Studies on Mounted Warfare in Asia I: Continuity and Change in Middle Eastern Warfare,c . ce 550–1350 – What Happened to the Horse Archer?

I. Introduction

From the sixth to the fourteenth century ce, the Middle East witnessed prolonged wars, the appearance of a new religion, the fall of a mighty empire, invasion by various peoples, the rise of a new military elite of slave origin, and the rise and fall of various dynasties. It is often assumed that at the root of these dramatic changes lies a continuous process of progressive development that strongly influenced Middle Eastern tactics. This article will propose and substantiate a view of the period that sees its warfare as a continuum, without essential military innovations, while the origins of those comprehensive changes must be sought elsewhere. It will argue that our deterministic tradition of pre-modern military historiography has seriously hampered our understanding of the warfare of the ancient and medieval Middle East.

We can find one of the clearest and most consistent formulations of this deterministic tradition and its consequential view of Middle Eastern warfare in Hugh Kennedy’s The Armies of the Caliphs, based on sources from the early Muslim period. ¹ This article will therefore discuss his book in order to argue the necessity of an alternative to the deterministic model. Kennedy connects his central theme – the transformation of a spoils-dividing army of volunteers into a salaried army of professional soldiers – with a supposed process of military and technological progressive development. He believes the soldiers of the Caliphs developed from foot soldiers with ‘simple’ equipment into stirrup-using horse archers with more ‘developed’ equipment.

In summary, the most important assertions of Kennedy’s model of progressive military development are:

His assertions lead to a watershed, or rather a series of watersheds, dating to around the Arab invasions. They make the coming of Islam close the chapter of ancient warfare and kick off the gradual development of Muslim warfare in the Middle East.

This article will show that, seen from a more extensive time frame than the early Muslim period, such a dichotomy between ancient and Muslim warfare is untenable. The next three sections will discuss the alleged disappearance of the horse archer before the beginning of the Muslim calendar, the alleged introduction of the stirrup after the beginning of the Muslim calendar, and the alleged inefficiency of the ancient cavalry. The last section will then suggest an alternative view.

II. The Disappearance of the Horse Archer

But the bowmen of the present time go into battle wearing corselets and fitted out with greaves which extend up to the knee. From their right side hang their arrows, from the other the sword. And there are some who have a spear also attached to them and, at the shoulders, a sort of small shield without grip, such as to cover the region of the face and neck. They are excellent horsemen, and are able without difficulty to direct their bows to either side while riding at full speed, and to shoot an opponent whether in pursuit or in flight. They draw the bowstring along by the forehead about opposite the right ear, thereby charging the arrow with such an impetus as to kill whoever stands in the way, shield and corselet alike having no power to check its force. ²

This is how, in his Wars, Procopius describes Roman soldiers of the middle of the sixth century. His eulogy is a reaction to those of his contemporaries who despised the archers of their day and idealized the ‘close-combat fighters’ of classical antiquity. In the early Byzantine/late Sasanian period, armoured horse archers dominated the warfare between the Persians and the Romans. Their characteristic tactics were archery and skirmishing. ³

Unfortunately, Kennedy doesn’t deal with Middle Eastern warfare as it existed in the sixth century. He is not the only researcher of Islamic history to ignore the early Byzantine and late Sasanian warfare as it existed on the eve of the Islamic revolution. Donner, for instance, in The Early Islamic Conquests, also omits to describe the armies that succumbed to these conquests. In order to explain this lacuna, he alleges that there is no information available on the subject. ⁴

Kennedy’s source for his vanished horse archer, Kaegi, claims that, after the sixth century, there is a lack of adequate sources on the subject of the Byzantine horse archer. This is not exactly true. ⁵ After Procopius and Agathias, our Roman sources still mention their mounted archers well into the seventh century. At the end of the sixth or in the early seventh century, a short pamphlet on archery appeared, Peri toxeias, in which horsemen are assumed to use the bow while attacking and retreating. For the seventh century, Theophylact stills mentions the bow as a cavalry weapon. And in our most important source for this period, the Strategikon of Emperor Maurice, dating to around 600, Roman, Persian, and Avar warriors are all described as armoured horse archers. The Strategikon requires every Roman soldier first of all to practise archery on a galloping horse, shooting forward, backward, and to the left and right, just as Procopius had described the skill of the Roman horse archer in the sixth century. It is not very likely that these indications for the continued existence of the Roman mounted archer, roughly half a century after the death of Procopius, are the result of harking back to a lost tradition. ⁶

The Persian horsemen too were armoured horse archers. Although al-Tabari’s and Firdausi’s sources on pre-Islamic Iran originated from the Sasanian Empire, not from the Roman Empire, their required equipment for a Persian soldier repeats almost verbatim the required equipment for a Roman soldier in the Strategikon. In fragments of a Sasanian military treatise preserved in an Arabic translation, the Persian cavalrymen are enjoined to fight in front of the army and to confine themselves as much as possible to the use of ‘light weapons’. The treatise also includes an archery instruction. Inostrancev remarks upon the similarity between the tactical instructions in this Iranian military treatise and the course of the battle of Dara, as described by Procopius in the sixth century. All these similarities confirm the continued existence of a Romano-Persian military culture of armoured horse archers. ⁷

In Persian art there is an abundance of proof for the continued presence of horse archers. A statue in Taq-i Bustan near Hamadan, usually dated to the sixth century, shows an armoured horse archer with a quiver on his right thigh. Behind his back, in relief on the rear wall of the large niche in which the statue is positioned, the top of a bag can be seen in which the archer stored his bow, with a characteristic flap on top. On the other reliefs, the king is portrayed without armour, as a hunter, using his bow from horseback. The traditional Persian silver vessels depicting such a royal hunter in flying gallop were produced from the fourth century ce well into the early Islamic period. As the equipment of these horse archers was constantly adapted to current fashion, it is unlikely they represent a frozen tradition that had long lost its connection with reality. ⁸

So the striking power of Roman and Persian armies was derived from their armoured horse archers, but what about the Arabs? Al-Tabari’s sources on the battle of Qādisiyyah (636) suggest the first Muslim Arabs hardly knew how to use a bow on horseback. While trying to hit his Persian opponents, an Arab hero shoots an arrow through his own horse’s ear. Other Arab heroes speak with contempt of the Persian preference for the bow, and regard themselves as superior for fighting with the lance from horseback. Therefore, it would seem that the followers of the Righteous Caliphs could not use their bows from horseback. ⁹

But is that true? Still highly esteemed by Muhammad in the late sixth century, in antiquity the bow had been regarded as the Arab weapon of choice. In Assyrian sculpture and in Herodotus the bow is already shown to have been the most important weapon of the Arabs. ¹⁰ Well into the Achaemenid period, these Arab archers were mounted on dromedary camels, as they did not own horses, but this changed from the Parthian period onwards, as the power and wealth of the Arabs grew. It is usually alleged the Arab cavalry was of little importance because of its small numbers, but in fact in late antiquity the horse became extremely popular on the Arabian peninsula, with Arab horsemen appearing as far south as Yemen. The Arabs of Palmyra and Hatra portrayed themselves as horse archers. When Emperor Julian’s army invaded Mesopotamia in the fourth century, the Arab vassals of the Persians ambushed the Roman advance guard near the city of Ozogardana on the Euphrates. Their mounted archers sent a hailstorm of arrows rattling down on the shields of the Roman soldiers. Before the latter could counter-attack, they first had to overcome their awe of the impressive appearance of these armoured horsemen. Just like their overlords, the Arab vassals of the Romans and the Persians fielded armoured horse archers. ¹¹

On the territory of the former Western Roman Empire, horse archery was not an indigenous military practice. Procopius has Belisarius comment on how the Italian Goths were at a disadvantage against the Romans, because they did not know how to use the bow from horseback. Although the Strategikon starts with a concise training instruction for horse archers, it subsequently recommends arming the young ethnikoi – foreigners recruited by the Roman army – with spear and shield. These young foreign recruits are not likely to have been Huns or Persians, who already were excellent archers. They were probably young Slavs or Germans who had not yet acquired the skill of mounted archery. ¹²

However, in the Eastern Roman Empire, the horsemen usually were archers. The soldiers described by Procopius fought with both lance and bow. Only when mentioning the Germanic contingents in the Roman army does he emphasize their different equipment. ¹³ Although the Arabs make their appearance in the Wars, Procopius does not mention a lack of horse archers in their ranks. At the battle of Callinicum (531) the flanks of the Persian and Roman armies were covered by their respective Arab vassals, hardly a suitable position for infantry. During this battle, clouds of arrows were discharged and, after extensive skirmishing, the Arabs of al-Mundhir (the Lakhmid vassal of the Persians) drove the Arabs of al-Athir (the Ghassanid vassal of the Romans) from the battlefield. In sixth-century Roman art, Bedouin are depicted as archers. All this suggests that the Arabs, whether mounted on camels or on horses, were still archers, just like the Persian and Roman soldiers. ¹⁴

Did the Arab horsemen then abandon the bow when they converted? That would be very unlikely. Muhammad advises the faithful to teach their children archery and riding. Considering the ambitious and highly successful military campaigns launched by his followers after his death, it would seem they took the advice of their prophet to heart. Al-Tabari’s above-mentioned anecdote about the Arab hero inadvertently shooting his own horse raises the obvious question why this man was armed with a bow at all. Al-Tabari’s sources frequently mention the archery equipment of the horsemen among the early believers, without their seeming to have any practical use for it. These cannot be anachronisms, because, as we will see, at the time these anecdotes were finally recorded in writing the Arab horseman no longer used the bow. And we will also see that the view of the Arab horseman as no more than a mounted foot soldier is mistaken. ¹⁵

Those unused cavalry bows are reminiscent of Homer’s chariots, which had the sole function of bringing the hero to enemy lines, where he would dismount to duel with another dismounted hero. The Greek epic tradition referred to a time when these chariots were still used in battle, but Homer had no idea what to do with them, as chariots no longer had any military function in his own time. Analogously, it seems that those useless cavalry bows are a ‘Homeric’ distortion, caused by these stories having been written down more than a century after the events occurred. It is much more probable that the decline of Arab horse archery did not occur before the enormously successful Arab invasions of the seventh century, but when Arab military supremacy declined in the eighth century. Al-Tabari’s sources still knew about those bows, but they could no longer imagine the Arabs had once been excellent horse archers, because in the second half of the eighth century the horsemen of Iraq and Western Iran had become lancers. Al-Tabari’s battle reports from this area only mention the bow in connection with infantry or government soldiers. As most of our information on the early believers was written down by eighth- and ninth-century Iraqi Arabs, this has created a distorted image of those earlier armies. It seems as if the tactics of the Arab rebels of the eighth and ninth centuries, for instance the Karijites, were projected onto the followers of the first two Caliphs. Those Karijites were feared for their audacious charge à fond with the lance, suspiciously similar to the tactics often supposed to have been employed by the first Muslim warriors. ¹⁶

The chroniclers now associated horse archery with the non-Arab soldiers of the government army. The Sasanian Persian horsemen in al-Tabari’s sources are described as excellent mounted archers, so describing Persians as horse archers did not test the credulity of an eighth- and ninth-century Iraqi public. This is confirmed by the fact that, in the eighth century, the Persian archers of the garrison of Basrah were known as the assawira, derived from the Persian word aswār, ‘horseman’. ¹⁷

Although most of the sources describe both the Arabs under the first Caliphs and the Arabs under Umayyad and Abbasid rule as lancers, al-Tabari’s report on the first civil war (656–61) paints a very different picture. In contrast to earlier and later events, during this conflict all the Arabs are described as archers, even when unquestionably on horseback, even when they are of high status and therefore horsemen. And they discharged their arrows in huge quantities. After the Battle of the Camel, the howdah of the Prophet’s widow was compared to a hedgehog. When A’ishah is taken prisoner nobody even contemplates harming her, so these arrows had not been targeted at the widow personally, but had been part of a torrent of arrows raining down on the ranks of her army. ¹⁸ Al-Tabari’s most important source for this war, the report of Abu Mikhnaf, who died in 774, is also one of his oldest sources. Abu Mikhnaf claims to have personally interviewed the veterans of the battle of Siffin (657) quoted in his report, so since he had at least been a contemporary of Ali’s (former) supporters and possibly even a close associate, the many casual references to the bow as an Arab cavalry weapon might well be true. ¹⁹

To show the continued presence of horse archers in the Middle East in the first half of the eighth century, we do not have to rely on our written sources alone, as the practice of depicting archers on horses in flying gallop was continued after the Arab invasion. A silver vessel in the Hermitage and a fresco and statue from Qasr al Hayr in Syria show clear representations of horse archers. It is often claimed the silver vessel originates from Central Asia, but that seems unlikely. The horse archer on the dish carries the same bow case shown both on a textile fragment from Roman Egypt – from about 600 – and on the wall behind the statue of the armoured horseman in Taq-i Bustan. It is a more or less rectangular bow case, bent out of shape by the unstrung bow inside, with a flat bottom and a characteristic flap on top. Central Asian horse archers portrayed on Sogdian murals carry a tapering, pointed bow case, without a flap to close the top. The sword of the horse archer on the silver vessel, with its characteristic asymmetrical hilt, is suspended from the same P-shaped appendages that are found on Sasanian sword scabbards from Northwestern Iran, usually dated to the late sixth or early seventh century. The Sogdians first used medallion-shaped appendages on their sword scabbards, and then often adopted a later derivative of the so-called scabbard slide suspension. ²⁰

David Nicolle implies the fresco from Qasr al Hayr depicts a Central Asian, but that would be illogical. Why would the Umayyad elite decorate their palaces with portraits of subjugated peoples that at the time played no significant role at their courts? The Umayyad Caliphs relied on the Syrian army. Only after the Abbasid revolution would soldiers from Eastern Iran and Transoxania start to play a dominant role in the Muslim military. Moreover, Nicolle notes decorative belt pendants on the original fresco. Once claimed to have originated in Central Asia, in this period such Nebenriemen were in fact only fashionable in the (former) Roman Empire and Western Iran, and would not appear in Central Asian art until after the eighth century. It seems much more likely that the Arab patron commissioned statues and paintings of himself and his retinue, dressed and equipped after the local East Roman / West Iranian fashion. This suggests that, in the first half of the eighth century, the Umayyads and their Syrian soldiers still practised the art of horse archery. ²¹

After the collapse of Umayyad power in 750, the Khorasani Arab supporters of the Abbasids replaced the Syrian Arab supporters of the Umayyads. In the ninth century, soldiers from Khorasan were in turn superseded by Turkish slave-soldiers. According to Kennedy, an essay of al-Jahiz shows that the Turks introduced a radically different military technique by shooting their arrows from a galloping horse, but this essay can be interpreted rather differently. Al-Jahiz discusses the military qualities of two types of guardsmen of the Caliph, the Turkish slave-soldiers and freeborn soldiers from Khorasan, the Khurasaniyya. Kennedy claims that in the case of the latter there is ‘no clear discussion of archery’. However, both the Turks and the Khurasaniyya are said to have practised on ring-shaped targets (birjas), on birds mounted on poles, and on birds on the wing. These were the common archery targets in the Middle East. Kennedy’s suggestion that the Khurasaniyya did not fight with the bow is therefore questionable. He notices this himself, as he later refers to an anecdote about an armoured horse archer from Khorasan vainly trying to hit a half-naked volunteer foot soldier from Baghdad. All this suggests that not only the Turks but also the Khorasani were horse archers. ²²

Summarizing, we may say that the early Byzantine Roman horsemen, the late Sasanian Persian horsemen, and the pre-Islamic Arab horsemen were archers. The available information also suggests that both the Arab soldiers of the Righteous Caliphs, the Syrian soldiers of the Umayyad Caliphs, and the Khorasani soldiers of the Abbasid Caliphs were horse archers. Therefore, when Turkish slave-soldiers appeared on the scene, the Middle East had already experienced a long and uninterrupted tradition of horse archery.

III. The Introduction of the Stirrup

Kennedy believes the stirrup was still unusual on the eve of the Muslim invasion and claims that this piece of equipment was only generally introduced at the end of the seventh century. Although this is a very common assumption, there is evidence that it is not the case. ²³

In the Strategikon of Emperor Maurice a pair of iron stirrups (skala, after the Latin scalae, a ladder or stair) is included among the required equipment of a Roman horseman. Elsewhere in the Strategikon a ‘medical orderly’ is advised to suspend an extra stirrup from his saddle, so as to allow an unhorsed soldier to mount behind him. However, although according to the Strategikon the Romans had adopted a great deal from the Avars – for instance the use of several reserves and the long horseman’s coat reaching to below the knees – the stirrup is nowhere associated with these nomads. This might suggest that the stirrup was already known in the Eastern Roman Empire before the 560s, when the Avars invaded the Balkans. ²⁴

The Sasanian Persians too knew the stirrup. An elegant pair of Sasanian silver stirrups is dated to around 600; Herzfeld believes he has detected a stirrup strap on a late Sasanian stucco statue; and the author believes he has detected such a strap on the statue in Taq-i Bustan. The saddle covers shown on late Sasanian stucco statues are of the new, ‘rounded’ fashion shown on Sogdian murals from the early seventh century. The horsemen on these Sogdian murals are all using metal stirrups. ²⁵

So around 600 the stirrup had been widely adopted both to the West and to the East of the Persian Empire, and was at least known in Iran proper. There are even signs that the use of the stirrup in Persia pre-dates this. One indication is the appearance in the Middle East in the sixth century of a new artistic convention of depicting horsemen. In the older convention the horseman’s foot is shown as a continuation of the lower leg, shin and top of the foot forming a single, almost straight line. This late Hellenistic posture remained the usual convention in the art of the Eastern Roman Empire (including those parts conquered by the Arabs, Syria, and Egypt) long after the stirrup had been generally introduced. In Iran, however, the feet of the horsemen depicted in the new style, for example those in Taq-i Bustan, are at a right angle with the leg, just like the feet of a modern, stirrup-using horseman. This new style might indicate a widespread adoption of the stirrup. ²⁶

Another sign that the stirrup had been adopted in the sixth century is a change in fashion. In the late Parthian and early Sasanian period, the horsemen were usually dressed in a tunic reaching almost to the knees, with a split on both thighs. ²⁷ However, in the sixth century the Roman and Persian horsemen adopted a long ‘Avar’ coat, reaching to well below the knees and closed at the chest. The adoption of this long coat might have been caused by the introduction of the stirrup. The short tunic had been well suited to jumping into the saddle, but as soon as the horseman was able to mount with the help of a stirrup, long coat-tails no longer obstructed mounting, while a long coat covering the knees offers a horseman superior protection against the elements. ²⁸

The manner in which the horseman carried his equipment also changed. In the third century ce the cavalry long sword was suspended from a loose-fitting belt passing through a scabbard slide. This long belt allowed for a low, vertical position of the sword, and the Sasanian quiver too was carried low and in a vertical position. ²⁹ By carrying his equipment in this fashion, the horseman lowered his centre of gravity, reducing his efforts to sit straight on horseback. From the sixth century onwards, however, the sword was carried relatively high on the left thigh, suspended in a diagonal position from a tight-fitting waist belt. The quiver too was suspended in a high and diagonal position, on the right thigh and from a second belt. Like the long coat, these double ‘Bulgarian’ cavalry belts were of nomadic origin and might also be related to the introduction of the stirrup. The appearance of the stirrup largely negated a low centre of gravity, as this footrest drastically reduced the physical exertion of the horseman to maintain an upright position, while the new, higher positions of quiver and sword greatly improved ease of drawing. ³⁰

The quiver suggested on the silver vessel in the Hermitage is probably of the classical Sasanian type, a long, slightly tapering tube in which the arrows were stored head down, but now suspended in the new, higher and diagonal position. This type of quiver can be observed on the statue from Qasr al Hayr depicting an Umayyad horse archer. The statue of the Sasanian horse archer in Taq-i Bustan, however, shows the new ‘box type’ quiver, characteristic for nomadic horse archers during the entire period under discussion. It is depicted and its remnants have been found from Manchuria to Hungary, and it is also shown in late Roman and Sogdian art. So just like the Romans and the Sogdians, the sixth-century Persians adopted from the northern nomads the long coat, the double belt, the high and diagonally suspended equipment, the box quiver, and the rounded saddlecloth. It is extremely unlikely that they would have drawn the line as far as the stirrup was concerned, nor does the archaeological and representational evidence endorse such a scenario. ³¹

Kennedy claims two written sources from the Muslim period confirm that the stirrup was adopted late in the seventh century, but an entirely different interpretation of those sources is possible. In the ninth century al-Jahiz wrote a fictional discussion between an Arab (himself) and a Persian, discussing the achievements of their own respective nations. When the Persian disparagingly compares the primitive military equipment of the Arabs with the more advanced equipment of the Persians, the Arab is forced to admit the stirrup was an already ancient piece of equipment only later adopted by the Arabs, but he explains this tardiness as a moral choice. He claims the Arabs refused to adopt the stirrup because they regarded this riding aid as a sign of decadence and weakness. So according to al-Jahiz, at some time the stirrup had been used by the Persians, while still being spurned by the Arabs. ³²

We know that in Northeastern Asia, where stirrups first appeared, wooden stirrups preceded those made of metal. ³³ Another ninth-century Arab source claims this pattern was repeated in Western Asia. According to al-Mubarrad, wooden stirrups are unfit for military use and therefore were replaced by iron stirrups by the end of the seventh century. However, the Strategikon shows that the Roman military stirrups were already made of iron around 600, and the slender shape of the above-mentioned Sasanian silver stirrups clearly shows that their design was not derived from a wooden example, since the oldest surviving wooden stirrups, from the eighth to the tenth century, are for obvious reasons of a much sturdier design. So, if al-Mubarrad is right and wooden stirrups also preceded metal stirrups in Western Asia, those wooden stirrups must have appeared even further back in time. ³⁴

The fact that the Persians later used an Arab loanword to designate the stirrup (rikāb) is often seen as an indication that this riding aid only appeared after the Arab occupation, but that is not a very compelling line of reasoning. ³⁵ The Arab origin for the New Persian word for stirrup might be explained just as convincingly by the long period of Arab dominance in Iranian history. The Arab takeover drastically altered the Persian language, and led to the adoption of both many Arab words and the Arabic script. This was definitely not caused by the Persians not having a satisfactory script of their own, or by their needing those new words to designate new phenomena. Firdausi, the father of New Persian, uses an Arab loanword to designate an armlet or arm-guard, sāʿid. Such armlets had been in use in Iran since antiquity, but the Arab word had simply supplanted the more specific Middle Persian word abdast. The New Persian word for ‘heart’ is the Arab loanword qalb, but it is unlikely the Persians only found their hearts after the arrival of the Arabs. ³⁶

IV. Ineffective Ancient Horsemanship

According to Kennedy, the first Muslim armies would have consisted mostly of infantry, with cavalry playing a subservient role as it was in a primitive state of development. He supports his theory by arguing that the dismounting of the cavalry often mentioned in the sources was necessitated by a need to ‘fight more effectively’. He argues the dismounting horseman was in fact a mounted foot soldier who, having travelled to the battlefield on horseback, dismounted to do ‘the serious and decisive fighting’. ³⁷ Kennedy refers to Hill, who believes the Arabs owed their victories at the Yarmuk and at Qadisiyya exclusively to their infantry. ³⁸ Hill supports this with the allegation in the sources that in the first Muslim armies, the Arab city-dwellers were much more reliable in battle than the Arab nomads. He implicitly assumes the sedentary Arabs were foot soldiers and the Bedouin were horsemen, but he contradicts his own assumptions when he remarks that especially rich citizens owned horses. ³⁹

And that should not really surprise us. Unlike a Turkish nomad in Inner Asia, a Bedouin mounted a dromedary camel, not a horse. On the Arabian peninsula, horses must be fed, as there are hardly any meadows for grazing. Not only on the peninsula but in most of the Middle East horses were not a means of transportation but a costly investment, only permitted by wealth and high social status, and only justified by military necessity. Therefore, the Arab horsemen were the rich tribal elites living in the cities. ⁴⁰ Three other domestic animals were much better suited to the function of the strategic transportation of soldiers to the battlefield, because of their superior stamina and economical use: the ass, the mule, and – last but certainly not least – the dromedary camel. From about 1700 bce onwards the horse ruled over the battlefields of the Middle East, for nearly a thousand years as a draught animal and from the beginning of the first millennium bce as a riding animal. Although it displaced the asses that had previously been used to pull war-carts and chariots, the success of the horse did not banish the ass to civilian use. The Iranian soldiers of the Achaemenid army had been known to ride to the battlefield on asses. In Southern Iran and Southern Asia, chariots drawn by onager/ass hybrids only finally disappeared after the last chariots were abandoned in the Parthian period. At that time the soldiers of the Middle East began to adopt a new mount, the dromedary camel. The soldiers of the Sasanian army also used mules for strategic transportation. ⁴¹

While the military tradition of the Middle East made a distinction between a tactical and a strategic mount and only used horses for combat, the nomads of Inner Asia used their countless horses as a means of transportation, to herd livestock, as a food source, and for combat. This dominance of the horse was exceptional, as outside its original habitat the horse was used almost exclusively for warfare. This fact is often overlooked in the West, because both Europe and the United States are familiar with the workhorse. In the West, too, the horse was not only used in battle, but also for travelling, for driving cattle, or to pull ploughs and waggons. This practice is often projected onto the entire Asian continent.

Even in its original habitat, the use of the horse as a strategic mount has its disadvantages. A horse lacks the stamina to be ridden day after day without rest. If the nomad did not want to spoil it, he could only ride his horse twice a week. So in order to change mounts every day, the Inner Asian nomads took huge herds of horses with them wherever they went. As they therefore depended on large tracts of grazing land to feed their herds, entering another ecological zone soon limited their military potential and forced them either to adopt the local military tradition, or to retreat. ⁴²

In the Middle East each horseman rode to the battlefield on a dromedary camel or a mule. The warhorses were led, and asses and camels carried the soldiers’ equipment. ⁴³ The dromedary camel can carry enormous loads and it is tougher, far less demanding, and very much more resistant to heat and lack of water than is a horse. Because both dromedaries and asses belong to the original fauna of the dry steppes of the Middle East, they can be released after each day’s march to forage for their necessary calorie intake. Thanks to these two humble animals, the armies of the Middle East could approach the strategic speed of the nomad armies without, however, being limited to operations close to extensive meadows. ⁴⁴

In Northern Iran we can draw an ecological boundary separating two different military cultures. To the south the horse was used almost exclusively for combat, while asses, mules, and dromedary camels were used for travelling and transportation. To the north of this boundary, however, dromedary camels could not survive the cold winters. The local two-humped or Bactrian camel and the Bactrian/dromedary hybrid were relatively rare and costly animals that were hardly used for riding but rather, like the ox, as slow, ‘heavy duty’ pack and draught animals. Domesticated asses were rare too, but horses were to be found in abundance, as this area is the natural habitat of its wild ancestor. Therefore, in Central Asia the horse was not only used as a tactical riding animal, but also for strategic transportation. ⁴⁵

But why did cavalry dismount, if the warhorse of the Middle East was only used for combat? Horsemen dismount when they have to defend themselves. Cavalry can only attack or flee, but they cannot stand their ground. In this respect the cavalry of the early Muslims did not differ from the cavalry of the ancient Romans and Persians, from the later Turkish horse archers, from Ilkhanid Mongol cavalry, or from modern cavalry. ⁴⁶ If horsemen can neither attack nor flee, their only remaining option is to dismount and fight on foot. In the sources the dismounting is always associated with a perilous situation for the cavalry. For instance, during the Battle of the Pass (731) the Arabs were ambushed by a superior Turkish force. Or when the Abbasid cavalry was on the verge of being overrun by the Umayyad cavalry during the battle of the Great Zab River (750), their commander ʿAbd Allah ordered his men to dismount to prevent panic and rout. ⁴⁷

It seems that the topos of dismounting cavalry enjoyed its popularity among the sources because it is such a useful literary device. It indicates the crisis during the course of battle, but most of all, the death-or-glory character of dismounting conveys a strong moral message. If those dismounted horsemen were unable to hold out, at least until help arrived, their prospects were grim, since without their horses they could no longer save themselves. The fact that both the Arabs in Central Asia and the followers of the Abbasids nevertheless dismounted not only shows their dedication to their cause, it shows they fought for the ‘right’ cause. Compare this with the conduct of the Umayyad soldiers opposing the Abbasids, who, when in their turn ordered to dismount, blatantly refused, not wanting to make themselves an easy target for the enemy’s projectiles. The discipline and bravery of the Arabs at the Battle of the Pass are in stark contrast to the incompetence and baseness of their commander Junayd, while the Abbasid soldiers at the battle of the Great Zab River show the kind of dedication and religious zeal that is so clearly lacking among the wine-drinking and music-making Umayyad soldiers. ⁴⁸

This is not a denial that dismounting actually occurred. The Battle of the Pass ended in the defeat of the party that took the initiative to dismount, so there is a logical connection between the military function of this procedure and the historical outcome of the battle. However, when this topos is used in the account of the successful bid for power by the Abbasids, it is probably just as much a dubious cliché as the Umayyads’ superior numbers. Precisely because dismounting Abbasids and overwhelming numbers of Umayyads are not logically connected to the Abbasids’ victory, it is very likely that in this case these topoi do not reflect a historical reality. ⁴⁹

According to Kennedy, horsemen dismounted because their lack of stirrups prevented them from fighting effectively from horseback. The introduction of the stirrup is supposed to have made cavalry so much more effective that the latter started to replace the infantry from the ninth century onwards. Many scholars have assumed that the stirrup revolutionized cavalry, but Kennedy is not at ease among them. Although he refers to White’s theory of the stirrup being the prime cause of European feudalism, he tones down his own support for the theory of the ‘stirrup revolution’. Nevertheless, Kennedy claims that the stirrup must have caused at least some improvement of the tactical performance of the horse archer, whatever that might have been. ⁵⁰

Kennedy’s ambiguity is understandable, as White’s view of ancient cavalry is controversial. The two greatest commanders of the ancient world, Alexander and Hannibal, would never have been able to defeat the Persians and the Romans respectively without their excellent cavalry. These horsemen attacked both other cavalry and infantry, throwing javelins, stabbing with lances, and hacking with swords, actions which, according to White’s stirrup theory, should have been causing them to continually fall off their horses. However, with his experimental archaeology Marcus Junkelmann has shown that even a mediocre horseman does not need stirrups in order to fight effectively from horseback. Stirrups only lessen the physical exertion of the horseman to remain upright, but one should not rely on them to keep a firm seat. A soldier who needs stirrups to prevent him from falling off his horse has no business being in the cavalry. Horsemen such as Junkelmann have therefore severely criticized this theory of the stirrup revolution. ⁵¹

Because of the modernist association with improved performance in combat, the development of riding aids is sometimes given a sedentary, ‘civilized’ origin, because nomads, having the reputation of being excellent horsemen, could not possibly have felt the need to develop stirrups and other appliances. In fact the technological evolution of the devices to improve riding occurred in Inner Asia, not in the sedentary world, and their origins are not military, but are connected to the nomad’s way of life. Riding aids may be useful for fighting from horseback, but they are indispensable for herding and roaming on horseback. Man does not have a ‘natural’ aptitude for sitting on a horse, nor does the horse have a ‘natural’ inclination to drag a human being on its back. Riding with only a simple blanket is surprisingly comfortable, but prolonged bareback riding is hard on both man and horse. The spine of a horse is unfit to carry weight, and riding without a support for the feet will eventually cause the leg-muscle attachments to the hips to become painfully strained. ⁵² As they lived in the saddle, the nomads were the first to develop the technology to relieve both man and horse. To effectively transfer the weight of the rider from the spine of the horse to its shoulders and rib-case, they replaced the simple blanket with a saddle. Trousers ending in a sock, leggings gartered to the horseman’s belt and strapped to his feet, or straps, hooks, and even leggings attached to the saddle supported the legs of the roving nomad. ⁵³

All these ancient supports for the legs became obsolete with the coming of the stirrup, but it is difficult to find any grounds for upholding the theory that the stirrup caused a military revolution in Asia. It is true that a revolutionary religion appeared whose adherents conquered an enormous empire, but the Arabs did not make their conquest with the help of the stirrup, but rather against the direction of its dispersal. They expanded at the expense of stirrup-using Romans and Persians. Therefore, this ‘advanced’ technology did not help its users in overcoming the stirrup-despising Arabs. The Arabs only started to appreciate the stirrup when they marched into Khorasan, in Northeastern Iran, where their dromedary camels could not survive in winter. Out of dire necessity, the Arabs now had to adopt the local custom and use the horse as a strategic mount. They therefore badly needed the stirrup, not to match the combat performance of their Central Asian opponents, but to match their strategic mobility. ⁵⁴

According to Kennedy, for the first Muslims cavalry combat was a relatively unimportant prequel to the real fighting, with masses of infantry, gathered around their respective banners, marching towards each other with levelled spears to fight some kind of a phalanx battle. However, infantry is in fact treated rather summarily in the sources, while most of their information on warriors concerns the activities of horsemen in the saddle. Explicitly, this can be deduced from the mention of cavalry, horse riding, the horse itself, and its equipment. Implicitly, it can be deduced from the way the Arabs are described to be fighting: individually, they went between the lines, did something remarkable, and then returned to their own lines. Such skirmishing is summarized as attacking and retreating, in Arabic karr baʿd al-farr. ⁵⁵

This kind of combat can only be performed by cavalry. ⁵⁶ It led to endless series of duels as the skirmishers met each other between the lines. The horseman approached enemy lines, discharged a handful of arrows, stabbed with his lance or struck with his sword, and then retreated again. The cavalry skirmish was not a preparation for ‘the serious and decisive fighting’, collisions between armoured spear- and sword-armed infantry units supported by light, missile-armed infantry units, as in the Hellenistic tradition. Cavalry skirmishing was the fight itself. The many duels were no ‘tournaments’: they were the inevitable result of this individualistic, skirmishing type of combat. ⁵⁷ This subject is elaborated in the next article in this series. ⁵⁸

These duels also show something else. In this period, Arab warfare – and Roman, Persian, and Inner Asian warfare – was of an elitist, ‘heroic’ character. The foot soldiers targeted the horses of the enemy, but the duel was the prerogative of ‘the heroes’, i.e. the horsemen, each mentioned by name and tribe, who only wished to fight with their social equals. ⁵⁹ The Muslims hardly tolerated even their own infantry ignoring such social distinctions. At Qādisiyyah an anonymous Arab foot soldier defeating a Persian horseman in a duel and capturing his horse is immediately pulled from the saddle by his fellow-Arabs and forced to hand the animal over to ‘his cavalry’. ⁶⁰ Al-Tabari describes how another anonymous Arab foot soldier commits the impertinence of duelling with a Persian horseman. The foot soldier is struck down by his opponent, but as the Persian dismounts to dispatch him with his dagger, he is inadvertently toppled by his nervous horse. The foot soldier seizes the opportunity to jump on his prostrate opponent and, ignoring the protests of the other Arabs, after a long, arduous struggle he finally succeeds in dispatching the horseman. Unlike the horse-riding heroes, these foot soldiers could not make free use of their spoils. The case of the latter foot soldier was referred to Caliph Umar himself, who after careful deliberation graciously decided to let him keep his spoils. ⁶¹

Whether Muslim or not, the infantry served, supported, and protected their horsemen. The striking power of any army came from its cavalry, be it a relatively small component of the army, as among the first believers, or a relatively large component, as among the Persians. The infantry supplied a base of operations from which the cavalry would attack and a safe haven when the cavalry was driven back. The foot soldiers were given the unenviable tasks of all infantry in warfare that is dominated by missile weapons: hold position, shoot, and be shot at.

V. An Alternative View

Kennedy’s model of the development of the early Muslim armies revolves around the stirrup. Before stirrups were used, infantry was dominant as cavalry was not yet effective. The stirrup came into use after the Arab occupation of Iran. The use of the stirrup caused the replacement of foot soldiers by horse archers. So the foundation of his argument rests on one single piece of equipment, of which he says its introduction is obscure and controversial and its importance should not be exaggerated. ⁶²

But if his reconstruction is so tenuously based on the available information, then where does it come from? It seems the root of the problem is a deterministic tradition of pre-modern military history. According to deterministic historiography, defeated armies cannot have possessed ‘more advanced’ technology. It ought to be impossible for armies lacking stirrups to defeat stirrup-using armies. It should be the other way around: a ‘more advanced’ military technology is a ‘decisive’ weapon that automatically leads to victory. The Arabs do not seem to have used stirrups and the Romans and the Persians were defeated by them, therefore the Romans and the Persians cannot have used stirrups either. ⁶³

It is the search in the sources for such ‘advances’ that often predominates today’s discussions on pre-modern warfare. As a result, one of the most noticeable properties of the sources has been ignored. I am alluding to the remarkably uniform character of the descriptions of warfare during the entire period under discussion, in the entire Middle East, whether deriving from late Roman or from Islamic sources. This literary continuity could well indicate a military continuity, just as the common military theory of the pre-Islamic Romans and Persians seems to be matched by their common military practice. This is not such a far-fetched and exotic idea as an orthodox modernist might perhaps assume. The essential military innovations of the ancient world were the development of the techniques to make copper alloy (bronze) and iron, and the development of the techniques to use the horse in combat, first as a draught animal and then as a riding animal. Between the last of these innovations – cavalry and iron – and the development of firearms at the end of the medieval period, no essential progressive military development occurred. ⁶⁴

But is it not possible that this apparent lack of development is simply the result of a lack of a specialized historical knowledge or investigative techniques to discern more subtle advances? In order to put this question into perspective, we might listen to what the doyen of Islamic social history, C. Cahen, has to say on this subject in his essay ‘Les changements techniques militaires dans le Proche Orient médiéval et leur importance historique’. ⁶⁵

Cahen is convinced that technological changes resulted in important historical changes in the medieval Muslim world. However, starting with the social and military upheaval caused by the Islamic invasion, he believes there is no reason to assume that the Arabs owed their success to some kind of superior technology. He then continues with a discussion on a technological innovation, the stirrup, but he does not believe that the stirrup caused a social upheaval in the Middle East.

Cahen subsequently discusses the technology and use of the bow. Like Kennedy, he can see the Turkish horse archer as an innovation, because he believes the Sasanian archer to have been a foot soldier, but he offers no explanation as to why he believes this is so. His claim that the arrow guide had been a weapon of Turkish cavalry is questionable. In the Strategikon it is only mentioned in the chapter on foot soldiers, and in Muslim sources, too, the arrow guide is associated with fighting on foot, especially during siege operations. ⁶⁶ To his intense chagrin, Cahen is aware of the fact that there is neither a reliable historical source nor a recent study on the relative performances of the military bows used in the Islamic world. Therefore, we cannot show a process of progressive technological development in the bowyer’s craft. He then mentions the crossbow, but knows this weapon was in use both in Europe and Asia since antiquity. Since both the Byzantine Greek and the Arabic term for a crossbow have a Persian origin, he assumes that this weapon periodically disappeared in some areas, only to be reintroduced from elsewhere, but he believes it to be very likely that crossbow technology was never lost in Asia.

As far as developments in the quality, design, and use of lances, swords, and shields are concerned, Cahen takes a very cautious stance, as he knows of no sources indicating the spread of such new techniques. However, he hopes further study will establish such developments. He then goes on to discuss artillery. He points out that on this subject, too, no unambiguous information is to be found in the sources, and he disagrees with Huuri’s view of the sequence of tension, torsion, and counterweight artillery as a progressive development. ⁶⁷ He ends with the social and military upheaval caused by the Mongol invasion, but again he can see no technological innovation that could have caused that success.

In his conclusion Cahen admits failure, but his firm belief in the occurrence of progressive developments in this period and their influence on historical events remains unshaken. He expresses the hope that others will improve on his study and eventually demonstrate these developments in the Near East. However, Cahen might be too hard on himself. He tries to follow the well-trodden path of technologically determined military history, but he is severely hampered by his own intimate knowledge of the subject. He is aware that no such technological developments can be demonstrated, but he blames himself instead of pointing out the real culprit: a baneful tradition of deterministic military historiography.

It may be hoped that Cahen’s exasperation will serve as a warning to any eager modernist scouring the sources for progressive developments. There is no compelling evidence for essential technological progress in the field of warfare during the period under discussion. The stirrup was already known before 600, but the Arabs apparently did not need it to defeat the Romans and the Persians. Horse archers had been the norm in the Middle East even longer. None of the sources claim or suggest armour and weaponry in this period became more ‘effective’ or ‘advanced’, and nor does any archaeological data suggest that this must have been the case. In fact, arms and armour remained essentially the same during antiquity and the Middle Ages until the advent of gunpowder. The assumption that weapons got progressively more powerful and armour progressively heavier is nothing more than a speculative projection of our modern arms race onto the ancient and medieval world. ⁶⁸

But what about medieval European armour? We know for a fact that between 1000 and 1500 it showed an unmistakeable development towards increased protection. And what about the warfare of the ancient Greeks, which developed from the simple phalanx into the complex Hellenistic army of various tactically specialized units supporting each other? The theme of progress has certainly successfully exploited in describing Western military developments during antiquity and the medieval period, but we should not forget that in Europe rapid technological progress has been just as common as rapid catastrophic regress. Admiration for the Greek miracle and what we may be justified in calling the medieval miracle should not obscure the fact that each of these periods followed a dark age. The rapid developments of both ancient and medieval Europe started out as a race to recover lost ground.

The Middle East had been spared these dark ages. Kennedy sketches a historical model in which the last chapter of the ancient world is neatly closed in order to let the next, Muslim, period begin with a clean slate. However, the canonical periodization of the history of the Middle East does not equate to the disappearance of civilization and technology. It is true that in Europe much knowledge and technology was lost as the late Helladic and Roman civilizations faded away, but the sudden collapse of the Sasanian Empire cannot be made analogous to the sudden disappearance of the civilization and technology of the Sasanian Middle East. The coming of Islam is undoubtedly one of the most dramatic changes in history, but it would be wrong and anti-historical to see this crucial change as a fixed boundary between two mutually exclusive categories, antiquity and Islam. To successfully study early Islamic history, we should not exclude the closing stages of the ancient Middle East from our research.

It is not the intention of this article to deny the fact of progressive technological development, but to dispute the dogma of its constancy. Before the modern period, progress was not an ever-present fact of life; it occurred in fits and starts. The convergence of new technological and social developments could cause a revolution just as fast and as drastic as in the modern period, but in the ancient and medieval world such rapid developments were separated from each other by centuries and even millennia of technological stability. As far as military technology is concerned, the period under discussion falls within such a long period of stability. Therefore, it is unlikely that technological determinism will be of much use in explaining the enormous changes that undeniably occurred in the Middle East. However, change is not identical to progressive technological development. There is another well-known idea that could explain these changes, the concept of nomadic expansion. In this concept the process of shrinkage and expansion of the sphere of influence of the Inner Asian pastoral nomads enforces changes on neighbouring sedentary civilizations. The military changes occurring in the Middle East from the sixth to the fourteenth century are not related to technological development, but to the contraction and expansion of the range of two military cultures, the ‘Turanian’ and the ‘Iranian’ tradition.

E. Darkó seems to have coined the term ‘touranien’ as referring to the military traditions of the Eurasian nomads, more specifically their reliance on cavalry and archery. He believes this tradition was comprehensively adopted by the Romans. However, the Roman Empire – and the Persian Empire – was sedentary, not nomadic, and this fact necessitated a military tradition that was different from the Turanian tradition of the nomads. Obviously, this military tradition was related to the nomadic military tradition; it was its sedentary variety. ⁶⁹

This sedentary variety of Turanian or nomad warfare needs a different name. ‘Iranian’, Firdausi’s eternal antipode to ‘Turanian’, seems to be the most appropriate. Please note that ‘Iranian tradition’ is not used in an ethnic or geographical sense, but only to designate a specific military culture that was forced upon sedentary civilizations by the nomads. Also, note that the word tradition is used to show that both the Turanian type of warfare of the Inner Asian nomads and the Iranian type of warfare of the sedentary civilizations were to remain essentially unchanged during the entire period under discussion.

Across Northern Iran, Anatolia, and the Balkans extends a vast range of mountain meadows and upland plains that was periodically occupied by the pastoral nomads from the northern steppes. Under their influence a sedentary, Iranian military tradition of warfare split off from the parent nomadic, Turanian military tradition. In the Iranian tradition the horseman was an archer too, but in the Middle East horses were relatively rare and expensive animals. Horse riding was the privilege of a small military elite and served an exclusively military purpose. However, the wealth and agricultural surplus of the sedentary state allowed for well-armed and armoured horse archers on fast and powerful warhorses.

The expansion of the nomads in late antiquity had brought the Iranian tradition deep into the Eastern Roman Empire. Not only Persians and Romans waged war according to this tradition, but also the followers of the Caliphs. The military skills of the rest of the population of the Muslim ecumene declined in the lee of the Islamic fury on the eastern front, Khorasan, Transoxania, Sistan, and Hind. The Iranian tradition survived at the Muslim courts and in these ghāzī marches to the east of the central deserts of Iran, but was revived when the eastern front collapsed and the nomads returned to the offensive. This renewed expansion of the nomads caused a concurrent expansion of the ‘range of distribution’ of the armoured horse archer, as the Iranian tradition returned to the Levant. So, according to this view, Islamic society was not changed by technological developments; Islam itself changed the Middle East.

In order to understand the warfare as practised by these armoured horse archers, we should look at the historiography, the military treatises, the military clichés in other literary genres, and the preserved representational and archaeological evidence. This information should then be studied in the light of our present-day knowledge of the behaviour of men under combat conditions. ⁷⁰ However, we should try to understand both the literary and the military significance of the topoi in our written sources. Before we start considering whether the sources are speaking the truth, we should first ask why they describe reality the way they do, and what are their implicit and explicit assumptions about the reality of warfare and their moral significance. Before we start looking for developments in the sources we should first be looking for similarities, because if we do not know what remained unchanged, we will never know what had changed. To successfully pursue such a line of inquiry we should shed our modernist biases, except for the humane bias that the sources are referring to a consistent, logical, and functional military system, practised by sentient human beings of flesh and blood. By following this procedure we can make a model of this ‘Iranian tradition’.