Long Arnaut Rasak gun

[Armatolos]

Hello everybody and Seasons Greetings,
A friend of mine sent me these photos of a long brass covered miquelet Rasak gun, now what's unusual with it, is that it has a firing mechanism taken from a Ottoman gun known as a Shishane, on both sides of it's beautiful decorated barrel there seem to be inscribed some numbers in arabic on one side of it and some letters on the other side.
Can anyone decypher what they mean?

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Hello everybody and Seasons Greetings,
A friend of mine sent me these photos of a long brass covered miquelet Rasak gun, now what's unusual with it, is that it has a firing mechanism taken from a Ottoman gun known as a Shishane, on both sides of it's beautiful decorated barrel there seem to be inscribed some numbers in arabic on one side of it and some letters on the other side.
Can anyone decypher what they mean?


Salaams Armatolos,
I thought to place some artwork to support your thread;
Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.

[Armatolos]

Salaams Armatolos,
I thought to place some artwork to support your thread;
Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.

Thank you for the input, any idea on the arabic inscriptions on the Rasak?

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Thank you for the input, any idea on the arabic inscriptions on the Rasak?

Salaams Not really "God" is listening ...or something like that...... I'm much more interested in knowing where and who Arnaut Rasak was... provenance of weapon etc. There appears to be a date in Arabic on the other side of the weapon? Can we see that?
Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Salaams all... Meanwhile more atmosphere courtesy http://www.vikingsword.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002363.html

Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi. :shrug:

[Armatolos]

Salaams Not really "God" is listening ...or something like that...... I'm much more interested in knowing where and who Arnaut Rasak was... provenance of weapon etc. There appears to be a date in Arabic on the other side of the weapon? Can we see that?
Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.

"Arnaut Rasak" is not a person, Rasak is a type of a long flintlock gun of Balkan origin similar to the Greek Kariophili and the Allbanian Tancica and the same applies for the term Arnaut:

Arnauts ( ﺍﺭﻧﺎﻭﺩ); old term used mainly from
Turks and by extension by European authors
during the Ottoman Empire. A derivate of the
Turkish Arvanid (Arnavut) ( ﺍﺭﻭﺍﻧﻴﺪ ), which
derives from the Greek Arvanites .

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Salaams Apologies for mixing up Balkan and Moroccan ... I shall put that right !
There is the date !
Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi :shrug:

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

:shrug:

[Armatolos]

Salaams Apologies for mixing up Balkan and Moroccan ... I shall put that right !
There is the date !
Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi :shrug:


That's a Tancica between his legs!
any hints about the date?

[TVV]

Very nice rifle, Armatolos. I believe we can clearly see a date. Assuming that the last digit 0 is not written, then a dating of 1220 will correspond to a date of 1807-1808. I actually think the lock is consistent with the rifle. Shishane and boyliya locks tend to be a bit different, while the lock on this rasak is similar to locks on Albanian pistols and long guns. I know that a lot of the preserved museum examples have French style locks, but the original locks must have been Balkan miquelet ones, with the French locks supplanting those when imports increased during the 19th century.

Regards,
Teodor

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Salaams All Note to Library...More of the Balkan stuff...and some Ottoman Guns. :shrug:
In addition see https://archive.org/stream/balkansalaborat00sloagoog#page/n28/mode/2up which is a free book by William Milligan Sloan from the 1914 edition. All readable and downloadable for nothing.
Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.

[Armatolos]

I am putting up some more details.

[Armatolos]

The mystery is over!
It reads Mā shāʼ Allāh ( ﻣﺎ ﺷﺎﺀ ﺍﻟﻠﻪ )
but it inscribed by an illiterate artist and thus it is written backwards!!
The same applies for the inscribed date on the other side!