No Deposit No Return Mongolian Arrows

Factual Questions
1

I just finished reading Jack Wetherford’s wonderful Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, and something is bugging me. On page 141, describing a battle between the Mongols (“Tatars”) and the Russians, he says:
“The Mongol horsemen halted just beyond the range of the Slav’s hand weapons…the Mongols had purposefully made their arrows so that they could not be nocked onto their adversaries’ bowstrings. In their angry frustration, all the Russian soldiers could do was break the fallen arrows to make sure the Mongols could not retrieve them to use again.”

A little further on he says:

“With their infantry cut to pieces, the Russian archers took aim and began to return the voley of arrows, but with the shorter range of the less-powerful European bows, few hit their mark. In mockery, the Mongols chased down the Russian arrows; but rather than brewaking them, they fired them back at their original owners, since the notches of the arrow easily fit the Mongol bowstring.”

Okay, I don’t understand this. IANAArcher, but, as far as I know, a notch for nocking an arrow is just a slot cut in its end. If it’s too wide, you can still put a narrow bowstring in place. If the slot is too narrow, you can still steady it against a thick bowstring. If you have to, you ought to be able to widen it enough with a knife. How the hell could the Mongols have arrows that the Europeans couldn’t, yet they could use European arrows? Did the have phillips’ heads on them or something?

That’s not to mention the slander on European bowmansip. We’re talking about professional Russian archers in the pre-gunpowder days, when arrows were virtually the only long-range weapons. There was presumably a premium on excellence of shooting and on range. So why would the Mongols be so much better?

2

can’t help you on the question of why they couldnt return the arrows from the mongol bows, but i can help explain why mongol bows were better - because they were more powerful, and because they thus went further and faster. WHy were they more powerful? Well, the English longbow was pretty powerful, but it was pretty much the same design as a standard bow, only bigger. The Mongolian bow was simply a superior design - any European could have picked up a Mongolian bow and revers-engineered it, but they didnt. The basic fact that gives the bow greater power is that instead of flexing an essentially straight piece of wood into a bow (a la longbow) the Mongolians would start with an already c-Shaped piece of wood (actually C-shaped construction from several pieces) and then invert it back upon itself, ie from } to {. This added tremendous tension and thus power to the bow. And was no doubt a b*tch to string.

Why did they have such better bows? Might as well ask why the Japanese and Europeans had such superior swords - it probably had something to do with their culture - in Europe the sword was for a long time the ultimate weapon to possess as a status symbol, great energy and time went into creating each one (months according to a recent BBC documentary), twisting lengths of iron and steel in upon each other (or stretching and folding in the Japanses tradition). But swords really didnt do it for the Mongolians, who were more interested in bows as useful hunting tools that also came in handy in warfare - thus Europeans obsessed about swords (and thus made good ones) and the Mongolians obsessed about bows (and thus made good ones).

Dan

3

Classical Greek bows were made this way, too. My “Companion to the Odyssey” has the technical details, and they match your description precisely. (And they were a bitch to string. See Homer’s climactic scene in The Odyssey) When did the Europeans lose this important bit of weapons designing?

4

How about a little Mongolian Bow History for a detailed answer.

Apparently, the bows used by the mogols were drawn by using their thumb, and use of a specialized thumb ring. Basically, everything about the bow was different from European, and asiatic bows.

5

Lets not forget that European civilisation in the middle ages was not really of classical descent, given that the Western half of the roman empire fell to “barbarians” and post-Roman England was conquered by successive waves of invaders from Scandanavia etc. The overall feel of medieval Europe, despite Christianity, spoken Latin etc was of half classical descent and half “Germanic” (for want of a broader, better descriptor) descent. Certainly in terms of military apparel little of the Greek or Roman military methodologies were remembered or aped. There’s a reason the era between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of medieval europe was known as the dark ages - there was very little experimentation or advancement (despite what revisionist historians like to persuade us) and lots of stuff was “back to basics”. I’m not saying thousands of years of culture were utterly dumped on their head, but forgetting how to make such bows would be far from the only example.

As an aside, much of the territories occupied by Rome in the east fell not into Christian European hands by Arabic/Muslim hands - thus the Moors retained the bow familiar to the Mongols but the Christian armies largely did not, using earlier bows of designs such as the longbow, and then later - and also concurrently - the crossbow.

Dan

6

[WAG]
Is it possible that the Mongolian bows were smaller than the European bows? (Using the mechanism hinted at by Pilchard it ought to be possible to make a smaller bow that’s still pretty powerfull.)
In that case the Mongolian arrows might well have been too short to use with a Russian bow, whereas the opposite ought to work.
[/WAG]

7

I thought of that, but Wetherford’s wording seems to imply that it’s the nocking. If it were the length, he’d have said so.

8

The Mongol bow was dual stringed and their arrows were dual notched. The Russian bow was single stringed so they could only launch a mongol arrow asymetrically. On the other hand the mongols could set both strings into the single Russian arrow notch.

I just made it up.
Or could it be that the Mongol arrow was just too damn short? Hard to launch a dart with an English long bow.

9

Sorry, missed the Popup

10

Thanks for the link, Phlosphr, but I don’t feel enlightened. Most of the stuff on that page seems unrelated to the question at hand. The explanation is intriguing, but not at all clear (would it kill them to include a few pictures or diagrams?)

I still don’t understand how Mongolians could shoot both types of arrows, but Europeans couldn’t. Heck, grienspace’s hack explanation sounds better than anything else (although I don’t think it would have worked, either).

11

Let me clarify some of the linked description:

This means that the bow was recurved, as described above. If you think of the bows you’ve seen, you’ll notice that the ones thar are shaped as a simple C (or D) look promitive and are underpowered, compared to the once with the more familiar modern recurve shape, where the body of the bow curves toward you, but the tips pointaway from you, so the string rides in a groove over the curve of the bow near the end. When a recurve bow is fully drawn, its ends may point vertically, rather than forward, but on a simple curved bow, the ends always point “backwards”.

In short, modern bows are mostly bent in the direction opposite their “natural” shape, which takes a lot of effort, but creates greater string tension, because the bow is fighting harder to return to its resting shape.

Whether you grab the bowstring with your thumb or finger, that small body part is going to be taking a lot of strain. After all, it is the final link in passing that strain onto the string to launch the arrow. The thunb is stronger than the fingers, and grabbing the end of it with your index finger spreads the load and allows you to hold the string more comfortably as you draw and aim. Carry a wirehandle bucket full of sand for a few minutes, and you’ll quickly do the same

The thumb ring offers more protection, and a smooth, designed shape, to allow for a smooth release of the string. The bit about hand position really only addresses the moment of release, which is critical for accuracy. It doesn’t really affect range.

The description of arm position may sound confusing, but it’s exactly the same issue faced by modern amateur archers. Keep the arm holding the bow out of the the way of the string, or you’ll get a painful string burn, but you should also keep it as straight and near the string as possible: the further (to the side) your arm is from the plane of the string (the path it takes as released) the more the bow will tend to twist to the side from the change in forces when you release the string.

I hope that helps.

12

KP

Thanks for the post, but it doesn’t help. The bow construction was pretty clear to me. Even the use of a thumb ring was pretty straightforward. What I still fail to see is why European archers couldn’t use the Mongol arrows. The type of grip seems totally unrelated, unless I’m missing something crucial here.

13

I’ve been trying to puzzle out in my head an answer to this notch-that-works-with-mongol-bows-but-not-with-european-bows question and I can’t figure it out - I mean, a mongol bow string isn’t so much different from a european bow string, it seems unlikely an arrow could notch with one and not the other. Its possible the mongol arrows themselves were designed to be usable once-only, in the same way as the later roman pila with the wooden bolts decuring the heads to the shaft designed to break on impact and seperate the two halves. Perhaps a two-stage arrow much like a rocket where the back half notches to the string and then falls away? Seems far too implausible but you never know.

As for the possibility the notch is a red herring and the length of the arrow is the key, I did some digging. According to a contemporary source:

“The length of their arrows is: two foots, one palm, and two finger wide. And because the foot length wariation, I will present foot length geometrically: thumb wide is the lenght of two barley grain, and sixteen thumb wides is the length of the geometrical foot.”

which would, apparently, make the length about 75 cm. Anyone know how far you can draw a longbow back?

Dan

14

WAG -

The string thickness. If the mongolian bow string is smaller then the arrow notch is also smaller and may not fit on thicker stringed bows. The Russian bow may also have had estra rap of leather or sinew where the arrow was fitted - perhaps to protect the string.

Again just a WAG.

15

Not buying it - this is no production line, these are handmade bows and handmade strings, there is little or no uniformity and each Mongol made his own bow and arrows as I understand it.

Dan

PS. WAG = wild arsed guess???

16

Regarding your WAG about “WAG”, precisely correct - after adjusting for regional slang, of course. :slight_smile:

As for the notch width - perhaps the Mongols used thinner arrow shafts in addition to thinner bow strings, thus necessitating thinner notches? I realize they’re all handmade, but at least with the arrows, you need some degree of uniformity - the shafts all should be within a certain range of straightness, for instance. A previous poster said you could brace an arrow with a too-narrow notch against a thick string, but I’d suspect that would lead to a tendency for the arrow to fly off at an angle instead.

(Sorry about the guessing but I figured it’s already being done. I’m just extrapolating from what I know about weaponry and childhood experiments at making primitive bows and arrows.)

17

On the question of different bowstring sizes, See my OP. I don’t buy it.

18

Hey, Pilchard, I read The First Man in Rome, too. Interesting concept, but it doesn’t seem to be what Weatherford is implying (and, as you note, seems pretty impractical in an arrow, rather than a pilum.)

19

Two thoughts:

The Mongol nock may have been attached directly to the bowstring. To use the bow, the archer would slide a blank, or rounded, arrow shaft into the nock’s cylinder, pull at the thumb ring and release. The result would be no notches on the arrow shaft, rendering the arrow immediately useless to the Russians.

The second thought is a more fanciful variation on the idea of a bowstring-mounted nock receptacle. I have no cite, but I have seen similar themes in the modern construction of “classic” Hun bows and arrows. Carve a false nock out of bone or horn and attach it to the arrow shaft. (As long as it still fits into the one mounted on the bowstring, you’re good to go.) Sharpen the “v” in the notch of your false nock, such that if retrieved by the enemy and used directly on his bowstring, it will cut it and render the bow temporarily useless.

20

It seems that the draw on a typical longbow was somewhere around 75-85cm. Given that (above) the typical Mongol arrow was 75cm total length, at the very least a man using a longbow would not have been able to reuse a Mongol arrow at full draw. he could have leashed it at part-draw for some, though not full, power. Various assumptions of course - longbow usage (unlikely), mean length, etc etc etc etc

Dan