Graspheight on the handle of an Ottoman Turkish bow?

[Amarutu]

Hello Atarnos,

I am these days thinking about how to grasp the Ottoman Turkish (target-) bow.
I have 2,5 sources so far, to get ideas.

1. The Art of Shooting a short reflexed bow with a thumbring by Adam Swoboda
2. Saracen Archery by Latham and Paterson
3. Bogensport bei den Osmanen by Joachim Hein (German "version" of Kanis Telhis-i resail ir-r?mat)

Are there additional sources, helping in this case, for Ottoman Turkish target shooting with the long arrow and without musamma?


Swoboda shows techniques, where you grasp the full handle, and leave just a fingers breadth space for the arrow. This seems to be from Saracen Archery, because he quotes this book a lot in the grasping chapter.
Saracen Archery shows these techniqes as well.
Hein/Kani describes to put the loose skin between the base of the indexfinger should be drawn towards the middle of the palm, and then be pressed to the middle of the handle.

My confusion startet with parts of Arab Archery where its author wrote in the end of section 4, that the positions of the middle of the bow is different in Persian/Turkish and Arab bows, and in section 32, that the bow with equal limbs has the middle of the bow in the middle of the grip (fits to Turkish), and the bow with slightly longer upper siyah and sal has the middle of the bow one third below the top of the grip (fits to the Indopersian bow in Saracen Archery).

The author also wrote, you can only shoot properly with a bow whose central point is two fingers below the top of the grip. which is around a quarter.
All grasping techniques in Arab Archery are somehow like a fist, with the arrow on top of the thumb.

In Saracen Archery the Indopersian bow with its given measurements has its central point at the third mentioned in Arab Archery. I think the (new?) falcon talons grip is the solution for the fault mentioned in Arab Archery. The grasp in Saracen A. is still below the "neck of the handle", like in Arab techniques, only the arrow lies one fingers breadth deeper, because the thumb now rests on the middle finger instead of the index finger with the falcon talons grasp.

With the central point even deeper on a Turkish bow, I think the technique mentioned by Kani/Hein is the solution for an even lower central point in the Grip. While you are only grasping the handle with middle-, ring- and little finger, you put these only need the lower half of the bulbous rounding of the backside of the grip to grasp the handle, and don't have to worry about the upper part.
If I do so with my Grozer TRH Turkish bow, I have the arrow in line with the middle of the Grip and bow. Shooting arrows with this bowhand technique works well.

Any ideas or opinions to this?

Oh, everyone loves photos: This is what I do. The stingray leather was my arrowpass when I grasped my bow like in Saracen Archery. I just took care of the arrangement of the fingers on the handle, so my wrist is more stretched then in normal shooting, because I made these pictures myself and I had to do some "yoga" to get this all on the photo.






Sorry if this is all confused, I still am so myself a little.

[Gokmen]

Hi,

in Turkish archery the arrow does not pass in the middle of the grip (kabza).
Between kabza and sal (working part of bow arm), there is a narrow part called 'tir ge?imi', the arrow pass. Because it is thinner than kabza and sal, the archer's paradox is minimized as well. Besides you see in all miniatures that the arrow doesnt lie in the middle of the kabza.
best
G?kmen

[Amarutu]

Thank You very much, G?kmen, for your comment. Yes, your grasp works well, too. It is mentioned in nearly every book on Turkish archery.

I still have a few questions:

Is the name, of the narrow part of the Grip, called 'tir gecimi', really mean something like arrow-pass? If I machine-translate it via google-translator, all results are weird.

Are the mentioned miniatures images of warriors?


As far as I know the Turkish bow, it hast its limbs totally equal. In length, strength, width, construction and curvation. Its handle is in the exact middle of the bow. If I grasp the handle in the middle, and pull on the middle of the bowstring, both limbs are equally stressed.
With a grasp, below the 'tir ge?imi', one stresses the upper limb more, than the lower one. The results of this, I see, are a turning motion in the handle, resulting in a need to grasp the bow very firm and still reducing the accuracy of the arrow in height. And the upper limb is bend more, so it has a longer way back to brace-height, resulting in no harmonic acceleration of the arrow.
Aren't these two points flaws?

Luckily one can compensate these with the shown grasp. Wouldn't it be "better" then? You can compensate two flaws with the other grip, and only have to use more flexible arrows to compensate the thicker middle of the handle.

[Bede]

There is a problem with the drawings in Saracen Archery. After reading Adam Swoboda's book, since I had some questions, I looked at the text and drawings of SA again and found that the artist did not follow the texts very closely. The falcon talons grip is not accurately reproduced though the written description matches the Persian texts I have been looking at.

The minor asymmetry of the bows in Arab Archery and Saracen Archery could be archaic at the times they were written. I have looked at many grips and they tend to come in a small range of sizes depending on what type of bow. Gokmen has the best approach. The tir gecimi is easily found by its narrowness. Indo-Persian, Persian and Turkish bows have it. Since the bows are symmetrical, the narrowing occurs at the top and bottom of the grip. This means that the lower one can be used as the seat of your little finger if you have the right sized hand. For most people this is not so. In the falcon's grip or when using a siper, the area of main pressure against the belly of the grip is the flesh between the base of the thumb and the index finger. On a small Turkish grip the chelik is covered by this part of the hand to let the arrow cross the bow at the tir gecimi since it is sitting on or slightly above (with a siper) the metacarpal bone at the base of the the thumb.

The odd translations probably stem from the meanings of the words in modern Turkish. Tir is the Persian word for arrow and it probably passed into Turkish as a synonym for the Turkish word, ok, very early in Turkish history. It has many meanings aside from arrow. Ge?im likewise has many modern meanings, but it can mean support.

[Gokmen]

Just looking up the terminology in Telhis-i Resailat-i; Rumat from Mustafa Kani Bey.

Page 327 (98a), in the original document Musataf bey writes: the place where the sal and kabza meets, we (the Turks) call it 'tir ge?imi' and 'kabza bogazi;', the Arabs say 'ser-kebed-i kavs.

Tir is farsi for arrow, 'ge?mek' is the Turkish verb for 'passing'. Ge?imi; or ge?im is the nound, so arrow pass literally translated.
'Kabza boğazı', kabza is the grip. boğaz is Turkish for 'neck', so a place that goes narrower on both sides. The bosphorus is called 'Istanbul neck' by the Turks as an example.

G?kmen

[Bede]

Gokmen is right. I was mixed up with the other noun ge?im (upkeep).

The Arabic kabid al-qaws means the heart of the bow or the centre of the bow and in Arabic texts this is explained by saying the upper limb and the upper part of the handle are one half the bow while the rest of the handle and the lower limb constitute the other half. Therefore in the Arabic texts, the arrow pass equals the centre of the bow, but this is not true in the later Turkish and Persian bows where the arrow pass is about two finger widths above the geometric centre of the bow. However, when the bows changed shape the old words were still used.

[Amarutu]

Hehe ... Farsi ... yeah, that was way too easy to think about ... damn.
Thank you both for your comments. These informations really helped!

Based on these infos I have changed my grasp again .. .and again ... and found a working grasp for me, with the arrow at the tir gecimi. And yes, after eliminating the forward turning motion by letting the handle cant a little to me, shooting became more accurate then before and with my grasp shown here.