Three new quivers

[mongolianarcher]

The bows pictured in the illustrations are beautiful. What period are they depicting?

[Bede]

Here is a link to the parts of the manuscript in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/shnm/hd_shnm.htm. The manuscript was painted in Tabriz in the 1520s and represents Safavid Persian fashions in weapons and armour. Swords and pieces of armour survive from this period as do some signed and dated bows in Iranian collections. The quiver styles influenced Ottoman Turkish quivers and some have that unique leading edge shape. I don't know of any that have survived with the scalloped top of the outside pocket with the bud shaped cut out. In another painting of about 1547, quivers are shown with the cut out curving left or right. Even in the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp, the top profile of the outside pocket varies: in some cases representing different shapes and in others just an artistic distortion of the basic shape.

[mongolianarcher]

Would this be an example, Bede, of how the Persians started to adopt longer draws in the Safavid and Qajar periods?

[Bede]

From what I have seen, in different parts of Iran you can find long and short draws. Long draws have a history in Iran going back before the Sasanians. However, it might be well to consider what is meant by a long draw. To me, at 166 cm tall, a 28 to 31 inch arrow is a long draw to the lobe of the ear or just beyond. At 32 to 33 inches, I am drawing as far as a Manchu archer. On the other hand taller people would find 32 inches a draw to the lobe of the ear. It is possible that while the relative draw length stayed roughly the same, as people increased in height, the physical length of arrows increased.

In the Safavid and later Qajar periods, increasing numbers of ghulams were recruited from Georgia in the Caucasus and they started to replace the Turkmen Qizilbash soldiers in the army. It is possible that arrow length increased because archers were taller in the later periods. This is excluding cases where shorter draws would have been normal. Wearing certain types of helmets would have constrained how far you could safely draw your arrow and still have a rear anchor point. I think this is one of the reasons for shorter draws. Drawing to the front edge of the earpiece of your helmet might have been one solution. When earpieces were discarded, I more natural draw would have been easier.

[mongolianarcher]

You're so right Bede. I am over 6'2" and to draw to just 28" to me is torture since it is barely at my lip, and 32" draw is just at the corner of my jaw "where the beard ends" (in Saracen archery terms). So I can understand what you mean when it comes to body structure.

So the ghulams from Georgia and Caucasus mountains(so by this I guess you mean Georgians and Armenians?) were taller than your average Turk? Is there ancestry different because I thought both are "Turkic"? Besides, I believed that the older, "Aryan"-descended Persians of Iran and Afghanistan who look Caucasian are from the same descent as the Georgians and Armenians (or the Armenians at least since Armenians speak an Indo-European language)...would Turks just be a descendant of the Caucasian peoples and the Georgians and Armenians more of their cousins?

[geoarcher]

There's actually been ample genetic studies done over the years focusing on autosomal components of one's 23 chromosomes. I've actually had my DNA done recently and one's autosomal dna can be broken down into several components.

Regarding 'Turkic' vs. Caucus DNA, the way to think of modern day Anatolian Turks is that they have a very similar genetic structure to Caucus folk like Armenians except that they have a very real 'Altaic' component to them at 8-15%. Most Turkic people who invaded 'West Asia' (aka n. Middle East/Anatolia-Caucuses) have a genetic structure similar to this since they admixed with local populations. Naturally, its different among Turkic people like Yakuts who lack 'West Asian' genes, but have a genetic structure that's almost strictly 'Altaic'. Here's a spreadsheet from one of the DNA calculators that does this type of analysis for further clarification:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... i=1#gid=24

Most people of 'West Asia' have strong West Asian genes in general, but the Turkic ethnicities of the area will have a slightly different genetic structure but not entirely. These links may help as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_hi ... er_Studies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_people#Genetics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkificat ... nd_Balkans

[Bede]

Historic accounts mention the Georgians and Circassians as being noticeably tall. The Turks and Turkmen of the 15th and 16th century were probably not as integrated into the Middle Eastern genetic strains as they are today. Once nomadism was suppressed and the great population boom of the late nineteenth century and twentieth century took its course, things changed.

However, there are other effects than genetics. The diets of the nomads and the mountaineers (like the Georgians and Armenians) may have affected their heights. Also the problem with relying on contemporary accounts is that the unusual stood out and no one was trying for an accurate statistical study. It may have been the slave buyers picked tall children to be soldiers. It might also have been that travellers remembered the most impressive people.

It is without doubt that there was a wide variation in height and built due to normal population variation aided by the complex ethnic map of Anatolia and Iran. That height has an influence of preferred arrow length is also demonstrable. The linguistic map of the Caucasus is really rich and complex. The Georgians, Abkhazians and Circassians spoke related languages, while the Ossetians and Armenians spoke Indo-European languages and the Turks and Turkmen spoke related Altaic languages. It is unfortunate that "Causcasian" is used as a physical description, a linguistic family and a geographical locator since they do not always overlap.

[geoarcher]

Here's a little more regarding the demographic impacts that Turkic people had on the Near East:

Byzantine authorities routinely conducted large-scale population transfers in an effort to impose religious uniformity and the Greek language. After the subordination of the First Bulgarian Empire in 1018, for instance, much of its army was resettled in Eastern Anatolia. The Byzantines were particularly keen to assimilate the large Armenian population. To that end, in the eleventh century, the Armenian nobility were removed from their lands and resettled throughout western Anatolia. An unintended consequence of this resettlement was the loss of local military leadership along the eastern frontier, opening the path for the inroads of Turkish invaders. Beginning in the eleventh century, war with Turks led to the deaths of many in the native population, while others were enslaved and removed. As areas became depopulated, Turkic nomads moved in with their herds.

Once an area had been conquered, and hostilities had ceased, agricultural villagers may have felt little inconvenience with the arrival of these pastoralists, since they occupied different ecological zones within the same territory. Turkic pastoralists remained only a small minority, however, and the gradual Turkification of Anatolia was due less to in-migration than to the conversion of many Christians to Islam, and their adoption of the Turkish language. The reasons for this conversion were first, the weak hold Greek culture had on much of the population, and second, the desire by the conquered population to "retain its property or else to avoid being at a disadvantage in other ways." One mark of the progress of Turkification was that by the 1330s, place names in Anatolia had changed from Greek to Turkish.

The Turkish nation took shape in the centuries of Seljuk and Ottoman power. The nomadic Turkish conquerors did not displace the original local inhabitants: Hellenized Anatolians (or simply Greeks), Armenians, people of Caucasian origins, Kurds, Assyrians and ? in the Balkans ? Slavs, Albanians and others. They intermarried with them, while many local people converted to Islam and 'turned Turk'. They were joined by Muslims from the lands north of the Black Sea and the Caucasus, by Persian craftsmen and Arab scholars, and by European adventurers and converts, known in the West as renegades. As a result, the Turks today exhibit a wide variety of ethnic types. Some have delicate Far Eastern, others heavy local Anatolian features, some, who are descended from Slavs, Albanians or Circassians, have light complexions, others are dark-skinned, many look Mediterranean, others Central Asian, many appear Persian. A numerically small, but commercially and intellectually important, group is descended from converts from Judaism. One can hear Turks describe some of their fellow countrymen as 'hatchet-nosed Lazes' (a people on the Black Sea coast), 'dark Arabs' (a term which includes descendants of black slaves), or even 'fellahs'. But they are all Turks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkificat ... n_Anatolia

[mongolianarcher]

It would seem natural that the Turks assimilated into the local populace once they conquered. And the latter part of that second quote about the mixtures of the races made me laugh, "fellas"

I can attest to this because I did my autosomal DNA test as well and I found out that among other ethnicities, that I am 23% Western European and 30% Italy/Greece and this would make sense since my mother is descendent of Spain via Puerto Rico. And, as we all know, the Iberian Peninsula was settled by Celts(Western Europeans) and invaded by Visigoths and the Romans and (not last but not least) the Moors.
So naturally, invasions and genetic mixes is a part of world history and also demographics

[Joomong]

Nvm. Wrong post.