Indo-persian bow?

Tawfiq · Post by **Tawfiq** » Sun Nov 13, 2011 10:44 pm

Is this an Indo -persian bow??

PjSingh · Post by **PjSingh** » Sun Nov 13, 2011 11:09 pm

Looks like a mughal crabbow to me.

Tawfiq · Post by **Tawfiq** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 6:49 am

Can these bows be made to work again? I did managed to bring back to life, with some repairs, heat and a pegboard, an old Manchurian horn bow I bought in an auction ( listed early 19th century). Actually very surprising flexibility much better than the presently made Manchurian horn bow I have and certainly lighter and faster! I must say it was my second try at reviving an antique one, the first such bow I broke

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But the shape of the present bow is really daunting and has made me think twice about trying to do the same.

Has anybody tried it?

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 1:43 pm

Is this bow not too valuable to attempt to revive? It is a near perfect piece of art right now. Why try?

Show the decoration please.

Tawfiq · Post by **Tawfiq** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 8:26 pm

jack farrell wrote:Is this bow not too valuable to attempt to revive? It is a near perfect piece of art right now. Why try?

Show the decoration please.

Well perhaps you are right, or at least it looks better than some art works I have seen lately. As you can see from the detail the bow is really very simply decorated. Not made for the elites. Last year in an exhibition of the Agha Khans collection here in Madrid there was a very elegant Qajar bow with some very detailed figurative decoration. I took some not very good pictures, if you are interested I will send them to you off line.[/url]

Dusan · Post by **Dusan** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 8:36 pm

please , show all your pics !

. Your Crab look in very good condition , and maybe you can try string him. I dont do it personaly , but i know that Lukas Novotny do it vith old hornbows vith succesful.
Anyvay if bow was mine- i dont do it...

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 9:17 pm

A kind of country decoration; not decorated in a big city site. But the bow is very sophisticated. Well, all crab bows are. My view is that all these crab bows were for elite persons of the status of a knight or equivalent. Commoners used wood and bamboo/laminated bows. Find my email on the first page of the member list. And thanks ahead of time. I will not share your pics.

PS; you have taken on the upkeep of a valuable piece of history. Preserve it as the venerable old thing that it is. If you want to see old crab bows which were pressed into service, just peruse the Grayson collection.

Kviljo · Post by **Kviljo** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 10:44 pm

That one has a real nice shape. I'm with the rest of the atarnites. Old bows like this one deserve the most respect we can possibly give them. They are the information-capsules of horn-bowyery that will tell future hornbow makers how these bows were made. And in the meantime they function as very interesting decoration. I hope to own one myself some day.

If one ever considered bracing such an old bow, which I think would lessen the value of the item even if it was made to shoot, I would expect the finish and decoration to crack and flake off.

Thanks for sharing the photos!

Tawfiq · Post by **Tawfiq** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 11:43 pm

Well, I have been advised and after all that has been said I don?t think I will ever dare try to brace the said bow.
I have posted another crab bow in my collection of a different shape which I bought when I was a poor student in London in 1970. I had not the slightest idea what a horn bow was then but I found the object fascinating and put my meager savings in it. The decoration is finer than the previous one and it feels like much more powerful instrument. It came with some four thin bamboo arrows with inordinately large knocks indicating the use of a very thick bow string.

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Tue Nov 15, 2011 2:53 am

Looks like those four little thin arrows are the real thing- war arrows with armor piercing points. So in your little collection you have come upon some of the finest quality horn bows ever made; Indo-Persian.

Look closely at the arrows, rarely are they not decorated with equally well done crestings (painting under the fletch area).

Tawfiq · Post by **Tawfiq** » Tue Nov 15, 2011 2:09 pm

Decoration of last bow and what seems to be a signature on one of the ends. Arabic script but cannot decifer it. Could be Persian or Urdu?

No painting evident on the arrows but will send other pictures latter.

Tawfiq · Post by **Tawfiq** » Tue Nov 15, 2011 8:19 pm

Rest of the arrow pictures.
Of note is the thinness of the bamboo shaft, a little less 6mm. diameter the thin ones to 7mm. the thicker one.

Also very interesting are the extraordinarily large wooden knocks (what wood or root is it that did not crack under such stress?). These wide knocks would also indicative of a very thick string at least in the knocking point. I have always considered in my limited experience the thicker string, though slower, as more stable. An important factor to consider in these powerful, very small, light and nervous bows. Also a very thick string at that point would help explain the bare, unprotected, thumb draw some chronicle advocates as the most efficient!

One can clearly observe that there is a relatively very long binding of sinew after the knock and all along even looking with a 10x magnifying-glass there is absolutely no the slightest mark indicating that they ever had feathers on them. When shooting at close range the feathers just have not the distance needed to begin to function. At home I am obliged due to space limitation to shoot at 15 meters and the feathers at that distance are a useless bother so taking a hint from these arrows I have long used bare shafts. At this close a distance the stability is much better achieved by a heavier point than by feathers, of course a clean thumb release also helps.

On the Persian miniatures the mounted hunter is usually depicted as tensing the bow right above his pray. I think feathers would be absolutely useless that close.

Ps. Note that two of the arrows were repaired in their time with sinew binding and probably a small shaft inside. Such a repair indicates that arrows, even broken ones, had their value.

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Wed Nov 16, 2011 1:15 am

Stefan; The sinewing about the nocks does not look original else it would be extremely smooth. Indeed it often takes quite an examination to see the sinew at all, always, as I have observed, painted. I also see quite a bit of recycling of arrows, re painting and etc.

Now follow this, if you respond with a thoughtful response, you will be the first in a decade on atarn to follow the argument. Many IP arrows have been intentionally spliced at a place just slightly forward of the fletching. This splice consists of a tapered socket in the main shaft and a tenon made from a specially compressed precut fletch section. The reason to compress (maybe a heated or boiled tenon) is to preserve the surface grain which is stronger than the inner grain. If the fletch section is merely, say, plugged and then tapered, the splice is no stronger, maybe even weaker, than an unspliced shaft.

By the method I describe, the spliced section is made of two overlapping pieces of SURFACE GRAIN BAMBOO. Why all the work?

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Wed Nov 16, 2011 1:22 am

Oh yes, the Arabic inscription is a magnificent touch. There is a clever Atarnite who can translate.

daryush · Post by **daryush** » Wed Nov 16, 2011 1:49 pm

Tawfiq, would you mind posting a larger / higher resolution picture of the writing?

Right now there's a patch of light shining over one of the letters, and I can't quite make out some of it (it looks like either the Diwani calligraphic style, or not-so-great penmanship). Maybe a better picture might help.