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[Badger]

    Following a discussion on another site they are discussing a war between the Russians and the mongols. It came up that the mongols could fire the Russians arrows back at them but the Russians could not fire the mongols arrows. If this is true does anyone know why?

[DC]

I seem to remember reading somewhere that instead of a nock the Mongols used a ring in the string(like a peep sight)and the back of the arrow was pointed to fit in the ring. They could nock the enemies arrows above or below the ring to return them but the pointed arrows wouldn't work on the enemies bow. Also they used the thing on their glove(a siper, maybe)so their arrows were to short for the enemy to use.

[mikekeswick]

Badger have a look at 'Saracen Archery' it has a fairly comprehensive section on all the methods of stopping the enemy using your arrows. There are quite a few methods

[Bjoern Sofeit]

Yes, there are a bunch of funny gimmicks in there. The question is, if there is there any actual record of this ever been done on a greater scale, like arming a whole army with stuff like that? A Majra for example is a simple thing, possible that many carried such a tool, but equiping an army of +100.000 men with such a large number of special arrows is an effort of a completely different scale. How many arrows did each man carry? 50-100?

The whole thing wouldn't be unlikely if the Mongols shot an unusually short arrow and the russians relied on a very long draw and large bows. That wasn't the case. The bows of the conquest era were comparably large, with arrows that make for a 30-32" draw.

There are so many bogus stories about the Mongol armies floating around, I'm quite sure this is another one.