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

Mongol Warfare and the Creation of the Mongol Empire m 153 n First, [the prince] mounted Tad Ì q Çor’s gray horse (and attacked. There that horse) was killed. Secondly, he mounted I â bara Yamtar’s gray horse and attacked. That horse, (too), was killed there. Thirdly, he mounted Yigän Silig Beg’s dressed bay horse and attacked. That horse, (too), was killed there. They hit (him) with more than one hundred arrows on his armor... (but, he did not let the enemy hit him) even once on his face or head 1 . The Mongols relied so heavily on light cavalry was that ponies, the only equines that could reliably be maintained on the inarable steppe, could not actively carry armored riders, let alone armor for themselves. The horses re- quired for heavy cavalry, perhaps twice a heavy as the average pony, needed fodder to supplement grazing, and fodder required agriculture. 2 The Mon- gols had always desired horses, not just for the sake of armor, although this was an important consideration. As a people who really lived in the saddle, they wanted comfort. Chinggis hoped to “sit [his followers] on fluid paced mounts” 3 . The ordinary ponies of Mongolia, like those that brought Mongol armies to Hungary and Korea, etc., do not have fluid paces. They have rough gaits, the “death trot”, for instance, that constantly jolt the rider, or require standing in the stirrups for prolonged periods, as Mongols learn to do from childhood 4 . 1 Talat Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic (Bloomington IN: Indiana University/Mouton, 1968), 268–269 [some diacritics altered]. The Mongols’ armor, when they could obtain the best available, would have been as effective. 2 A 600-lb. pony should carry only 102 lbs., 17 % of its own weight; a heavy cavalry horse with a 200-lb. load (150 lb. rider and his 50-lb. armor) should weigh about 1200 lbs, and would need almost twice as much food. See Horse , 288. 3 Thomas Allsen’s apt translation of akhtaghan rahvar in Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire (Cambridge UP, 1997), 12 from the Persian of Rashiduddin, Jāmi ’ al-taw §rÊ kh, B Kar Ê m Ê ed. , two vols. (Tehran: Iqbal, 1959–60), I, 439: Steingass’ dictionary gives for rahwar “a quick, easy, ambling-paced horse; a good roadster”. (In RaD, II, 298, Thackston follows a later Chaghatai Turkic version of Rashid’s work.) 4 E.g. Tim Severin, In Search of Genghis Khan (NY: Atheneum, 1992), 44–45; he rode with Mongols who: “urged their horses into a fast, pattering run and then kept up the same blistering pace with no variation ... The runty little horses gave a thoroughly uncomfortable ride. If you sat down firmly in the saddle, you were jolted and rattled...The solution was ... either [to rise] in the stirrups and just [stand] there, for 20 or 30 or 50 miles a day, appar- ently on legs of pure sinew and swaying with the motion of the horse. Or [to sit down in [the] wooden saddles and [relax, go] limp and be shaken up and down like peas on a drum”. Travelling on campaign, however, the Mongol armies proceeded, more comfortably, at the walk; see the Secret History , § 199.