Panjagan

Panjagān was either a projectile weapon or an archery technique used by the late military of Sasanian Persia, by which a volley of five arrows was shot.

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).

[3] 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.

[1] According to Kaveh Farrokh, use of the panjagan allowed the archer to shoot with greater speed, volume, and focus, creating a "kill zone".

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