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

Mongol Warfare and the Creation of the Mongol Empire m 135 n The ponies’ condition was always on responsible Mongols’minds. As men- tioned above, Chinggis loosened saddles and removed bridles to prevent gal- loping on the march. Likewise, limiting the number of arrows in the soldiers’ quivers enforced their retirement to the rear line after three or four attacks, and together with draconian punishment for halting or moving contrary to officers’ orders 1 , restrained the soldiers even in the heat of battle and reminded them to rest or replace their ponies, or to give way altogether to the unit behind them. The Thousand ( Mingghan , Hazāra ), the next larger unit, consisted of ten Hundreds. Next above that was the largest unit, the Tümen , Ten Thou- sand. Components of both of these could be in depth, one behind another. For the first battle of Homs, in 1260, around 6000 Mongols “were organized in eight squadrons ( atlab ), one after another, as if they were ready to launch a se- ries of successive attacks”. The leading Mongol unit was a Thousand, as were probably most of the following units. If this Thousand were arrayed on a front of ten Hundreds, the front would have extended (57 yards per 22-man line × 10 Hundreds =) roughly 600 yards. Their enemies numbered only about 1400, forces drawn from Homs, Hama and Aleppo and arrayed by city into a Center (Homs), Right (Hama) and Left (Aleppo) 2 . If the front of the cities’ forces matched that of the Mongols (ca. 600 yards), their ranks would have been about six lines deep. The Syrians’ upset victory might be explained if their cavalry, although much less numerous, was heavier, armored and armed with shock weapons, such as the Egyptian Mamluks had used at Ayn Jalut, very likely on some of these same Mongols, who were therefore even more prone that usual to avoid hand-to-hand combat, leading to the further possibility that the Mongol forces, stacked deep: “eight squadrons, one after another”, were unprepared for a precipitous flight into their midst by their leading Thousand with Syrian swordsmen on their heels 3 . The largest Mongol armies, in tümen-strengths, also used the three-part ar- ray: Center, including the commander and his guards; and on either side, Left and Right wings 4 . At the second battle of Homs (1281), for example, the Center included three commanders who are named in the sources — usually, by this 1 Plano Carpini, 46–47. 2 Reuven Amitai-Preiss, Mongols and Mamluks: the Mamluk-Ī lkhānid War (Cambridge UK: Cambridge UP, 51, 222. 3 The Mongol victory over the Jin at Huan-ehr-tsui (Martin, 141 and 336–37) is an ex- ample of this problem: Muqali led the Mongol Left Wing (perhaps including Kitan or other Jin-frontier heavy cavalry serving the Mongols, such as Muqali led later in his career) in a lance-charge, driving the Jin cavalry into flight, collision with their infantry backers, and devastating defeat. Likewise, the Mongols destroyed the Cuman-Russian army at the Kalka River by chasing ambushed Cumans into the Russian camp. 4 The Center often had a Vanguard ( manglai/ yazak) in front of it, as at Mt. Naqu. Rear Guards ( gegige )are mentioned in RaD, I, 50, 92; in another context, ibid. II, 249, gegige meant a pursuit unit.