Albanian Rat tail Miquelet pistols

[Marcus]

Pistols identified as "Rat tail Miquelets" have a pretty distinctive style so it is easy to identify them. There always seem to be a few for sale on the internet, so a fair number of them must have been made. Antony Tirri identifies them as contract pieces made in Albania for the Ottoman Turks. That might explain why, although each was probably hand-made and no two are identical, they are all basically of the same design. Does anyone know what sort of troops these pistols would have been issued to?

Also, I just purchased a Tanchika long gun. I'll post pictures in a couple of days once I get it home. It really seems like the match piece for my Albanian rat tail. The vendor claims that one of the marks is a Turkish proof. There is also an inscription on the barrel. Does anyone know if these long guns were also contract pieces for the Turks and what sort of service they would have seen.

Thanks,
Marcus

[TVV]

Marcus,

Looking forward to seeing some pictures. The local craftsmen of Albania and Macedonia, where the distinctive rat tail pistols were produced, were not working on state contracts for the Ottoman Army, but were rather meeting the demands within their local area. The same applies to the various types of long guns. These beatiful weapons saw service mostly locally, but also anywhere throughout the Empire wrhere there were irregulars, recruited from the Balkans involved, such as in Egypt during the Napoleonic wars. They were used not just by Ottoman troops, but also by various outlaws and by Christian freedom fighters.

The compelxities of the production and trade of firearms in the Balkans during the Ottoman period are well explained in Dr. Elgood's latest book "The Arms of Greece and Her (Western) Balkan Neighbors". Alternatively, another good source will be Dr. Elgood's "Firearms of the Islamic World", where there is also a chapter on the region.

Regards,
Teodor

[Marcus]

Teodor,
Thanks for the recommendation. I have ordered the book. I was always a little skeptical about Terri's statement that they were contract pieces.
Marcus
www.handfulsofhistory.com

[Marcus]

Does anyone know what sorts of small arms would have been used by the Janissaries around 1800? Single shot miquelet pistols and muskets, I imagine. Would they have been of various sorts with each soldier responsible for their own, or would they have been produced under contract with some expectation of standard caliber etc. The pictures of Janissaries I find feature them with swords so I wonder about their firearms.
Marcus

[Marcus]

The new musket is a perfect match for my rat tail miquelet. However, I do have a hard time imagining the circumstances for convenient use of a gun with a 55 inch barrel. Maybe it went camel back. There is a "saddle ring".

For an album of photos go to:

Comments please.

Marcus
www.handfulsofhistory.com

[Marcus]

I would especially appreciate comments on the proofs and the inscription.
Thanks.

[Rick]

I find myself unwilling to join facebook .
Please avoid facebook links .

Upload some photos to the site; that way they will stay in the forum archive .
If you need assistance contact me .

[Marcus]

Sorry about the facebook album. That was the only way I could post photos from home. The pictures are now up on a new thread.
Marcus

[Rick]

Thanks Marcus !

[Marcus]

I just received my copy of the book. In the first paragraph of the relevant chapter on Albanian pistols Elgood states, "The Turkish army also employed Albanians, and pistols, though a novelty, came into general use." This statement is on a page with two rat tail pistols displayed.
In my opinion this is consistent with Tirri.
Marcus

[TVV]

I fail to see how the presence in the Ottoman army of Albanian irregulars, armed with their personal weapons, signifies a government contract for the production of rat tail pistols.
Regards,
Teodor

[Marcus]

Teodor,
Elwood states that in 1805, Elbasan, the town to which he attributes production of the rat tail pistols, was documented to have 243 gunmakers. If the Turkish government did not order pistols through a contract with a consortium of these gunmakers, who did the Turkish government buy from? I doubt that prior to 1800 they were buying in large numbers from European manufactures. I would be very interested to know your thoughts on this question.
Marcus
P.S. This scenario reminds me of the situation France was in during World War I. They needed pistols badly, and they made a deal with a consortium of Spanish gun makers to provide "Ruby pistols", which were knock offs of Browning semi-automatic pistols. Probably more than 100 producers supplied "Ruby" pistols, and while the 4 or 5 big companies provided guns of reasonable quality, other small producers made guns that were more of a liability than an asset. Just as all the rat tails you see kind of look similar, the Ruby pistols were supposed to be the same, but not even the magazines were interchangeable.

[TVV]

Marcus,
You refer to the Ottoman Empire as though its military was organized in a way, similar to that of the armies of the centralized Western European Monarchies. However, until the 1820s, the Ottoman Sultan relied on feudal lords and their levies, supplemented by various mercenaries, such as the Albanian irregulars subject of this thread. There was no regular army, except the Janissary corps to a degree, but even there there was not any standardization of arms and ammunition. In a system like this, there really was not any need for the Sultan to contract local manufacturers for the needs of his army, but rather paid cash to his soldiers and let them decide what equipment to procure for themselves. Obviously not a great solution, as evidenced by the series of military defeats in wars with European powers such as Russia and Austria.
Regards,
Teodor

[Zifir]

Hi,
Although I agree with Teodor's comments on the Ottoman army to some degree, it would be misleading to say that the Ottoman central authority never ordered weapons of any sort from local contractors and artisans. For the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century there are many documents in the Ottoman archives showing that central state ordering swords, musket and rifle barrels, stocks etc. from local contractors from different parts of the empire. The procedure of issuing weapons from the state arsenal for the Janissary army during the campaigns goes back to as early as the classical period as far as I know. For example, I remember reading in a source from the early seventeenth century that the author was complaning about the muskets issued from the state arsenal for janissaries because of their low quality. But of course as Teodor pointed out, we cannot expect a standardization to a degree of centralized states of Western Europe from the Ottomans until the first half of the nineteenth century. However, even for those centralized "modern" Western monarchies, when we say standardization and uniformity how much a standardization or uniformity we are talking about.

[RDGAC]

Interesting point, Zifir. Britain, as I recall, was one of the first nations to establish a system of Pattern Weapons (and other military accoutrements), and even that was by no means universally adhered to; partially that was the consequence of pre-precision engineering solutions being applied to the problem, with all the resulting non-interchangeability of parts one would expect, but partially it was accounted for by the simple demands of wartime exigencies and various military traditions. Nominally, every British infantry soldier should have had a Bess of some pattern or other, all with broadly interchangeable parts, firing much the same ammunition. Even with the advantage of the Pattern system, however, this wasn't guaranteed, and the problem was merely made worse by, for instance, the tendency of officers to purchase their own fusils privately, thus adding non-standard ammunition to the mix.

With that being borne in mind, if we turn our attention to the Ottoman Empire, we surely find that the Ottomans didn't even have the advantage of being at the head of an Empire either sufficiently far-flung (and lacking in a history of indigenous gun-making to quality equivalent to Ottoman products) or ethnically/culturally/technologically uniform (allowing the easy imposition of some form of standardisation of equipment). Instead, the Ottoman Empire encompassed notably fractious regions, each of which had a long history of making guns their own particular, unique way, be that the Albanian rat-tail, the Ottoman tufek or the Bosnian boyliya. Their influence, moreover, spread across regions which also had a very strong tradition of doing things their own way, viz. Algerian and Moroccan guns.

In other words, my suggestion is that the Ottomans didn't have the luxury either of presiding over a relatively homogeneous dominion, wherein their own style of weapon-making was already fairly similar to that of their subjects, or of an Empire sufficiently technologically inferior, or distant, to make standardisation around their design desirable or practical. The Ottomans, instead, had to work with what they had; what they had was a large number of local gunsmiths, in a number of generally restless lands, who would quite happily turn out their products to anyone who'd pay.

Combine this with the general Ottoman tendency to allow their subjects to continue following their own traditions - to an extent - and it seems reasonable to suggest that the Ottoman Empire would, from time to time, order arms from out-of-the-way, local contractors. It might be a question of keeping them busy (for a busy gunsmith is probably less likely to sell his wares to criminals, insurgents etc), or of a sudden upsurge in need for arms making the obtaining of any sort of weapons necessary (in which case, providing they can all use the same ammunition, it might not even matter too much that their designs, or styles, differ); it might also be a question of arming a locally-raised corps with weapons with which they're familiar, both as a sop to wounded pride and as to take advantage of that familiarity.

... sorry, that turned out longer than I expected.

[TVV]

Originally Posted by Zifir

Hi,
Although I agree with Teodor's comments on the Ottoman army to some degree, it would be misleading to say that the Ottoman central authority never ordered weapons of any sort from local contractors and artisans. For the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century there are many documents in the Ottoman archives showing that central state ordering swords, musket and rifle barrels, stocks etc. from local contractors from different parts of the empire. The procedure of issuing weapons from the state arsenal for the Janissary army during the campaigns goes back to as early as the classical period as far as I know. For example, I remember reading in a source from the early seventeenth century that the author was complaning about the muskets issued from the state arsenal for janissaries because of their low quality. But of course as Teodor pointed out, we cannot expect a standardization to a degree of centralized states of Western Europe from the Ottomans until the first half of the nineteenth century. However, even for those centralized "modern" Western monarchies, when we say standardization and uniformity how much a standardization or uniformity we are talking about.

Good points Zifir,

I agree with all of them. In fact, the Ottoman administration strived to maintain some level of control over the production of firearms for obvious reasons and in some cases was even suppliying the gunsmiths with raw material, such as iron. However, based on Ottoman records for the confiscation of weapons from the Christian peasantry, and the large numbers in those records of various firearms seized, it is obvious that the majority of the production was sold locally. So while the best gunsmiths were transferred to Istanbul to work for the Sultan and the Janissary corps, and garrisons throughout the Balkans often placed orders with the local gunsmith guilds, I still think the relationship was far from a contractual one, such as say Colt's contract with the U.S. Navy. Given the nature of the production of the characteristic Balkan firearms and its lack of industrialization, the gunsmith guilds in Tetovo, Elbasan or Sliven could not really complete a large government contract. Thus, after the military reforms of Mahmud II, the Ottoman army was relying mainly on Belgian, English and American factories for its firearms, and the local gunsmiths were soon out of business, unable to compete on quality and price.

Regards,
Teodor