doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com The Damascus Road

The defeat of Kara Mustafa Pasha by Jan III Sobieski at Vienna September 12, 1683 is identified by Claude Gaier, in Four Centuries of Liege Gunmaking as the key date in the development of European Damascus. Thousands of Damascus blades and pattern welded gun barrels were available for examination by armourers throughout Western Europe.

Jan III Sobieski sending message of victory to the Pope; "We came, we saw, and God conquered."
"Sobieski pod Wiedniem" by Jan Matejko. Note man front left studying a Damascus blade, and front right carrying a miquelet.



"Return from Vienna" by J�zef Brandt. Polish army returning with Ottoman arms, captives and loot.



c. 1700 Turkish miquelet reportedly made by Bulgarian workers serving the Ottoman Sultan. Acid etched Two Iron Crolle damascus at the breech.



Acid etched Twist at the muzzle



Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire
"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...added to their expertise of metallurgy techniques of the Islamic East..."

Trade Routes. It was a global economy even then.



The Walloon's may have been in the middle of the "road"
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oDJQ1usil2iRMrlJgyg5HXVpR8lIo6QX5cCDwgojC8g/edit


None of this carries any eternal significance.
Please pray for all the hurting and hopeless in our nation.
https://sites.google.com/site/anotherday...ay-of-your-life

Thanks Drew... Good article in DGJ too, but I am waiting for the next installment

"Battle of Vienna" by Juliusz Kossak with a miquelet rifle in foreground



c. 1580 Lock 'a la Miquelet, the flint-lock, was invented in Spain. In 1600, 400 French and Walloon Protestant mercenaries of the garrison of Papa offer their services to the Ottomans. Shortly thereafter miquelet carbines and rifles with pattern welded barrels were manufactured in Turkey.





c. 1600s Turkish miquelet with clearly recognizable Four Iron Crolle from 'The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin', May 1958, "The New Galleries of Oriental Arms and Armor"



Some barrels however were "Damascene". Ottoman barrel with roll-graved 4 Iron crolle pattern



It was not until about 1700 that Twist barrels were manufactured in Liege; Crolle about 1750.

So now we know where John M. Browning got his idea for the humpback A-5...Geo

Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire
Gabor Agoston, Cambridge University Press, 2005
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZnptAPvQIlWG5n5UU2FmKcFpYtVmOSc4b7K7G9IBs4g/edit