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''Panjagān'' was either a projectile weapon or an
Al-Tabari records the use of ''panjagān'' by the Sasanian army during the Yemeni campaign of Wahriz against the Aksumites of Ethiopia, noting that the latter had not encountered it before. The author makes another allusion when describing the assault by the Persian '' asāwira'' (descendants of the Sasanian '' aswārān'' heavy cavalry) that killed Mas'ud ibn Amr, the governor of
archery
Archery is the sport, practice, or skill of using a Bow and arrow, bow to shooting, shoot arrows.Paterson ''Encyclopaedia of Archery'' p. 17 The word comes from the Latin ''arcus'', meaning bow. Historically, archery has been used for hunting ...
technique used by the late military of Sasanian Persia, by which a volley of five arrows was shot. No examples of the device have survived, but it is alluded to by later Islamic authors, in particular in their description of the Persian conquest of Yemen, wherein the application of the unknown ''panjagan'' was supposedly the deciding factor in Persian victory.
Name
The name ''panjagān'' (Middle Persian
Middle Persian, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg ( Inscriptional Pahlavi script: , Manichaean script: , Avestan script: ) in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasania ...
for "five-fold") is reconstructed from its Arabized
Arabization or Arabicization () is a sociological process of cultural change in which a non-Arab society becomes Arab, meaning it either directly adopts or becomes strongly influenced by the Arabic language, culture, literature, art, music, and ...
forms recorded by the Islamic authors al-Tabari
Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr ibn Yazīd al-Ṭabarī (; 839–923 CE / 224–310 AH), commonly known as al-Ṭabarī (), was a Sunni Muslim scholar, polymath, historian, exegete, jurist, and theologian from Amol, Tabaristan, present- ...
( ''banjakān'', ''fanjaqān''), al-Jahiz
Abu Uthman Amr ibn Bahr al-Kinani al-Basri (; ), commonly known as al-Jahiz (), was an Arab polymath and author of works of literature (including theory and criticism), theology, zoology, philosophy, grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, philology, lin ...
, and al-Maqdisi
Shams al-Din Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Abi Bakr, commonly known by the ''Nisba (onomastics), nisba'' al-Maqdisi or al-Muqaddasī, was a medieval Arab geographer, author of ''The Best Divisions in the Knowledge of the Regions'' and '' ...
( ''fanrajān''). The word ''banjakiyya'' (, "a volley of five arrows") mentioned by al-Jawaliqi is also related.
History
Al-Tabari records the use of ''panjagān'' by the Sasanian army during the Yemeni campaign of Wahriz against the Aksumites of Ethiopia, noting that the latter had not encountered it before. The author makes another allusion when describing the assault by the Persian '' asāwira'' (descendants of the Sasanian '' aswārān'' heavy cavalry) that killed Mas'ud ibn Amr, the governor of Basra
Basra () is a port city in Iraq, southern Iraq. It is the capital of the eponymous Basra Governorate, as well as the List of largest cities of Iraq, third largest city in Iraq overall, behind Baghdad and Mosul. Located near the Iran–Iraq bor ...
, in 684 AD during the Second Islamic Civil War. As the advance of the 400-strong ''asāwira'' cavalry was halted by spearmen at the gates, the Persian commander Māh-Afrīdūn ordered his men to shoot with ''"fanjaqān"'', thus they hit them with "2,000 arrows in one burst", forcing the spearmen to retreat.
Analysis
A. Siddiqi has translated the word as five-pointed/five-barbed arrow, butC. E. Bosworth
Clifford Edmund Bosworth FBA (29 December 1928 – 28 February 2015) was an English historian and Orientalist, specialising in Arabic and Iranian studies.
Life
Bosworth was born on 29 December 1928 in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire (now ...
consider this interpretation unlikely. Bosworth proposed that the term refers to a military technique of rapid shooting of five arrows in succession. However, Ahmad Tafazzoli
Ahmad Tafazzoli (December 16, 1937, Isfahan – January 15, 1997, Tehran) () was an Iranian Iranist and professor of ancient Iranian languages and culture at Tehran University.
One of his most important books is ''Pre-Islamic Persian Literature ...
's analysis of Middle Persian military terminology suggests that it was actually a device, probably a type of crossbow
A crossbow is a ranged weapon using an Elasticity (physics), elastic launching device consisting of a Bow and arrow, bow-like assembly called a ''prod'', mounted horizontally on a main frame called a ''tiller'', which is hand-held in a similar f ...
. Furthermore, a device capable of shooting five arrows simultaneously has been described in the work of ''Ā'īn-Nāmah''.
According to Kaveh Farrokh, use of the ''panjagan'' allowed the archer to shoot with greater speed, volume, and focus, creating a "kill zone". Thus, it may have been developed for the wars against the Göktürks and the Hephthalites, who were known for their agile cavalrymen.
See also
* List of lost inventions * Polybolos *Repeating crossbow
The repeating crossbow (), also known as the repeater crossbow, and the Zhuge crossbow (, also romanized Chu-ko-nu) due to its association with the Three Kingdoms-era strategist Zhuge Liang (181–234 AD), is a crossbow invented during the W ...
, an ancient Chinese weapon
* Mad minute, a pre-WWI British military exercise for rapid firing and reloading
References
{{Reflist Medieval archery Projectile weapons Crossbows Military equipment of Asia Weapons of Iran Ancient weapons Medieval weapons Military history of the Sasanian Empire Lost inventions History of archery