Ближний Восток и его соседи

g 174 h David Nicolle 28. Meanwhile the burial of archery equipment with the dead continued amongst the non- or pre-Islamic peoples of the Eurasian steppes for many centuries. In some places it even seems to have endured for a generation or so after the peoples converted — at least nominally — to Judaism, Christianity or Islam. The arrows found in the graves of nomadic or still partially nomadic peoples in the western steppes and forest-steppe fring- es of modern Ukraine and the southern parts of European Russia are often remarkably varied in form. Those shown here date from the 10th to 12th centuries and include both European-style socketed arrowheads, tanged forms which would remain characteristic of Turco-Mongol tribes, and some which are very similar to those found in Mamlūk contexts in the Islamic Middle East. (Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; author’s photograph). 29. The Magyars who migrated to, and took control of, the Carpathian basin to create the state of Hungary were originally from the forest-steppes, not from the open steppes of Eurasia. They also had long and close cultural, political and military links with the powerful Judeo-Turkish Khazar Khanates of the western steppes. The Khazars in turn had not only dominated much of “forest” Russia to the north and the pre-Caucasus to the south, but also formed a bastion against the northward expansion of Islam which endured for several centuries. These Khazars established an al- liance with the Byzantine Empire while still enjoying close trade links with Islamic Central Asia, Iran and the Middle East. Hence it is not surprising to find that Magyar archery equip- ment, including the finely forged 11th–13th century arrowheads shown in this picture, had as much in common with the archery equipment of the Islamic heartlands as they did with more strictly “nomadic” steppe peoples east of the Carpathian Mountains. (Hungarian National Museum, Budapest; author’s photograph)