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

Mongol Warfare and the Creation of the Mongol Empire m 151 n have few arms apart from their bows and arrows and leather garments. I saw them being presented with iron plates and helmets from Persia, and I also saw two men who appeared before Mangu [Möngke Qan] armed with tunics made of curved pieces of stiff leather, which were very clumsy and cumbersome 1 . The scanty heavy cavalry was provided by rich Mongols who could afford bespoke or imported armor: “the wealthy ... have swords … and … a horse with armour; their legs also are covered and they have helmets and cuirasses…” 2 . Most of it was probably the leather sort Rubruck mentions and Plano Carpini de- scribes, as it could be made from available animal and forest products by simple procedures: [T]hey take strips of ox-hide, or of the skin of another animal, a hand’s breadth wide and cover three or four together with pitch, and they fasten them with leather thongs or cord; in the upper strip they put the lace at one end, in the next they put it in the middle and so on to the end; consequently, when they bend, the lower strips come up over the upper ones and thus there is a double or triple thickness over the body 3 . Metal armor could be made by similar procedures, but was not as easily produced, until the conquest of countries, especially Persia and China, with 1 Rubruck/D, 210–211, reporting his inquiry of 1254. Polo (1980), 99 likewise reports that "[The Mongols] wear an armour of buffalo hide or some other leather which is very tough”. 2 Plano Carpini D, 33. The pictorial record shows Mongol heavy cavalry, armored (but no horse’s armor, “bards”) and with various shock weapons as well as archery gear, al- most to the exclusion of the numerically and tactically far more important light cavalry, glimpsed in a painting (MS Diez A, fol. 70) of, probably, the crucial event in the battle of Wadi al-Khaznadar, won by the Mongols in 1299, in which their dismounted and, with one exception, unarmored men, buffered by their ponies running loose in front of them, shoot attacking Mamluks: see Phillips, plate 20 [picture reversed]; also Ipş Ì roğlu, pl. 9 [not reversed]. For horse-armor (bard) in East Asia before and after the Mongols, see Nomad Flute , illustration for the first poem, depicting pre-Mongol Kitan/Liao equipment (note the barded ponies); and LaRocca, 99, pl. 26 of a panoply for man and horse, mostly of post-Mongol Tibetan pieces, in the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds (UK). 3 Plano Carpini 1966: 33. This description should be read alongside the armor illustrations of the Rashid 1309.