KZ HORN BOW IN URALSK MUSEUM!

It also has no sinew back and was likely made last year by somebody who was influenced by the cover pic of a fantasy novel. :roll:

Yes, this can sadly not be an original artefact. It is a bit of a shame that a museum would put something like that on display. While its pieces may be put nicely together, it is an insult to the ancient KZ bowyers. One can only hope that it is labelled as a modern made "bow symbol".

Sad thing... That they put in one group with an artefacts!

I am sorry to say that this is just the tip of the iceburg. All of the bows in the Almaty national museum are of Chinese manufacture of the 19 century or maybe a bit earlier. A request to the collections department demonstrates that the curators are convinced that these are Kazakh made bows.

An otherwise very well written book published in Russian language in Kz, Ethnographica, which is an excellent source on the arms and armaments of this country, also misrepresents the ethnic bows. Communications with the author also demonstrates that on this particular topic, the author is not knowledgeable. I said nothing.

To be fair, Russian collections in the Hermitage? do contain these ethnic bows so the folks there did recognize the difference when they took them out of the country. There are just a few quivers and several arrows of Kz construction still in Kazakhstan.

The bow in the first post is a fantasy production for tourists and can be seen in the markets there.

ATARN remains on the cutting edge of traditional (ethnic) archery information.

The authentic Kazakh bows were brought to our attention by atarnite Dusan in his long thread of interesting bows in Russian collections. Thanks, Dusan.

So I see that the best way to reconstruct a true KZ bow is to contact with Hermitage & go to St.Petersburg to make a measurement. Make the replica. And then - go with a critics to our museums :!:

jack farrell wrote:

The authentic Kazakh bows were brought to our attention by atarnite Dusan in his long thread of interesting bows in Russian collections. Thanks, Dusan.

Jack, what do you think - did the Kazakhs made their bows wooden core(like a Sythians from West China) with a Tamarisk wich is alot of growing near the rivers in a stepps?

I do not believe that Tamarisk is useful for composite bow making. You have found out that you are surrounded by the best composite bow making materials on earth. This does not include Tamarisk, I think.

this grows very curved, so it could make good natural siyahs

for you it would now be quite some waste of time to try tamarisk

however I'd find it an interesting experiment to show if its possible to make a bow from some twisted brush wood like this.. see the 5-piece core was developped for lack of long pieces of straight wood.

which scythian bow was made of tamarisk ?

There is a bow described in an article on Khotanese Archery in The Journal of the Society of Archer-Antiquaries, Vol. 16, 1973, pp. 29-31. It was discovered by Sir Marc Aural Stein.

N. viii. 4. Bow of tamarisk wood. Made from a small branch of a tree or from a sapling, halved to near the centre, where a round section is left to form a hand-piece, ends tapered and shaped to take a string, broken at one end. Resembles the pellet-bow used by bird0scarers in India today. Length 3 ft. 6 ins.

This is a quote from Stein's report. Some crossbow bolts were found as well. The bow is a simple self bow using the outside of the branch as its back. While this may not be directly relevant to this discussion, it does prove that tamarisk was used for bows.

Ok guys :) But my father told me that our ancestors made a "shanyrak" the central part of Urta from tamarasik & "karatal" (kind of willow) . Anyway it was interesting to see your opinion :)

Rafael; That is good information. What is a shanyrak? What is Urta?

OH NOW I GET IT!!! the shanyrak is the wheel like center of the yurt (ger). the shanyrak is on the Kz flag. Is this so? HA! Jack

Bede and all. Yes, I have also read that tamarisk was used for bow making. In a much younger time I also made some bows from willow. There is a great number of tamarisks growing in the southwest USA where they are an introduced species, maybe from Australia. They can grow to an immense size in the desert where there is just a little water, like a ditch or arroyo.

A little investigation shows that there are many types of tamarisk. I have used them successfully for arrow making. But the type here is soft like poplar or willow. It can be made into a child's bow but not a serious bow, certainly not a composite. Why one would report that it was used this way is beyond me. Maybe because in Xinjiang it is one of the few trees.

One cannot go down to the river and find the birch bark used on a Scythian bow. Those Siberian ibex are not found in the desert. Most Scythians had to travel to obtain bronze points. And so there is no surprise that the material for bow cores came from mountain sides and not from tamarisks or willows.

Those and other soft woods would make a youngster's stone bow, especially in the dry environment. There is yet another type of bow and arrows found not infrequently in Xinjiang collections, bows and arrows which are fetishes or more accurately, oracles. These were not used in a classic sense to shoot but were used to divine. There are also other oracles not uncommon from the bronze age and I think, iron age. collections.

jack farrell wrote:

Rafael; That is good information. What is a shanyrak? What is Urta?

OH NOW I GET IT!!! the shanyrak is the wheel like center of the yurt (ger). the shanyrak is on the Kz flag. Is this so? HA! Jack

Yes Jack you're right :) Shanyrak is very symbolic & relic for the most of nomads of our region. Also I found a latin name of that kind of willow (Salix tenuijulis). And some sources say that the yellow birch was used too

jack farrell wrote:

Bede and all. Yes, I have also read that tamarisk was used for bow making. In a much younger time I also made some bows from willow. There is a great number of tamarisks growing in the southwest USA where they are an introduced species, maybe from Australia. They can grow to an immense size in the desert where there is just a little water, like a ditch or arroyo.

A little investigation shows that there are many types of tamarisk. I have used them successfully for arrow making. But the type here is soft like poplar or willow. It can be made into a child's bow but not a serious bow, certainly not a composite. Why one would report that it was used this way is beyond me. Maybe because in Xinjiang it is one of the few trees.

One cannot go down to the river and find the birch bark used on a Scythian bow. Those Siberian ibex are not found in the desert. Most Scythians had to travel to obtain bronze points. And so there is no surprise that the material for bow cores came from mountain sides and not from tamarisks or willows.

Those and other soft woods would make a youngster's stone bow, especially in the dry environment. There is yet another type of bow and arrows found not infrequently in Xinjiang collections, bows and arrows which are fetishes or more accurately, oracles. These were not used in a classic sense to shoot but were used to divine. There are also other oracles not uncommon from the bronze age and I think, iron age. collections.

Ok. I think Kazakhs made the arrows from tamarick too. I shall try mine bows with - Acer Tataricum. :)

There were bows and arrows from Xinjiang exhibited in Germany some few years ago, maybe in Mannheim? This was my source picture for the Subeixi bow. Exhibit number 9 looks like such a bow for divining. I so wish I had a translation for the illustration. Arrows, both functional and for divining are also in the exhibit. I did not find a link but will look further.

translation from German ? any time just post the text :-)

on soft wood: Arab archery quotes soft poplar as a famous bow wood in Persia ?

Uli; Some text missing. Can send off for more if necessary. Poplar for a self bow? They do not have yew in Persia.

the text in english:

"This miniaturebow is most likely a funeral gift. The bowstring, even nocked on one tip is half ripped apart. In general, this type of miniaturebow belongts to the longbows, as they were used for hunting and in warfare. Making miniatures from everyday objects has practical uses, for exaple these objects for everyday use were too sophisticated in production making them far too expensive. Another reason for miniatures, as they were found over and over in all epochs are magical religious practices. "

Thanks. Nice smooth translation.

And leave it to the German curators in Mannheim to understand this concept. I snail mailed a paper to the head archaeologist who sponsored the Penn show but when I went to the Silk Road symposium, my ideas about some bows and arrows not being functional met with not an iota of interest, like one would react to a derranged person. (The same attitude will meet you if you should inform a curator that a display bow is strung backwards.)

However, Fitzhugh does explain divination very well among the Siberians in Crossroads of the Continents.

The concept does not mesh well with modern scientific thought, though it is fact. Shamanism preceded all the world's known religions.

Such a bow, such an arrow can be made of any material and take any form and has nothing to do with composite construction (our topic).

yep, composite :wink: :
Faris&Elmer translated the "nab" wood used for flight bows as
- white poplar ? (page 117 note 58 )
:?

Uli; You did well to find this reference.

"In a composite bow the central lamellar base need not necessarily made of a variety of wood that would be suitable for self bows as the horn and sinew provide the real strength and the wood serves for little more than a frame for them to be glued to. So, if nab' should really be white poplar..."

Actually we now know, through experimentation, that the opposite is true; that the core of a composite is made from the same woods as self bows but not even all of those will be a successful material.

I would enjoy going to Xinjaing, collecting their tamarisk, and trying some bow making experiments. But even making a successful bow of that material does not prove that it was used, only that it could be.

I do not believe that tamarisk is useful for composite bow making, nor that Farris and Elmer's nab' wood is white poplar.

:idea:

:idea: :D

:idea: - this mean - i agree vith Jack . :wink:

:idea:

Hammer-Purgstall's "On Bow and Arrow" contains some interesting passages concerning Neba wood (=Nab?) and other woods, used by arabs and persians for bow+arrow making. He states that Neba is probably yew.

-> enjoy:


Ssafra, the yellow, a bow made from the yellow wood of the neba tree

Schewat, the name of the tree that bows are cut from and which the same as Neba and Scherijan

An arrow of Kidh wood sounds different to an arrow of Neba wood, and is thus not of the same stuff

One of the most famous sayings involving arrows is that of the regret of Kosaji, which is given by Sylvestre de Sacy in his Chrestomathie Arabe. Koasji had cut himself a bow and five arrows from the beautiful yellow neba wood and, in the night, ambushed some gazelles. Five times pack of the latter came past and five times he shot one of his five arrows, every time seeing sparks come from the rocks. Thinking he had aimed wrongly, when he had no more arrows left he snapped his beautiful bow in anger. When day broke, he saw that five dead gazelles lay around and the bloody arrows lay some distance from these. The arrows had passed through the gazelles and still retained enough power to spark against the rocks. Out of remorse for having broken his beautiful bow, he bit off his thumbs, giving rise to the saying: ?more regretful than Kosaji?.

Pelenk, Pinus Orientalis Linei, a type of conifer tree found in Trabzon. These four types of wood are given in the Excerpts and are still used for arrow-making in Constantinople today. Amongst the Arabs, however, the most highly prized wood for arrow-making is the yellow Neba, which the Kamus says can be of three kinds. The first kind is that which grows on mountain tops and is called Neba, the second grows at the foot of mountains and is called Scherjan, and the third grows in pits and deep valleys and is called Schwewhath. The Kamus says that the tree is known in Turkish as Kam-agadschi, Kogusch-agadschi and akdsche-agadschi, and in Persian as Beschdschir. Of the three Turkish names, only kain appears in the Turkish dictionaries, and is said to mean beech and most definitely not Neba, whose yellow colour is so distinctive that it is mentioned in a saying: ?yellower than an arrow of Neba?. The word beschdschir is also missing from the Persian dictionaries. Schulten translates Neba, which is probably yew, in Semachscheri?s ?Collection of Wise Sayings? as ash, which is any case more plausible than beech, by reason both of the colour and the hardness of the wood

The Arabs are hard like the Neba
The Persians are like willows.

The famous Kassidet Makssuret of the great lexicographer Ibn Doreid also uses an arrow cut from Neba wood as an image of a pilgrim dried out and turned yellow by the hardships of the pilgrimage:

The long hunger had tapered his body
Like an arrow cut from Neba wood.

The famous elegy of the great poet of the Beni Hodeil, Ssachrolgaij, includes the words:

The yellow bow protects me which Sawa made me
Which makes a sound, like that of many men?
It makes its noise when it recoils
Like wild tribes calling through the desert.

I will follow these verses from poets of the Beni Hodeil, which concern themselves particularly with descriptions of bows and arrows, with the following section from a poem by Omer B. ed-Dachils, which gives an exhaustive description of bows and arrows:

It sounds like the moans of widows and orphans
who yearn for their husbands and fathers.
With long, thin iron, with a sharp tip,
from which fire shoots into the eye of the enemy.
The bow is yellow and cut from a branch of Neba,
lined as if with streets and streams.
They turned and I aimed at the entrails,
and the arrows whizzes through the air like the branch of a young willow.
The top of the arrow, the feathers, drank blood,
mixed with the flood of water and iron.
It was at Allda where I and comrades
enjoyed the delicacies of fresh meat and fat.



The wood Schirajet, mentioned above as a type of Neba, also appears in the
poems of Ebu Omaret, of the Beni Hodeil tribe, in their anthology:
With every thin arrow
that thunders down from the noisy bow.

In addition to the four above-named types of wood, Neba, Scherjan or Schirjanet, Schewhath and Neschem, the Beni Hodeil anthology and the Hamasa also teach us about fifth and sixth kinds of trees which are used to make bows, i.e. sixthly [sic] Sera or Serae; a work of the great poet Ssachr includes the verse:
As if a bow were cur from the Sera tree

And seventhly Hirm:
Of my bow of light Hirm wood.

In addition to these woods, the Arabic dictionaries the Kamus and Dschewheri give an eighth: the Nescheb tree, from whose hard wood bows are made. Another saying involving Neba wood relates to the qualities of the latter, which is not at all suited, unlike the wood of the Merch and Affar trees, to making fire by friction. One says of a person who is very resourceful and well-equipped: If he used the Neba to make fire, it would work. The Arabs use Merch as the steel and Affar as the stone when
making a fire; this makes clear two verses from the Koran which would otherwise make no sense:

He, who has made fire from green wood, for you to use in starting fires.
What do you think of fire that comes from green wood ?did you create the wood,
or who?

Uli; Well, this all is just brilliant. Thankyou for vindicating me when I stretched my neck out so far. This will all take me a little while to digest but a copy will go into my "botanicals" file. As common names for plants come and go, it might be some project to identify the remaining few without positive ID.

PS. I know from my own experience that coniferous woods will not make friction fire making fire board or spindle.

thank you Jack :-)

It would be great if ATARN members who know arabic/persian/turkic languages could have a look on this text and help identify some of the plants !

below a copy of the (german) text part about the three types of Neba in arabic letters.

Unfortunately there is no persian word in this text that i could translate.

Oh, there is one single word in Persian, hcspng.
But its written in latin letters. Its written "Beschdsch?r". Do you know it?

Could it be بشجير or بش جير ?

I don't now whether this is relevant, but the transliterations in the text can cause confusion. He uses an "a" as a carrier for ء so his "neba" would now be transliterated as nab`.

"PS. I know from my own experience that coniferous woods will not make friction fire making fire board or spindle."

Jack, odly some conifers work very well in that application for some people, haven't tried yet myself, guess the wood has to be in a certain condition (well weathered?) to qualify.
I apologize for getting off the subject.

No that word in not in persian too.the word naba means spring(season) but it may have other meaning too.

It is difficult to sort out the meaning of the phonetic transliterations such as these. According to my Ottoman Turkish dictionary, the Turkish terms: kam-agadschi, kogusch-agadschi and akdsche-agadschi do not bring anything new. The first probably refers to a "bow wood", the second (kovush agachi) means "timber wood" and the last (akche agachi) means "pale wood" or "maple".

The neba or nab tree is probably the nebk tree - a small tree or a shrub very common in the area (Ziziphus or Ramnus spinachristi, a buckhorn). The dictionary points also to a lotus tree, which can be several species: jujuba, nettle (hackberry) or persimmon.

The other names starting with "schew" or "scher/schir" might be a thorny plant (shevke- in Ottoman), or a plant with milky sap or perhaps a resin (shir-). The Rhamnus trees, such as the nebk or jujuba would fit the description best. Plus, the berries and bark used to be a source of a yellow dye, so one can imagine the wood may be yellow as well. The sap/resin could be describing acacia, well known as a source of bow wood and gum Arabic, but I think the neba is probably nebk.

Adam

very interesting
thank you for sharing expert knowledge !