Use siper from whan?

[fusizoli]

Is there any exact date, from turkish archers use siper?
Thaks the answers!

[Bede]

There is a problem dating the origin of the siper. Yucel dates it from documentary evidence to the 18th century, but that may only refer to the latest form of the bilek siperi.

In the Hidayat ar-Rami, dated to 1500, there is a reference to a navak-i qabze which is also a siper in its function. It could be attached to the wrist or the grip of the bow. This is the first Persian reference I have heard of. The same book also had descriptions of different types of arrow guides.

In Turkish, bilek siperi means wrist shield or wrist defence. In Persian, navak-i qabze means grip guide. It is possible that the original siper was merely the groove, oluk, and this corresponds to the navak-i qabze. Perhaps the later refinement of building a protective plate, the tabla, was considered by the old Turkish archers to be a sufficient improvement to warrant a new name. There is an intriguing siper in the Topkapi Museum which is just a flat plate with two raised ridges to contain the arrow and that might have some significance too in the development of the siper.

Another possibility is that the improved siper was introduced into flight shooting in the 18th century and this is the reason that some of the old authors thought is was invented then.

[Gokmen]

We read also that the Ottoman flight archers of the late period said that their ancestors did not use sipers and that their records are unsurpassed.
This raises a lot of questions marks.
Maybe they said that just to praise their ancestors in respect. But maybe it is true, but then I wonder how somebody can outshoot somebody in distance shooting without using a siper. Second questions remains about the time they started using sipers.

[Stephen Selby]

It's recorded in China from the late Ming period (i.e. after 1500), suggesting importation from the Middle East.

[Bede]

Stephen,
What is the literary source of the Ming use of the siper? I knew about majras, but I thought the setback handles of the Ming bows would have ruled out sipers.

[Stephen Selby]

Or was it a majra? Mao Yuanyi "Wu Bei Zhi" Vol. 102 p. 18. But I suspect that the reference by Li Chengfen ('Chinese Archery' p. 291 11C29) is in fact a reference to shooting with the siper.

[Bede]

Reading that section again, it seems very similar to the description of the chang al-baz draw in Taybugha's treatise on archery. This was an unsupported overdraw where the arrow head slid back along the thumb onto the area of skin between the thumb and fore finger.

It required the utmost skill and steadiness. Without total concentration, a slight vibration in the body could send the arrow's tip into the belly of the bow or into the back of the hand. I personally think that the siper was developed to extend and control this kind of draw. Perhaps there was some analogy to the arrow guide used to designing the first siper, but it was not necessary.

I have seen people overdraw by accident and achieve this kind of shot. There is no guaranty which side of the bow the arrow will pass. Anything that improved its reliability would have had users. One question that occurs to me was why use the longer arrows that were required with the siper when the arrow guide was already in use? Some experiments that I did several years ago suggest that arrows of the length of the Turkish flight arrows perform better out of an arrow guide for distance than do the more normal shorter darts. There might be a sweet spot between arrow length, drag, weight and velocity that was discovered by experiment.