OTTOMAN TURKEY, LATE 18TH CENTURY

This exceptional Ottoman gun, or shishana, has a rifled watered steel barrel set into a richly inlaid stock of beautifully figured Circassian walnut. Ottoman gun barrels were highly prized throughout the Middle East and Europe and from the 17^th century were exported in large numbers to Italy. These barrels, often with the distinctive swollen muzzle, are recoded in arriving into Brescia where they are referred to – incorrectly – as ‘alla Greca,’ or Greek (Robert Elgood, The Arms of Greece and Her Balkan Neighbours in the Ottoman Period, London, 2009, p. 176). The swollen muzzle on the present lot is especially notable for its being inlaid with gold and silver to resemble a monster’s head emerging from leafy tendrils.

The highly decorative stock terminates with an ebony butt and strips of ivory and stained bone and is further enriched with silver mounts of various floral designs. An Ottoman shishana with a comparably decorated stock is in the Wallace Collection, London (inv. OA2157). However, what further sets our gun apart from similar examples is the leather pad fixed just behind the lock. This pad would have offered protection to the thumb of the gunner. Although this would have been widely found on guns such as this, it is exceedingly rare to find original pads still attached. Another Ottoman gun with its original leather pad is published in Kjeld von Folsach et al., Fighting, Hunting, Impressing: Arms and Armour from the Islamic World 1500-1850, Copenhagen, 2021, no. 47, p. 152. A finely decorated 18^th century Ottoman gun with watered steel barrel was sold in these Rooms, 7 April 2011, lot 366.