Traveling With a Mongolian Bow

[bat_hawk]

In an original story of mine, I have a character who uses a Mongolian bow (aka composite or recurved bow), and I've gotten almost everything I need to know about them; how they're made, how long it takes to make them, how they look unstrung, the thumb draw, thumb rings, all that good stuff

Comments

[salamandraga]

Most of the books I've read have shown bows in bow cases on the saddle. They can be - and often were - kept strung while in the case. I've got one of the Osprey books about the Mongols and I'll check that just to be sure.

EDIT: Yeah, so the bows were kept strung in cases. A typical warrior would also have one or two extra bows in stored cases and hanging with the rest of his gear. Also the cases could be worn around the belt so the warriors wouldn't have to carry bows in their hands unless they were ready to use them. Their quivers hung around their necks. The book covers 1200-1350 AD so the info fits your time period. The cases were made of leather, presumably lined internally with linen, and decorated according to personal taste with brass or gold or whatever else was available. Most of the other steppe archers used similar cases although the Scythians had a case that incorporated an arrow quiver. If you wanted something unique for a certain character then it's not impossible for a Mongol to have adapted that style of case for his own use. Although it might mean taking the change in shooting form into account since the archer would be reaching around his waist for a new arrow rather than around his neck/back.

[kuriadalmatia]

YMMV with Osprey books. I researched the heck out of Byzantine armor and garb, and found Osprey partially accurate vs. other period sources. Granted, Osprey is one of the few sources out there for some historical periods....

[salamandraga]

Agreed.

Apparently another type of case - which was more or less a leather tube - was used by the Steppe peoples for unstrung bows. There's also an article that explains a bit more.

And another dealing with keeping the bow strung.

[bat_hawk]

Thanks for all that! It's very helpful.

[spartakos]

A bit of an aside, but can I ask if you have any good online resources on Byzantine armor? I'm doing some research on that myself right now.

[kuriadalmatia]

I'm traveling right now and don't have access to my bookmarks. If you don't mind waiting until sunday I could forward you some links.

Off the top of my head, Dumbarton Oaks had some excellent treatises and translated works on their sites.

[spartakos]

Whenever you have time, if you have time. No pressure. :)

And thanks for the tip.

[syntinen_laulu]

The trouble with Osprey books is that Osprey pay their authors so little that the fee just about pays for the time it takes to sit down and bash out the text. If the author already knows all there is to know about the subject, and has all their references and picture sources all on file already, they can write a good reliable book and still end up earning a bit of money. But it's un-economic to do any research specially for the book - if they do that, it's in their own time and at their own expense. So the chances are that they won't, and if there are any areas of the subject that they aren't too sure of they'll just fudge them as best they can.