A good mongolian bow replica

once again I am new and apologize this thread should have been under a different topic.

Raven, if you read more topics , you understand , that todays Mongol bow is not the same bow from 12-13 cen.If you try buy bow close the old mongols bow , you must see topics about Yuan , or Omnogow bow ... Some people can construct such bow, but price i think was no more lower then Lukas Novotnys ofer. If you try realy good composite bow.

Thank you for the info Dusan. It is true what you are saying due to the research that I have found, and what is advertised as "mongol bow"

Thank you for the info.

Best regards,

Joe

Todays "Mongol " bow is mostly Chines -Manchu cur disain .Mongols , like another tribes from this area (Huns, Avars, Bulgars, etc. ) forget how looks and - what is mostimportend how doing his extraordinery weapons.
Now here we tring re-construct this old craftsmans art.

If you want a modern bow that has many of the qualities of the old Mongol bows, I think the modern Crimean Tatar reproductions might be close to a good substitute. They have a pedigree based on the fact that they descend from the one of the Yuan styles without the Manchu influence that has resulted in modern Mongol bows. They have similarities to the early representations of Mongol bows in west Asian paintings. The major difference is in areas like the sal/kasan transition which cannot be accurately reproduced in bows made from modern materials. The degree of recurve in the tip is variable in the many representations of the early Mongol bows. The Crimean Tatar bow is at one end of the range of variation and the Omnogorov bow is at the other. Unfortunately, it would be hard to specify a single "type" for the early Mongol bow.

So are you guys saying that ancient mongol design has been lost?
That perhaps we dont know what a modern day representation would be?

To go back that far in time, there are not so many bows known. Each new bow found expands the boundaries of typology. Standardization of weaponry probably did not occur until well AFTER the introduction of firearms. There are four Mongol era bows posted here on ATARN. There is some commonality between them. One is radically different than the others but still has good provenience.

There is no typical Mongol bow. There are only reproductions of individual bows. There is no generic Mongol arrow.

One can search out the topic here on ATARN and find out world class information on the subject. Make your version, post it here and we will critique it in a friendly manner. Jack.

If one looks at the unstrung geometry of these bows, it is apparent the bows had to be non-contact (or perhaps mimimal-contact) recurves. This is regardless of the grip or limb reflex. It seems it will be the general characteristic of the early Mongol bows. It means the bows would behave similarly in shooting and drawing. I think it is fair to say the so called Magyar bows are a close approximation of the Mongol.

Adam

Adam,
There are several paintings from the Mongol period at both ends of their range showing contact ears or string bridges. The degree of recurvature is rudimentary and might not make much difference to performance as you say, but it is there. This is the reason I am hesitant to accept some of the surviving bows as military productions or mainstream as Jack would have it. I can send you pictures in a PM, but copyright considerations prevent me from publishing them here.

I also agree with Jack that there is not enough surviving material to identify a Mongol type bow, if one ever existed. From conversations I have had with Russian archaeologists, I conclude that before the Mongol conquest, the Kipchak/Kuman groups did not use contact siyah bows. In centuries earlier, there is doubt that they even used thumb rings. Kirghiz and Kazak graves of the 8-10th centuries have no trace of them though they were used on the Mongolian parts of the steppe in the east based on literary sources.

The Turkish mercenaries that served in Iran definitely did use non-contact siyah bows and the influence on art caused by this means that there was quite a delay before artists started reproducing the new style of bow. This can be seen in other aspects on painting in Iran. The fastest uptake was in clothes and saddlery which were obvious to people in a day to day acquaintance with the Mongol conquerors. Armour and weapons were taken up piecemeal and a close examination of the paintings of the Ilkhanid and Jalayarid, show a gradual accumulation of Mongol accessories. The easiest comparison is with Song and Yuan paintings where certain features appear several generations before they are used in the west. The method of painting composition using pre-existing images in Iran and Iraq contributed to this conservatism.

By the 14th century, most Middle Eastern authors had forgotten that there ever were bows with non-contact siyahs. This accounts for the sometimes confusing quotes from earlier writers.

Adam; i would agree about the similarity between Mongol and Magyar bows. I would go farther and say that I see a continuity between Hun and early Mongol in shape which i see as a reflection of construction technique. The curved Shiluustei sum bow (HMNS "curved bow") is a dead ringer for ones illustrated in Rashid al Din and would represent a technology at least a century later in time. I would refer to this V-spliced core construction as "Turkic" in nature, relating it to even later bows of this technique which are clearly evolved in technology.

Bede; The comparisons to artistic renderings has become problematic to my thinking. Some drawings, such as Rashid have historic importance. Others, such as illustrations to Alshier Navoie, are copies of copies of copies of fictional works. For instance, Alexander is often shown in Persian armor in a work executed 1800 years after the fact. So, I think it is difficult to generalize. But I do not dismiss their importance.

Andrew has done some analysis on Mongol bow lineage -j-

I am trying to be practical and to base the conclusions on what can be clearly seen. It is true the V-splice allows for making even the most radical recurvature with relative ease, a opposed to laminations or scarf joinery. The reflexed tips (as the extremities of the siyahs we are talking about here) are helpful in shorter bows to ease the stacking during the last inches of draw by forcing the limbs to bend closer to grip and in addition do not allow the string to slip. Such tips, best apllied with the V-splice, may indicate the transition to shorter bows perhaps? With varied results to be sure.

Adam

Jack,
You are correct to be careful of what art you use for a reference. The albums assembled for Alisher Navoi are a case in point. There is an excellent book of paintings made for the literary works of Alisher Navoi published in Tashkent in 1982. It has paintings from several eras and locations all grouped together because they illustrate the writings of Alisher Navoi. Unfortunately for people wishing to get information from the miniature paintings, there are a number of problems. Some paintings are painted in a deliberate copy of the earlier Timurid style. Others were added to manuscripts carried to India by Babur and his son Humayun who were Timurid descendants themselves.

I would not worry too much about the fact that some paintings were claimed to be about historical figures like Alexander and Rustam. In general, they are dressed and equipped as people of the artist's time. Rustam has his tiger skin coat and Isfandiyar is often in a leopard skin garment, which are used to identify characters in the illustrations to parts of the Shahnama. what is more important is the regional styles that sometimes maintain features of earlier styles of paintings that do not reflect contemporary fashions.

What everyone must remember is that these paintings were not photographs and the artists were not interested in realistic representations. There is at least one study of Timurid painting that shows that some illustrations of a literary work were actually pictures of a contemporary historical event. However, the items shown in that painting were not useful in any but the most general analysis arms and armour of the time.

It is also important to remember that one book's assertion that a painting is by X and such and such a time should not be taken without further checking. I have found many occasions where general historical works have misidentified the origin and the subject of paintings. When the item is traced back to its current owner, it is found to be something entirely different. This happens with miniature paintings because authors are often not interested in the art history of the object and are quite happy to have something that roughly illustrates what they are talking about.

I am not sure whether the dogwoods were used in Mongolia for arrows. There is a species Cornus chinensis in China, a species in Siberia and North China called Cornus alba and another called Cornus officialis in China Korea and Japan. The arrows I have seen were generally birch and other coniferous trees, but I think that you might be right. Using shoots is an ancient way of making arrows. It has several advantages for nomads. The arrows are strong, the processing can be carried out in stages and simple tools can be used.

I know about the grooving etc. But how do you get from a horn, all curly and nobbly and pointed, to a flat piece ready to use on a bow?

EDIT: sorry, this was supposed to be a new thread ...

Prepare a smooth surface on the outer curve then make a cut parallel to this. I think Adam has a tutorial here on the topic. -j-

I hope I'm not straying too far off topic here , and if I am, I apologise. If Mongol and Magyar bows are similar what then does a turkish bow look like?

I don't by this mean an Ottoman bow but the bow carried by the Turks when they left Central Asia and swept into Persia, Asian Minor and Syria. What kind of bow did Ortoq famously fire into the ceiling of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in a gesture of supremacy? What modern reconstruction approximates to that type of bow in shape if not in materials?

The bows in the Warqa wa Gulshah manuscript, which are similar to Seljuk bows based on location and date of the manuscript, appear to be non-contact siyah bows with proportionately long siyahs. The same type of bows are still being depicted in some Ilkhanid manuscript paintings.

The equipment of the figures suggest that these are based of Central Asian Turkish bows. However, they are not diagrams and a better impression might be obtained from looking at some of the bows with siyahs excavated in Xinjiang.

Many thanks for those references, some of which I've managed to locate. That leave my second question. For a recently early retired pensioner on limited means which low end priced bow best (visually at least) simulates that kind of bow? Kassai, for instance, seems to have a bewildering variety available sub 200 euros.