I was invited to Skokloster Museum, Stockholm, Sweden, where I had the oppurtunity to study 21 bows of asiatic(Turkish) origin. The bows were taken by Swedish Commander Nils Bielke after the battle of Mohacs 1687. The battle was a turningpoint for the expanding Ottoman empire. 20 of the bows are identifyable as being turkish, but this one stand out...
It is 122 cm between the nocks. 50 mm at the widest point and the saiyahs(sayiatan plur.???) are 27 cm long, meassured from the angle. It is covered in painted birch-bark.
Does anyone have a well estimated idea about its origin?
I am not really good at identifying horn bows but this one looks Chinese in origin to me...... How ever, this bow seems kinda short for Chinese but I'm not sure.
Is that white horn on the belly?
bowyer tom
I?m not sure weather it is white buffalo horn or if it is horn from som other cattle. The belly is however very light in colour...
The bows as they hang since end of 1600... Questioned bow is #2 from top [external image] [external image]
click to enlarge
Bede
There is at least one Qing style quiver captured at the siege of Vienna in 1683. There is some reason to believe from this that people using Manchu equipment were present in the Turkish army. They may have been Mongols (maybe Dzungars) who had fled the Manchu expansion in Central Asia. I have never seen any documentation of this aside from recording the artifacts. When the Torghut returned to Xinjiang they brought Turkish-style bow cases and quivers, so some may have interacted with the Ottoman Empire while they were in the west.
Peter Dekker
Hi,
It is amazing how good the bow still looks, and great that you know where it came from. Seeinng it without knowing it's provenance, I would have never dared dating it so early!
The bow indeed appears to be of Manchu origin. Their bow design got to dominate large parts of Central Asia from some point, I still find it hard to pinpoint exactly when this happened but it was probably before 1687 and possibly even before their founding of the Qing dynasty.
I also have a Manchu bow with "golden horn" belly, it is rare but sometimes found among Manchu bows. Other animal's horns generally don't come large enough to make these huge limbs out of.
Possible Dzungar refugees make sense, but the Dzungars and Qing didn't really fight until 1690. Still, I agree that many nomadic people carrying Manchu equipment of something based / related to theirs may well have reached the Ottoman empire and joined their forces.
In 1687 the Qing was still largely occupied in campaigns against the Russians near the Amur river (later resulting in the treatise of Nerchinsk) and fighting the Three Feudatories in Southern China.
Bede, do you have pictures of this particular quiver? I would be very interested in seeing it.
-Peter
Peter Dekker
By the way, how thick are the limbs mid-limb? This looks to be a pretty strong bow, probably exceeding 100 pounds of draw.
-Peter
bowyer tom
Hi there...
The bow is a very powerfull bow for sure. I didnt have a caliper when I visited the museum, just my tape meassure. I was only given two hours to examine the bows, so I just did a sort of general inspection. I?m going back in may, and then I will do a total meassure of four-five of the best kept bows. As far as I know it is aruond 9-11 mm thick midlimb. It is 45 mm wide at the same point.
I was confused that all the bows were exceptionally beautiful. Not blackish grey as I remember turkish war bows to be. The possible explanation is that Gen. Bielke was famed for being very eastethic (how does that spell???). Obviously he loved beautiful things and a lot of swedens treassures, such as silver items, marble sculptures, matts and silk gobelains, now on the national museum was once traded or looted by Gen. Bielke and brought back to the King.
I can very well imagine Bielke selecting only the most stunning bows after the battle and bringing them back to his mansion.
One of the bows have been hastidly repaired after being cracked. Sinew has been laminated in a thick layer on the crack. Two of the bows are broken in such a manner that it is obvious that someone has tried to string them backwards. This most certainly happened in sweden... The roof were the bows are kept are littered with broken arrows.. It is said to be more than a hundered arrowheads protruding in the attic floor. The bows must have been functional... No strings are to be found, though...
Peter,
The Manchu quiver appeared with a single appliqued shoe in a Polish book on the anniversary of the Siege of Vienna in 1683. The other was in Wenwu. I have the references. I will send them to you.
Stephen Selby
bowyer tom wrote:
I?m not sure weather it is white buffalo horn or if it is horn from som other cattle. The belly is however very light in colour...
The bows as they hang since end of 1600... Questioned bow is #2 from top.
I'm a bit worried about the attribution of ths bow. I think it's a made-in-China Manchu bow, no earlier than 1800. Could the Museum have thrown it in by mistake? These things happen...
Peter Dekker
Stephen Selby wrote:
I'm a bit worried about the attribution of ths bow. I think it's a made-in-China Manchu bow, no earlier than 1800. Could the Museum have thrown it in by mistake? These things happen...
This was my feeling as well when seeing it. However, the decoration on the bow is very close to what you see Kangxi and his men carry in artwork of the period. Also the way the decoration ends with an oblique line at the ear, it tends to be different on most of the later Manchu bows. Of course, old styles may still have been made in later times.
Misattribution would explain the excellent condition of the bow.
-Peter
Stephen Selby
Well it's certainly early. There's none of the Chinese filigree associated with the later bows. But it doesn't look as if it has a square cross-section siyah, and there's a horn inset in the tip, which all point to around 1800 or later.
It would be really difficult to imagine this bow having been made before 1600. But you never know - I've learned never to be dogmatic ;-)
Peter Dekker
As for actual bows, I am much more familiar with the later styles as you can easily see so many of them.
However, when looking at artwork it seems that the Kangxi emperor already had a bow with black parts at the nock that I thought were horn nocks. Most of the ears look square in artwork as well but I had taken them for artistic convention. There appears to be little, if any difference in style of Kangxi's bow and the many bows depicted in the portraits made in the 60's of the 18th century to commemorate the campaigns of Western expansion.
Also, some bows attributed to the Qianlong emperor himself, one even with Manchu inscriptions in the horn about where and when he shot which type of game, also has horn nocks and ears (siyahs) identical to their 19th century counterparts. This had made me to believe that the style has been the same for quite some time, unlike many other Qing weapons that evolved a lot.
Have you seen actual examples of mid. 18th cent bows without the horn nocks, and with more square ears?
-Peter
Stephen Selby
Yes, I have a couple of 18th C ones. What looks like horn tips in the paintings (I thought so, too) are actually black painted tips. To be honest, from the photo above, I can't be sure whether the siyahs are square or not. But the ones shown in the paintings are not artistic convention: they really were square.
Yang Wentong called square cross-section siyahs 'Manchu', tear-drop cross section 'Chinese' and oval cross-section 'Mongolian' But I don't know whether that was accurate or just the traditional terms used in the trade.
I'll try to take photographs.
S
Peter Dekker
Pics would be great! A friend of mine also has a fine example of what I think could well be an 18th cent. example with nice camouflage pattern.
For clarity, with "square", do you mean an angular cross-section with a slight wedge shape but four well defined corners, as opposed to rounded ones on for example that Xian made bows I showed you pics of? Then I know what you mean.. I got a large Manchu bow with ears just like that.
Could you provide the Chinese terms that Yang Wentong mentioned? Pinyin with tones is ok if characters don't work on the forum.
Thanks..
Misattributed or not, the bow posted is quite a conversation piece!
-Peter
Alam ed Din, Adnan
I think this is a bow of Kalmyk design,( .. ..Bede - not all the Thorghuts went back to Dzungaria with Ubashi Khan, many stayed in the area known today as Kalmykia) - but this is an assumption - since they where the close neighbours though not "friends" of Crim Tatars and Nogais that served in the Battle of Mohacs, perhaps a number of Kalmyks/Oirats changed side and served in the Turkish army's Tatar battalions, or Tatars may even have traded/captured the bows from the Kalmyks and used them? [external image]
Bede
I am aware that the Kalmyks are the Torghuts that were "left behind". It is unlikely that the Torghuts used Manchu bows until they returned to Central Asia. They were not part of the Qing military establishment and probably used bows directly descended from earlier Mongol bows like the Krim Tatars. However, considering the quiver at Vienna, maybe they did bring Qing equipment with them. Perhaps it was more available when they were migrating.
The real problem is the contamination of collections with misidentified artifacts. Many bows that were captured and have good documentation are really valuable to historians, but there were many nineteenth century collectors of curiosities and they often made fanciful claims for their origins.
Alam ed Din, Adnan
The Dzungars battled the Qing Armies many times before moving to the Northern Caucasus plains - maybe they copied/recycled the Qing bow design in way similar to how Tibetans do....but you're probably right about the contamination.Good to talk to you again, Bede.I haven't been around for some time. :D
Peter Dekker
I think the bow is most definitely of Qing / Manchu origin, because all design features correspond exactly to the way the made bows in this era.
The drawing you attached is a little peculiar, as the ears don't seem to come into play. I guess this is an error in the representation of the bow. But you're right that there is quite some similarity with the Manchu type.
But we know that Manchu beile Nurhaci had typical Tibetan ironwork on his saber, while wearing an armor styled on Ming design. Their bows may well have spread through the many tribes in the area as well. It is too bad that there is so little artwork depicting people in this era to spread some more light on the matter.
On the matter of identifying this bow, see pictures below: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Kangxi-Jagd.jpg
The Kangxi emperor in armor. Note the bow in two colors of bark, with very similar decoration on the birch bark. This type of decoration was apparently used on bows from their times of conquest way up to the early 19th cent. Unfortunately this version is not too clear, there are much more detailed versions reprinted in books such as: "China, the Three Emperors".
[external image]
Manchu Imperial guard Zhanyinbao who served in Eastern Turkestan. Collection of the Metropolitan Museum, NY. Note how little his bow changed since Kangxi was painted about a century earlier, and how incredibly close it is to the even earlier bow that started this thread.
The real change in design patterns of these bows seems to have begun in the late Qianlong reign, probably as a result of Qianlong's own experimentation with a mix of traditional and more contemporary design patterns. However the construction of these bows never seemed to have seen a lot of change from the times of conquest up to the early 20th century.
-Peter
robno
Stephen Selby wrote:
bowyer tom wrote:
I?m not sure weather it is white buffalo horn or if it is horn from som other cattle. The belly is however very light in colour...
The bows as they hang since end of 1600... Questioned bow is #2 from top.
I'm a bit worried about the attribution of ths bow. I think it's a made-in-China Manchu bow, no earlier than 1800. Could the Museum have thrown it in by mistake? These things happen...
It is highly unlikely that the museum did it, but one of the owners of the palace may at one point have mixed things up a bit. The import from China in the 18th and 19th century did not only bring china, which can be found in all palaces in this country, but also other types of handicraft.
The question of whether the museum made a mistake can easily be checked, luckily, since it was after 1967 they took over and by then there were a lot of regulations on how they should put everything into catalogue - and thus those records are available.
Peter Dekker
I'm a bit worried about the attribution of ths bow. I think it's a made-in-China Manchu bow, no earlier than 1800. Could the Museum have thrown it in by mistake? These things happen...
Stylistically I tend to disagree because I haven't seen this particular style on any bows made after 1800. Then again, sometimes archaic styles were reproduced in later eras but it would be the first of this style I would encounter.
The condition looks extremely good though, perhaps too good, for a bow of the 1600's.
It would be interesting to check the museum's records.
-Peter
Bashqort
dear bowyer tom
was there any bow marked as bashkirian (bashkurt, bashkirt etc.)?
Wu Fu -a Qing general from a Gansu garrison inspecting a horn bow...
Chiron
I personally think that this is not the Qing dynasty bow, at least the Qing Dynasty is not a true arch. Since the Qing Dynasty arch is one of the salient features of the string tall pillows, and the above picture do not see any string pillow.
Bede
Chiron,
You are right about the string bridges, but they sometimes come off old bows. There are some in the Imperial Collections that have only one left or none. If you see the bows in person, you can see the marks where they were.
The bow in the original photograph has a broken nock so it has see some rough handling. In many cases the string bridges were only glued on with hide or fish glue which is moisture sensitive.
Chiron
Bede,
I agree with your opinion, is indeed likely to exist you say this situation. Under normal circumstances but the museum exhibits on display after restoration must deal with in order to restore the original look of the exhibits. But it is regrettable that the museums mentioned above does not seem to have carried out this work.
--------
Chiron
jack farrell
In the Central State historical museum in Almaty, Kazakhstan there are two bows listed as Kazakh which I suppose are of Qing origin. Additionally there are two others listed as Bashkir of similar origin. One arrow is obviously Qing while others appear locally made.
I showed a pic to Stephen and he agrees. Even the decoration is in the Chinese taste so it seems unlikely that the bows were Chinese inspired but rather that they were obtained from China.
There is yet another in the Tashkent, Uzbekistan museum. This alltogether might suggest that there was a trade in bows of Qing manufacture.
Therfore the bow in Sweden might well be a Turkic bow but not of their manufacture.
Chiron; Most western museums will not restore artifacts. This confuses researchers as to what is original and what is not. Rather, artifacts might be stablized to prevent further deterioration or else nothing is done. Probably more of the latter. -j-
Dusan
Jack i posted pics from uzbek or kazaks muzeum in Russian findings. Like you said -its Chines bows.
Chiron
Ancient between the country are generally communicate through war and trade of these two forms. Because of geopolitical reasons, China's northwest frontier and some Central Asian countries since ancient times between the close, of course, there is one of the war, but also there is trade. However, once the largest in modern times or the Central Plains culture moved westward in 1862 -1870 in Ningxia and Gansu in China's Muslim area of large-scale riots, after the Qing Dynasty army camp brutal repression, the Muslim armed forces through hardships, fled into the Russian territory of Russia Czar to accept, in 1942 Russia was also "do the East" was officially named for this nation. Now the nation are located in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and other countries. I think the Kazakh Chinese museum collections and arrows that are possible evidence of historical events.
Chiron
jack farrell:
Forgive my blunt, I can not agree with your opinion. As far as I know, the British Museum on the Museum with specialized agencies, there is a lot of Chinese are also excellent long-term restoration experts employed there. Repair of cultural relics are now a very popular professional disciplines, by the museum and heritage experts favor, of course, repair of cultural relics before they will conduct a comprehensive and detailed heritage assessment, including risk assessment, as you say, once the repair is wrong, it is irreversible.
___________
Chiron
Chiron
Chiron wrote:
jack farrell wrote:
Chiron; Most western museums will not restore artifacts. This confuses researchers as to what is original and what is not. Rather, artifacts might be stablized to prevent further deterioration or else nothing is done. Probably more of the latter. -j-
jack farrell:
Forgive my blunt, I can not agree with your opinion. As far as I know, the British Museum on the Museum with specialized agencies, there is a lot of Chinese are also excellent long-term restoration experts employed there. Repair of cultural relics are now a very popular professional disciplines, by the museum and heritage experts favor, of course, repair of cultural relics before they will conduct a comprehensive and detailed heritage assessment, including risk assessment, as you say, once the repair is wrong, it is irreversible.
___________
Chiron
Stephen Selby
As far as I know, the British Museum on the Museum with specialized agencies, there is a lot of Chinese are also excellent long-term restoration experts employed there. Repair of cultural relics are now a very popular professional disciplines, by the museum and heritage experts favor, of course, repair of cultural relics before they will conduct a comprehensive and detailed heritage assessment, including risk assessment, as you say, once the repair is wrong, it is irreversible.
The point that Jack is making, and I agree, is that museums will conserve old bows which include a lot of bad, pre-1960s 'restoration'. Museums will not remove bad restoration, they just keep it stable. It is not the same as saying that the restorers are not experts (I agree with you that they are.) The are just very cautious.
jack farrell
Certainly no offense intended whatever. I was only stating that the main focus in the west is to stabilize artifacts and not to return them to an original condition. That there are many expert preservationists among the Chinese, I have no doubt.
Please allow that there is always something lost in translation. It is good that we all contribute freely. Jack
Chiron
[/quote]
The point that Jack is making, and I agree, is that museums will conserve old bows which include a lot of bad, pre-1960s 'restoration'. Museums will not remove bad restoration, they just keep it stable. It is not the same as saying that the restorers are not experts (I agree with you that they are.) The are just very cautious.[/quote]
Stephen Selby
At our museum to see a large number of the original Broken bronze ware, porcelain, wood, calligraphy and painting, sculpture was on display after restoration, bow and arrow has not been repaired. Is not the museum do not want to fix it, but at present in this area can be said to be empty, there is the ability of experts to repair the ancient bow and arrow is very scarce. Can also say that this is worthy of an entirely new field of study to explore and go everyone.
________
Chiron
Adam Karpowicz
The knowledge of ancient bowyery is generally very poor among the curatorial staff and the conservation specialists in the musems. Under the circumstances, it is best if the bows are only preserved and stabilized with no further intervention.
Adam
robno
There is, in fact, a bit of news to add to this discussion. A Swedish bowyer (on a Swedish forum known as Melegari) visited Skokloster and took the picture found below after I had asked him to have a look at the one discussed here. Many thanks to him for that!
I leave to you with more experience to say if there has or has not been a bridge there (with my very limited experience it certainly looks like it) :)
The bare patch is in the right place for a Qing style string bridge. When this is taken into account with the shape and size of the bow and the way the tips are covered, I think that a Qing origin is the most likely. However, the bow may have passed through several hands in its working life before it reached the museum.
Stephen Selby
The rattan edging where the horn is glued down is a give-away for a Chinese, Manchu style bow. I haven't seen other designs that did that. The Turks were importing huge amounts of products from China in the 17-18th Century - tea, blue and white porcelain and weapons.
S
jkekoni
Kalmyk design.
I am looking and the ears. I think they are laminated or kerfed and glued to bend without V-splice.
What do you think?
Bede
What you are seeing is probably an illusion caused by the positioning of the birch bark overlays covering the tips.
mongolianarcher
Alam ed Din, Adnan wrote:
I think this is a bow of Kalmyk design,( .. ..Bede - not all the Thorghuts went back to Dzungaria with Ubashi Khan, many stayed in the area known today as Kalmykia) - but this is an assumption - since they where the close neighbours though not "friends" of Crim Tatars and Nogais that served in the Battle of Mohacs, perhaps a number of Kalmyks/Oirats changed side and served in the Turkish army's Tatar battalions, or Tatars may even have traded/captured the bows from the Kalmyks and used them? [external image]
The picture that you posted is a kalmyks bow or tatar?
Sorry for my ignorance, but the discussion is a little confusing.
Bede
Even though the caption says Kalmyk Archer, I think that the shape of the bow and most of the costume is imaginary. Kalmyks in the 19th century wore distinctive fur hats which this is a distant relative. The coat is an interpretation rather than a representation. The bow is shown partly drawn but the archer is shown as small in comparison.
While there are a lot of good 18th to 19th century European depictions of Asian costume and equipment, there are unfortunately many more poor ones produced for general consumption.
A really interesting engraving of the painter, Sir William Allan, dressed as a Circassian chieftain shows the quality of ethnographic depiction that was available. Almost all of the equipment of this type has survived and one can compare the 1815 engraving with the real objects and see how good the artist could be. For these reasons, his painting of Bashkirs should be taken as a serious representation of real equipment. http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/fcgi-bin ... From=simil
When you look at the depiction of the bows here, you can see where the bow in the Kalmyk engraving originated. The difference is that the engraving has a guess at the shape of the drawn bow rather than a depiction of the shape.
These bows, which are closely related to Crimean Tatar bows, may represent the late Mongol style of bow that preceded the Manchu Qing style of bow that is shown in the early part of this thread. The Torghuts may or may not have brought a variation of this with them. There certainly seems to be a family resemblance between these bows in contrast to the Qing bows.
jack farrell
Lucas; I find the illustration to be an excellent representation of a Buryat style bow. Buryats are Turkic peoples of Southern Siberia. His clothes are good. -j-
mongolianarcher
Bede wrote:
Even though the caption says Kalmyk Archer, I think that the shape of the bow and most of the costume is imaginary. Kalmyks in the 19th century wore distinctive fur hats which this is a distant relative. The coat is an interpretation rather than a representation. The bow is shown partly drawn but the archer is shown as small in comparison.
While there are a lot of good 18th to 19th century European depictions of Asian costume and equipment, there are unfortunately many more poor ones produced for general consumption.
A really interesting engraving of the painter, Sir William Allan, dressed as a Circassian chieftain shows the quality of ethnographic depiction that was available. Almost all of the equipment of this type has survived and one can compare the 1815 engraving with the real objects and see how good the artist could be. For these reasons, his painting of Bashkirs should be taken as a serious representation of real equipment. http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/fcgi-bin ... From=simil
When you look at the depiction of the bows here, you can see where the bow in the Kalmyk engraving originated. The difference is that the engraving has a guess at the shape of the drawn bow rather than a depiction of the shape.
These bows, which are closely related to Crimean Tatar bows, may represent the late Mongol style of bow that preceded the Manchu Qing style of bow that is shown in the early part of this thread. The Torghuts may or may not have brought a variation of this with them. There certainly seems to be a family resemblance between these bows in contrast to the Qing bows.
A bowyer that lives near me said that some late mongol, pre qing period bow used looked like a crimean tatar, with a arrow plate, but with longer siyas. Can this possibly be true???
jack farrell
There were pictures posted here of Buryat bows by Taras, who authored the article her on ATARN. He shows his old bow strung. Dusan posted a photo of a Buryat bow from the Talas armory museum. It would be interesting to know how that bow arrived there. There was also the article in Primitive archer about an old Buryat bow.
The features of this bow are the lack of a Kasan, the ridged, rigid section below the ear. The ear features a bone belly plate abutting the horn belly slat. (The Xining Mongol bow has a butt joint at the horn plate in this location) Besides this there are horn side plates on the ears. There is also a pillow bridge in the manner of Qing bows.
To my thinking it is a cousin of the Manchurian bow. It probably lacks a splice at the ear but the ear plates hark back to Hunnic type bows. It may have been too cold in the country to intensify pressure on the limb that a kasan would have caused. Manchurian bows also lack a kasan. The pillow bridge is common to very few bow types. The length of the bow may also be in response to the cold climate.
Lucas, what do you mean by arrow plate?
mongolianarcher
Sorry, I ment a string plate.
Bede
Jack is right about the relationship of the Buryat bows. There were Buryats in the Qing armies and they were strongly also influenced by their close proximity to the Mongols proper. The Buriat bow, at least those lacking kasans as Jack mentioned, also show influence from Siberian and other Northern wood-laminated bows.
String bridges in the form of small triangular plates with rounded corners and sunken centre are common in the area north of the Black Sea as far east as Central Asia. Bows were collected by Moser in the nineteenth century and there are earlier ones in several collections. This covers bows from the Crimea, Bashkirs, Circassians, and several other groups like the Eastern Turkmen. The earliest dated bows I have seen with this feature are Iranian bows from the 1500s. However, as I have pointed out elsewhere on this site, there is a fair amount of evidence in paintings that they were introduced at the time of the Mongol invasion. I think that these smaller string bridges were more to protect the belly of the bow from the impact of the string knots than prevent the bow from unstringing itself. The fact that they gave extra insurance from unstringing accidentally was probably a benefit that wasn't anticipated at first. At least one painting suggests they may have been design to move the string away from the belly of the kasan, but it is hard to tell from a painting.
The drawing I was referring to was a Kalmyk archer. The Kalmyks are those Torghuts who chose to remain in Russia when the majority decided to return to Dzungaria. The name, Kalmyk, is from the Turkic verb meaning to "leave behind". Torghuts were Oirat or Western Mongols.
Tom; You did good. This is the reason I love ATARN. Where else can one find these pictures?
According to google, Bielke fought in the second battle of Mohacs, in Hungary, defeating the Ottoman army mostly made up of Mamluks and Balkans troops and about 800 Ottomans in 1687. This would be the origin of the weapons you photographed. Bielke died in 1716
The similarity to the bow I photographed in Samarkand is amazing. These are very strong bows.
Apparently the Skokolster castle was built by Wrangel, am not sure Bielke ever lived there as all work stopped at Wrangel's death before the battle of Mohocs. Many items were donated to the castle, including, apparently, the Turkish bow collection of Bielke. -j-
bowyer tom
Of course. I stand corrected, and I can only say that I got things mixed up. Of course Wrangel built and Bilke donated. Bielke fought, with a small Swedish contingent, together with the western allies at the battle of Mohacs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_ ... 1cs_(1687)
As I understand Nils Bielke was a liassons officer in Vienna, Austria at the time. Still, Bilke was surely very interested in beautiful things... Together with the bows, there are two big chests containing arrows, also captured at Mohacs. I also understand that they separated the bows from the arrows somewhere in the mid 1700?s. The reason for this, the curator of the museum, mr Nils Kyhlsberg told me, was that adventorous visitors shot the bows at the ceiling. Apparantly the ceiling is littered with arrowheads, portrouding in the attic-side, making it very difficult to walk there... Also, apparently, the bows, or some of them, was still strung at the time. Note that one of the bows has been fixed with tendons after breaking. This must have been done in the field, prior to the battle. One of the bows also show signs of being broken at the sayah when someone tried to string it backwards... After the battle i presume.....
I do appologize to all for my mixing up facts. I really do know better, but I was not humble enough to check facts before i Wrote... Sorry...:oops:
I had the chance to take a fast look, or a glance more, on the arrows. I?m really interested in them, because I?d like to figure out how many people, or artisans, were involved in the line of making a battlearrow, and how standardised they were.
It would also be interesting to compare these arrows with the replica medieval ash-shafts I make for my bows. Comparing weight, fletching, arrowheads, everything... Perhaps I can return to skokloster this fall. I?ll bring a better camera then...
Thank You Jack.... Thank You... Daniel, I found the one photo i took of a small bundle of arrows. They seemed to be very uniform in presence, with the turkish form of fletching, with very long, low feathers. Some tips were broke of, wich lead me to assume that the tips are temepered. I will be back in this matter, though...
[external image] The one photo I have of the Mohacs arrows [external image]A Turkish saddle made in silver...Warprize, Mohacs 1687 [external image]And here I am, shooting at a viking fair this summer
Daniel
Thank you Tom,
You wrote:
"I?m really interested in them, because I?d like to figure out how many people, or artisans, were involved in the line of making a battlearrow, and how standardised they were. It would also be interesting to compare these arrows with the replica medieval ash-shafts (...) Comparing weight, fletching, arrowheads, everything... "
This is exactly what I'm trying to find out. Looking forward to see more pictures of arrows from the museum
Regards
jack farrell
Tom; Nothing to apologize for. i am just a stickler for provinience. This makes everything more meaningful. Provinience is everything!
Not only were these bows shot after the battle, they were worked on. Several have a cord wrapped around problem areas but the 9th from the bottom has a leather grip added over fade wrappings of this cord.
It also appears that someone has done a crude beginning repair to the siyah of the blue bow. Broken nock, two broken limbs and other breaks look suspiciously like post military repairs.
How about the bow with the three horn slats on the belly? Several have the setback grip like the Hazorasp bow from Samarkand. Several have very wide limbs. One has that so called Tatar look.
Even the arrows are not what I have seen elsewhere.
Maybe the use of Mamluks and Balkins troops speaks to the wide variety of material. -j-
jack farrell
I am suspicious of those arrows.
Dusan
Fantastic pics Tom ! Thank you very much. I agree vith Jack. Very ucefull info about braek points, horn layers, handle , kasans... Good job. :idea:
bowyer tom
Thanks a lot for the kind remarks. It makes all trobles well worth while. I have relayed the link of this discussion to the curator of the museum, whom is in charge of these bows. I hope this will add to an increased understanding of the value of these bows. I plan to be back at Skokloster as soon as I have a possibility. As I understand, the origin of the questioned bow has been answered, but there are some questions about the other bows. This can be explained by the fact that a lot of different asiatic cultures and subcultures were engaged by the Ottoman Army. The asiatic composit bow has a common origin and has been spread through out Asia over time. Is that, somewhat, right on target?
The next issue I will bring to question is the somewhat troublesome fact that there has been parts of asiatic archery equippement dug out in a Swedish viking site. These parts are questioned, but they origin from 800-900 AD. The site is the Swedish town of Birka in lake Malaren.
I agree with Jack, it is really good to have all these good pictures turn up at this forum.
It has been a while since I last checked this thread and a lot has happened since.
What I would like to add is that I still maintain that this bow is very likely a late seventeenth-century Qing bow with no foreign influences as far as I can tell. Very few of these bows have survived to today, the vast majority being in the Palace Museum Beijing.
Especially notable is the rather natural look of it with no Chinese luck symbols anywhere on the bow, these only appeared in the mid. Qianlong reign. Especially the way the ears are done, with the birch bark covering all of it, is a tell-tale sign of an early to mid. Qing bow. I think what we are looking at is a bow as likely carried by officers in the Kangxi period, although the design remained much the same up until the late Qianlong era. It is surprising that the bow travelled so far, but then again, Qianlong had a Crimean tatar bow and Kangxi owned a Dutch sword so why not.
For clarity, I will sum up all the points that these early bows have in common:
1. Birch-bark covered backs, decorated with a simple painted pattern in a single color.
2. Birch-bark covered extremities, ray-skin on these parts is rarely seen in the late Qianlong era and didn't become common until the nineteenth-century.
3. No patches of contrasting color as found on later bows: limbs on these are the same from handle to ear with no transitions covered in different colors.
4. Transition from limb to ear of a straight line. It is rounded on later bows, beginning in the late Qianlong reign on six of the Qianlong emperor's own bows, spreading to the rank-and-file in the decennia thereafter.
5. On the birch-bark covered ears there is a seem through the center of the ear, on the side of the archer. Exactly as seen on the pic posted.
Comparable examples:
See for this detail on Kangxi's own bow, showing very similar style but as an imperial item of course with impeccable execution, QING GUAN WUBEI, Hong Kong Commercial Press, pp. 31.
Another one, also by Kangxi, shows the exact same construction of the "knee" as shown in the picture posted above showing the missing string bridge, right up to the rectangular patch of birch-bark. QGWB pp 104.
In contrast, the Yongzheng era bow on pp. 105 of this book doesn't have this feature.
In short, to me there are plenty of features on this bow that are both decisively Manchu / Qing, and appear to place it in the Kangxi reign period: 1642-1722.
This bow may be among the purest form of Manchu bows we can expect to encounter, before Chinese styles got used on them.
-Peter
Stephen Selby
I agree with Peter, but only add that on these early Qing bows, white paint on the ears instead of birch bark is also common.
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