Ottoman Composite Bow

Origins

Bows made of horn, wood and sinew had been used across Asia for thousands of years, from the Assyrian Composite Bow to the Mongol Composite Bow. The Turkish peoples brought the steppe version of this bow with them when they moved from Central Asia into the Middle East and, after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, into Anatolia. The Ottoman Empire grew out of one of the small Turkish principalities of Anatolia around 1300, and its bowyers gradually refined the weapon into a distinct Ottoman form. Bowmaking in Istanbul was the work of a skilled guild, and after the conquest of the city in 1453 Mehmed II set aside a large field outside the walls, the Okmeydanı or 'Arrow Field', for archery practice and contests.

Design & Construction

The bow had a thin core of wood, often maple, with strips of horn, usually from water buffalo, glued to the belly facing the archer and layers of shredded sinew glued to the back. Horn resists being squeezed and sinew resists being stretched, so a short bow could store a great deal of energy. The glue was made from animal hide or fish, and each layer had to dry slowly, so making a fine bow could take a year or more. The ends were stiff wooden levers, and unstrung the bow curled forward into a deep C shape. Strung, Ottoman bows were short, often little more than a meter long, which made them easy to use on horseback. They were covered in bark or leather and often lacquered, painted and gilded. The archer drew the string with the thumb, protected by a thumb ring of horn, bone, metal or stone. A grooved arrow guide strapped to the hand let archers shoot very short, light arrows for long-distance shooting.

Combat Use

Ottoman armies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries relied heavily on archery. The provincial cavalry and the light raiders known as akıncı were mounted archers, and the Janissaries, the sultan's slave infantry founded in the late fourteenth century, were trained first as foot archers. At the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 Ottoman archers shot at the defenders on the walls while the guns battered them, and the Janissaries who led the final assault carried bows as well as swords and early firearms. During the sixteenth century the Janissaries turned more and more to the matchlock, the Janissary Tüfek, and the bow became a secondary weapon in the Ottoman Wars in Europe. Cavalry and the Crimean Tatar allies still used bows at the Battle of Vienna in 1683.

Legacy

Archery remained a respected sport and an art for sultans and courtiers long after it faded from the battlefield. Stone markers at Okmeydanı recorded the longest flight shots, and one credited to Sultan Selim III in 1798 is recorded at about 889 meters (972 yards). In 1795 a secretary of the Ottoman embassy in London astonished English archers by shooting 482 yards with a Turkish bow. The American physicist Paul Klopsteg studied these bows in the 1930s, and his book helped explain their performance to Western readers. Traditional Turkish archery has seen a strong revival in Turkey since the early 2000s.