The Ottoman Gunpowder Empire and the Composite Bow

Volume 9 Article 4 2010 The Ottoman Gunpowder Empire and the Composite Bow Nathan Lanan Gettysburg College Class of 2012 Follow this and additional works at: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/ghj Part of the Islamic World and Near East History Commons, and the Military History Commons Share feedback about the accessibility of this item. Lanan, Nathan (2010) "The Ottoman Gunpowder Empire and the Composite Bow," The Gettysburg Historical Journal: Vol. 9 , Article 4. Available at: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/ghj/vol9/iss1/4 This open access article is brought to you by The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of The Cupola. For more information, please contact . The Ottoman Gunpowder Empire and the Composite Bow Abstract The Ottoman Empire is known today as a major Gunpowder Empire, famous for its prevalent use of this staple of modern warfare as early as the sixteenth century. However, when Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq visited Constantinople from 1554 to 1562, gunpowder was not used by the Sipahi cavalry who stubbornly, it seems, insisted on continuing to use the composite bow that the Turks had been using for centuries. This continued, despite their fear of European cavalry who used “small muskets” against them on raids. Was this a good idea? Was the composite bow a match or contemporary handheld firearms? Were Turkish tactics incompatible with firearms to the point that the Ottomans would have lost their effectiveness on the battlefield? Could the Ottoman Empire even be considered a Gunpowder Empire with such a refusal? Keywords Ottoman Empire, Gunpowder Empire, composite bow, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq This article is available in The Gettysburg Historical Journal: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/ghj/vol9/iss1/4 32 The Ottoman Gunpowder Empire and the Composite Bow Nathan Lanan The Ottoman Empire is known today as a major Gunpowder Empire, famous for its prevalent use of this staple of modern warfare as early as the sixteenth century.1 However, when Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq visited Constantinople from 1554 to 1562, gunpowder was not used by the Sipahi cavalry who stubbornly, it seems, insisted on continuing to use the composite bow that the Turks had been using for centuries. This continued, despite their fear of European cavalry who used ―small muskets‖ against them on raids. Was this a good idea? Was the composite bow a match for contemporary handheld firearms? Were Turkish tactics incompatible with firearms to the point that the Ottomans would have lost their effectiveness on the battlefield? Could the Ottoman Empire even be considered a Gunpowder Empire with such a refusal? Busbecq says of the Turks that ―no nation has shown less reluctance to adopt the useful inventions of others.‖2 This was proven by their use of gunpowder; Mehmed II Fatih famously used massive cannons to batter down the walls of Constantinople in 1453, when gunpowder weapons were just beginning to gain their potency. 3 Mehmed even equipped some of his Janissary infantry with primitive handguns, including early muskets and mortars4 By Busbecq‘s trips to Constantinople in the middle of the sixteenth century, the Ottoman military was equipped with the most firearms in Europe, their disciplined infantry and often foreign, mercenary artillerymen being best suited to gunpowder weapons. Indeed, until the turn of the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire was at the forefront of military technology.5 This makes it all the more shocking when Busbecq tells of a group Sipahis, landowning cavalrymen, refusing firearms in his third letter home to his friend. He was in Constantinople at 1 Marshall G.S. Hodgson, The Venture Of Islam Volume 3: The Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 99. 2 Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, The Turkish Letters, trans. Edward Seymour Forster (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008), 135. 3 William H. McNeill, The Age of Gunpowder Empires: 1450-1850 (Washington D.C.: American Historical Association: 1989), 33. 4 Godfrey Goodwin, The Janissaries (London: Saqi Essentials, 2006), 69. 5 McNeill, 33. 33 the time, performing his duty as the Austrian ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. As Busbecq observed, after a small band of Christians decimated a larger force of Turks by using muskets, Roostem Pasha ordered that 200 Sipahis should learn to use small muskets from horseback. This idea was quickly abandoned when, according to Busbecq, the muskets became unreliable and the soldiers were embarrassed by how dirty they became while using them. They went back to using more primitive composite bows instead. This is despite the fact that Busbecq quotes a Turkish messenger as wholly understanding the ability of the muskets to ―harness fire‖ and rout the Muslim forces. One would think that, if the Ottomans understood the power of the musket, they would have forced the 200 Sipahis to take care of their weaponry and continue learning to use the muskets regardless of their own thoughts and worries. Busbecq‘s story suggests that there was more to the matter.6 The basic requirement for the use of each weapon was creating them; if either weapon was too expensive or time-consuming to make, or not durable enough to withstand multiple conflicts, it could be a detriment to the cavalry. The process of making a bow was incredibly time-consuming and required the best materials available. For the highest quality bows, glue that was made either from tendons or a combination of the ears or hide of cattle and skin from the roof of the mouth of a Danube sturgeon, had to be cooked. The most common wood used as the base of the bow was maple because of its ability to accept the glue. Excellent bowyers knew exactly where and when to find the best trees to use to obtain this wood. Horn that is appropriate for the bow must be smooth and free of imperfections and the pieces for the top and bottom limbs of the bow must be identical. The bow is covered on the opposite side by sinew. Assembling the bow is a rigorous multi-step process in which the bow is repeatedly heated and cooled while the bowyer applies glue in many different layers, adding in the horn and sinew at various points in the years-long procedure. The final steps include reflexing the bow to the point that it resembles a pretzel and applying sinew so that the bow will tend to return to that shape, and then stringing the bow and going through a final shaping process to increase its efficiency. All told, making a high-quality bow that would be powerful, efficient and durable could take anywhere from five to ten years including several periods during which the bowyer leaves the 6 De Busbecq, 122-125. 34 bow to dry.7 Compared to such a lengthy and complicated process, firearms of the time might seem simple. Two different firing mechanisms existed during the mid-sixteenth century: the matchlock and the wheellock. The matchlo (...truncated)