Video: Warriors of the era of Ancient Russia X - XI centuries in the drawings-reconstructions of Oleg Fedorov
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Oleg Fedorov's drawings are based on reliable archaeological and scientific data, many of them were created for the largest museums and private collectors from Russia, Ukraine and other countries. We have already talked about the reconstruction of the ancient Russian women's jewelry headdress in Fedorov's watercolors, this time we will talk about the warriors of Ancient Russia.
The druzhina culture in Ancient Rus was formed simultaneously with the ancient Russian statehood and embodied the ethnic, social and political processes of the 9th - early 11th centuries.
As historical materials show, the Slavs, the main population of the ancient Russian territories, were relatively weak in military-technical terms. They only used arrows, spears and axes as weapons. The situation changed after the so-called "Rus" came to the territory of Ancient Rus. According to scientists, this is how the warriors who came from northern Europe were called in ancient times. Along with the Rus, items of military armament and protection, progressive for that time, also appeared.
Among the archaeological materials, children's wooden swords and other "toy" weapons are often found. For example, in Old Ladoga a wooden sword was found with a handle width of about 5-6 cm and a total length of about 60 cm, which corresponds to the size of a boy's palm at the age of 6-10 years. Thus, in the games, the process of learning skills that were to be useful to future warriors in adulthood took place.
It is important to note that the "Russian" army at the initial stage of its existence fought exclusively on foot, which is confirmed by the Byzantine and Arabic written sources of that time. At first, the Russians considered horses solely as a means of transportation. True, the horse breeds common at that time in Europe were rather short, so for a long time they simply could not carry a warrior-rider in full armor.
By the end of the 10th century, more and more often there were military conflicts between the troops of the Rus and the troops of the Khazar Kaganate, as well as the Byzantine Empire, which had a strong and trained cavalry. Therefore, already in 944, the allies of Prince Igor in the campaign against Byzantium were the Pechenegs, whose detachments consisted of light horsemen. It was from the Pechenegs that the Russians began to buy specially trained horses for the new kind of troops. True, the first attempt by Russian troops in a battle on horseback, undertaken in 971 at the battle of Dorostol, ended in failure. However, the failure did not stop our ancestors, and since they still lacked their own cavalry, the practice of attracting horse detachments of nomads was introduced, which were even part of the ancient Russian squads.
Old Russian warriors adopted not only horse fighting skills from the steppe inhabitants, but also borrowed weapons and clothing characteristic of the “equestrian” culture. It was at that time that sabers, sphero-conical helmets, tassels, caftans, tashki bags, complex bows and other items of equipping the rider and equipping the horse appeared in Russia. The words caftan, fur coat, feryaz, sarafan are of eastern (Turkic, Iranian, Arabic) origin, which, apparently, reflects the corresponding origin of the objects themselves.
Taking into account the fact that in most of the territory of Ancient Russia the climatic conditions were quite severe, historians suggest that woolen fabric could be used when sewing Russian caftans. “They put on wide trousers, leggings, boots, a jacket, and a brocade caftan with gold buttons, and put a sable brocade hat on his head” - this is how the Arab traveler and geographer of the 10th century Ibn Fadlan describes the funeral of a noble Rus. The wearing of wide trousers gathered at the knee by the Russians is mentioned, in particular, by the Arab historian of the beginning of the 10th century Ibn Rust.
In some military burials of the ancient Rus, silver, decorated with filigree and grain, conical caps were found, which are supposedly the end of headdresses in the shape of a cap with a fur trim. Scientists claim that this is exactly what the "Russian hat" made by the masters of ancient Rus looked like, the shape of which most likely belongs to nomadic cultures.
The need to conduct hostilities mainly against the steppe lightly armed horsemen led to a gradual change in Russian weapons towards greater lightness and flexibility. Therefore, at first, the completely European (Varangian) weapon of the Russian squads during the campaigns against Byzantium gradually acquired more eastern features: the Scandinavian swords were replaced by sabers, the warriors moved from rooks to horses, and even the heavy knightly armor, which eventually became widespread in Europe, never had analogies in the works of ancient Russian armourers.
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