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

m 146 n John Masson Smith, Jr. some 65 of the low-manpower, long-ranged, heavy-missile counterweighted catapults. Besides catapults, Hülegü had over-sized Chinese crossbows (the Romans’ arcuballista ), mounted on a stand or cart: 1 “a kaman-i-gav [“ox’s bow”] , which had been constructed by Khitayan craftsmen and had a range of 2,500 [ gâm ], was brought to bear on those fools [the Assassins in Maymun Diz] ... and ... many soldiers were burnt by those meteoric shafts” 2 . “ Gâm can mean foot, cubit , step, or pace 3 . But foot is the only remotely plausible one here: a gâm of 12 inches would make the range of this “oxbow” 833 yards, about a half- mile — nearly twice as far as any recorded arcuballista shot 4 . Siege warfare was dangerous. Assault troops were exposed to the missiles of better-positioned and -protected defenders, and the whole besieging army was exposed to disease. Qubilai lost eight tümens out of ten attacking Yauju 5 , Com- pensating for these hazards were the Mongols’ practice of using arrow-fodder and non-Mongol subject soldiers for the worst work, and the demographic re- ality that the best fortifications were the products of the most populous socie- ties, which also provided the most arrow-fodder. China was certainly the best protected, but it also gave Möngke 66 tümens of “Jauqut” (Chinese, etc.) troops to draw upon for his Song war 6 , and Qubilai 80 tümens of Chinese for his 7 , Conversely, ditches, stockades and earthworks — what a Hungarian scholar has termed “mudpies ... called castles” defended population centers in Russia and eastern Europe and proved very vulnerable to siegecraft honed in China and Khwarezmia 8 . 1 Such crossbows ordinarily had an effective range, according to Franke, 166–67, of about 200 yards, similar to that of the counterweighted catapult, and about twice that of a hand- drawn war-bow; Hülegü’s may have been different. 2 Juvaini, II, 631. Boyle translates gâm as “pace”. For the name “ox-bow”, compare the limbs of a multiple “composite crossbow” illustrated in Franke, p. 162, with the bows of ox- harness in the fourteenth century paintings in Eighteen Songs of a Nomad Flute: the Story of Lady Wen-chi (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art,1974) ), [no pagination; hereinafter Nomad Flute ], scenes 16–18. Operation of the “composite crossbow” is explained in Need- ham, op.cit. , 194–95, figs. 63- 64. 3 Steingass F. Persian-English dictionary. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957. P. 1072. 4 Needham, op.cit. , 192–93 offers a range of ca. 500 yards. It has been suggested that this catapult’s missile — a “meteoric shaft”, according to Juvaini, II, 631, was rocket-assisted: Smith, “Heartbreak”, 127–28. 5 RaD, II, 415. 6 RaD, II, 414–15. 7 Rashiduddin Fazlullah, Jāmi ‘ al-Tawār Ê kh: Compendium of Chronicles, J. A. Boyle trans, 271; Thackston’s translation (RaD) lacks this passage. 8 Fügedi E. Castle and Society in Medieval Hungary, 1000–1437 (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1986), 45. It has been suggested, in J. M. Smith, Jr., “Obstacles to the Mongol