Excellent Teodor!!! An absolutely magnificently thought out and written account of the geopolitical flux of these times. The complexity of the history of these areas and the Ottoman Empire have always seemed a bit formidable, and I've never been able to focus enough in that area of study to fully understand all of the components of this history. Your concise overview really helps, thank you so much.
Ausjulius, I think I missed the premise of the original question in that what you are looking for is not as much 'influence' from the 'East' on European arms and armour and that what you are trying to discover is instances of actual swordsmiths and armourers working in European centers.
That is an interesting question, which reminds me of the line from Kipling's famous ballad;
"...Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet".
Clearly this was not the case, especially with arms and armour, and with reference to influence, which is far more permeable in many perceptions than actual presence.
Your note on Catholic Monks working on cannons among the Mongols is an interesting anology, and I'd like to hear more on this. As to 'Eastern' (or foreign) craftsmen working in European production of arms, the only thing that readily comes to mind would be possibly the Armenians who were situated in the south of Poland in Lvov and Krakow. These skilled armourers were key in the adaption of Ottoman styles into the European armouries.
It would be difficult to say how prevalent the instance you are considering might be, as in post exploration colonization, the most common scenario was the export of European surplus and trade materials to these ecumenical locations. There was certainly always a supreme effort to capture the process of watered steel, wootz in blademaking centers, but as far as I know there was not documented presence of 'foreign' smiths in European locations.
Foreign weapons were often brought in as souveniers, and certainly there were efforts made to duplicate them, but again, typically and as far as I know ,not using foreign artisans.
While noting that these are my own perceptions, without further research, and I would be interested to hear of instances of 'foreign' presumably Eastern or Oriental armourers working in European locations.
All best regards,
Jim
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