Book Recommendations 1 and Lost Technology 2
A look at some books that I have read and the Panjagan weapon
When I first started my journey to financial freedom, I began by reading all of the books that I currently had available to me. Most of these were basic personal finance books, but they definitely got me to start to take the idea of investing more seriously. Up to that point, all I knew how to do was hoard everything I had into a bank account. After some time, I began reading more specialized investing books that gave the the knowledge to purchase stocks and real estate. The stages of my knowledge are broken up into 4 sections: Personal Finance, Stock Investing, Beginner Real Estate Investing, Advanced Real Estate Investing.
The Total Money Makeover - Dave Ramsey: This book was one that I had read all the way back in high school. The biggest contribution it had for me was helping me to stay away from credit cards while I was to young to understand the concept of bad debt. Bad debt is debt that looses you money, like buying a new TV with a credit card, as opposed to good debt that makes you money, like a mortgage on a rental property. It also introduced concepts like having sizable emergency savings and paying off debt one at a time to help build momentum.
Money Master the Game - Tony Robbins: This book was another book that I read that helped me understand basic financial terms and strategies. Some of these strategies include, investing in annuities, diversifying your portfolio and how your 401(k) does not guarantee a full retirement. Due to how big the book is, at over 400 pages, it is a significant read, but is filled with good information for people who are new to the personal finance world.
The Automatic Millionaire - David Bach: This book taught be to automate savings and investing. The latte factor is brought up, which says that if you saved the amount of money that you spend on a latte everyday, then automate that, once you retire, you would have significant amount of money saved up, and that is not including any of the interest you would have compounded as well. Paying yourself first is a must, if you want to be a millionaire.
Why We Want You To Be Rich - Donald Trump, Robert Kiyosaki: This book was important because the lessons in it helped me to move on from basic personal finance into the investing world. Something both authors agree on is that the only way to get ahead in the world is to invest. A major topic in the book is the cashflow quadrant. It is something that Kiyosaki has written about in his book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. It essentially gets the reader to change their mindset from just a person who works and pay taxes in a 9-5 job into someone who invests and creates a business, since that is where the wealth and tax saving is.
Lost Technology: Panjagan
Do to how many conflicts and wars there has been on Earth, it is no wonder that a plethora of weapons have been built. These range from long range, to short range, to stealthy and loud. And as expected, it should be no surprise that some of these are lost to time. One of them is called the Panjagan. This was described as a projectile weapon that could launch 5 projectiles at once. The main empire that used it was the Sasanian empire, otherwise know as the Sassanid Empire. This empire covered areas around Iraq and was the last Persian empire to rule before it was conquered by the arabs. The weapon was used in the Yemeni campaign, which saw the Sasanid Empire fight armies of Ethiopia around 570 A.D. However, there are no replicas around today and people aren’t sure what the descriptions of it mean. Some have speculated that this could be a way for archers to fire 5 arrows at once by tying 5 arrows together. Others have speculated that it might have been a repeating crossbow, or even a box that could fire 5 arrows. Still, others believe that it could just be a way to describe how fast the Sasanid archers were at firing arrows. The differences in opinion are from how the texts that mention this item are described while cross referencing it from a historical perspective.
Medieval textile depicting Persian archers fighting Ethiopians in Yemen. Islamic historian al-Tabari notes that the heavily defeated Ethiopians were unfamiliar with panjagan.
The Savaran counterattack against the Turco-Hephthalite invasion of 618-619 CE (Source: Farrokh, Plate C -اسواران ساسانی- Elite Sassanian cavalry, 2005); note that the fully armored knight in the middle is deploying a Panjagan (conjectural reconstruction) seen firing five arrows.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panjagan
https://www.kavehfarrokh.com/ancient-prehistory-651-a-d/sassanians/the-panjagan-of-the-sassanian-army-a-chinese-connection/