Jeweled Gun of Sultan Mahmud I: Extended Entry
The Jeweled musket of Mahmud I was created in Istanbul between 1732 and 1733.[1] Crafted in Istanbul, its namesake—Mahmud I patronized it.[2] He employed a few imperial artists to make various components, creating an extravagant gun set.[3] To understand the gilded musket, however, it is essential to understand the context of the Ottoman Empire and Mahmud I at the time. The gun is a critical peacetime signal from Mahmud I, making claims at home and abroad. He asserts his commitment to continuing in the Westernizing footsteps of Ahmed III, while warning Europe that the Ottoman Empire is ready to reclaim its recently lost Southeastern European holdings. He challenges the Austro-Hungarian Hapsburgs as a revived world power.
The Jeweled Musket of Mahmud I is at the Walter’s Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. In 2016, the museum curated Pearls on a String exhibiting art from the Islamic courts. As part of the exposé and in collaboration with the University of Washington Press, they published a book covering the exhibits topics. Bora Keskiner, Ünver Rüstem, and Tim Stanley were three key contributors who wrote the chapter “Armed and Splendorous,” which focuses on Mahmud’s gun set.[4]They establish the connection with Ahmed III and allude to Mahmud’s direct modernization and Europeanization of the empire but do not go as far as to tie these symbolically to the gun, which was an ambitious statement by Mahmud regarding his imperial agenda.
The key to understanding the musket is understanding Mahmud—the Patron. While he was the patron, he was also heavily involved in creating the piece, so while not this work, it was still his project.[5] History has typically focused more on the Sultans who ruled on either side of him. The reigns of Ahmed III and Selim III tend to align with the general historical narrative that drives the shrinking Ottoman empire into the 19th century, where it reformed drastically, and eventually into the 20th century, from which it did not emerge.[6] Ahmed III was responsible for losing some significant Eastern European territories to the Austro-Hungarian Hapsburgs.[7] Selim III was in charge when Mehmed Ali Pasha and Egypt declared independence from the empire.[8] Janissary rebellions deposed both Sultans.[9]
Mahmud was a strong patron of the arts. Rüstem describes him, saying, “Mahmud was regarded differently during his own time and in the decades that followed. Not only was he recognized as a capable ruler who brought peace and stability to his empire, but he was also celebrated as a prolific patron of the visual arts.”[10] His crucial projects included a series of public water fountains, the Nuruosmaniye Mosque, a Cairo madrasa, and a collection of waterfront buildings, including an addition to the Topkapi palace complex.[11] One of the defining connections between these projects is the continuation of a trend started under Ahmed III.[12] Mahmud builds upon the architectural tradition of the Turkish Baroque, which was a dialogue between Ottoman artistic and architectural traditions with those of Europe.[13] As Mahmud ushered in a uniquely peaceful period for the Ottomans, its prevalence increased significantly. Shirine Hamedeh defines it as “an indigenous process of reinterpretation of the European Baroque.”[14] In doing so, she decouples the re-imagination of the Baroque from the premise that a declining Ottoman state was Westernizing.[15]
The musket is critical to the Turkish Baroque tradition that Hamadeh and Rüstem reference. Rather than suggesting a level of assimilation to European norms, Mahmud challenges Western supremacy. He takes the weapon of European origin and ascribes an Ottoman definition. The form also points to a military context, suggesting architectural rivalry with the Europeans and symbolizing the consistent military rivalry between the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs. Thus, Mahmud stakes a claim to the artistic legacy of Ahmed III while renouncing his military failures.
Gábor Ágostan connects the Musket presence in European trade in the 15th Century.[16] Once in the empire, he ties their significance to their usage by the Janissaries, a lasting institution at the core of the Ottoman military.[17] Janissary intervention cut short the reigns of both Ahmed III and Selim III.[18] Mahmud’s musket alludes to the importance of their political support. By redefining the terms of the Sultanate with a musket rather than the traditional sword, he asserts his commitment to the existing, modernized military power structure.
The use of the musket as a conduit for artistic expression did not begin with Mahmud, but he innovated upon the premise. The musket pictured above was that of Cezayirli Hasan Pasha, a naval officer of the Ottoman era. As a contemporary of Mahmud’s, it is an excellent example of musket-based art. While it is not as extravagant, it is evident that there was a tradition of gilding and embellishing muskets to portray power.
The artistic tradition is consistent with other weaponry as well. The Topkapi Dagger is a similarly jeweled weapon from the same period.[19] The dagger also comes from the patronage of Mahmud and has a similar art style to the musket.[20]Rüstem explains, “Mahmud commissioned the dagger as a gift from Nadir Shah.”[21] He cites the diplomatic significance of the gift, demonstrating the quintessential role art played in political expression between empires.[22]
While Mahmud was closely involved in the patronage of the gun, a handful of imperial artisans crafted it in Istanbul in 1732/33.[23] Two of them signed the work. A gunsmith named Ismai’il forged the barrel but left no other identifying information.[24] Scholars know from his name, however, that he was a Muslim subject of the Sultan.[25] Hovhannes Agha Düz was Mahmud’s chief goldsmith and responsible for the beautiful exterior of the gun.[26] He was a Christian Ottoman subject from Armenia.[27] The background of the designers of the gun points to the theme of the Turkish Baroque in which European Christians combined their skills with the existing Islamic tradition in Istanbul to create a dialogic tradition that reinterpreted European styles, issuing a challenge to the empire’s rivals.
There are three pieces to the musket. Ismai’il crafted the first, the barrel, out of Iron and steel, hammering it in the Ottoman way, which was more precise than the European empires at the time, with longer stronger barrels, making for a more accurate shot.[28] It was then inlaid with Gold and silver in an arabesque style, creating a vegetal motif.[29]Scholars do not know much about the second part, the gunlock because the original is no longer with the gun.[30] The miquelet lock on the gun is from 19th-century Russia, where the art dealer who sold it to the museum added it instead of the original.[31]
Tim Stanley compares the artistic plating of the musket to a silver- and gold-plated pocket watch (pictured above).[32]Aside from the general convenience of watches in Europe, timepieces were important in the Ottoman Empire for determining when to pray and in what direction.[33] Stanley compares the arabesque gilt plating to the musket for their gold and silver gilt and for the design style in addition to their matching vegetal engravings.[34] Thus, the musket and the watch are both part of the same tradition of Islamic smithing.
The third part of the gun, the stock, is made entirely of wood but is sheeted in gold.[35] Jade plaques, emeralds, rubies, and diamonds are embedded in the gold gild.[36] However, the most important and unique feature of the stock is the hidden compartment accessed through the butt of the gun. The cavity is home to a dagger and a capsule containing a pen, a pen knife, and an ink well.[37] The designers also hid Mahmud’s diamond-clad insignia or tughra in the secret compartment.[38] That is the key identifier of the musket as his patronage and indicates an intimate relationship between the Sultan and his piece. No one ever actually fired Mahmud's musket. Scholars suspect that Mahmud intended it to be symbolic rather than practical. Rüstem, Stanley, and Keskiner conclude rhetorically by asking,
Could it be, then, that Mahmud’s gun, with its many thousands of gemstones, was intended to accompany or even replace the sword of state among the imperial regalia? It would at the very least have been part of a less formal type of royal display for which we have later evidence in connection with pistols. Indeed, the musket very likely formed a set with a pistol now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that is decorated in a comparable manner and also dated 1145 (1732/33).[39]
They theorize that the musket is part of a new era of Ottoman court armament ceremonial use and symbolism.[40] That shift likely began under Ahmed III, who was a great modernizer. The musket is Mahmud’s attempt simultaneously to uphold his predecessor’s legacy while staking a claim to European modernity and Ottoman participation in that development.
One of the defining features of Mahmud’s rule was that he led a stable, peaceful empire.[41] The big exception to that rule was a war he waged simultaneously against Russia and Austria-Hungary.[42] He held the Russians at bay during the conflict and recovered Ahmed III’s lost territories in Southeastern Europe from earlier that century.[43] The warning he issues through the musket foreshadows that victory. While Rüstem, Stanley, and Keskiner assert the royal nature of the extravagant gun set, they do not go far enough to define it as a peacetime challenge from Mahmud to his European counterparts that makes an explicitly political and military assertion about the Ottoman Empire, himself, their reclamation of Europe, and their increasingly Westernizing army.[44]
Ultimately, the jeweled Musket of Mahmud is a crucial point in the tradition of Ottoman gunsmithing and goldsmithing--linking the arts together. It is the coming together of different branches of the cosmopolitan empire and represents the unity of Mahmud’s court in response to the threat of Europe. It also illustrates the Ottoman court’s quickly westernizing state, exemplifying the Turkish Baroque of Ahmed III and the rest of the 18th century. The legacy of the musket is a reminder to its beholder of Mahmud’s firm and capable leadership as he fulfilled the ambitious promise of the armament.
[1] Bora Keskiner, Ünver Rüstem, and Tim Stanley, “Armed and Splendorous” in Pearls on a String, ed. Amy S. Landau, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015) 205.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid, 219.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid, 220.
[6] Carolina Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire, (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
[7] Ibid, 338.
[8] Ibid, 399.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Keskiner, Rüstem, and Stanley, “Armed and Splendorous,” 206.
[11] Ibid, 209-219.
[12] Can Erimtan, Ottomans Looking West?: The Origins of the Tulip Age and its development in Modern Turkey, (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008), 14.
[13] Ibid, 211.
[14] Shirine Hamadeh, “Westernization, Decadence and the Turkish Baroque: Modern Modern Constructions of the Eighteenth Century,” Muqarnas 24, no. 9 (2007), 189.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Gábor Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 88.
[17] Ibid, 90.
[18] Finkel, Osman’s Dream.
[19] Keskiner, Rüstem, and Stanley, “Armed and Splendorous,” 218.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid, 220.
[24] Ibid, 219.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, 91.
[29] Keskiner, Rüstem, and Stanley, “Armed and Splendorous,” 221.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Ibid.
[32] Ibid, 226.
[33] Tim Stanley, Mariam Rosser-Owen, and Stephen Vernoit, Palace and Mosque: Islamic Art from the Middle East (London: V&A Publications, 2004), 12.
[34] Keskiner, Rüstem, and Stanley, “Armed and Splendorous,” 226.
[35] Ibid, 222.
[36] Ibid, 222.
[37] Ibid, 226.
[38] Ibid, 225.
[39] Ibid, 235.
[40] Ibid.
[41] Ibid, 209.
[42] 208.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Ibid, 235.
Bibliography
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Erimtan, Can. Ottomans Looking West?: The Origins of the Tulip Age and its development in Modern Turkey. London: I.B. Tauris, 2008.
Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Basic Books, 2007.
Hamadeh, Shirine. “Westernization, Decadence, and the Turkish Baroque: Modern Construction of the Eighteenth Century.” Muqarnas 24, no. 9 (2007) 185-198. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25482459.
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