Early Iranic Warfare

[Azadan Januspar]

History of early Iranians is strongly bound with their original homelands i.e. vast plains of Eurasian steppes. Some of the earliest documents at hand which indicate the lifestyles and warfare of the early or possibly Proto-Iranians or even before that, are ancient Iranian texts, most notable of which are various versions of ancient tradition of keeping of histories related to Iranian people called "Šāhnāmak" or "Shahname" and "Avesta" both of them possess amost a considerbale amount of words and terms related to weaponry which make them actually historical lexicon in this field, many of them remained consistent though possibly of varied usage in Iranian languages or to some degree in the other langauges of steppe and middle east. In the following lines I m gonna try to mention some of them, widely exploiting an exquisite work rarely done in this field by E. Purdavud under title "Zēn Abzār" lit. The Weaponry of Ancient Iranians.

[ALTAR]

Persians













all pics are from: www.riseofpersia.com/factions/iranian-factions/persia.html

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Nice

Dear Azadan, do you mean the Šāhnāme of Firdavsī (11th cen.) or do you mean older texts? Firdavsī's Šāhnāme probably depicts Iranians and Turks with rather contemporary (10th-11th century) styles, right?

[ALTAR]

Meds























all pics are from: www.riseofpersia.com/factions/iranian-factions/media.html

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Thanx for the share

[Azadan Januspar]

Čarx, Čarxag. Wardiyūn, Gardūne, Wheel - Chariot
Raethaeshtar, Artēshtār , Charioteer, Warrior

Wheel is one of the widely used tools amongst the early Indo-europeans. the use of Chariots amongst early Iranians were of great prevalence so that the army was called according to that name "Raethaeshtar" or later "Artēshtār".

Zaenu , Akana or Kantigr, Tarkeš Weapon or Quiver. Tiγra, Tigrā, Tigr, Arrow

Interesting thing that in Avetsan texts and their Pahlavi translations, the word "Zaenu" means weapon and is almost identical with both weapon in general and quiver. In Vandidād there is mention of twelve arms which should be bestowed to a warrior or "Raethaeshtar" in order to extricate the sins, one of which is quiver of thirty ironhead arrows. The word Tarkesh meaning quiver found its way via Arabic to Italian as Turcasso, Greek Tarkasion and French Carquois.

[Azadan Januspar]

You are welcome

And thanks for the pics I think they are for the game Total War and the Iranian horse archers are missing. I think for the Achaemenid army there is a lot of misunderstanding through their image as complete Mesopotamian army. Which in fact regardless of some court fashion adaptions of their time, it remained Iranic. Osprey series on Elite armies: Achaemenid Persians gives a good reconstruction highly based on Greek point of view. Greek historians often described Iranian Achaemenid soldiers as mostly brown-haired, tall ones wearing variety of helmets, most popular of which long and pointed helmets.



The Ferdowsi's Šāhnāme is actually a continuation of works called "Šāhnāmak" or "Xudāynāmak" (stories of the kings) a very ancient verbal and written tradition of telling the stories of early Iranians or even possibly early Indo-european, through a narration of the stories starting from very early stages of creation of wisodm then evolution to the life after that up to time of the Sassanid kings in which it gets a form of chronicle, importnat point that the very early stages of these narrations having a mythical layer represents long durations of passage of time during which something significant occured with a metaphor under the name of a mythical king.
Fredowsi in order to describe the warfare, excessively used the words, which are most of the times the original Pahlavi not the spelling of his times or possibly Arabic terminology. The reason is high level of development of weaponry in times of Sassanids, whose core of armies were developed version of early Iranian steppe armies. So it is natural that even up to the time of Ferdowsi he employed mostly such vocabulary to depict the opposing armies.

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

And thanks for the pics I think they are for the game Total War and the Iranian horse archers are missing. I think for the Achaemenid army there is a lot of misunderstanding through their image as complete Mesopotamian army. Which in fact regardless of some court fashion adaptions of their time, it remained Iranic. Osprey series on Elite armies: Achaemenid Persians gives a good reconstruction highly based on Greek point of view. Greek historians often described Iranian Achaemenid soldiers as mostly brown-haired, tall ones wearing variety of helmets, most popular of which long and pointed helmets.

Hehe, I actually never thought the Achaemenid Persians as hevaily Mesopotamian ;D What comes to my mind when I see that name is surely different from Mesopotamians

The Ferdowsi's Šāhnāme is actually a continuation of works called "Šāhnāmak" or "Xudāynāmak" (stories of the kings) a very ancient verbal and written tradition of telling the stories of early Iranians or even possibly early Indo-european, through a narration of the stories starting from very early stages of creation of wisodm then evolution to the life after that up to time of the Sassanid kings in which it gets a form of chronicle, importnat point that the very early stages of these narrations having a mythical layer represents long durations of passage of time during which something significant occured with a metaphor under the name of a mythical king.
Fredowsi in order to describe the warfare, excessively used the words, which are most of the times the original Pahlavi not the spelling of his times or possibly Arabic terminology. The reason is high level of development of weaponry in times of Sassanids, whose core of armies were developed version of early Iranian steppe armies. So it is natural that even up to the time of Ferdowsi he employed mostly such vocabulary to depict the opposing armies.

Hmm my point was that, for example, could I use Firdavsī's Šāhnāme to examine Qarakhanid armies?


Oh btw, how is the "ae" in Raethaeshtar and Zaenu pronounced?

[Azadan Januspar]

Unfortunately not really, cause as I said before, it is almost based on a tradition of narration up to the Sassanid era. But apart from the mainstream of the words which show great resemblance to their Pahlavi (middle Persian) equivalents, rest of them are either natural evolved modern Persian or some arabicized forms of Pahlvai, there is nothing of significance for later Turks like Qarakhanids'. But it could be a good source for that of Turkic khaganate period.
Oh sorry it was Rathaeshtār, which is pronounced as it is written, for Zaënu it is also like that.

[H. İhsan Erkoç]

Ok, I see, thanks So it is pronounced like "a-e" as it's written.