Turkish Archery in Ottoman Documents (201208)

Prepared by: Hasan Şahintürk-Şükrü Seçkin Anık

     The point that archery is an important livelihood for Turkic society is confirmed by almost all historical sources related to the subject. Turkic people, who made archery as a part of their social life, kept archery alive in many fields from battlefields to sports arenas, from proverbs to poems, and left important traces that we can follow today.
    The Ottoman period, which is expressed as the peak of Turkic archery, is the period when we have the most information about it compared to other periods. In this period, archery was brought to an institutional structure and kept alive through dozens of Okmeydans (Archers Fields) and Archery Lodges extent throughout the empire. With the spread of firearms since the end of the 17thcentury, archery, which lost its military front, has lasted as a more civilian activity in the sportive sense. This study, which consists of documents in State Archives of the Presidency, which summarizes the interest of the Ottomans in archery, sheds light on the military, sportive, technical, historical and cultural background of Turkish Archery in the Ottoman period.

ISBN No: 978-605-74584-7-6