Panjagan

Panjagān was either a projectile weapon or an archery technique used by the aswaran heavy cavalry of the late military of Sasanian Persia, by which a volley of five arrows was shot.^[1] No examples of the device have survived, but it is alluded to by later Islamic authors,^[2] 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 for "five-fold")^[3] is reconstructed from its Arabized forms recorded by the Islamic authors al-Tabari (بنجكان banjakān, فنجقان fanjaqān), al-Jahiz, and al-Maqdisi (فنرجان fanrajān).^[1] The word banjakiyya (بنجكية, "a volley of five arrows") mentioned by al-Jawaliqi is also related.^[3]

History

Medieval textile depicting Persian archers fighting Ethiopians in Yemen. Islamic historian al-Tabari notes that the heavily defeated Ethiopians were unfamiliar with panjagan.

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.^[4] 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, 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 (2,000 equals 400 multiplied by five).^[5][6][7]

Analysis

A. Siddiqi has translated the word as five-pointed/five-barbed arrow, but C. E. Bosworth consider this interpretation unlikely.^[3] Bosworth proposed that the term refers to a military technique of rapid shooting of five arrows in succession. However, Ahmad Tafazzoli's analysis of Middle Persian military terminology suggests that it was actually a device, probably a type of crossbow.^[1] Furthermore, a device capable of shooting five arrows simultaneously has been described in the work of Ā'īn-Nāmah.^[1]

According to Kaveh Farrokh, use of the panjagan allowed the archer to shoot with greater speed, volume, and focus, creating a "kill zone".^[2] Thus, it may have been developed for the wars against the Göktürks and the Hephthalites, who were known for their agile cavalrymen.^[8]

See also

• List of lost inventions
• Polybolos
• Repeating crossbow, an ancient Chinese weapon
• Mad minute, a pre-WWI British military exercise for rapid firing and reloading