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

m 126 n John Masson Smith, Jr. kinds of arrows mentioned in the Secret History resist correlation with Polo or the illustrations 1 . The basic, most commonly illustrated type of Mongol quiver may be called the combat quiver 2 . It is usually shown holding six arrows. The quiver hangs from the archer’s belt at a slant, bottom forward, top rearward, encasing the arrows to a third or half their length with the midpoint at arm’s length, easy to extract and shoot at the gallop 3 : “take hold of [the arrow] — nock towards the elbow — with the palm and all five fingers of the right hand...at a point two- thirds of the distance from the head...” 4 and, “[k]icking the horse into the charge, nocking the arrow, drawing the bow with the arrow in place, and slipping the rein from the right [drawing] hand should all be carried out after the manner of a single operation. The charger by this time should be in full career...”. 5 Besides the combat quiver, the Mongols sometimes carried a more capa- cious “box quiver” 6 , probably Plano Carpini’s “three large quivers” 7 , holding the 60 arrows Polo gives each soldier 8 . Depictions have them used in “Par- thian” shooting 9 , and by dismounted archers. Worn from the belt, but unlike 1 SH /IdR (2006), § 174 and 195. 2 Rashid 1309, illustration no. 5 and description, p. 48–49; and illustration no. 19 and de- scription, p. 76–77; also Phillips, plate 21 (picture reversed), and Ipş Ì roğlu, pl. 43. I have previously called these “quick-draw” quivers (Smith J. M. Jr. Mongol Society and Military in the Middle East: Antecedents and Adaptations, in Y. Lev ed., War & Society in the Eastern Mediterranean, 7 th –15 th Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 1996) [hereinafter Smith/Lev], 260 n. 40). “Six-shooter” quiver might be a usefully suggestive alternative. 3 The individual arrows are often shown held in place and separated from one another by the intertwined tail of a snow leopard: Legacy , 160, fig. 187, cat. no. 56, and 161, fig. 188, cat.no. 41; Rashid 1309, illustration no.19 and description, p. 76–77. Some combat quivers have two compartments, one large one holding most of the arrows fairly deeply encased, with a shallow pocket on its side holding two or three more exposed for easy grasping: e.g. Legacy, 186, “Mongol Archer on Horseback”, fig. 220, (cat. no. 20); also Phillips, plate 20 (picture reversed; right foreground). 4 Saracen Archery , 47. 5 Saracen Archery , 73. Mongol archers, and Asian archers in general, placed the arrow on the right side of the bow, not the left as by English or modern archers; it makes for faster loading. 6 The term of Nicolle, op.cit., passim. 7 Plano Carpini 1966: 33. Extant “Tibetan or Mongolian” examples, from the late thir- teenth to fifteenth century, are illustrated and described in LaRocca, 188–89, pl 92; their arrows were inserted points-up, as in the Legacy Baghdad scenes. 8 Polo 1980, 314. 9 Nicolle, op.cit., #324 and #325 (Daghestani), #1525 (Kipchak), #1540 (Cuman). “Par- thian” shots: Marco Polo, 101: “When [Mongols] are fleeing at top speed, they twist round with their bows and let fly their arrows to such good purpose that they kill the horses of the enemy and the riders too”.