... the fashion of Persian cavalry and Persian dogs ...
Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia. 1856. Тут, тут и тут.
Нужный фрагмент относится к 1835 году. Описывается со страницы 323.
Коммунальная разборка у курдов.
8th Moharrem. This morning Bala Khan, Meer Sedr-ud-deen, Meerza Rāmezān, Meerza Ghaffār, and a number of inferior people, called on me to devise means for preserving the peace. They were evidently in great alarm, and said that they looked to me to prevent violence, as the Hyderees had called in aid from the surrounding villages by orders of Nejeff Koolee Khan, and had sworn vengeance against the Niametees to-day. I told them all I could do was to offer advice, to which no one seemed disposed to listen. My Turkish teacher from Tabreez was in a great fright, and proposed that we should mount our horses, and take an excursion into the country; for, said he, "I perceive there will be a row, and they may perhaps attack us."
Before noon the Hyderees assembled in great force on their own ground and on the tops of the houses, where they shouted, and bellowed, and abused, without cessation or compunction, the mothers and wives of the Niametees, who remained quiet and silent in their houses. Encouraged by this, the Hyderees advanced and took possession of a Niametee mosque, and a detachment advanced over the tops of the houses to where I was living, and began slinging stones into my courtyard. "Kiupek Oghleeler, you sons of dogs!" shouted my ferocious cook, Gool Mahommed; "how dare you insult an English gentleman?" "Bilmadiq Wallāh-We did not know it," was the submissive reply as they retired.
9th Moharrem. This morning early Nejeff Koolee Khan, Bala Khan, and several other people of both parties, called on me. Ismāël Khan and Imam Koolee Khan, two chiefs from the neighbouring villages, and both Niametees, having heard of the jeopardy of their faction yesterday, had come to their assistance with their followers. The Hajee was an aq seqqāl, or white-beard; the other was a stout, wild, and ferocious-looking fellow. Each party tried to impress me with the opinion that they were very pacific, and that the other party alone was to blame. After much talking they took leave, and soon after we heard loud yells of Shakhsye. We went out, and saw a body of 200 or 300 men, advancing over the plain, on seeing whom the Niametees went out to Istikbald, and ushered them into the town with shouts and antics, standards, and flags flying. Each man had a large stick, and a piece of carpet or old coat to keep off the stones. With yells and screams they took post near the mosque, in line of battle opposite to the Hyderees, who mustered strong, but seemed depressed. The latter got ready for action by taking off their coats, and wrapping them round their left arms. Both parties now shouted and yelled, and fast and furious flew from side to side epithets which it is needless to transcribe. They defied each other by dancing a figure meant for a challenge. They threw their caps in the air, flinging their sticks after them, and then took a leap with a yell. I thought for a moment I had thrown off a dozen years of life, and that once more I was standing in a glen of the Galtees; but I soon awoke from my dream, for the accents were not those of Tipperary, but of Alp Arselan, Chengeez, and Timour. At last the fight began in earnest, and we had a good view from the top of a house. After some time two Niametees were carried off badly wounded; a Hyderee was knocked down, and a party rushed at him to kill him, but the intercession of Meer Sedr-ood-deen saved his life. After an uproar and fight of two hours a Niametee got a blow on the head from a stone, which knocked him dead. Nevertheless the Niametees gained the day, for they drove back the Hyderees to the bazar, which they sacked, as being chiefly filled with the property of that obnoxious party. Each side seemed to muster about 400 men. They fought in detached squads, very much after the fashion of Persian cavalry and Persian dogs [12]. When one party made an advance the other retired, and so on alternately, something like the boys' game of prison-bars. The death of the man seemed to frighten both factions, for they gradually withdrew from the field.
On my return home in the afternoon of the same day I witnessed a curious and amusing trait of Persian character. An old villager ran up to me, crying, "You are welcome. You are welcome. I am your sacrifice. I have a petition to make to your service. I want justice, and you have come, by the help of the Prophet, to give it to me. I have got a wife, the mother of eight children. A week ago I gave her a drubbing, and she ran off to her own village. Her friends, instead of restoring my wife, are going to make me pay the dowry and force me to divorce her. This is most contrary to equity, and against the law, and I make this petition in your service that I may receive justice." On inquiring the cause of disagreement, he replied that, having bought her eight yards of beautiful English chintz, she abused him, and called him son of a dog for purchasing less than twelve: thereupon he had beaten her soundly with the halter of his bullock. In the skirmish she had pulled out a part of his beard. "Here it is," said he, producing it from his pocket, "and I shall exhibit it against her, after my death, at the day of judgment." A Persian invariably preserves these memorials of his brawls and grievances, to be brought in evidence against the aggressor at the time mentioned above. I remember a servant of the Mission, in a fit of excitement from a reprimand he had received from me, pulling out of his pocket, carefully rolled up in numerous coverings of linen, a tooth which, many years before, one of my predecessors had dislodged from its tenement under great provocation. He was keeping it for the rooz-kiamet, the day of judgment.
It may seem strange that a man whose position was simply that of a regimental captain in the Indian army should have been so often appealed to by both parties in a matter not only not military but purely religious. The answer is plain. Both parties knew well that any report I might make would be exactly in conformity with truth, or what I believed as such, and that the testimony of an English officer would be decisive.
...
12. It is highly amusing to witness a combat between two parties of the numerous dogs residing near the slaughterhouses outside the walls of a Persian city. They live in communities of 40 or 50 in a pack, 80 or 100 yards distant from each other. Some fresh offal brings on a feud. Four or five dogs rush out as if to assault the opposite party, but gradually diminishing the pace as they approach. Seeing this slackness, six or eight of the enemy sally forth, the former retreat at full speed, and the same takes place on the other side, and so on backwards and forwards without ever coming to close quarters, the noncombatants howling and yelling furiously all the time. The Koords fight in exactly the same manner; at least their mock combats, no doubt a true representation of real battles, are so conducted. I remember once ridiculing a Koordish chief for this harmless mode of fighting, telling him that European cavalry, when good on both sides, charged home in a line, and that the Koords ought to do the same. That would never do, said he, "Kheilee adam kooshteh mee shewed" - a great many people would be killed.
Для сравнения - "игра в войну" у казачат в "Уральцах". И у индейцев-манданов.
С одной стороны - занятна параллель. Стычка пеших в общих чертах не отличается от битвы всадников. С другой - кто немного интересовался тем, что называют "примитивной войной", скорее всего увидел много знакомого. Довольно типичная "большая битва". Упор на метательный бой - не потому, что он наиболее "убийственен", а наоборот - как избегание кровавого ближнего боя. Много ора и беготни - мало крови. Ориентация не на максимизацию потерь противника - а на минимизацию своих.
Складывается впечатление, что можно сделать основную массу участников конными стрелками, можно - дротометами, можно легкие неметательные пики выдать, можно добавить несколько десятков процентов панцирной конницы - а "общий образ действия" толком и не поменяется ... Тут, имхо, наличие сильной власти, которая способна бросить две массы воинов в "съемный бой", в котором "a great many people would be killed", может на тактике сказаться куда как радикальнее. Вариант - формирование "героического этоса" у какой-нибудь социальной группы, который бы требовал "доводить дело до решительного столкновения".
It is a fine sight to see a body of 300 or 400 Koordish cavalry in movement proceeding on a chapow or marauding expedition. They move in a compact body, making great way over the ground, at a pace half-walk, half-trot, like the Afghans; their spears are held aloft with the black tuft dangling below the point; their keen looks, loud eager voices, and guttural tones, give them a most martial air. In front are the chiefs, and by their side are the kettledrummers beating their instruments of war with vast energy; they always lead the way.
