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

Mongol Warfare and the Creation of the Mongol Empire m 123 n much. The decent minimum of subsistence animals for family support is 100 sheep, or equivalents in goats and cows 1 , judging both by thirteenth century Mongol tax practice and modern Iranian nomad opinion 2 . 100 sheep would have the pastoral weight of 20 ponies at the conventional equivalence of 1 horse/pony = 5 sheep, and a military unit traveling with its families would need five times more pasture than one without. The women, children, sheep, goats and cattle were therefore usually left be- hind, in a ‘ urugh s: home bases, with assigned pastures, an administration, and guards ( turqaq s: day-guards, and kebte’ül s: night-guards) 3 . After a campaign, the men might return home, or the families might rejoin their men in new homelands 4 . The weapons, equipment and tactics of the pony-cavalry were devised to inflict maximum enemy casualties, while avoiding as far as possible losses to themselves, in view of their limited manpower, and to their crucially-im- portant ponies. Bows and arrows, the main weapon, were easy to make and dangerous to unarmored men and animals within range of accurate shooting, about 75 yards, and, at 50 yards or less, effective against armor. The ponies brought their riders to effective range, and (relatively) safely away again. The combat quiver carried and rationed out the archer’s arrows, limiting his ex- penditure and keeping it in proportion to the other soldiers’, while control- ling the pony’s stints of attacking, and insuring that these remained within its capacity. 1 The conventional equivalences are: 1 horse/cow = 5 sheep/goats. Vreeland, 24, has (sim- plifying) 2 camels = 4 horses = 5 oxen = 20 sheep = 30 goats. One hundred milking ewes produce milk (surplus to their lamb’s needs) of caloric value sufficient to sustain a nuclear family. 2 “As for the levy on animals ... if a person had a hundred head of a particular kind of beast he was to give one, and if he had less, none”. ‘Alauddin ‘Ata-Malik Juvaini, The History of the World-Conqueror , J. A. Boyle trans. (Cambridge MA, 1958), 2 vols., II, 600. The Secret History of the Mongols, § 279, 280. See also: Barth F. Nomads of South Persia: The Basseri Tribe of the Khamseh Confederacy. Oslo UP, 1964. P. 16–17: “[I]nformants agreed that it was impossible to subsist on less than 60 [head of sheep]. To maintain a satisfactory style of life it was generally considered that a man with normal family commitments requires about 100 sheep and goats..” 3 A ‘ urugh s: Smith, “Heartbreak”, 132 and passim ; Smith J. M., Jr., From Pasture to Man- ger: The Evolution of Mongol Cavalry Logistics in Yuan China and its Consequences, in B. G. Fragner, R. Kauz, R. Ptak, and A. Schottenhammer eds., Pferde in Asien: Geschichte, Handel und Kultur / Horses in Asia: History, Trade and Culture (Vienna: Verlag der Österreis- chischenAkademie der Wissenschaften, 2009) [hereinafter Smith, “Manger”], passim . Guards: SH, § 191–192, 224–229. 4 Mongol pastoral bases established in the Middle East after its conquest are described in: Smith J. M., Jr. Mongol Nomadism and Middle Eastern Geography: Qishlaqs and Tümens, in R. Amitai-Preiss and D. O. Morgan eds., The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy. Leiden: Brill, 1999 [hereinafter Smith, “Qishlaqs”].