A MAGNIFICENT OTTOMAN IVORY-INLAID MIQUELET GUN, TURKEY, 18TH CENTURY

the pattern-welded barrel chiselled with lobed cartouches, the wooden stock faced with natural and green-stained ivory richly decorated with inlaid mosaic hexagrams and silver-coloured plaques, the stock with bands of mother-of-pearl, hemispherical brass studs and brass plaques with raised bosses set with gems, the plaques engraved with floral designs, the toothed flintlock chased with foliate decoration, the barrel clasped to the understock by capuchines of gilt copper embossed with floral forms

It is sometimes thought that this rare type of gun bearing white and green-stained ivory decoration was made for the bodyguard of the Ottoman sultan. Traditionally ascribed to the late 17th/early 18th century (Paris 1988, no.42 and 43), a dated example in the Khalili Collection (d. A.H. 1191 / A.D. 1777-8) suggests that the whole group should be reassigned to a later period (Alexander 1992, pp.128-129, no.73). Michael Rogers, however, convincingly points to documentation that such pieces were certainly manufactured in 17th-century Istanbul: "In his account of Bitlis in 1655-6, Evliya Celebi gives a list of muskets by the most reputed makers allegedly in the collection of Abdal Khan, the ruler of that principality. Among the Istanbul masters, he lists Memi, Kuçuk Omer, Uzun Mehmed and Kara Mehmed Ketbeli as specialists in jewelling and encrustation" (Rogers 1995, p.154).

Comparable examples of ivory-inlaid Ottoman guns are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 32.75.270), the Military Museum in Istanbul (Istanbul 2000a, p.160, no.E25), the Victoria & Albert Museum (North 1985, p.11, fig.3b), the Wallace Collection (Laking 1914, no.2091) and the Khalili Collection in London (Alexander 1992, pp.126-129, nos, 72 and 73; Paris 1988, no.42), as well as two privately owned in Denmark (Copenhagen 1982, nos. 40 and 41) and a number of others. An almost identical gun was given to Admiral Horatio Nelson by the Sultan of Turkey after the battle of the Nile in 1803.