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

Mongol Warfare and the Creation of the Mongol Empire m 149 n cavalry. As the Chaghatay Khan said, “the sword, if it touch, works from point to hilt”. The Ilkhans seem to have attempted improvement of their own heavy cav- alry to counter the Mamluks’. The military paintings of the Rashid 1309 Ms show contemporary Mongol armor and shock weapons on all the combatants in the battle scenes 1 ; government procurement of arms from Persian and Mon- gol craftsmen, and its reform by Ghazan is discussed by Rashid 2 ; and farm land was allotted to soldiers for growing barley as fodder for “fat horses” to carry the armored troopers 3 . Maintenance of “fat horses” on Syrian campaigns was easier than on long marches across empty steppes. Fodder from home bases could be procured right up to the frontier; in 1299, Ghazan brought along 50,000 camels, probably to carry more beyond the border 4 . But in the last war against the Mamluks, in 1312, Öljeitü’s army, after a very leisurely approach, never got beyond the border 5 . As they began to besiege cities, the Mongols, or at least some of them, would soon have been convinced that they needed armor. Although their main role would have been providing archery support for the arrow-fodder 1 Rashid 1309, passim. 2 RaD/G, 336–39 = RaD, III, 749–50. 3 RaD, III, 731ff. 4 Lambton, 23; Vassaf, 373. 5 Abu’l-Q §sim Q§sh§nÊ, T§rÊkh Ö lj§it ü , M. Hambly ed. (Tehran: 1348 [1969]), 142–43; Smith/Lev , 265–66. Fig. 9. An outline of the Mongol cavalrymen from a miniature of Rashid al-Din’s World History, 1314 AD (Or. Ms. 20)