«Тахиййат»: Сборник статей в честь Н. Н. Дьякова

Mongol Warfare and the Creation of the Mongol Empire m 121 n army’s [mounts] before they become too lean ... Except on limited battues, do not allow the soldiers to fix the crupper to the saddle and put on the bridle, but let the horses go with their mouths free. If this order is issued, the soldiers will not be able to gallop on the way. 1 Plus grant pensée avoient les Tartars de leur chevaus que de soi meismes... 2 The cavalry marched, at a walk, for about four hours a day at 4 mph, and spend the rest of the day, and the night, grazing and resting. Mongol men grew up with ponies, and with arms: bows and arrows made to their own measure by their fathers or themselves. They learned to manage animals and, with them, to move their families and possessions from pasture to pasture; they learned to shoot, and their fathers also told them why, in sto- ries of their ancestors and their people, with raids, fights and battles playing a large part. Some of the stories were epics, about the phenomenal feats of remarkable heroes. The Secret History tells one of these 3 , the only one we have from Mongol imperial period, but one that implies the coexistence of a repertory of similar stories. It is a David-and-Goliath story, satirically inverted. Its David is Chinggis’ enemy, the Naiman qan, Tayang, who, with his army, faces Goliaths in battle: Chinggis and his warriors, monstrous in size, strength and weaponry — hyperbolic hallmarks of epic. The Naiman David should, of course, rise to the occasion, but fails to do so. As these extraordinary Mongols are described to him, he decides, again and again, not to fight, but to retreat higher up the mountain, ultimately to defeat and death 4 . The lost epics implied by this sole atypical exemplar inculcated ideals of behavior in war, in this case the very pertinent one of standing up to a far stronger foe. The actual event in which the epic is located was the final major battle of Chinggis’ unification of Mongolia. 1 SH, § 199. 2 Haithon of Korykos, Flos Historiarum Terre Orientis , in Recueil des Historiens des Croi- sades Documents Arméniens , 2 vols. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1906. Vol. II. P. 200. 3 SH, § 195. 4 SH, § 196. For an analogous satire, see: LawrenceT. E. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom , ch. 48, p. 173–74, where Lawrence entertains guests of Auda abu Tayi, a renownedArab raider, with “a raiding story in which nothing happened” in “a close parody of Auda’s epic style”, re- ceived by the audience “in waves of laughter” with Auda laughing “the loudest and longest”.