Agoston's
Guns for the Sultan is much more about cannons than shoulder weapons, and little more is said about the transfer of pattern welded technology from the Ottomans to Europe. So we still don't know who brought the first pattern welded musket barrel to...where?...Spain to France to Liege? Hungary to Germany to Liege? Both directions? Nor when?
p.91
From Arnold Pacey,
Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-Year History, 1990
(In the early 1600s)…Raimundo Montecuccoli…claimed that the metal of the Turkish muskets was of good quality and that their range and force were greater than those of the Christian muskets…Ottoman musket barrels were stronger and more reliable than European ones because Ottoman gun-makers used flat sheets of steel – similar to that of Damascus blades – which were coiled into a spiral. This method produced great strength in the barrel that could withstand higher explosive pressure.
p.95
With regard to hand firearms Janissary
tufenks closely resembled the muskets their Spanish and Venetian opponents used…
p. 192-193
Between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, direct military conflicts, the employment of European military experts and, to a lesser degree, illegal trade in weaponry ensured relatively easy dissemination of up-to-date technologies and military know-how in the Sultan’s realms.
Istanbul was more than a simple recipient of foreign technologies with its Turkish and Persian artisans and blacksmiths, Armenian and Greek miners and sappers, Turkish, Bosnian, Serbian, Hungarian, Italian, German, and later French, English and Dutch foundrymen and military engineers…Turkish, Arab and Persian blacksmiths added to (the European's) expertise of the metallurgy techniques of the Islamic East that produced the world-famous Damascus blades. To what extent Europeans could and did profit from this technological dialogue
must be the subject of further research.
