Did the Magyars use Thumb rings?

As far as I have seen, the Magyars used either a two-finger or a three-finger release from the time of Arpad. Up until the 15th century (at least the 1430s), they are reported as shooting using their fingers to draw the string (Bertrandon de la Broqu?ere).

It is quite likely that thumb rings were introduced by the Avars, but the Magyars had their own tradition. The Byzantines may have learned the use of the thumb rings from the Avars or the Western Turks since they had contact with both peoples.

Some of our Hungarian members can confirm this since I am relying on reports translated to English.

That's THE question here, too.
The pictures of the Illuminated Chronicle show a two-finger draw, but a few hundred years passed between the actual events and the making of these pics. And in the meantime, the whole Hungarian army was reorganized in a western-european way. That's why I was asking here about the thumb release of the Sassanids in the pictures of Sahname - maybe the Illuminated Chronicle shows a similar example, I don't know...
The main point against the tumb draw is the complete lack of thumb rings in Magyar graves. However, I'm not sure such rings would be recognized, as their archery-relatedness is still not well known here...
There's a recent thesis about the findings at Birka, Sweden, unfortunaetely I don't speak Swedish, so I hope somebody will help us with the brief summary of the part about thumb rings found there: http://www.diva-portal.org/diva/getDocu ... lltext.pdf
There's an interesting wall painting in the Temple of Kakaslomnic, showing the legendary fight of a Cuman and St. Ladislaus of the Arpad-house - the Cuman seems to shoot with his thumb, holding his spare arrow in his right hand.
I hope others, like Jeno or Paku will add to this. Personally, I shoot with a thumb ring as it feels MUCH better :wink:
Szabi

I have read the Swedish paper.
The thumb ring they found is not a thumb ring. And they also say that Hungarian did not use ring.
But in that paper are so much faults that I would not consider any information from that as real fact.

Thanks!
Szabi

I think Szabi made a valid point. You cannot use later artistic representations as evidence of earlier practice. However, if the preponderance of evidence is negative, it is safe to assume that thumb rings were not used.

The lack of thumb rings in the archaeological record could be that they were made of leather or horn and have vanished through insect damge or bacteriological activity. The easiest explanation was that they were not there in the first place.

I once asked Dr Vladimir Kubarov whether he had found any thumb rings in early Kirghiz graves around the Altai Mountains and he said he had never seen one. The same has been said about Xiongnu tombs. There are no remains of thumb rings in pre-Mongol invasion Qipchaq tombs on the steppe north of the Black Sea.

Despite the earlier introduction of the thumb ring probably by the Avars, other steppe tribes seemed not to use it until after the Mongols. However, it was used in Byzantium and in the Muslim Middle East probably from the early seventh century.

However, it is likely that their were pockets of thumb ring use spread across the steppe. the problem is to find the evidence. It is likely that the bronze rings found throughout the Balkans where left by nomadic tribesmen and later Turkish armies. Some are probably Byzantine. Someone could do a doctoral thesis going through old archaeological records looking for overlooked thumb rings from datable excavations.

Thumbrings are not essential for a thumb draw. I don't use one any more. They seem to be more important for practice, when you repeat shots many times. When you are just shooting off an arraow every few minutes, you don't really need one.

An alternative to thumbrings is a thickening of the string below the point where the arrow is knocked. That can make even a heavy bow quite comfortable to draw without a ring.

In China, there are no thumbrings in burials from the Han Dynasty through to the Qing dynasty (a gap of 1200 years). Despite this, it is clear that the thumb draw was used there.

S

In the meantime I found an online version of the Kakaslomnic painting:
http://www.pccd.hu/nemzetismeret/image.php?id=a_040b
It's from the XV. century. Although it isn't so clear from the point of view of the draw, the way he holds the spare arrows is a bit suspicious, I think.
Szabi

Looks wrong. Bow in right hand but the quiver on right side as a left hand hold archer have.
Arrows in draw hand I think Japs have.

I think it's rather a kind of artist's freedom - the quiver is an important element of this composition to indicate the nomadic/barbarian aspect of the Cuman ("the evil") - but the bow must be in the right hand otherwise we would see his back.
Szabi

Does anybody have information whether thumbrings have ever been found in early Bashkyrd graves dated before the 11th Century?

I wonder - were thumbrings found in Avar graves in Hungary?
Szabi

A comment on the painting:
If it is accurate, it might represent a right handed archer shooting left handed to hit someone on his right hand rear. Several cultures encouraged shooting with either hand where possible to extend the coverage the archer had. If you were using a closed quiver, it would be logical to take a few extra arrows out because drawing them across your body would be awkward.

Regarding the thumb rings in Avar graves:
I had read about them in several contexts, but I have not seen original excavation reports. I will look for the references I remember. I think one was an article of Dr Fabian and another about the Avars and the Gepids.

Bede, thanks on forehand! The books I have (in Hungarian) do not even mention thumb rings. Only Gy. Laszlo mentioned them, but he mixed the stringing and drawing of a bow, so he wrote, stringing of these bows was so difficult that a special ring was necessary on the thumb...
Szabi

Szabi,
I have one of Laszlo's books. The confusion between stringing (bracing) and drawing the bow is common in authors with little experience in archery. When you are writing about a whole culture, it is hard to be the master of all the facets.

Bede, I agree, and I didn't want to say anything wrong about Gy. Laszlo's work. His theory about the two waves of the arrival of the Magyars to the Karpathian basin was refreshed recently by Gabor Vekony, who theoretized that the people speaking the finno-ugric Hungarian language lived here already under the Avar Khaganate, and the Magyars who arrived here later were actually a turkish-speaking nomadic tribe from the Irtis region and can be related to the Baskhyrds (contemporary Tibetan sources named them as "ala juntlug").
Szabi

Although somewhere in there one must account for the Byzantines calling them "Xunoi" as well as "Tourkoi."

Let's see... I don't know of any wall-paintings that depict a ring in use. Most of what I see is a two or three-fingered release, occasionally with spare arrows in hand. But I don't have an image directory handy... need to get one, b/c there are a LOT of wall-paintings out there that can be looked at for the purpose. Bogoz, Maksa, Homorodszenmarton, Bibarcfalva, Szekelydalya, Szepesmindszent, Rimabanya, Bantornya ... sorry, I don't have my other keyboard enabled at the moment. There are more, but I don't know of any others actually showing the shooting technique.. and Szekely technique would be good to know, b/c one can make an argument that Danubian archery degrades over time... this is clearly not the case with the Transylvanians.

Russ,
The Byzantines had a habit of using classical references which went on to a tendency to lump barbarians into groups. "Xunoi" or Huns and "Tourkoi" or Turks are just two of the terms writers used. Avars were often called "Scythians" perhaps because it had become a generic term for nomads. You also see Getae and other archaic terms. Almost everyone is called by another ethnic name at some time or other. The fact that the Magyars were sometimes called Turks or Huns suggests that to the Byzantines they shared the same lifestyle.

You do have to be careful to check whether the writer you are relying on had other idiosyncrasies.

Yes, Bede, that's true, just like Persians making sabres refer to their customers as "Fringia" (Franks), and we lump a huge number of different peoples under "Chinese."

But in this case it's also true that only the Magyars are ever referred to as Xunoi...

I tend to not expect too much from historical paintings, the artist may have no idea of the actual method of use. I think the possibility of individual archers' preference would be a valid point.

Looks like it's been a while or this thread, but I wanted to confirm my understanding:

Avars --> used thumb draw
Magyar --> most evidence suggesting no thumb draw use early on, but perhaps thumb draw later on because of contact with other peoples.

Have there been any new developments in understanding of this situation since 2007? I remember talking to an archer who visited Hungary and mentioned, if I recall correctly, how there seemed to be a nontrivial supply of thumb rings in local shops.

To the best of my knowledge, the earliest rings in the area date to Avar. There is still the fact that no evidence does not mean they were not used, just that it cannot be confirmed. The cave paintings that Russ has mentioned would suggest a form of finger draw. Some show spare arrows held in the drawing hand, which would be difficult, though not impossible but not as easy to perform as when using a thumb draw. There again, Bhutanese archers surrounded by thumbdraw cultures, use fingers.

I think that there is a possibility that the Avars used the thumb draw, but I would like to review the excavation reports that the second and third hand information I have seen was based on.

The Avars were a direct import from the Mongolian steppe north of China so they could have brought thumb rings with them. The Magyars probably were a mixed nation of Finno-Ugric speaking tribes and some Turkic Khazar dependent tribes. There is not only no evidence that they used thumb rings, but also there is no reason to think they would have. The Avar migration was rapid and there is no evidence for thumb ring use on the Western steppe again until after the Mongol invasions. The Avars seemed to have more influence on Byzantine military practice than on their immediate neighbours.

You were discussing this painting before: http://www.pccd.hu/nemzetismeret/image.php?id=a_040b

A small comment from me regarding paintings. Even if the painting was created at the time of what it is depicting, there can be many mistakes. The reason is that the artist is usually no eyewitness and has not been on the battlefield. Usually people describe and tell the artist how it was on the battlefield. This leaves a lot of room for personal interpretation of the artist. Now coming back to the fresco, how can the artist have known about the draw type of the Cuman archer?

As I research Ottoman/Seljuk Turkish archery I can tell you the same happened there. European painters painted the Turks often in a weird way using 3 finger release etc. Often they use artefacts, they got in war from the Turks e.g. helmets, swords etc, paint these in the highest detail, but then use their fantasy for the bows e.g.

The second case is if the painter did not even live in the same time period, this is worse. Another example here, in the 19th cc some Turkish painters made a lot of paintings of 15-17cc battles, but they made many mistakes. E.g. one of the famous painters has probably inspected an Iranian helmet but didnt know it was Iranian as there is many in our museums. Outcome is that all the Ottomans in his paintings wear Iranian helmets...
Now, the worst thing is that today people count these 19th cc paintings as historic as well. Sure the paintings are 150 years old but they lack of any historic value regarding the content.

Gokmen

Very true Gokmen.

Gokmen,
Undoubtedly people from different cultures like Western Europeans depicting Turks or Chinese and vice versa made many mistakes. In order to evaluate the usefulness of a work of art for tracking archery equipment and technique, you have to compare contemporary paintings to contemporary artefacts. Fortunately most cultures, even when depicting historical or legendary subjects, used current costume and equipment for models. Sometimes literary details do appear like elephants and odd weapons like the two pointed sword of Ali.

There are exceptions. Some Timurid princes so admired the styles of earlier periods that they had whole manuscripts illustrated in a previous style of painting.

Stephen Selby wrote:

Thumbrings are not essential for a thumb draw. I don't use one any more. They seem to be more important for practice, when you repeat shots many times. When you are just shooting off an arraow every few minutes, you don't really need one.

An alternative to thumbrings is a thickening of the string below the point where the arrow is knocked. That can make even a heavy bow quite comfortable to draw without a ring.

In China, there are no thumbrings in burials from the Han Dynasty through to the Qing dynasty (a gap of 1200 years). Despite this, it is clear that the thumb draw was used there.

S

Great point Mr Selby,
The thumb can be built up quite well. I find it easier to find your arrow without looking or fussing with the ring to get it just in the right spot.

But, duing extended practice, a ring is beneficial.