantry together with their cavalry, and overestimates their cavalry as well. Their cavalry,
consisting of nomads from Inner Mongolia (about equal in number to those of Outer
Mongolia) and sedentaries from Manchuria, would have outnumbered Chingis'-
except that it was divided between Hsi-hsia and Chin, and probably underutilized and
immobilized within Chin by the distrust and antagonism between its principal con-
tributors, Jurchen and Kitan.
A more sensibly skeptical approach to the idea of large Mongol forces is taken by D. 0.
Morgan, in "The Mongol Armies in Persia," Der Islam 56 (1979): 85-86 and n. 35 who
cites a text assigning each campaigning Mongol 5 horses and 30 sheep, and wonders
whether (to take his example) an army of 300,000 men could find pasture for 1.5 million
horses and 9 million sheep. They could do so, I believe, on the steppes of Inner Asia and
its extensions into the Middle East-with exceptions to be noted below. On the Khwarezm
campaign, for instance, the Mongol forces were dispersed to a degree in various task forces,
so that the pastoral burden would have been distributed and diminisbed, and moved,
in proper nomadic fashion, from lowland winter pastures to summer highlands. And
they were campaigning in country that still supported some 1.1 million nomads in 1897:
CAYN JALUT 309
were not. Several sources state or imply the size of the Mongol force.
Bar Hebraeus and Haithon give 10,000 men; Kirakos has 20,000;4
some 900,000 Kazaks along the northwestern flanks of the Tien-shan, and 249,000
Turkmen, as I calculate from the data in L. Krader, Peoples of Central Asia (Bloomington
and The Hague: Mouton for Indiana University, 1963), pp. 199-200, reworking it to
fit the regions attacked by the Mongols, and omitting the out-of-the-way Kirgiz and
Karakalpaks. A population of 1.1 million nomads should have as a decent minimum of
animal capital (assuming 5 persons per family) some 22 million sheep or their equivalent,
and they probably had something like this in fact as well as theory. Russian Central
Asia in 1911 had a total of 85.9 million sheep-equivalents (s-e): 28.5 million sheep, 2.9
million goats, 5.6 million cattle, and 5.3 million horses, taking 1 horse or cow as the
equivalent of 5 sheep or goats: data from R. A. Pierce, Russian Central Asia (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960), pp. 160-61. Although the animal
population is not broken down by region or people, we might subdivide it in accordance
with the proportions of the nomad populations. The 1.1 million Kazaks and Turkmen
were about 26% of the total nomad population of Russian Central Asia (Kazak, Kirgiz,
Turkmen and Karakalpak); 26% of the 85.9 sheep-equivalents would be 22.3 million s-e.
Chingis would not have had difficulty campaigning in a region that could support such
numbers when the "ecological weight" of his own force (at 5 horses and 30 sheep-or
55 s-e--per man) would have been only 5.5 million s-e per 100,000 men-16.5 million s-e
for Morgan's 300,000, and 22 million exactly for 400,000 (which I suggest, in an article
forthcoming in one of the Oxford-Pennsylvania Middle East conference volumes, to be
Juvaini's veiled estimate of the size of the Mongol army used against Khwarezm).
As for Iran, the figures cited by Morgan for the animal population in 1970, 48 million
sheep and goats, reveal a theoretical capacity for the country as a whole to support (at
100 s-e per family) 480,000 nomad families or 48 tamens. Excluding southern Iran, and
allowing it half of these animals (which is probably too many, since northern Iran has the
best pastures), would still give the parts occupied by the Mongols 24 million sheep
and goats-about the same number as the total population of all animals in Outer
Mongolia-which could support 240,000 families or 24 tumens. The sheep and goat popula-
tion of Turkey in 1965 was 53 million, plus 13 million cattle and 1.2 million horses, these
latter the equivalent of 71 million more sheep; I have not counted in the buffaloes,
mules, donkeys and camels. These figures can only be used suggestively, since the Mongols
did not occupy the whole of Anatolia, and the modern Turks provide some fodder as well
as pasture for some of these animals (although not the sheep and goats): see J. D. Dewdney,
Turkey (London: Chatto and Windus, 1971), pp. 107-10. The Syrian animal population
in 1949, according to Syria, Ministry of National Economy, Department of Statistics,
Statistical Abstract of Syria, 1950, pp. 158-59, was some 8 million sheep-equivalents,
enough to support 80,000 nomad families or 8 tumens. The pastures in Afghanistan that
the Mongols also used are not counted.
Morgan's observation that the Mongols needed pastures along their invasion routes,
which would seem to deny them much of the pasture supporting these modern animal
populations, puts the matter backwards. The Mongols had to route their invasions through
pasture, but, not being road-bound, could move wherever there was pasture and thus use
much, rather than just a little, of it. 4 Kirakos of Ganja in At. Dulaurier, "Les Mongols d'apres les historiens Arm6niens,"
Journal Asiatique, 5th ser., 11 (1858): 498; Haithon, p. 172; Gregory Abu'l-Faraj
Barhebraeus, The Chronography, E. A. W. Budge, trans. (London: Oxford University Press,
1932), p. 436.
310 JOHN MASSON SMITH, JR.
Rashiduddin does not enumerate the Mongols directly, but describes
the campaign and the army in a way that makes possible the recon-
struction not only of the size of the army, but of the changes in that
size during the campaign. For the convenience of their generally
illiterate commanders, the Mongol armies consisted of decimal units,
Tens, Hundreds, Thousands and Ten Thousands. Therefore when
we have enumerations of Mongol commanders in the sources we
usually have also the "order of battle"-the number and frequently
the disposition of the major military units involved, which are
normally tiumens, Ten Thousands. Thus we can count Htilegii's
troops. For the campaign of 1257-58 against Baghdad, 15 com-
manders are named, implying a force of 15 tiumens and 150,000 men.5
For Htilegui's Syrian campaign that ended at cAyn Jluit, six com-
manders are named, including Htilegii himself and Kedbuqa, the
loser at cAyn Jalilt.6 Accordingly the Mongol force at the outset was
six tumens or 60,000 men.
Htilegii opened his attack on Syria in September of 1259, about a
year before cAyn Jluit, and marched from the Alatagh in eastern
Anatolia via Diyarbekir and Edessa to Aleppo, a distance of 575
miles covered in some four months. He took and frightfully sacked the
city of Aleppo after a short siege in late January 1260. The citadel
held out for another month, but upon its fall the other rulers and
commanders in Syria gave up the struggle and fled to Egypt or joined
the Mongols. Their cities, U[oms, IjamTh and Damascus, yielded to
Htilegui. In late April, probably, while the Mongols were still con-
solidating and rounding out their conquests, and despite the presence
of the undefeated Mamluiks in Egypt, Huilegii withdrew to Iran,
taking many of his troops with him, and leaving Kedbuqa to hold
5 I have discussed the reconstruction of the Mongol "order of battle" further in "Mongol
Manpower and Persian Population," Journal of the Social and Economic History of the Orient
18 (1975). Those who doubt that Mongol tumens actually included ten thousand men
should consider the information in V. Minorsky, "A Civil and Military Review in Fars
in 881/1476," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 10.1 (1939), and J. E.
Woods, The Aqquyunlu (Minneapolis and Chicago: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1976), pp. 122
and 131, n. 122, which shows that the actual numbers in Aqquyunlu tiimens closely
approximated their nominal manpower. If the Aqquyunlu could keep their tiimens up to
strength, so surely could the Mongols.
6 Rashiduddin, Jdmic al- Tawdrzkh, B. Karimi, ed. (Tehran: Eqbal, 1338/1957), p. 719;
(hereinafter RaD/K).
cAYN JALCT 311
Syria.7 In July or August, having made sure that Hilegu was gone,
the Mamliiks came out of Egypt to cAyn Jalit.8
Kedbuqa had been named among the commanders at the begin-
ning of the campaign, and thus he must have commanded a tumen of
Ten Thousand. Associated with him in the garrison of Syria after
Hiilegui's departure was another commander, Baidar, who was not
named in the initial order of battle, and whose ordinary position may
have been that of commander of a Thousand in Kedbuqa's tumen.
But since he is named in both Mongol and Mamliuk accounts of cAyn
Jaliut, he must by then have had a greater military importance.9 He
had been made governor of Damascus, as Kedbuqa was governor of
Aleppo, and I imagine that he led not only a Mongol contingent but
also the Syrian, ex-Ayytibid troops that had gone over to the Mon-
gols, and locally-recruited nomads, Turkish and perhaps Arab.
Baidar was probably promoted to commander of a tamen and autho-
rized to raise the men needed to make one. Accordingly the Mon-
gols at cAyn Jluit from the original invading army, Kedbuqa's
tiumen, numbered 10,000, and the total Mongol force, including Bai-
dar's nominal locally-recruited tiimen, was supposed to be 20,000.10
Bar Hebraeus, Haithon and Kirakos were all correct in different
ways.
The Mamluiks had 12,000 men at cAyn Jliit, according to
D'Ohsson, apparently citing Nuwairl, an historian of Mamliuk
Egypt who died in 1332. 11 The most nearly contemporaneous account
of cAyn Jliit, by Baybars' biographer, Ibn cAbduzzahir, gives no
7 RaD/K, pp. 718-20. 8 Maqrizi, Histoire des Sultans Mamlouks, M. Quatremere, trans., 4 vols. in 2 (Paris:
Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1837, 1845), 1:103. 9 Ibid., pp. 100, 104; RaD/K, p. 722. 10 Owen Lattimore, in "Chingis Khan," p. 55, attempts to excuse the Mongol defeat at
CAyn Jaliit by claiming that the "Mongols" involved were in fact only Turkish auxiliaries.
The sources say nothing of the ethnic composition of Kedbuqa's force; Lattimore is
only making a guess based on the known Mongol practice of recruiting non-Mongol
troops, and on the general scholarly opinion that most of the "Mongol" soldiery in the
westerly parts of the empire were derived in this way from the local Turkish nomads.
Lattimore's more serious mistake is to undervalue these Turks, whose nomad and warrior
background was the same as the Mongols', and who, under Mongol organization, com-
mand and inspiration, were quite the equals of the Mongols themselves. 11 D'Ohsson, 3:334.
312 JOHN MASSON SMITH, JR.
numbers for the Mamliiks in the version that has been translated.12
The figure of 12,000 is a plausible one. The studies of the Mamliuk
army by Poliak and Ayalon have shown that the nominal forces of
the Egyptian Mamliiks, as of their Ayyuibid predecessors, were
24,000 cavalry based on 24 military districts (qirat) supplying 1,000
troops each. These forces seem, judging especially by the assignments
of the qirdts during the second half of the thirteenth century, to have
been composed of some 4,000 royal mamliiks, 10,000 amirs' mamluiks,
and 10,000 men of the 4alqa (regular troops of various origins).1-3 In
addition there were soldiers from defeated Khwarezmian, Ayyuibid
and Kurdish forces that had taken refuge in Egypt from the Mon-
gols. 14 The armies of Egypt would thus in theory somewhat have out-
numbered those of Kedbuqa. But although Maqrizl says that Qutuz
led the whole power of Egypt against the Mongols,16 we may doubt,
I believe, that the actual numbers approached the theoretical. Some
12 Ibn cAbduzzahir, Baybars I of Egypt, F. Sadeque, trans. (Dacca: Oxford University
Press, 1956). Hereinafter material from Ibn cAbdu zahir will be cited under his name,
and information provided by his translator under Sadeque.
18 During the second half of the thirteenth century, the numbers of royal mamluks
seems to have varied between 2 (an-Nasir, beginning of the fourteenth century) and 4
thousand (Baybars); of amirs' between 10 and 13 thousand; and of talqa between 9 and
10 thousand. Syria, which did not become part of the Mamlu:k realm until after CAyn
Jaluit, nevertheless contributed some, although probably not much, further manpower
for the Mamluiks. Although az-ZAhiri's list (in Ayalon, "Studies", pt. 3) enumerates
23,000 Syrian halqa, this figure seems implausibly large. The list was compiled (at an
unknown date) to daunt a potential (but unnamed) Mongol invader, and systematically
overstates Mamlfik strength: the Egyptian forces, for instance, were inflated by double-
counting the mamlfiks, who were tacitly included among the 24,000 halqa, and then
counted again as a separate and seemingly additional item of 18,000. See A. N. Poliak,
Feudalism in Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and the Lebanon, 1250-1900 (London: Royal Asiatic
Society, 1939), pp. 6-9, and the three articles of D. Ayalon entitled "Studies on the
Structure of the Mamluk Army," of which Parts 1 and 2 are in BSOAS 15 (1953) and
Part 3 in BSOAS 16 (1954), especially 1:222-223, 2:452, and 3:70-72. In Saladin's time
and the later Ayyuibid period, Syrian forces appear to have numbered about 4,000 men,
according to H. A. R. Gibb, "The Armies of Saladin," Cahiers d'histoire igyptienne, ser. 3,
fasc. 4 (May, 1951), and a similar strength is suggested for Mamlik Syria in the early
fourteenth century by the Mamlhk order of battle at Shaqbab in 1303, in which only four
of the 18 amirs-nominally doubtless commanders of a Thousand-led Syrian troops
(Maqrizi, 2.4:199-200). At the time of cAyn Jiluit these forces would have been reduced
by the destruction of a considerable fraction at the siege of Aleppo, by the attrition of
retreat to Egypt, and by the conscription of many into the Mongol army.
14 For the Khwarezmians, see RaD/K, pp. 721-22; for the Kurds, Maqrizi, 1:79-80;
for the Syrians, ibid., pp. 91-95. 16 Maqrizi, 1:103.
cAYN JALOT 313
force would surely have been left behind to guard Egypt against any
renewed Christian assault after the manner of the recent Crusade of
Saint Louis; Saladin, earlier, had left half of his Egyptian man-
power behind for such defense.16 Then, too, it is questionable how far
the various troops in Egypt were able and willing to campaign abroad.
Most of the fugitives, after the attrition of defeat and retreat on
equipment and especially mounts, would not have been equipped
adequately to take on the Mongols-and the Mamliuk arsenals and
studs probably lacked the resources to make good these losses.
Moreover, the soldiers in Egypt knew the Mongols' record and feared
meeting them; many surely evaded doing so. Finally, the figure of
12,000 coincides, probably for logistic reasons, with that of the
Ayyuibid period: Saladin had already found that an army of this
size was the largest that he could field in Palestine17-and that this
was large enough.
Hiilegti obviously believed that Kedbuqa could hold Syria with
his own tiimen and the odd ex-Ayyiibid trooper. He would probably
not have done so had he thought the Egyptian army to be up to its
nominal strength or known the quality of its mamliiks. Mongol
military intelligence, questioning captive and allied soldiers from
Syria (doubtless including some of the exiled Bahr! mamliuks), would
have discovered the numbers and kinds of troops before them in
Egypt. The good ones were mamliiks, perhaps 14,000 in number;
the rest were the 4alqa, whom the mamliks seem to have looked down
on, and unreliable, underequipped fugitives. Almost all of them were
Turks apparently of the same sort that the Mongols had met from
Central Asia to Russia and Anatolia and had always beaten. Be-
cause of this experience they could not evaluate their information
about Egypt properly. They could count, but not appraise, the mam-
luks.
The Mongols had not, in fact, met the Egyptian kind of mamliuk
army before. They had encountered some small mamluak contingents
in Ayyiibid service, and probably some more among the Khwarez-
mians, but most of their Turkish opponents, and the bulk of the
Khwarezmian forces, had been nomad tribal troops, mass armies
indifferently equipped and haphazardly trained, much like those of
10 Gibb, "The Armies of Saladin," pp. 310-11. 17 Ibid., p. 315.
314 JOHN MASSON SMITH, JR.
the Mongols themselves. The mamlulks in Egypt were different. The
difficulty of procuring and mounting suitable troops in Egypt, distant
from the Turkish lands and lacking the great pastures needed by a
large cavalry, made the Egyptian governments rely on small armies
of picked men, finely armed and highly trained in tactics conceived
to withstand the Mongols. In fact, the Mamlfiks used methods
that were part of an ancient Middle Eastern military tradition for
coping with Inner Asian nomads, of whom the Mongols were only
the latest, if worst.
The Mongols' tactics may best be understood first by counting their
horses and inspecting their arrows. Each Mongol had from six to
eight, to as many as 18 horses, according to Marco Polo; the troops
mobilized by Ghazan to invade Syria in 1299 were ordered to bring
five horses each.18 All these horses made it possible for the Mongols
to keep up a fast pace in cavalry combat. Other nomads with similar
numbers of horses could match this pace-it is nomadism, not being
a Mongol, that provides abundant horses-but the armies of seden-
tary powers, including Mamluik Egypt, could not. John of Plano
Carpini counselled avoidance of any long pursuit of retiring Mon-
gols ". . . so as not to tire the horses, for we have not the great
quantity which they have." 19 This horsepower superiority enabled the
Mongols, like other nomads in similar circumstances, to outmaneuver,
outflank and surround their sedentary enemies, and to outpace them,
18 Marco Polo, The Travels (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958), pp. 100, 152. Vaif, Kitdb-i Va,s.df (Tehran: Ibn Sina, 1338/1959), p. 373, lines 20-22.
19 John of Plano Carpini, History of the Mongols, in C. Dawson, ed., The Mongol Mission
(London: Sheed and Ward, 1955), p. 47. The rules and requirements of the equestrian
game of polo suggest, I believe, the capacities of horses in high-paced cavalry combat.
Polo demands much all-out effort of the horses, and accordingly the game is divided into
"chukkas" reflecting the length of time that a horse can keep up with the demand. As
the modern game was developing, at the turn of this century, a chukka ended with the
first out-of-bounds ball struck after 10 minutes of play, resulting often in play lasting for
12 or 13 minutes; this soon came to be recognized as placing an excessive strain on both
horses and men, and so the chukka was reduced to 10 minutes, and later to the present
standard of 71 minutes. During this time a horse may cover as much as 3 miles at the
gallop. Since there are 6 chukkas to the game, each player must have, at minimum, 3 horses
to be able to participate effectively: each horse is ridden for 2 chukkas, with a rest for
some 36 minutes between them. Players prefer to use more than 3 horses. See The En-
cyclopaedia Britannica (191 1; 1973), "Polo". Consider also the remuda system employed in
Western American cattle round-ups and requiring seven mounts per cowboy: see C.
Chenevix-Trench, A History of Horsemanship (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1970),
p. 231.
CAYN JALQT 315
avoiding their charges and hounding their retreats.20 It gave the
Mongols the tactical initiative.
Mongol arrows suggest the uses made of these advantages. "Every
[Mongol] is ordered to carry into battle sixty arrows, thirty smaller
ones for piercing and thirty larger with broad heads for discharging
at close quarters. With these latter they wound one another in the
face or arms and cut through bow-strings and inflict heavy losses.''21
It is clear that for Polo the heavy arrows were much the more im-
portant, and I believe that in fact the "smaller" arrows for "piercing"
may be largely disregarded. Contemporary depictions of Mongol
combat exclusively show the heavy arrows, with the broad heads Polo
mentions, and with long, high-standing feathers.22 The Mongols
knew and to some extent doubtless used light arrows for long-range
shooting, as in the sport of flight-shooting or especially during sieges.23
But most of their shooting was done at short ranges to which the heavy
arrows were better suited. Hunting with the bow is usually done at
ranges under thirty yards; since the Mongols usually shot from
horseback, and usually at the gallop, whether hunting or fighting,
they had little occasion for long-range shooting, which is effective
only against very large targets, and consequently little need for
arrows suited to it. And since most Mongols made their own arrows,
they would not have made many of a kind very limited in utility.24
Arrows of the heavy kind that they did make and use in large num-
bers are very-and almost only-good for close range shooting. Large
arrowheads and heavy shafts increase the weight, cutting and pene-
tration of an arrow, but reduce its effective range; heavy fletching in
20 The same methods were used by the first Turkish nomad invaders of the Middle
East: see R. D. Smail, Crusading Warfare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1956), pp. 77-83. 21 Polo, p. 314. 22 E. D. Phillips, The Mongols (New York: Praeger, 1969), plates 19, 20, 21, 25;
M. S. Ip?iroglu, Painting and Culture of the Mongols (New York: Abrams, 1966), plates 8
(= Phillips' plate 19), 9 (= 20), 10 (= 25), 43.
23 Different kinds of arrows for long- and close-range shooting are named, and per-
formances with them described in hyperbolic terms in the Secret History of the Mongols,
sect. 195. A Mongol stele of the early thirteenth century commemorates achievement
in a flight-shooting competition of a shot of 335 alda (fathoms), perhaps 530 meters: see
Igor de Rachewiltz, "Some Remarks on the Stele of Yisiingge," in the volume, Tractata
Altaica (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1976), honoring Denis Sinor. 24 Plano Carpini, p. 18; William of Rubruck, Journey, in Dawson, p. 103.
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