What SWORDS did the MONGOLS use? Turko-Mongol Sabers

sometimes in history there's a weapon which is hugely influential More Than People realize today we're going to be looking at the Mongol saber hi folks mat e here of scholar gladiatoria now over the years a subject which I've somewhat neglected on my channel but I really should have given more attention to is the Mongols particularly the Mongol invasions not just of Europe but of everywhere because of course Jenis Khan was a huge Mighty and important an conqueror in not just not just history in Europe but history in Asia history in uh the Middle East and North Africa incredibly important and influential Empire that sprung out of Mongolia under tagim and a question which I've actually been asked a number of times in comments under videos for years and years for the last decade basically is what types of swords did the Mongols use and this is not necessarily A straightforward question to answer and so I've never got around to doing a video on it but this hopefully will answer that question in pretty straightforward terms and moreover we're going to look at the swords that the Mongol swords influenced where they came from and where they went to so here I have one of the latest replicas from LK Chen now many of you will know that um I've done various things with alen over the years I've reviewed a lot of their swords and finally they've got around turning their attentions to a Mongol sabba that's right so in essence what the Mongols what jengas Khan was using for most of the Army most of the golden hord was a saber now before I go on and before we look at the details and the features of this particular saber I just want to say that these swords are part of a wider group the turo mongolic Sabers uh so if you want to look up more about them online that's what you're looking for essentially Turco Mongol Sabers um and they are part of a group that goes all the way back far earlier actually than Jenis Khan's time and a little bit later as well um and they aren't an isolated group and they're somewhat complicated to talk about now this isn't going to be a hugely detailed video about them because that would warrant an entire big video just by itself so this is really an introduction to the subject but all you need to know for the purposes of this is that the tur Mongol Sabers come around just about the earliest in the 7th Century they start to become quite common in the e8th n9th and 10th centuries within Central Asia okay so the first types of them appear in Central Asia and they do appear um on the outskirts of Europe with people like the avar so there are various uh groups nomadic raiding groups some of which settle um and one of the earliest examples of one of these tur Mongol Sabers is actually found in a grave from Romania uh it's an avar grave so Charlamagne for example in the late 700s was fighting against the avar the avar were one of the main opponents of the carolingian empire of charlamagne's Empire and they were essentially a uh a horse-based culture a bit like how the Mongols would be L later on much later on so the Mongols jengus Khan we're talking about the 13th century okay so the 1200s so we're talking about a large period of time here now what's interesting about these Turco Mongol Sabers is they span a large amount of time they do change they do evolve there are different types they're not all the same but what is surprising is they are a very definite type that do maintain consistent features and look at those features in a second but one other thing to mention as well particularly about the Mongols and Jenis Khan's Army is they included a lot of different people from different areas and they absorbed military technology from different areas most famously Chinese ships and Siege engines for example and of course the Mongols conquered areas and absorbed things from there and and just made them part of the mongal Empire so in fact we don't only see these types of Sabers in jenus Khan's Army we also see European arming swords and various other types of sword um Islamic swords for example from down in the Middle East that were different to these right so what are the basic features of the uh tur mongal saber particularly the one of Jenis Khan's era we're going to dispense with the scabard okay I might come back to the scabard so this isn't a review of The Sword we're going to look just look at the basic features for now now the first thing you'll notice is this blade is gently curved blade and very interestingly characteristically it has a bevel it has a false Edge okay so this is actually incredibly like 19th century military swords as found in places like Britain and France and Prussia so the blades on later 19th century swords are really incredibly like these Turco Mongol Sabers and we can absolutely say that these are basically via a long winding route these are basically the prototypes of later 19th century military swords that are still being worn and carried in parade today okay so an incredibly successful and popular blade type now while this is slightly curved and it is predominantly single-edged it is predominately also a Cavalry sword it also has a pretty good point for thrusting so these were cut and thrust swords and they were gently curved therefore they are a sort of compromised design they're not hugely um adapted towards cutting they're not completely specialized towards cutting we have a spear Point again with the double edge up here they're not particularly broad so they're not incredibly powerful Choppers um but clearly they're not specialized towards thrusting either so they are a true compromis design and I think a lot of people think that compromis designs are something that somehow came later on which is rubbish of course cuz you know the Roman Gladius or the Greek zos they're all compromized designs they cut and thrust swords and so was this it's just that this one is slightly curved and quite long now let's just talk about the blade length for a second so LK Chen's Recreation here is I think about 31 1/2 in 32 Ines long that's actually fairly short for these Turco Turco Mongol Sabers now it might be that the Mongols were using slightly shorter blades which I think is the case but if we look at earlier tur uh Sabers we find some with blades all the way up to like 40 in now that gets into the Realms of some of the longest Cavalry sabers from the 19th century much like this French heavy Cavalry saber that I've pulled out of my stock uh inventory to show here so these types of very long blades basically blades exactly like this were in use from like charlamagne's time uh by people like the avar and other turkic groups now for anyone who knows much about history you will know that these turkic groups were in many places okay they were ranging from uh Central Europe all the way across cross into Central Asia and via the Mongols into East Asia then down to India and we'll get to these how this affects their swords in a second all the way down into India especially once we come via the the Mongols and then the mugal all the way down into Persia in the Middle East and uh all the way affecting the mamluks over in North Africa so a huge range and therefore a huge influence so these swords were incredibly influential um so other characteristic things about this model of Sword is that you will notice it has the forward C of grip so the blade slopes that way and the grip slopes forward now again this is something that we find on European Sabers this is something that's continued and this is almost certainly where it starts and where it comes from because Sabers from essentially Central and Eastern Europe that were the direct models for these their ancestors were these okay so that is a very characteristic feature of the uh of the Mongol or turkic um saber is that the grip curves forward now this is actually a fairly mild example of that some of the early ones actually have a Pummel section which is bigger and that is caned really quite drastically forward there's one uh avar sword probably from the 10th Century which has been associated with Charlamagne probably not actually associated with Charlamagne but it does seem seem to be an avar saber of this family of this group and that has really quite CED foils Pummel and that's quite common particularly in that area and at that time so where we're talking about the late Dark Ages if you want to call it that the early medieval period then these Sabers often have a more drastically curved forward grip but even the ones which are more mild like this they still have that forwards curve and that's very characteristic the other thing which is quite characteristic is having some form of pommel cap okay it's not always a distinct pommel but it sometimes is so sometimes there is a proper Pummel like we find on a European Medieval sword sometimes it's a hollow cap like this sometimes there isn't anything at all maybe just a flap plate at the end so it varies by time and by uh area and culture but usually there is something at the end and usually it is tilted towards The Cutting Edge here the next thing is the cross guard you will notice it is not a disc or oval or anything like that like a Chinese or Japanese or Korean sword it is a cross guard a little bit like a medieval European sword sword now they tend to be either straight like this or very often they are curved upwards towards the blade so if we look at the early like the avar Sabers for example uh and various other turkic examples the um cross guards Point upwards and they usually have little ball ends will very often have little ball ends but this is a Mongol form which has a little short straight guard now another really important and characteristic feature of this type of Sword is this thing here which if you're familiar with Japanese or indeed Chinese swords you will be familiar with these constructions now this is called a tungu um in Chinese we don't necessarily know what it was called in Mongolian at least I don't uh but what's interesting is we find these on uh turkic Mongolian swords and they spread this to other cultures so what's interesting is in later swords for example even ottoman um uh ottoman yatagan have a vestigial version of this okay whereby it's not actually a a metal plate that's wrapped around like a sleeve at the base of the blade they sometimes in fact engrave it on the blade so they still maintain this as a decorative element even when it no longer has a functional element which tells us as archaeologists and historians that originally the old ones the original ones had these plates now what's interesting is that connects us to two very important cultures it connects us to the turkic Mongolian swords so we know that ottoman swords probably have their root in those and that's probably where they come from but additionally also Chinese swords now that's very interesting because we know that there was a two-way exchange obviously the Mongols contacted um uh con conquered uh China and they brought certain things to China and they took certain things from China um so it was a two-way exchange now what's not totally clear is whether this construction was originally a Chinese thing was originally a tur thing we're not 100% sure but certain types of Chinese sword do have it and it is possible going all the way back to the Han Dynasty it is possible that uh certain forms of ancient Chinese sword did influence the later Turk swords but equally if we look at the scabber designs and various other things it's very likely that nomadic groups on the borders of China influen Chinese swords as well so it was a two-way exchange and in fact we also see influence from Mongolian swords or turkic and Mongolian swords on later dynasties in China we see this on Ming swords Ming Dynasty and we see this even on Ching uh Dynasty swords all the way through to the 19th century so there are features design features on chines da for example that clearly come from the Mongol influence and moreover it seems to be the Mongol influence that made the da the primary military sword in China okay so before that the um the Jen was the primary military sword in China after the Mongols it became the da okay the Jen still existed it was the court sword essentially but the da became the primary military sword probably because of Mongol influence what other swords did this affect so it affected Chinese swords um it affected Middle Eastern swords okay um so up until the Mongol invasions of the 13th century the standard Islamic World sword so if we look at the three Cru SES for example contrary to what you've seen in Hollywood movies even contrary to what you read in some history books depressingly and funny enough I've just been filming in Canada for a documentary which touches on this subject as well um Middle Eastern swords and SL Holy Land swords of the first three Crusades for the Islamic forces were almost all if not totally almost all straight and mostly double-edged so that's right the swords that were carried in the First Crusade the Second Crusade the Third Crusade by Muslim forces were usually straight and very often double-edged sometimes single-edged curbed SS did exist though as I've mentioned these uh Turco Mongol swords existed from the 7th e8th Century onwards and there were some cultural groups possibly the sujuk who did use these more commonly but there was nevertheless a preference for the straight and usually double-edged sword this is what most Muslim forces carried at this time so if you were looking at uh saladin's Army you would expect approximately I don't know 80% of them to have straight swords maybe even 90% and only the remainder to have curved swords because they happen to be from cultural group which has some connection with turkic tribes that has curved swords so they were in the minority it wasn't until the Mongol invasions that the sword the curved swords started to be more common and that's true all over the Middle East even Persia and wherever okay and that obviously affects North Africa as well and it affects the Ottomans and this was probably the inspiration for the kich or Pala whatever you want to call it in the Ottoman Empire now that has a double wammy effect cuz just remember for a second first of all the Mongols were conquering everyone in the 13th century but later on in the 15th century and 16th century the Ottomans were conquering everyone so we've got this double whammy effect of these swords affecting people first of all they're coming in with a wave of Mongols and everyone going well let's copy their swords or you know make swords like they use cuz they've been very successful and then later on we get the same thing with the Ottomans as well and the Ottomans themselves have been influenced by the Mongols so we've getting this double whammy effect okay so we dealt with North Africa the Middle East um China let's talk about India for a second so I'll put this sword down for a second there is a very famous type of Indian sword which really appears in the 16th century as a result of the mughals okay curved swords come into India at this time and they have their ultimate roots in the curved swords of the mugal conquerors who obviously stem back to the Mongols originally okay so curved swords in India ultimately has their root in this sword as well if we go over to Russia for example in the Caucasus this a famous type of Sword uh the shashka and the shashka has its root again in this type of Sword now if we come over to Europe we find first of all in the 14th century places like Hungary start to adopt curved swords again there's a double effect here first of all we've got in the 13th century the Mongol invasions so we've got the influence in Eastern Europe from the Mongols and their related groups of people we've also got groups of turkic people obviously as I mentioned in charlamagne's time there were also of these Sabers and they may to some limited extent have been used and in one particular case they seem to have been uh influenced uh Sabers in the Byzantine Empire famously with the pomian which was used in the Byzantine Empire uh from this sort of time uh sort of 10th Century onwards so that type of saber almost certainly comes from groups of people that the byzantines were hiring as mercenaries or who were on their borders and these swords affected swords there so there were Sabers in the byzantian Empire and that in itself affects areas within the sphere of influence of the Byzantium but then we've got this next effect of the Mongols coming in the 13th century and then you've got the Ottomans uh appearing in the well not appearing but starting to be a problem on the borders of Europe in the 14th century uh and obviously increasingly so in the 15th century until eventually the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 so we've got this wave after wave of peoples on the border of Europe now how what effect did this have on European swords but there's no question that as I mentioned in Hungary we start to see Sabers start to become popular in the 14th century if we go to Poland they start to popular uh with the shaber in the uh 14th century and increasingly so in the 15th century uh if we go to even Switzerland the Swiss saber if we look at the blade there very clearly influenced probably by ottoman swords as well and these are distinct to the Lang Messa and the falan they have some Crossovers and in fact in some senses we could say that the Lang Massa is affected Enough by these new incoming saber designs to sort of become what we now known as know as the dusak um and the blade forms that we see on 16th century langa or dusak are somewhat different to most of the blade forms we see on 15th and 14th century uh examples of falam so we have a huge amount of influence all over the world coming from these swords we have it in the middle eastn North Africa we have it in India we have it in China in a two-way exchange we have it obviously all over Central Asia we have it in Eastern Europe and we have it in the Byzantine Empire as well and of course this is through various ways we've got originally the turkic groups in charlamagne's time and the subsequent so 9th 10th centuries then we've got this massive uh influential invasion of the 13th century and Jenis Khan and then we've got another 100 Years of tataa or Mongol activity as well on the borders of Europe and then we've got the Ottomans also and the Ottomans themselves two-way exchange with the Mongols so there we go an incredibly uh influential saber that really has a blade form which is incredibly like 19th century military swords and ultimately is where they come from uh the hilt even on the hilt obviously we've only got a small cross guard on this but even the fact that we've got this little Pummel cap which has retained hello look at French swords for a second little Pummel cap so even on French swords we still got that little Pummel C and some British ones and Prussian and so on so forth and then the curve that that distinctive gently curved shape here with the gently curved forwards caned forwards uh grip here so this really is the you could say in many ways whether it's the earlier turkic tribe version of this which tends to be a bit longer and a more caned grip or it's the Mongol version of it which is almost the same sword just with slightly different Tendencies this is the granddaddy of Sabers pretty much all over the world whether we're talking about um ottoman swords whether we're talking about European military swords whether we're talking about the Indian talwa uh or we could say in a two-way exchange with the Chinese da as well anyway I hope this has been interesting I will do a deeper dive on this family of swords in the future but I need to gather more data I want to have more time to look up original archaeological examples that are well dated because there have been a lot of these that have come out of um Graves which our best source of data for the originals and some of them got really big long blades equally I'd like to look at some of the research in different languages I know the Chinese have got lots of data but it's not available in English so I'm going to see if I can get some from LK Chen um and in due course we'll be looking at a review of this sword but I hope for now that's been an interesting introduction to the uh to the question so to answer the basic question of what swords did jenus Khan's army use this was the most predominant type of Sword even if they had other types of sword from other areas they would have had some Chinese weapons they would have had some European weapons probably some arming swords and things like that mixed in as well due to their conquests primarily this the turo or turkic Mongolian um saber is the primary type of sword that was used by a huge number of nomadic and step dwelling people in a big period of time and really this type of Sword should be a lot more famous than it is but hopefully I've done my little starting part to help change that and we'll do more in the future anyway I hope you've enjoyed watching I hope I'll see you on the channel again really soon give us a thumbs up hope you're subscribed I've got extra videos on patreon if that's something that's of interest and I will see you really soon cheers folks thanks for watching we've got extra videos on patreon please give our Facebook a like And subscribe if you haven't already cheers folks

Channel: scholagladiatoria

Views: 100,863

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Id: wADgKUjpXBE

Length: 21min 50sec (1310 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 15 2024