mongol bow

Uli · Post by **Uli** » Sat Aug 12, 2006 2:43 pm

Hi everybody,

I found this pic in the internet.
Its cited from a book "the mongol warlords".
Looks really cool, but is this really a bow which existed ?

Uli

Rapsod · Post by **Rapsod** » Sat Aug 12, 2006 2:57 pm

This bow is more crab bow made in india than mongol bow. I saw somewhere
few pictures of crab bows in some museum.

jiao · Post by **jiao** » Sat Aug 12, 2006 6:41 pm

hai , this bow useing by a wrong way? when the bow drawing, the arrows not in the palce of middle handle, the bow string angle too small , when the arrow shooting it will jump up and swing?

MJuingong · Post by **MJuingong** » Sat Aug 12, 2006 7:51 pm

I think Osprey has used that illustration for composite bows in general, in a number of its books.

I have noted that many bows put the "handle" just beneath the center, so that the nocked arrow is in the center of the string, not at the center of the bow. Jiao's question raises a new reason for doing that. [/i]

jack farrell · Post by **jack farrell** » Sun Aug 13, 2006 11:07 pm

This is an old illustration of a crab bow, also appeared in Scientific American, late 1980s but is from an earlier article. The two hands drawing the string look like Laubin's drawings, if I am not mistaken.

My thinking is that a crab bow could look like that strung. -j-

Bede · Post by **Bede** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 12:18 am

You are all right. This illustration is an old one of a variation of the crab bow and has been around for years. The arrow pass should be a little lower since the arrow rests against the narrowest part of the handle.

It appeared also in McEwen's Persian Archery Texts. The bow is unusual because of the angle between the tip and the ridged section is more pronounced than most surviving bows.

It may originally been described as a Mogul bow which is the Farsi word that originally meant Mongol. That could explain the misidentification.