Help me identify an asiatic bow

bowyer tom · Post by **bowyer tom** » Fri Feb 29, 2008 12:32 pm

I was invited to Skokloster Museum, Stockholm, Sweden, where I had the oppurtunity to study 21 bows of asiatic(Turkish) origin. The bows were taken by Swedish Commander Nils Bielke after the battle of Mohacs 1687. The battle was a turningpoint for the expanding Ottoman empire. 20 of the bows are identifyable as being turkish, but this one stand out...

It is 122 cm between the nocks. 50 mm at the widest point and the saiyahs(sayiatan plur.???) are 27 cm long, meassured from the angle. It is covered in painted birch-bark.
Does anyone have a well estimated idea about its origin?

click to enlarge

Alex S. · Post by **Alex S.** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 2:20 am

I am not really good at identifying horn bows but this one looks Chinese in origin to me...... How ever, this bow seems kinda short for Chinese but I'm not sure.

Is that white horn on the belly?

bowyer tom · Post by **bowyer tom** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 1:46 pm

I?m not sure weather it is white buffalo horn or if it is horn from som other cattle. The belly is however very light in colour...
The bows as they hang since end of 1600... Questioned bow is #2 from top

click to enlarge

Bede · Post by **Bede** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 9:48 pm

There is at least one Qing style quiver captured at the siege of Vienna in 1683. There is some reason to believe from this that people using Manchu equipment were present in the Turkish army. They may have been Mongols (maybe Dzungars) who had fled the Manchu expansion in Central Asia. I have never seen any documentation of this aside from recording the artifacts. When the Torghut returned to Xinjiang they brought Turkish-style bow cases and quivers, so some may have interacted with the Ottoman Empire while they were in the west.

Peter Dekker · Post by **Peter Dekker** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 4:26 pm

Hi,

It is amazing how good the bow still looks, and great that you know where it came from. Seeinng it without knowing it's provenance, I would have never dared dating it so early!

The bow indeed appears to be of Manchu origin. Their bow design got to dominate large parts of Central Asia from some point, I still find it hard to pinpoint exactly when this happened but it was probably before 1687 and possibly even before their founding of the Qing dynasty.

I also have a Manchu bow with "golden horn" belly, it is rare but sometimes found among Manchu bows. Other animal's horns generally don't come large enough to make these huge limbs out of.

Possible Dzungar refugees make sense, but the Dzungars and Qing didn't really fight until 1690. Still, I agree that many nomadic people carrying Manchu equipment of something based / related to theirs may well have reached the Ottoman empire and joined their forces.

In 1687 the Qing was still largely occupied in campaigns against the Russians near the Amur river (later resulting in the treatise of Nerchinsk) and fighting the Three Feudatories in Southern China.

Bede, do you have pictures of this particular quiver? I would be very interested in seeing it.

-Peter

Peter Dekker · Post by **Peter Dekker** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 4:29 pm

By the way, how thick are the limbs mid-limb? This looks to be a pretty strong bow, probably exceeding 100 pounds of draw.

-Peter

bowyer tom · Post by **bowyer tom** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 12:16 pm

Hi there...
The bow is a very powerfull bow for sure. I didnt have a caliper when I visited the museum, just my tape meassure. I was only given two hours to examine the bows, so I just did a sort of general inspection. I?m going back in may, and then I will do a total meassure of four-five of the best kept bows. As far as I know it is aruond 9-11 mm thick midlimb. It is 45 mm wide at the same point.

I was confused that all the bows were exceptionally beautiful. Not blackish grey as I remember turkish war bows to be. The possible explanation is that Gen. Bielke was famed for being very eastethic (how does that spell???). Obviously he loved beautiful things and a lot of swedens treassures, such as silver items, marble sculptures, matts and silk gobelains, now on the national museum was once traded or looted by Gen. Bielke and brought back to the King.

I can very well imagine Bielke selecting only the most stunning bows after the battle and bringing them back to his mansion.

One of the bows have been hastidly repaired after being cracked. Sinew has been laminated in a thick layer on the crack. Two of the bows are broken in such a manner that it is obvious that someone has tried to string them backwards. This most certainly happened in sweden... The roof were the bows are kept are littered with broken arrows.. It is said to be more than a hundered arrowheads protruding in the attic floor. The bows must have been functional... No strings are to be found, though...

The museum is an amazing place...
http://lsh.it-norr.com/default.asp?id=1 ... 3&ENGINE=U

Bede · Post by **Bede** » Thu Apr 03, 2008 9:46 pm

Peter,
The Manchu quiver appeared with a single appliqued shoe in a Polish book on the anniversary of the Siege of Vienna in 1683. The other was in Wenwu. I have the references. I will send them to you.

Stephen Selby · Post by **Stephen Selby** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 1:37 am

bowyer tom wrote:I?m not sure weather it is white buffalo horn or if it is horn from som other cattle. The belly is however very light in colour...
The bows as they hang since end of 1600... Questioned bow is #2 from top.

I'm a bit worried about the attribution of ths bow. I think it's a made-in-China Manchu bow, no earlier than 1800. Could the Museum have thrown it in by mistake? These things happen...

Peter Dekker · Post by **Peter Dekker** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 11:45 am

Stephen Selby wrote:I'm a bit worried about the attribution of ths bow. I think it's a made-in-China Manchu bow, no earlier than 1800. Could the Museum have thrown it in by mistake? These things happen...

This was my feeling as well when seeing it. However, the decoration on the bow is very close to what you see Kangxi and his men carry in artwork of the period. Also the way the decoration ends with an oblique line at the ear, it tends to be different on most of the later Manchu bows. Of course, old styles may still have been made in later times.

Misattribution would explain the excellent condition of the bow.

-Peter

Stephen Selby · Post by **Stephen Selby** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 3:04 am

Well it's certainly early. There's none of the Chinese filigree associated with the later bows. But it doesn't look as if it has a square cross-section siyah, and there's a horn inset in the tip, which all point to around 1800 or later.

It would be really difficult to imagine this bow having been made before 1600. But you never know - I've learned never to be dogmatic

Peter Dekker · Post by **Peter Dekker** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 10:28 am

As for actual bows, I am much more familiar with the later styles as you can easily see so many of them.

However, when looking at artwork it seems that the Kangxi emperor already had a bow with black parts at the nock that I thought were horn nocks. Most of the ears look square in artwork as well but I had taken them for artistic convention. There appears to be little, if any difference in style of Kangxi's bow and the many bows depicted in the portraits made in the 60's of the 18th century to commemorate the campaigns of Western expansion.

Also, some bows attributed to the Qianlong emperor himself, one even with Manchu inscriptions in the horn about where and when he shot which type of game, also has horn nocks and ears (siyahs) identical to their 19th century counterparts. This had made me to believe that the style has been the same for quite some time, unlike many other Qing weapons that evolved a lot.

Have you seen actual examples of mid. 18th cent bows without the horn nocks, and with more square ears?

-Peter

Stephen Selby · Post by **Stephen Selby** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 3:15 am

Yes, I have a couple of 18th C ones. What looks like horn tips in the paintings (I thought so, too) are actually black painted tips. To be honest, from the photo above, I can't be sure whether the siyahs are square or not. But the ones shown in the paintings are not artistic convention: they really were square.

Yang Wentong called square cross-section siyahs 'Manchu', tear-drop cross section 'Chinese' and oval cross-section 'Mongolian' But I don't know whether that was accurate or just the traditional terms used in the trade.

I'll try to take photographs.

S

Peter Dekker · Post by **Peter Dekker** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 8:30 am

Pics would be great! A friend of mine also has a fine example of what I think could well be an 18th cent. example with nice camouflage pattern.

For clarity, with "square", do you mean an angular cross-section with a slight wedge shape but four well defined corners, as opposed to rounded ones on for example that Xian made bows I showed you pics of? Then I know what you mean.. I got a large Manchu bow with ears just like that.

Could you provide the Chinese terms that Yang Wentong mentioned? Pinyin with tones is ok if characters don't work on the forum.

Thanks..

Misattributed or not, the bow posted is quite a conversation piece!

-Peter

Alam ed Din, Adnan · Post by **Alam ed Din, Adnan** » Tue Aug 26, 2008 12:55 pm

I think this is a bow of Kalmyk design,( .. ..Bede - not all the Thorghuts went back to Dzungaria with Ubashi Khan, many stayed in the area known today as Kalmykia) - but this is an assumption - since they where the close neighbours though not "friends" of Crim Tatars and Nogais that served in the Battle of Mohacs, perhaps a number of Kalmyks/Oirats changed side and served in the Turkish army's Tatar battalions, or Tatars may even have traded/captured the bows from the Kalmyks and used them?