Falconry or hawking is
the art of rearing, training and using birds of prey, like falcons,
hawks and eagles. Falconers were commonly in the employ of major households,
but falconry was seen
as a sport or recreational activity in a similar way to hunting. Period
art displays the lords and ladies walking and riding with a bird on
their glove. The bird would be released to hunt for other birds or small
animals to the joy of the nobility, but it was the falconer's job to
look after and train the raptor. The chief falconer was a respected
position within the household. Birds were given as gifts between royalty
and prey was bred to hunt with.
Traditional views of falconry state
that the art started in East Asia, however archaeologists have found
evidence of falconry in
the Middle East dating back to the 1st century BC. In 680 BC the first
Chinese reference to falconry is
found. Historically, falconry was
a popular sport, and status symbol, among the nobles of both medieval
Europe and feudal Japan, where it is called takagari. Eggs and chicks
of birds of prey were quite rare and expensive, and since the process
of raising and training a hawk or falcon takes a lot of time, money
and space, it was more or less restricted to the noble classes. In Japan,
there were even strict restrictions on who could hunt which sorts of
animals, and where, based on one's ranking within the samurai class.
In art, and in other aspects of culture, such as literature, falconry remained
a status symbol long after the sport was no longer popularly practiced.
Eagles and hawks displayed on the wall could represent the noble himself,
metaphorically, as noble and fierce. Woodblock prints or paintings of
falcons or falconry scenes could be bought by wealthy commoners, and
displayed as the next best thing to partaking in the sport, again representing
a certain degree of nobility.
The first artistic views of falconry come
not from the Far East, but from Turkey. Several carvings from around
1500 BC show a large bird on the fist of a human figure. Grasped in
the same fist is the figure of a hare (presumably the quarry) held by
the back legs.
Another, somewhat later, example has been found
in northern Iraq. Dated to the period of King Sargon II (722-705 BC),
this bas-relief depicts
a small bird of prey on the wrist of a man. Significantly, this carving
seems to show ‘jesses’ (leather thongs used to secure the
bird to the human fist), tied to the bird’s feet and passing between
the thumb and forefinger of the falconer. If so, it may indicate
that falconry (and
its paraphernalia) was well developed by the eighth century BC in the
Middle East.
In both cases, some researchers have interpreted these carvings as
purely religious or symbolic scenes. But if these examples do indeed
depict hawking, then the sport is at least 3,500 years old in Western
Eurasia.
