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Lot Essay
This weapon is an extremely rare and important survival from a short-lived period during which the Mamluks used firearms as a modern method of warfare. In David Ayalon's book, Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom, he refers to the 15th century cannon of Sultan Qaitbay, now in the Askeri Museum in Istanbul, as the only extant Mamluk firearm 'that can be identified beyond doubt by the inscription it bears, as Mamluk' (David Ayalon Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom: A Challenge to a Medieval Society, London, 1956, and Gülen Arslanboga, Asker Muüze Toplar Koleksionu, Istanbul, 2009, p.57). The weapon offered here, which has an inscription linking it firmly to the Mamluk Emir Kertbey al-Ahmar, provides an important second example.
In 1497, the German knight Arnold von Harff visited Cairo on a pilgrimage. His observations provide us with a clear picture of Mamluk military attitudes of the time. Entering the Citadel von Harff wrote, "As one enters the first gate there is on the right hand a large building, in which are many large rooms, wherein the young Mamelukes have thirty-two masters, who teach them writing, reading, fighting with lances, also to defend themselves with the buckler, shooting with the hand bow at a target, and all kinds of feats of skill. I saw five hundred young Mamelukes in this building" (Henry Maundrell, A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem at Easter AD 1697, 1749, p.156, quoted in Robert Elgood, Firearms of the Islamic World in the Tareq Rajab Museum, Kuwait, New York, 1995, p.24). Firearms receive no mention in this list of traditional furusiyya skills.
Until now no Mamluk handheld firearms were thought to have survived, although contemporaneous references to such weapons exist in primary sources. Al-Qalqashandi and Ibn Khaldun describe events that plausibly suggest that cannon were used from as early as 1365 in Cairo and 1376 in Alexandria (Elgood, of cit., p.23). In 1432 De la Brocquière describes the Meccan pilgrims' return to Damascus, 'In front, and around, were about thirty men - some bearing crossbows, others drawn swords, others small harquebuses, which they fired off every now and then' (Elgood, op.cit., p.23). Elgood writes that towards the latter part of the fifteenth century, cannon were increasingly to be found in the Mamluk state, but that antiquated weapons such as the mangonel survived until the fall of the dynasty. The Mamluks continued to use their artillery infrequently in sieges and not on the battlefield until very late, owing to their desire to resist all changes to the structure of a traditional military society.
The heavily illustrated so-called St. Petersburg Furusiyya, a manual of horsemanship, written in Egypt or Syria in 1474, features a number of Mamluk gunpowder devices including a mortar of closely related form to that offered here (depicted on f.156, illustrated above). In the St. Petersburg illustration the weapon is shown supported at the end of a long rod. It is unclear as to whether the rod in the illustration is made of wood or metal, although the former is perhaps more likely in that would not conduct heat from the explosion. The base of our hand bombard reveals the remains of just such a rod, square-section and iron, from which the weapon could be safely held or through which it may have affixed to a wooden pole. The text relating to the weapon begins on f.160, where the author describes it as al-madfa' [the cannon] and touches on the composition of the gun powder (saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur) and the mechanics of operation (which involve filling a third of the barrel with the powder, compressing it with a wooden piston, inserting the cannon ball within the barrel and lighting some gunpowder applied to the top of the vent). A copy of the Deeds of Sir Gillion de Trazegnies in the Middle East, copied for Louis Gruuthuse in French in Antwerp or Bruges in 1464 also includes in the elaborately illuminated borders (painted by Lieven van Lathem) depictions of larger but closely related bombards supported on wide wooden stands (this manuscript was recently acquired by the Getty Museum through Sotheby's sale of Old Master and British Paintings including three Renaissance Masterworks from Chatsworth, London, 12 December 2012, lot 51).
One more weapon temptingly similar in form is depicted in another Mamluk manuscript on Furusiyya in the Keir Collection (Duncan Haldane, Mamluk Painting, Guilford, 1978, pl.33, pp.72-73). The form of that example, carried by a figure in the lower right hand corner of the composition, differs slightly from ours and that in the St. Petersburg illustration in that it does not have the upper 'cup'. Otherwise however, it is very similar. Ernst Grube describes the particular illustration as 'Aspects of Warfare practiced by the naffatin' and suggests that it depicts a group of soldiers specialised in 'fire-throwing' by way of naphtha-drenched lances and arrows set alight (Ernst J. Grube, Islamic Painting and the Arts of the Book, London, 1976, no.II.12, p.75). The weapon in question however, differs from the obvious arrows waiting to be lit, and it is tempting to suggest that it is rather a hand bombard of our type, until now relatively unknown and unstudied.
Ayalon suggests that the bombard was first introduced under Sultan Qaitbay in AH 895/1490 AD, and that in this year he built up a military battalion which was trained in the use of firearms, despite the resentment of most of his Mamluks. The main problem for the Mamluk nobility seemed to be that large firemarm battalions altered the nature of warfare - such a solider had to give up his bow and his horse, two areas in which the Mamluks prided themselves (Elgood, op.cit., p.24). The unit of artillerymen or arquebusiers, was thus primarily formed from low-class recruits, in some sources referred to as imported black slaves, which succeeded in further alienating upper-class sympathy towards firearms.
Our hand bombard bears a commissioning inscription along the shaft which states that it was made by the order of Kertbay al-Ahmar. Under Qaitbay, Kertbay al-Ahmar is recorded as a prefect of Cairo. Under Qaitbay's successor, Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad (1496-98), he rose to the position of silahdar (master of the training of troops). Al-Nasir Muhammad tried to raise the social standing of the slaves of his firearm battalion, and to increase their numbers, something which was resented by the Mamluk amirs who forced their ruler to disband the battalion (Elgood, op.cit., p.25). At this juncture threatened by the amirs who so disapproved of his activities, Kertbey took the existing firearms from the Cairo citadel and other cities including fortresses like Alexandria and transported them to Damascus where he was appointed Viceroy of Syria (na'ib al-sultana). In this role he there created four different firearm battalions. The troops in these battalions were numbered in the Mamluk army and his activities were approved by Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad in Cairo (Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn Tulun, Kitab mufakhat al-hillan fi hawadith al-zaman, Cairo, AH 1384/1964 AD, p.45). It was in Damascus that our weapon was probably made, on the order of Kertbay, for one of his firearm battalions. Shortly after the murder of Al-Nasir Muhammad in 1498, Kertbay also died, perhaps poisoned by enemies trying to quash his attempts to modernize the army (L.A. Mayer, Saracenic Heraldry, Oxford, 1999, p.128).
In 1510, Sultan Qansuh al-Ghawri made a final attempt to raise a firearms battalion, though again it was forced to disband in 1514. Decisive Ottoman victories at Chaldiran against the Safavids (1514) and Marj Darbiq near Aleppo (1516) in which Qansuh al-Ghuri was killed were what it took for the Mamluks finally to learn that they had to modernise. When Sultan Selim I threatened the security of the Mamluk dynasty, Tuman Bay - the last Mamluk Sultan - purchased eighty cannon from Venice and brought in artillery experts from Rhodes (P.G.Elgood, Bonaparte's Adventure in Egypt, Oxford University Press, 1931, p.86). However it was a case of too little too late, and when battle began these last minute preparations were no match for Ottoman firepower. Within a year the Ottomans had destroyed the Mamluks with the aid of the firearms that the Mamluks had for so long rejected.
When he was bought before Selim the Grim after the battle of Marj Darbiq, a Mamluk Emir, confusingly also by the name Kertbay, is recorded as having said, "...you have bought with you this contrivance artfully devised by the Christians of Europe when they were incapable of meeting the Muslim armies on the battlefield. The contrivance is that bunduq which, even if a woman were to fire it, would hold up such and such a number of men. Had we chosen to employ this weapon, you would not have preceded us in its use. But we are the people who do not discard the Sunna [practices] of our Prophet Muhammad which is the jihad [Holy War] for the sake of Allah with sword and lance. And woe to thee! How darest thou shoot with firearms at Muslims?" (Ayalon, op.cit., p.94, quoted in Elgood, op.cit., 1995, p.15).
The conclusion of Ayalon's renowned work was summarized by Reuven Amitai as follows, 'A more direct reason for the demise of the Mamluk Sultanate is the failure of the Mamluks to adopt the use of firearms; thus they were not able to meet the challenge of both the Ottoman Empire and the Christian West. This inability to modernize the army was rooted in the social psychology of the Mamluks. The adoption of firearms contradicted their training and vocation as mounted archers, as the use of primitive handguns required dismounting; this would have meant the transformation of the mamluks into infantrymen' (Reuven Amitai, "The Rise and Fall of the Mamluk Institution; A Survey of David Ayalon's Works", in M. Sharon (ed.), Studies Islamic History and Civilization in honour of David Ayalon, Jerusalem, 1986, p. 28). The Mamluk sultanate was presented with the challenge of new military technology, but failed to respond to it. This small mortar provides an important piece of evidence of that short moment in Mamluk military history when a few key figures tried, in the face of mass opposition, to modernize the army.
A metal analysis performed by Curt-Engelhorn-Zentrum Archäometrie gGmbH, on 9 August 2013 (sample number 13-055) is available on request.
In 1497, the German knight Arnold von Harff visited Cairo on a pilgrimage. His observations provide us with a clear picture of Mamluk military attitudes of the time. Entering the Citadel von Harff wrote, "As one enters the first gate there is on the right hand a large building, in which are many large rooms, wherein the young Mamelukes have thirty-two masters, who teach them writing, reading, fighting with lances, also to defend themselves with the buckler, shooting with the hand bow at a target, and all kinds of feats of skill. I saw five hundred young Mamelukes in this building" (Henry Maundrell, A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem at Easter AD 1697, 1749, p.156, quoted in Robert Elgood, Firearms of the Islamic World in the Tareq Rajab Museum, Kuwait, New York, 1995, p.24). Firearms receive no mention in this list of traditional furusiyya skills.
Until now no Mamluk handheld firearms were thought to have survived, although contemporaneous references to such weapons exist in primary sources. Al-Qalqashandi and Ibn Khaldun describe events that plausibly suggest that cannon were used from as early as 1365 in Cairo and 1376 in Alexandria (Elgood, of cit., p.23). In 1432 De la Brocquière describes the Meccan pilgrims' return to Damascus, 'In front, and around, were about thirty men - some bearing crossbows, others drawn swords, others small harquebuses, which they fired off every now and then' (Elgood, op.cit., p.23). Elgood writes that towards the latter part of the fifteenth century, cannon were increasingly to be found in the Mamluk state, but that antiquated weapons such as the mangonel survived until the fall of the dynasty. The Mamluks continued to use their artillery infrequently in sieges and not on the battlefield until very late, owing to their desire to resist all changes to the structure of a traditional military society.
The heavily illustrated so-called St. Petersburg Furusiyya, a manual of horsemanship, written in Egypt or Syria in 1474, features a number of Mamluk gunpowder devices including a mortar of closely related form to that offered here (depicted on f.156, illustrated above). In the St. Petersburg illustration the weapon is shown supported at the end of a long rod. It is unclear as to whether the rod in the illustration is made of wood or metal, although the former is perhaps more likely in that would not conduct heat from the explosion. The base of our hand bombard reveals the remains of just such a rod, square-section and iron, from which the weapon could be safely held or through which it may have affixed to a wooden pole. The text relating to the weapon begins on f.160, where the author describes it as al-madfa' [the cannon] and touches on the composition of the gun powder (saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur) and the mechanics of operation (which involve filling a third of the barrel with the powder, compressing it with a wooden piston, inserting the cannon ball within the barrel and lighting some gunpowder applied to the top of the vent). A copy of the Deeds of Sir Gillion de Trazegnies in the Middle East, copied for Louis Gruuthuse in French in Antwerp or Bruges in 1464 also includes in the elaborately illuminated borders (painted by Lieven van Lathem) depictions of larger but closely related bombards supported on wide wooden stands (this manuscript was recently acquired by the Getty Museum through Sotheby's sale of Old Master and British Paintings including three Renaissance Masterworks from Chatsworth, London, 12 December 2012, lot 51).
One more weapon temptingly similar in form is depicted in another Mamluk manuscript on Furusiyya in the Keir Collection (Duncan Haldane, Mamluk Painting, Guilford, 1978, pl.33, pp.72-73). The form of that example, carried by a figure in the lower right hand corner of the composition, differs slightly from ours and that in the St. Petersburg illustration in that it does not have the upper 'cup'. Otherwise however, it is very similar. Ernst Grube describes the particular illustration as 'Aspects of Warfare practiced by the naffatin' and suggests that it depicts a group of soldiers specialised in 'fire-throwing' by way of naphtha-drenched lances and arrows set alight (Ernst J. Grube, Islamic Painting and the Arts of the Book, London, 1976, no.II.12, p.75). The weapon in question however, differs from the obvious arrows waiting to be lit, and it is tempting to suggest that it is rather a hand bombard of our type, until now relatively unknown and unstudied.
Ayalon suggests that the bombard was first introduced under Sultan Qaitbay in AH 895/1490 AD, and that in this year he built up a military battalion which was trained in the use of firearms, despite the resentment of most of his Mamluks. The main problem for the Mamluk nobility seemed to be that large firemarm battalions altered the nature of warfare - such a solider had to give up his bow and his horse, two areas in which the Mamluks prided themselves (Elgood, op.cit., p.24). The unit of artillerymen or arquebusiers, was thus primarily formed from low-class recruits, in some sources referred to as imported black slaves, which succeeded in further alienating upper-class sympathy towards firearms.
Our hand bombard bears a commissioning inscription along the shaft which states that it was made by the order of Kertbay al-Ahmar. Under Qaitbay, Kertbay al-Ahmar is recorded as a prefect of Cairo. Under Qaitbay's successor, Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad (1496-98), he rose to the position of silahdar (master of the training of troops). Al-Nasir Muhammad tried to raise the social standing of the slaves of his firearm battalion, and to increase their numbers, something which was resented by the Mamluk amirs who forced their ruler to disband the battalion (Elgood, op.cit., p.25). At this juncture threatened by the amirs who so disapproved of his activities, Kertbey took the existing firearms from the Cairo citadel and other cities including fortresses like Alexandria and transported them to Damascus where he was appointed Viceroy of Syria (na'ib al-sultana). In this role he there created four different firearm battalions. The troops in these battalions were numbered in the Mamluk army and his activities were approved by Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad in Cairo (Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn Tulun, Kitab mufakhat al-hillan fi hawadith al-zaman, Cairo, AH 1384/1964 AD, p.45). It was in Damascus that our weapon was probably made, on the order of Kertbay, for one of his firearm battalions. Shortly after the murder of Al-Nasir Muhammad in 1498, Kertbay also died, perhaps poisoned by enemies trying to quash his attempts to modernize the army (L.A. Mayer, Saracenic Heraldry, Oxford, 1999, p.128).
In 1510, Sultan Qansuh al-Ghawri made a final attempt to raise a firearms battalion, though again it was forced to disband in 1514. Decisive Ottoman victories at Chaldiran against the Safavids (1514) and Marj Darbiq near Aleppo (1516) in which Qansuh al-Ghuri was killed were what it took for the Mamluks finally to learn that they had to modernise. When Sultan Selim I threatened the security of the Mamluk dynasty, Tuman Bay - the last Mamluk Sultan - purchased eighty cannon from Venice and brought in artillery experts from Rhodes (P.G.Elgood, Bonaparte's Adventure in Egypt, Oxford University Press, 1931, p.86). However it was a case of too little too late, and when battle began these last minute preparations were no match for Ottoman firepower. Within a year the Ottomans had destroyed the Mamluks with the aid of the firearms that the Mamluks had for so long rejected.
When he was bought before Selim the Grim after the battle of Marj Darbiq, a Mamluk Emir, confusingly also by the name Kertbay, is recorded as having said, "...you have bought with you this contrivance artfully devised by the Christians of Europe when they were incapable of meeting the Muslim armies on the battlefield. The contrivance is that bunduq which, even if a woman were to fire it, would hold up such and such a number of men. Had we chosen to employ this weapon, you would not have preceded us in its use. But we are the people who do not discard the Sunna [practices] of our Prophet Muhammad which is the jihad [Holy War] for the sake of Allah with sword and lance. And woe to thee! How darest thou shoot with firearms at Muslims?" (Ayalon, op.cit., p.94, quoted in Elgood, op.cit., 1995, p.15).
The conclusion of Ayalon's renowned work was summarized by Reuven Amitai as follows, 'A more direct reason for the demise of the Mamluk Sultanate is the failure of the Mamluks to adopt the use of firearms; thus they were not able to meet the challenge of both the Ottoman Empire and the Christian West. This inability to modernize the army was rooted in the social psychology of the Mamluks. The adoption of firearms contradicted their training and vocation as mounted archers, as the use of primitive handguns required dismounting; this would have meant the transformation of the mamluks into infantrymen' (Reuven Amitai, "The Rise and Fall of the Mamluk Institution; A Survey of David Ayalon's Works", in M. Sharon (ed.), Studies Islamic History and Civilization in honour of David Ayalon, Jerusalem, 1986, p. 28). The Mamluk sultanate was presented with the challenge of new military technology, but failed to respond to it. This small mortar provides an important piece of evidence of that short moment in Mamluk military history when a few key figures tried, in the face of mass opposition, to modernize the army.
A metal analysis performed by Curt-Engelhorn-Zentrum Archäometrie gGmbH, on 9 August 2013 (sample number 13-055) is available on request.