Swords

This paper utilizes an approach that combines studies of Samanid period artifacts and textual accounts with modern genetic studies to explore the identity of the people who were involved in long distance trade from the far eastern regions of the Central Asia into Northern Europe. Although this study does not analyze the Samanid works, it reiterates and illustrates how important Iran/Persia was in the history of Europe as well as Central Asia. The information contained in the artifacts and texts gives us the evidence needed to understand the vast trade network and the people who were responsible for the movement of these goods, people and ideas. This study reconfirmed recent genetic studies that the people, collectively termed Rus or Vikings, were a mixture primarily of Scandinavians, Slavs, and Turks, with additional admixing with local populations. The importance of the Persian and Arabic sources addressing contact between the Rus and Eastern people has been thoroughly discussed by Thorir Jonsson Hraundal. In these texts, the Rus were referred to by different names including Majus, Northmanni, Urduman, Warank as well as by other names. One of his many observations is the unmistakable influence of Turkic culture on that of the Rus. This complex ancestry is supported by recent genetic studies and will be discussed in more detail below in light of archaeological evidence. Thus, the term Rus refers to a way of life rather than a homogenous ethnic or cultural group. However, this study refined the identity of the people responsible by observing a correlation between the distribution of the genetic haplogroup R1a sub-clade and the long-distance trade routes across Central Asia to Northern Europe, with the central focus in Eastern Europe. Despite the vast distance, the evidence indicates that there were cultural contacts between people with linked ancestry. The study is important because it begins to reveal the unexpected influence of Eastern cultures on those of Northern Europe.

Fakhr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Manṣūr Mubarākshāh al-Qurashī was born around 1150 CE, probably in Ghazna, and eventually joined the court of Quṭb al-Dīn Aybak, the first Turkish Mamlūk or “Slave King” of northern India. He died around 1224 CE. His Ādāb al Ḥarb wa’l Shujācah (“Rules of War and Bravery”) was a treatise on statecraft in the Persian tradition of “Mirrors for Princes”. A substantial, if idealised discussion of warfare, it includes sections on tactics, troop organisation, various weapons, sieges and many military-historical anecdotes. Nevertheless, these chapters also include more recent, more localised Indian and Turkish elements, plus otherwise lost aspects of military practice or theory. For example, the essentially traditional Islamic or ʿAbbāsid sections include Chapter 12 which describes “How to arrange an army firmly and to maintain that (arrangement)”. The first part of Chapter 13 describes “How to bring the army to a halt and the (best) place to do this”. Some specifically military chapters of theĀdāb al Ḥarb wa’l Shujācah are clearly based upon ʿAbbāsid military theory as developed during the 8th to 10th centuries CE; notably sections such as “How to arrange an army firmly and to maintain that (arrangement)”, and “How to bring the army to a halt and the place to do this”. Other sections reflect more recent Indo-Islamic, Indian and Turkish military ideas, as well as otherwise lost aspects of earlier military practice, plus plans of military arrays, idealised encampments and exercises in the tradition of Islamic furusīyah military training manuals. Chapter 11, which is interpreted here, concerned the characteristic features, advantage and usage of a wide array of weapons. Chapter 19, which is also interpreted here, focussed on various aspects and variations in the array and deployment of an army for battle.