Tim Stanley
The Ottomans and the Transmission of Gun Lock Technology
The Ottoman empire was the longest-lived of Islamic
states: it was founded in the late 13th century, and the
last sultan was deposed in 1922. An important factor
in ensuring this longevity was the Ottomans’ ability to
produce and use firearms, which they did over most of this
period.1 So successful were they in this field that Kenneth
Chase identified the Ottoman empire, with Europe and
Japan, as “three areas that stand out for their success at
producing and deploying firearms”.2 Chase was not sure,
though, whether the Ottomans should be considered
separately from Europe, since part of their empire was in
Europe in geographical terms. Yet Europe has not been
purely a geographical term since the Enlightenment, when
it began to be used to refer to a specific cultural zone in
a way that implicitly excluded the Ottoman empire. In
other words, during the Enlightenment, “Christendom”
was transformed into “Europe”. This process was not yet
complete when Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli (1658–1730)
wrote in his Military Condition of the Ottoman Empire that,
“The employment of firearms ... has reached them from
the Christians”.3 Marsigli’s presumption that Christians,
that is, non-Ottoman Europeans, invented firearms, and
that the Ottomans (and other Muslim states) received
them as an unintended and undeserved bounty has
proved remarkably long-lived. It still dominates the field,
so that the development of firearms is still regarded as
predominately an example of the genius of European
civilization.4
This idea persists even though it is generally acknowledged
that firearms were invented in China and then
transmitted to Europe by some unknown route.5 What is
more, the evidence of the locks on Ottoman guns show
that this presumption is probably an over-simplification.
Ottoman flint-based mechanisms certainly place
205
the empire in the same peripheral relationship to the
more dynamic centres of technological development
in north-west Europe as Spain, Morocco, Sweden and
Russia, but this is not the case with Ottoman matchlock
mechanisms. They have a parallel but distinctive form
compared with those found on guns from the rest of
Europe, and this difference needs to be explained.
The resolution of this issue is relevant over a very wide
area, as the geographical setting for Ottoman firearms
technology grew very large, for two reasons. The first
was the Ottomans’ territorial expansion. During the
15th century, they established control over the Balkans
south of the Danube and over Anatolia, and in the
16th century, the empire acquired almost all of North
Africa, the Arab lands in the Middle East and much
of Central and Eastern Europe. The second reason
was the transmission of Ottoman gun technology to
regions well beyond the boundaries of the empire, as
indicated by the Shen Qi Pu of Zhao Shizhen, completed
in 1598.6 The Chinese work, whose title was translated
by Needham as “Handbook of the Magically Efficient
Tools”, gives this Ottoman technology something close
to global significance, as do the numerous surviving
examples of East and South Asian guns that follow the
same model as the Ottoman examples.7 Despite the
evident importance of the subject, however, the study
of Ottoman hand-held guns is not well-developed. Even
Gábor Ágoston, in Guns for the Sultan (2005), was unable
to offer more than a few pages on arquebuses and
muskets, the history of which “needs further research”.8
Ágoston concentrated on cannon, and this emphasis no
doubt reflected the nature of his archival sources, but
documentary evidence for the history of Ottoman hand-
Osmanlı Dünyasında Kültürel Karşılaşmalar ve Sanatsal Yansımaları • Cultural Encounters in The Ottoman World and Their Artistic Reflections

held guns certainly exists, as Feridun M. Emecen has since shown.9 The present contribution to the subject is based on
an Ottoman text of 1640 which illustrates the transition from the type of matchlock gun discussed in the Shen Qi Pu to
guns with a flint-based mechanism. The modest piece of research presented here was undertaken after Dr Bora Keskiner
and I were asked to contribute to an exhibition catalogue for the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The Museum owns
an extraordinary jewelled flintlock musket made in 1732 for the Ottoman sultan Mahmud I, and we set out to show
how this gun fitted into the Ottoman court culture of the 1720s and 1730s. It soon became clear, however, that the
literature on Ottoman matchlock and flintlock weapons was so weak that “further research” was indeed needed before
we could answer straightforward questions such as, “When was the flintlock adopted by the Ottomans?” The Ottoman
text of 1640 guides us to an answer.

The text from 1640

Upon his accession in 1640, the Ottoman sultan Ibrahim assumed (nominal) control of a state in the middle of a
prolonged fiscal crisis, which had led to the repeated debasement of the coinage. New coinage with a higher silver
content was issued in Ibrahim’s name, and the reduction of all prices by one half was decreed. Inspectors moved
round the markets of Istanbul, recording an enormous range of products, which are described in a way that would
have made them immediately recognizable to contemporaries, and setting the new prices for them. The descriptions
and new prices were brought together in a register of fixed prices (narh defteri, es‘ âr defteri), which is a valuable source
on the material culture of the capital in the mid-17th century.10 The text includes a section on the tüfengcis, which
in this case clearly refers to the sellers of secondhand muskets and associated items, and it describes their wares in
detail.11

The document lists six weapons; a class of item called tabanca (also written tapanca); and eight types of gun stock.
Only one of muskets (no.1) was being sold with its stock already attached. The other five, then, consist essentially of
musket barrels, a product in which the Ottomans excelled,12 but it seems from the context that they were sold with a
lock already attached. The text on the muskets reads as follows, with numbering added for ease of reference:

Tüfengciyân

Boğmakları sîm ve medâhilleri altun ve savâdlı ve sîm sarmalu ve mercânlu ve gümüş

iğneli cevherdâr tüfeng, kundağı ile; boyı beş karış, on dirhem atar: dört biñ sekiz yüz

Boğmakları sîm ve cevherdâr tüfeng, kundaksuz; yedi dirhem kurşun atar ve boyı beş
karış: yedi yüz

Na‘lpâreden kârhâne işi medâhilleri ve boğmakları ve nişângâhı sîm tüfeng, kundaksuz;

boyı beş karış ve şeşhâne, beş dirhem kurşun atar: beşyüz seksen

Boğmağı sîm demir ve kundaksuz tüfeng; boyı beş karış ve beş dirhem kurşun atar:
dörtyüz elli

Tapancası Macar işi üstâd işi demir tüfeng, kundaksuz; beş dirhem kurşun atar: dörtyüz kırk

Ağzı zerkûft altun ve gümüş medâhillü tabancası Macar tarzı cevherdâr tüfeng,
kundaksuz; altı dirhem kurşun atar, boyı beş karış: iki biñ iki yüz kırk

Musket-sellers

Musket with a watered [barrel], with its stock; [the stock decorated] with silver “wrapping”
(sarma), coral, and silver “needles” (iğne);13 [the barrel] blackened and with overlaid

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decoration (medâhils) in gold,14 and barrel-bands of

silver; five spans long;15 fires [balls weighing] ten 1.
dirhems:16 4800 [silver pence]. Seventeenth-
century
Ottoman
Musket with a watered [barrel], without a stock; pistol with a
miquelet lock,
barrel-bands silver; fires balls weighing seven after Elgood,
1 The Arms of
dirhems; five spans long: 700 [silver pence]. Greece, p.32.

Musket [with a barrel] made from horseshoes in the [state gun] works, without a stock;
overlaid decoration, barrel-bands and sight in silver; [barrel] five spans long and rifled,17
fires balls weighing five dirhems: 580 [silver pence].

Musket with an iron [barrel], without a stock; barrel-bands silver; five spans long, fires
bullets weighing five dirhems: 450 [silver pence].

Musket with an iron [barrel] made by a master [gunsmith in private trade], without a
stock; with a tapanca of Hungarian manufacture; fires balls weighing five dirhems: 440
[silver pence].

Musket with a watered [barrel], without a stock; with a tapanca of the Hungarian type;
overlaid decoration in gold and silver; the muzzle damascened in gold; fires balls
weighing six dirhems; five spans long: 2240 [silver pence].

Guns nos 5 and 6 were armed with a tabanca “of Hungarian manufacture” (Macar işi) or “of the Hungarian type” (Macar
tarzı). Tabanca is the word for “pistol” in modern Turkish, but this meaning does not fit here: why would a musket be
fitted with a pistol? So what did tabanca mean at this date? The answer I propose is that, before it meant “pistol”, the
main firearms-related meaning of the word tabanca was “flintlock”.18 The original sense of the word, now recorded as
archaic, is “a slap in the face” or “a box on the ears”, and this could well have been used to describe the action of a
flintlock. The cock, armed with a piece of flint, is released when the trigger is pulled. It springs forward, striking the
steel with a sharp “slap in the face”, and this action produces the spark that lights the priming powder that fires the gun.

The pistol was invented in Western Europe as a means of providing mounted troops with a small, light-weight firearm,
and it is first recorded in use in the 1550s. The matchlock mechanism was not practical for use on horseback because
the match had to be kept lit for the gun to be fired, and so the pistol appeared after the invention of the wheel lock, the
first matchless firing mechanism.19 The wheel lock was known to the Ottomans, 20 but it seems never to have caught on,
probably because it was too expensive to produce, too delicate for rough handling and not easy to reload. This would
mean that in the Ottoman case, the first pistols in general use would have had flintlock mechanisms (see fig.1), and,
since, as we shall see, most 17th-century muskets still had matchlock mechanisms, the flintlock pistol would have been
the flintlock weapon par excellence. Thus the pistol armed with a tabanca/flintlock became the tabanca/pistol, and this use
of the term remained a frozen form even after pistols were armed with other mechanisms in the 19th century.

Other texts provide evidence that tabanca continued to mean “flintlock” in the 18th century. One example concerns a
feat of marksmanship by Sultan Ahmed III (r. 1703–1730): a stele was to be erected in honour of the achievement, and
the court poet Seyyid Vehbi (d.1736) composed verses to be inscribed on it. Vehbi tells us how the Sultan set up a gold
ducat bearing a portrait of a Habsburg emperor as his target and took aim at it from 85 paces. 21 He then describes how,

Tüfeng-î zer-nişânla bu mahalden atdı kurşunı.

Tabanca çakdı! Bozdı çihre-î tasvîr-i çasarı!
He fired the ball with his gold-figured musket from this very spot.
The flintlock went snap! The Emperor’s face was blown to bits!22

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“The flintlock went snap!” is only one possible translation of Tabanca çakdı!, for it relies on a technical interpretation
of the word tabanca, which fits into the context provided by the previous line. If we consider the phrase in the context
of the second half of the same line, with its reference to the fate of the coin, the original meaning of the word appears
more relevant, so that the phrase can also be understood in a punning way as, “The slap in the face hit home!” A
moral interpretation is possible, too, as the word tabanca could refer to divine retribution, as in the phrase felek
tabancası, literally, “a slap in the face from Heaven”, or, metaphorically, “a misfortune”. In other words, the sultan was
Heaven’s agent in giving the ungodly emperor what he deserved. What is certain is that tabanca does not mean “pistol”
here, as pistols were only accurate in close combat. 23

This reading of the word tabanca allows us to make sense of the next entry in the list:
Tabanca
San‘atında mâhir Macar nâm zimmî işi ve aña mânend üstâd işi olursa, iki yüz kırk
Şâgirdli işi olursa, yüz kırk

Flintlocks
If they are the work of the subject infidels called Hungarians so skilled in making them
or the work of [our own] master [gunsmiths] that resemble these: 240 [silver pence].
If they are the work of a man with an apprentice’s skills: 140 [silver pence].

Again, we are offered only Hungarian flintlocks or locks made by Ottoman subjects on the Hungarian model. The
same word, tabanca, also occurs among the entries for stocks (again, with numbering added for ease of reference):

Kundak
1. Sarma kundağuñ gayet a‘lâsı: dörtyüz
2. Evsatı: üçyüz
3. Sarma yollı ednâ kundak: yüz altmış
4. Ceviz ağacından kundak: yüz kırk
5. Akça ağacdan a‘lâ kundak: yüz kırk
6. Akça ağacından tabancalı tüfeng kundağı: yüz on
7. Köçek tabancalı tüfeng kundağı: altmış
8. Gürgen ağacından harcî tüfeng kundağı: altmış

Stocks
1. Stock with “wrapping” (sarma), of top quality: 400 [silver pence].
2. [The same,] of medium quality: 300 [silver pence].
3. Stock of lower quality, with [only] bands of “wrapping”: 160 [silver pence].
4. Stock of walnut wood: 140 [silver pence].
5. Stock of maple wood of top quality: 140 [silver pence].
6. Stock of maple wood for a flintlock musket (tabancalı tüfeng): 110 [silver pence].
7. Stock for a small flintlock musket: 60 [silver pence].
8. Stock of hornbeam wood for an ordinary musket: 60 [silver pence].

As with the muskets themselves, we are offered no information on the locks used with a majority of the stocks (nos
1–5), but nos 6 and 7 were made for guns with a flintlock. Rather significantly, however, no.8 was for use with an
“ordinary” musket. In a 17th-century context, this must have meant a musket with a matchlock mechanism. Raimundo
Montecuccoli (1609–1680), who commanded Habsburg troops very successfully in the war of 1663–4 in Hungary,
later provided a description of the Ottoman musket, which he finished with the words, la lor miccia è di bombace ritorto,
“their match is of twisted cotton”. 24 In other words, the guns he has been discussing were armed with matchlock
mechanisms. We can claim the same for the four guns in the first part of the list (muskets nos 1–4) for which no
mechanism is specified: they were “ordinary” muskets with matchlocks.

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The “small flintlock musket” referred to in entry no.7 was presumably a pistol, but by the beginning of the 18th century,
the word tabanca was already being used on its own to mean “pistol” as well as “flintlock”. After the peace of Passarowitz
(Požarevac) in July 1718, an Ottoman ambassador was sent to Vienna to ratify the treaty, and when he set out in March
1719, he was provided with an array of magnificent presents for the Emperor Charles VI (r. 1711–1740). These included
a grand tent and all its fittings, jewelled horse trappings, luxury textiles, high-value goods such as ambergris and musk,
and 12 handsome horses, as well as three pistols (tabanca) with enamelled gold mounts set with 71 diamonds of various
sizes.25 The number of diamonds alone tells us that these items could not have been simply flintlock mechanisms.

The moment of transmission

The passage from the register of fixed prices of 1640 discussed above establishes that the Ottomans were using flintlock
guns by the mid-17th century, although, as we have seen, the matchlock mechanism remained the more common
form for some time thereafter, and matchlock guns were still in use well into the 18th century. The register of 1640
also shows that the inhabitants of Istanbul believed at the time the document was compiled that the flintlock the
Ottomans used had come from Hungary, whose inhabitants were skilled at making it. Contact between Hungarians
in general and Ottomans was not a rare event, since the Ottoman empire and the Kingdom of Hungary had vied for
hegemony in South East Europe since the 15th century, when the Ottomans had taken control of the regions south of
the Danube. A decisive change in the balance of power occurred in 1526, when, at the battle of Mohács, King Louis II
and a large part of the Hungarian nobility were eliminated by an Ottoman army under Sultan Süleyman. The death
of Louis II left the succession open, and the Hungarian throne was claimed both by Ferdinand of Habsburg, as the
husband of Louis’s sister and Louis’s acknowledged heir, and by John Zápolya, the voivode of Transylvania, who was
elected king by the Diet. From 1529, King John ruled with the support of the Sultan.

A crisis followed John’s death in 1540, and this led Süleyman to invade his kingdom, which was divided into three parts.
In the north and west was “Royal” Hungary, a band of territory ruled by the Habsburgs; in the centre and south was
the area under direct Ottoman rule; and in the east was Transylvania, ruled by Catholic and then Protestant princes
as vassals of the Ottomans. This disposition was relatively stable, though far from uncontested, for the period from
the 1570s to the unsuccessful Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, which was followed by the Habsburg conquest of all
Hungary. During this period there were two major conflicts. The second was the war of 1663–4, already mentioned as
the setting for Montecuccoli’s success in battle, and which, of course, postdates the document of 1640. This leaves the
first, the “Long War” of 1593–1606, as the most likely occasion on which the transmission of the flintlock from the
Hungarians under Habsburg rule to the Ottomans took place. This war was, moreover, the scene of a major change of
Habsburg and then Ottoman policy which led to the more extensive use of hand-held guns on both sides.

From the 1570s, the Habsburg military authorities considered how to remedy their inferiority to the Ottomans. They
did so in the light of the experience gained by the Spanish Habsburgs in the struggle against the Protestants in the
Netherlands, where developments in the art of war were at their keenest. As a result, they concluded that one area
in which they were superior to the Ottomans was the use of hand-held firearms, and they therefore increased the
proportion of their troops armed with these guns. The effect of this change was felt as soon as the Long War broke
out in Hungary in 1593. As V.J. Parry noted,

A Muslim from Bosnia, writing not long after the battle of Keresztes (1596), lamented
that the Christians, through their use of new types of hand-gun and cannon, as yet
neglected by the Ottomans, had won a definite advantage over the armies of the Sultan.26

Parry’s source was Hasan Kâfî (1544–1616), an Ottoman legal scholar from Akhisar in Bosnia (now Donji Vakuf ) who
participated in the Hungarian campaign of 1596 led by Sultan Mehmed III (r. 1595–1603). 27 Although the eventual
outcome of the campaign was presented as a great success, and Mehmed III declared himself the “Conqueror of Eger”,
the two-day battle of Keresztes (Mezőkeresztes, Haçova) was a very near thing. 28 Hasan Kâfî was not alone in realizing
that the enemy’s troops were outperforming his own side in the use of hand-held guns, and the Ottoman authorities

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responded by significantly increasing the number of Janissaries armed with muskets and by hiring arms-bearing
infantry troops from among the subject populations.29 This also seems to have been a propitious moment for the
introduction of the “new types” of gun referred to by Hasan Kâfî, which surely included a form of flintlock musket.
The question then arises, what sort of flintlock musket was this?

The miquelet lock

As used here, the term “flintlock” refers to a mechanism that developed over time, but, just as the appearance of flintlocks
did not cause the immediate disappearance of the matchlock, so flintlocks at various stages of development coexisted. In
this respect, the type of flintlock standard among the Ottomans (see fig.1) was much the same as that used in Spain and
the Spanish empire, a point that has been made from the time of Count Marsigli (1658–1730) to the present.30 This form
of flintlock has been called the “miquelet lock” in English since the 19th century in order to distinguish it from the type
of flintlock mechanism invented in France early in the reign of Louis XIII (1610–1643).31 As noted above, the Ottoman
mechanism has a cock that holds the flint in its jaws, where it is fixed in place using a screw.32 At the base of the lock is
an external spring, which is used to force the cock forward. Most of the time, though, the cock is held back by a catch,
or sear, which prevents it from springing forward until it is released by pulling the trigger. When this occurs, the cock
flies forward, striking the vertical steel opposite, which is one piece with the pan cover beneath. This has two effects: it
forces the steel back, simultaneously lifting the pan cover; and it produces sparks that fall into the open pan, lighting the
priming powder and producing that flash that passes through the touch hole to ignite the charge in the barrel.

In literature in English on the subject, the miquelet lock is so strongly associated with Spain that it has been presumed that
this form of lock was transmitted to the Ottomans from Spain via their territories in North Africa, namely, the provinces
of Algiers, where the first Ottoman intervention took place in 1518, and of Tunis, which was finally conquered from its
Hafsid rulers, and their Spanish overlords, in 1574.33 It is clearly possible that the Ottoman sultans’ subjects in North
Africa did indeed receive the miquelet lock from Spain, separately from the core regions of the empire. But the register
of fixed prices of 1640 provides strong evidence that the flintlock was transmitted to these core regions from Hungary.

Since it was the miquelet form of the flintlock that later held sway in these territories, it may be that it was this
form that reached the Ottomans during the Long War of 1593–1606. This presumption will need testing against
the material and other evidence, but if the miquelet lock existed at the time of the Long War, which is itself not
entirely certain, it would have been the most up-to-date form of flintlock, if, as is widely asserted, the final stage in
the development of the mechanism did not take place until the 1620s. The information in the Ottoman register of
1640 may, therefore, offer us a new view of the miquelet lock, namely, that, rather than being a specifically Spanish
form that was transmitted eastwards to the Ottomans, this mechanism was in widespread use in Europe in the
1590s and 1600s. In the context of the Spanish Habsburgs’ struggle with the Protestants in the Netherlands and the
Austrian Habsburgs’ wars with the Ottomans in Hungary, we can even suggest that the miquelet lock was originally a
Netherlandish invention that was disseminated to both Spain and Hungary, that it was transmitted from Hungary to
the Ottomans during the Long War of 1593–1606, and that, for reasons that need further clarification, Spanish and
Ottoman gunsmiths did not abandon the production of this mechanism after the invention of the French form of
the lock in the 1620s.

The Ottoman matchlock

The history of the matchlock gun in the Ottoman empire is no better understood than that of the flintlock musket,
but it is universally presumed that the Ottomans took the arquebus over from their European neighbours, and that
they relied on their Christian European subjects to operate these weapons. As noted above, this view goes back at least
as far as the early 18th century, when Count Marsigli was certain that

The employment of firearms ... has reached them from the Christians, firstly through
the iniquity of certain men who, either out of avarice, or for vengeance, have taught

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them it; and then by the test they have made of it themselves in the wars which they
have had with us in Europe. The siege of Candia [from 1648 to 1669] has made them
even better acquainted with how they had to make use of them; and it was on these
principles that they carried out that of Vienna [in 1683]. Later in this war, they began
to make use of several other sorts of arms that they were not familiar with, and that the
Christians taught them to handle.34

As noted above, this view is still vital. In the 1950s, V.J. Parry wrote in an apparently more informed manner that,
“The arquebus … was taken over in about 1440–1443 during the Hungarian wars”, and its use was “much extended” in
the reign of Mehmed II (1451–81).35 He also noted that,

A large share in the transmission of these new arms fell to the peoples of Serbia and
Bosnia. Artillerists and arquebusiers recruited in these countries and still retaining their
Christian faith, are known to have been in the service of [Mehmed] II …36

The fact that two sets of data have been manipulated to fit the same ingrained prejudice ought to raise our suspicions,
and there are indeed reasons to doubt that the story was quite so simple.

The first cause for doubt is the circumstances in which, according to Parry, an improved form of gun, and presumably
of matchlock mechanism, were adopted by the Ottomans in the later 15th century. A key role seems to have played
by the war with the Mamluks in 1485–1491 over who should control south-east Anatolia. The Ottomans lost, and as
a result of this setback, Sultan Bayezid II (r. 1481–1512) “increased the number of Janissaries and provided them, and
other categories of troops, with arms more efficient and of greater offensive power”.37 If we follow the model offered
above for the flintlock, in which the Ottomans go to war with an enemy and, having lost, or almost lost, they adopt
the more successful forms of weapon used by their enemy, we would have to presume that the better arms with which
Bayezid II provided the Janissaries were modelled on those used by the Mamluks, not those in use in Europe. This
runs counter to almost all the literature on the Mamluks and firearms, which presumes that the Mamluks only armed
themselves with these weapons after the war of 1485–91.38 So, if the Mamluks had no firearms at the time, how could
the Ottomans have copied them?

The bedrock on which these views rest is David Ayalon’s influential study of Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk
Kingdom, published in 1956, in which the collapse of the Mamluk sultanate in 1516–17, in the face of an invasion by
Bayezid’s son, Sultan Selim I (r. 1512–1520), was attributed to the failure of the Mamluk ruling class to adopt the use
of firearms. As Robert Irwin has recently shown, however, Ayalon
was wrong.39 Irwin found references to the Mamluks using hand-
held guns as early as the 1340s, as when the historian al-‘Umari, who
died in 1349, referred to makahil al-barud (guns using gunpowder, sc.
rather than naphtha).40 What is more, with regard to the war with the
Ottomans in 1485–91, Irwin proposes that at this time the Mamluk
sultanate was ahead of both the Ottomans and the Safavids in its
use of hand guns. Sultan Qaytbay (r. 1468–1496) had an elite corps
trained in the use of the arquebus, who “were equipped with camels
and sent off to fight the Ottomans in ... 1490. It was a remarkably
successful campaign. ... and the following year Bayezid II sued for 2. Anony-
mous
peace.”41 It is, then, perfectly possible that Bayezid II was inspired by a watercolour
showing The
Mamluk model when he provided the Janissaries and other categories Turkish em-
peror Sultan
of troops “with arms more efficient and of greater offensive power”. Murad on
horseback,
1590–91,
Parry found no more news of the Ottomans’ hand guns until the after Arbasi-
2 no, I Turchi,
reign of Sultan Murad III (r. 1574–1595). By this time the Venetian p.67.

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government was receiving reports that almost all the Janissaries were
equipped with arquebuses, “the Ottoman model of this gun being
made with a longer barrel than was normal amongst the Christians
and loaded with larger bullets”.42 There are contemporary depictions
of these guns that should aid our understanding of the texts. One
is a European watercolour that can be dated to 1590–91, and which
was included in an album presented soon after to the Emperor
Rudolph II (r. 1576–1612).43 The painting (see fig.2) shows Murad
III on horseback and accompanied by two guards on foot, who
carry matchlock weapons. These guns have the long barrels already
referred to, while the firing mechanism (see fig.3) consists of a metal
flash pan and cover, shown closed, which sit next to the touch hole
(not visible here) at the breech end of the barrel; beneath the stock
is the trigger; and the cock, in the form of a C-shaped metal lever, is
attached to the outside of the stock. The cock has a vice shaped like
a bird’s head at one end, which was designed to hold the length of 3 3. Detail of
cord that formed the match. fig.2

This type of mechanism would have looked antiquated to Rudolf II and his subjects,44 and this impression would have
been increased by the way the Sultan’s guard who is in full view is shown holding the lit match in his right hand, still
attached to the rest of the cord, which is wound round the same hand.45 It may be then that the artist was responding
to the Habsburgs’ belief, formulated in the 1570s, as we have seen, that they had the advantage over the Ottomans in
this sphere. But the guard’s behaviour can be explained not as an example of Ottoman conservatism but as a safety
measure, particularly necessary in the imperial presence: if the gun was loaded, and there was a lighted match in the
lock, the musketman might fire it accidentally, which could lead to the injury or death of the Sultan.

A stranger misrepresentation is the illustration of an Ottoman matchlock gun published more than a century later, in
Marsigli’s work of 1732 (see fig.4, A),46 which appears to show a European type of matchlock mechanism, despite the fact
that the Count owned at least one Ottoman matchlock gun of his own (fig.5).47 Yet it is an inescapable and, it appears,
overlooked fact that the many surviving examples of Ottoman matchlock guns found in collections in Istanbul and
across Europe show a different type of firing mechanism, as fig.5 shows. The pan and its cover are in the same general
position, adjacent to the touch hole at the breech end of the barrel. Everything else, though, is different.

The trigger is a solid piece of metal without a guard, while the cock is curved, with a round head that is split to form the
vice for the match. Most strikingly, this cock, like the trigger, is fixed inside the stock, from which it protrudes through a
slit in the wood. The mechanism as a whole is strikingly simple,48 which may be the reason for its longevity: within the
stock are a spring and pivoted levers arranged so that, when the trigger is depressed, the curved cock is forced forward
and into the pan. If the cock was armed with a lit match, and there was priming powder in the pan, the result would
have been an explosion. This is precisely the action described in the Chinese work referred to above, the Shen Qi Pu of
Zhao Shizhen, with regards to an Ottoman gun: “The holding mechanism of the cock ... is situated inside the stock.
On pressing (the trigger), the cock
falls, and after ignition it rises again”
(fig.6).49 The Shen Qi Pu is concerned
in part with the evident differences
4. Ottoman
between the guns produced by firearms as
recorded
the Portuguese, the Japanese and in Count
Marsigli,
the Ottomans, and so comparable Lo Stato
information is provided on the militare
dell’Impero
European musket, where the trigger ottomano,
4 published in
operated a spring system.50 1732.

212
 The Ottomans and the Transmission of Gun Lock Technology• Tim Stanley

The dating of the surviving Ottoman matchlock guns is usually

vague,51 and they may all date from the 17th century or later, in
5. The
matchlock view of records of ownership that sometimes provide a terminus ante
mechanism
on a 17th- quem for production, as in the case of Marsigli’s gun, mentioned
century
Ottoman above. Three examples in Dresden, for example, were presented to
gun owned the Elector Johann Georg II of Saxony in 1664 by Count Nicholas
by Count
Marsigli, 5 Zrinyi, who played a major role in the Ottoman–Habsburg war of
after Elgood,
The Arms 1663–4,52 another was given to Elector Johann Georg III in 1683,
of Greece,
p.30. immediately after the Ottomans withdrew from the second siege of
Vienna in disarray,53 and two more were recorded in an inventory of
1709.54 There is no doubt, however, that this Ottoman version of the
matchlock mechanism was in use in the 16th century precisely because
of the description found in the Shen Qi Pu. This work was completed
in 1598, at the very moment when, if the scenario described above is
correct, the Ottomans were considering the superiority of European
firearms with flint-based locks.

The information provided by the Shen Qi Pu led Joseph Needham to

remark that, “it can still remain an open question whether the Turkish
locksmiths were not the first in the field as regards matchlocks.”55 It has
been proposed above, however, that the Turks, that is, the Ottomans,
modelled their matchlock on those used by the Mamluks, taking the
story one stage back but not isolating the origin of this mechanism.
Nevertheless, the Ottomans were successful in disseminating this
mechanism to other parts of Asia before they themselves adopted a
flint-based mechanism developed in Europe. As in many other fields,
the Ottomans moved over the course of their history from being part
6
of an Asian cultural zone to sharing many features of their material
6. Illustra- culture with Europe, making this change in advance of other parts of
tion in the
Shen Qi Pu Asia. They were able to integrate this aspect of European technology within their own practice with success, perhaps
of Zhao
Shizhen, because they initially called the flintlock by a locally derived name, the tabanca.
1598, after
Needham
and others, This paper is based on two pieces of evidence, namely, the description of the muskets available on the Istanbul market
Science and
Civlization in 1640, and the physical evidence of surviving Ottoman matchlock guns. The publication of further documentary
in China,
volume 5, sources and a wider survey of the surviving material are needed to resolve the issues raised, but the fact that there are
part 7, p.445. issues to address seems certain56.

1 This case is put forcefully in Gábor Ágoston, Guns for the Sul-
tan – Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman
Empire, Cambridge, 2005.
2 Kenneth Chase, Firearms: A Global History to 1700, Cambridge,
2003, p.2.
3 [Luigi Ferdinando,] Count Marsigli, Lo Stato militare dell’Imperio
ottomanno/L’État militaire de l’Empire ottoman, The Hague and
Amsterdam, 1732, part 2, p.15.
4 See Claude Blair, “Early Firarms”, in Claude Blair, ed., Pollard’s
History of Firearms, London, 1983, pp.25–30, for example. This
view is also reproduced in more specialist literature, e.g. V.J.
Parry, ‘Brd, iv. The Ottoman Empire’, The Encyclopaedia of Is-
lam, second edition, vol. i, Leiden and London, 1960, pp.1061–6;
Gábor Ágoston, “Tüfek”, Türk Diyanet Vakfı İslâm Ansiklopedi-
si, Istanbul, 1988–, vol. xli, p.459–61.
5 Chase, op.cit., p.1, opens with the question, “Why was it the Eu-
ropeans who perfected firearms when it was the Chinese who
invented them?”
6 Joseph Needham, Ho Ping-Yü, Lu Gwei-Djen and Wang Ling,
Science and Civilisation in China, volume 5, Chemistry and Che-
mical Technology, part 7, Military Technology; the Gunpowder
Epic, Cambridge, 1986, pp.425–72; Giray Fidan, Kanuni Devrin-
de Çin’de Osmanlı Tüfeği ve Osmanlılar, Istanbul, 2011, which
covers only the sections on Ottoman guns.
7 See the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London,
and the Royal Armouries, Leeds, for example.
8 Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, p.95.
9 Feridun M. Emecen, Osmanlı Klasik Çağında Savaş, Istanbul,
2010, pp.33–64. Emecen does not, though, enquire into the topic
of this paper.
10 Yaşar Yücel, 1640 Tarihli Es‘âr Defteri, two volumes, Ankara,
1982; Mübahat S. Kütükoğlu, Osmanlılarda Narh Müessesesi
ve 1640 Tarihli Narh Defteri, Istanbul, 1983. Yücel’s edition is
based on a copy made in the reign of Sultan Selim III (1789–
1897) held by Istanbul University Library, while for her edition
Kütükoğlu used both this manuscript and an earlier and better
copy in the Topkapı Library. The following is therefore based on
Kütükoğlu’s edition.
11 Kütükoğlu, op.cit., pp.225–7; cf. Yücel, op.cit., facsimile, pp.92–
3, transliterated text, p.62.

213
Osmanlı Dünyasında Kültürel Karşılaşmalar ve Sanatsal Yansımaları • Cultural Encounters in The Ottoman World and Their Artistic Reflections
12 See, for example, Raimundo Montecuccoli, Aforismi dell’arte
bellica, book III, Aforismi applicati alla guerra possibile col Tur-
co in Ungheria, chapter XIV; see Opere di Raimundo Montecuc-
coli, edited by Giuseppe Grassi, Milan, 1831, vol. ii, p.140–41.
As a result of their high quality and impressive length, Turkish
musket barrels were sometimes mounted in European guns,
e.g. a wheel-lock musket from the cabinet d’armes of Louis XIII
of France (London, Victoria and Albert Musuem, M.12-1949;
Anthony North, An Introduction to Islamic Arms, London, 1985,
p.9) and another from Scandinavia (Robert Elgood, Firearms of
the Islamic World in the Tareq Rajab Collection, Kuwait, Lon-
don, 1995, p.46, fig.4). On the greater effective range of Ottoman
muskets at the time of the siege of Vienna in 1683, see Rhoads
Murphy, Ottoman Warfare, 1500–1700, New Brunswick, NJ,
1999, p.111.
13 Coral and silver decoration is not unusual on Ottoman guns (Ro-
bert Elgood, The Arms of Greece and Her Balkan Neighbors in
the Ottoman Period, New York, 2009, pp.104–13), and the words
sarma and iğne clearly refer to different ways of applying the
silver, although their precise meaning needs elucidating. This
type of decoration is usually referred to as Cezayir işi, “Algiers
work”, which reflects the fact that the coral in question, Coral-
lium rubrum, is harvested in the Western Mediterranean. The
decoration was not, though, necessarily added in Algiers. See
also J.M. Rogers and Cengiz Köseoğlu, The Topkapı Saray Muse-
um: The Treasury, London, 1987, p.46.
14 The term medâhil (or müdâhil) is not recorded in Turkish
dictionaries with an appropriate meaning, but madākhil is
recorded with the meaning “braids to adorn a garment” in Persian
(F.J. Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian–English Dictionary,
London, 1892, p.1199). This is strikingly similar in concept to the
overlaying in gold and silver found on Ottoman guns.
15 Five spans was roughly equal to 110 cm, according to Ágoston;
see Guns for the Sultan, p.244: “The karış or span is the standard
measurement used in weapon inventories to measure the length
of Ottoman gun barrels. As in the case of European inventories,
the length of the barrel is often engraved on the upper side of it.
Based on … Ottoman guns … [in] the Military and Naval Mu-
seums in Istanbul, whose length is given in karış on the barrel
as well as in centimeters in the relevant inventories, it seems
that the karış used in these cases equaled 22–23 cm. In all my
calculations I used 1 karış = 22 cm.”
16 According to Ágoston (Guns for the Sultan, p.245, s.v. Okka), the
dirham in use until the 18th century was the Tabrizi dirham of
3.072 grams. If this is correct, the weights of the shot descri-
bed in this list can be converted as follows: 10 dirhams = 30.72
grams; 7 dirhams = 21.504 grams; 6 dirhams = 18.432 grams; 5
dirhams = 15.36 grams.
17 Şeşhâne, here translated “rifled”, could also mean “hexagonal
[in section]”.
18 I am using the term flintlock in its common-sense meaning of a
lock with a flint in it, not in its more restricted meaning of a the
type of flintlock mechanism developed in France in the early
17th century.
19 Blair, op.cit., pp.56–60; Chase, op.cit., p.69.
20 There is a reference to an Ottoman courtier owning a wheel-
lock pistol in 1636, for example (Emecen, op.cit., p.43), and an
Ottoman musket in the Royal Armouries, Leeds (no. XXVI.F
178, acquired in 1990), has a German wheel lock of the mid-17th
century. My thanks to Thom Richardson for introducing me to
this collection, and to the subject of Ottoman guns in general.
21 The Hungarian word for “emperor” in a Habsburg context is
császár, and this is the term used in the poem (transliterated as
çasar).
22 Topkapı Palace Library, ms. Emanet 1640/1, folios 151b–152a. My
thanks to Bora Keskiner for providing me with this reference.
23 Chase, op.cit., pp.69–70.
24 Montecuccoli, loc.cit. But see Murphy, op.cit., p.31, where it is
presumed that “flintlock muskets ... predominated in the seven-
teenth century”.
25 Râşid Mehmed Efendi, Târîh-i Râşid, ed. Abdülkadir Özcan, Yu-
nus Uğur, Baki Çakır and Ahmet Zeki İzgöer, Istanbul, 2013,
p.1152: ve kebîr ve vasat ve sagîr ve hurde yetmiş bir kıt‘a elmas
ile murassa‘ ve kırmızı ve yeşil mînâ ile müşebbek zemîni altun
üç tabanca.
26 Parry, op.cit., p.1064.
27 Muhammed Aruçi, “Hasan Kâfî Akhisarî”, Türkiye Diyanet Vak-
fı İslâm Ansiklopedisi, 1988–, vol.xvi, pp.326–9.
214
28 See, for example, Emecen, op.cit., pp.225–36. See also Caroli-
ne Finkel, The Administration of Warfare: The Ottoman Military
Campaigns in Hungary, 1593-1606, Vienna, 1988, pp. 26, 34-5,
37-46, 107-9.
29 Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, pp.9, 25–6. See also Caroline Fin-
kel, The Administration of Warfare: The Ottoman Military Cam-
paigns in Hungary, 1593-1606, Vienna, 1988, pp. 26, 34-5, 37-46,
107-9.
30 Marsigli, op.cit., part 2, p.17, where caption B reads,
Altro Moschetto col fucile piu simile alla Spagnola, che ad altra
maniera/Autre Mousquet fait en forme de Fusil a peu près dans
le goût Espagnol; Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, p.10.
31 For an early example of the new type of lock, made about 1620,
see New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, no.1972.223,
which bears the arms of Louis XIII.
32 See Tülin Çoruhlu, Osmanlı Tüfek, Tabanca ve Techizatı (Askerî
Müzeden Örneklerle), Ankara, 1993, p.3, fig.2.
33 See, for example, Z. Żygulski, “Oriental and Levantine Fire-
arms”, in Claude Blair, ed., Pollard’s History of Firearms, Lon-
don, 1983, p.430–31; Elgood, The Arms of Greece, p.10, 39.
34 Marsigli, op.cit., ii, p.15. Candia is the Venetian name for Crete
and its capital, now Herakleion.
35 Parry, op.cit., p.1061.
36 Parry, op.cit., p.1062.
37 Parry, op.cit., p.1061.
38 Perhaps the most ingenious explanation for this is Kenneth
Chase’s view that the Mamluks did not show great interest in
firearms because these weapons would have been no use in
fighting their nomadic enemies; see Chase, op.cit., pp.98–107.
39 Robert Irwin, “Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk
Sultanate Reconsidered”, in Michael Winter and Amalia
Levanoni, editors, The Mamluks in Egyptian and Syrian Politics
and Society, Leiden and Boston, 2004, pp.117–39. See also
Albrecht Fuess, “Les Janissaires, les Mamelouks et les armes
à feu: une comparaison des systèmes militaires ottoman et
mamelouk à partir du milieu du XVe siècle”, Turcica, vol. xli,
2009, pp.209–27.
40 Irwin, op.cit., p.121.
41 Irwin, op.cit., p.124. See Fuess, op.cit., pp.212–13, for a different
interpretation of the same data.
42 Parry, loc.cit.
43 Alberto Arbasino, I Turchi – Codex Vindobonensis 8626, Parma,
1971, p.67.
44 Claude Blair, “The Sixteenth Century”, in Claude Blair, ed.,
Pollard’s History of Firearms, London, 1983, pp.50–52.
45 This may have been a visual trope, as Melchior Lorck, for
example, showed a Janissary with a lit match wound around
his arm (dated 1575; first published posthumously in Melcher
Lorch, Wohlgerissene und geschnittene Figuren in Kupfer und
Holz durch, Hamburg, 1626).
46 Marsigli, loc.cit.
47 Bologna, Museo Civico Medioevale, no.259; see Robert Elgood,
The Arms of Greece, pp.30, 317, no.014.
48 Çoruhlu, op.cit., p.2, fig.1. My thanks to Dr Gülşen Arslanboğa
and her colleagues at the Military Museum in Istanbul for
giving me access to matchlock guns catalogued by Çoruhlu
and in Aysel Çötelioğlu, Askeri Müze Osmanlı ve Cumhuriyet
Dönemi Ateşli Silahlar Kataloğu, Istanbul, no date.
49 Needham and others, op.cit., p.444–5 and fig.174.
50 Needham and others, op.cit., p.450, fig.177.
51 A gun in the Military Museum, Istanbul (no.81), is dated AH
981, equivalent to 1573–4, on the underside of its flintlock,
which is of the miquelet type. This date is regarded with justifi-
able suspicion by both Çoruhlu (op.cit., p.31) and Çötelioğlu (op.
cit., p.50, no.24), who dates the gun to the 18th century.
52 Holger Schuckelt, Die Türckische Cammer: Sammlung orienta-
lischer Kunst in der kurfürstlich-sächsischen Rüstkammer, Dres-
den, 2010, nos 150–51. Schuckelt dates two of these to the 16th
century.
53 Schuckelt, op.cit., no.200.
54 Schuckelt, op.cit., nos 246–7.
55 Needham and others, op.cit., volume 5, part 7, p.443.
56 For the research on Ottoman gun culture above; now see Bora
Keskiner; Ünver Rüstem and Tim Stanley, Armed and Splendo-
rous: The Jeweled Gun of Sultan Mahmud I; in Amy S. Landau;
ed., Pearls on a String: Artists, Patrons and Poets at the Great
Islamic Courts, Baltimore, MD, 2015, pp.205-241, esp.