Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 160 h David Nicolle More interestingly perhaps, smaller crossbows were used by Muslim foot soldiers and were usually identified as “foot/feet” or “stirrup” bows. The for- mer and larger type was spanned by placing the feet directly on the bowstave while the latter had a metallic stirrup for one foot, attached to the front of the stock. These early hand-held crossbows did not, of course, oust the handheld bow as the primary missile weapon of the Islamic world, perhaps because their main rival was, from at least the 10th century onwards, the sophisticat- ed composite bow rather than the relatively primitive simple bow. Crossbows continued to be used in siege warfare following the Mongol conquest, even in Iran. Here they included the supposedly multi-shot charkh kamān which, despite its Persian name, was almost certainly introduced from the Far East. In other respects, the crossbow came to be regarded as a “western” weapon in most eastern regions of the Islamic world where, of course, the term “west- ern” also meant Middle Eastern when viewed from India, Central Asia or Iran, or meant North African and Andalusian when viewed from the Middle East. In fact, the crossbow would play a role in siege and naval warfare until a widespread adoption of handheld firearms in the 16th century. Within the Middle East the arrival of the Saljūq Turks had led to a brief domi- nance of Central Asian horse-archery dispersal and harassment tactics, but there- after the area’s own tradition of concentrated shower-shooting horse-archery steadily revived. Beyond these regions, in Egypt, North Africa and al-Andalus the Turks had minimal impact on established Islamic archery traditions. In fact, the Muslim soldier’s debt to his predecessors was recognised in several later me- dieval training manuals, while the reality underlying many apparently theoretical texts was clear during the struggle against both Crusaders and Mongols. By the 12th century simple bows were unusual enough in the Middle East for a captured Crusader example to be shown to Saladin during the siege of Acre. On the other hand, the Nubians continued to use simple bows of acacia wood, apparently comparable to those of ancient Egypt, while the simple bow of 14 th century Ethiopia was described as a long weapon with a short draw and a string made of cotton. Meanwhile, substantial simple bows dominated Indian warfare, and would continue to do so almost to the end of the medieval period. In contrast to the primitive weapons used on and immediately beyond the southern and western European frontiers of the Islamic world, sophisticated composite bows now dominated archery throughout the Islamic heartlands. They were made in a variety of forms although within the heartlands of Egypt and the Fertile Crescent an almost industrialized, production-line system of manufacture is thought to have produced bows in a limited number of sizes and-or strengths, suitable to men of corresponding strength and-or size. This was especially true of the Mamlūk Sultanate and may also have been seen in