Another Jezail
 

I got this jezial about a year ago. I have to confess that I did not know much about jezails back then, and am still learing. The lock is from a Brown Bess from King Goerges' era, and the barrel is damascus steel with silver engravings and also a poem engraved on the spine. One of these days I'll get the poem in a picture. It basically reads, I fear no enemy because I breath fire and have an iron shirt....

I think I have I have about six of those things including a couple borderline shorter Afghans without locks. Those are the garish type with heavy smaller mother of pearl work and poor workmanship on the lock inletting. These are not far removed from being old commercial cheapo reproductions but they are real and functional. I have an odd Indian matchlock which is also rather primitive. The peasants still make them. I will try to get a pic up but my first attempt miscarried. Looks like I have a lot of zip work to do.

There are lots of commercial ones being made these days. A few times I almost bought a couple of those not knowing they were fake. But I have a habbit of researching things before I buy them and that helped me lots. This one is real, that kind of stock was the standard style for jezails so you'd see heaps of them.

Frankly, an old crotch cheapo but shootable gun following the form of the original and made by the same people, is still a real gun. They can be trimmed and properly re-finished. Took a look at one of three I have. There is a huge amount of pearl work. That is a lot of work to do. The barrel is a wide twist form. Round with a hammered up V-notch rear sight as found on a lot of matchlocks. The center has filed flats. However it has a more Persian style of "silver" decoration with the usual squiggles. I must clean it and compare to markings on my other long guns. Barrel is 31" which I don't know is original length. There is a tiny bead sight at the front.

I have one with a newer solid stock in dark finish with what may be an east India lock and a cut down barrel of 16". This is fairly well made but shows external file or rasp marks. The barrel is quite old and has some fluted sections plus the usual rings. It has partial Arabic markings which someone told me is "broken" writing and incomplete. It is no doubt made from parts, which is irrelevant for a lot of these guns as they only have three components. Those would be mixed and matched over the decades or centuries.

A lot of these guns are brought back by military men or civilian contractors from Afghanistan, which is where two or three of my guns came from. One has an 1899 Moore lock made like the usual Brown Bess lock. This and another are fine guns though they don't have a rifled barrel or some of the fancier markings and inlays. One seller sent me pics he took of an Afghan musket market.

sounds interesting, If you want to post complete picture, and close ups of writings I could help you out with the writings. Lots of military folks buy the stuff that is new and cheaper, which adds to the demand , but some cough up the money and buy really nice ones. the mother of pearl work is hard and long process, but they are spitting them out en-mass. Sad thing is if they take a bit more time and care themother of pearl work would be amazing and would bring them lots of money.

My interest is in duplicating the barrel bands/capucines as so many were lost and replaced with simple brass bands. No doubt many such brass bands were common as original replacements. Many were fairly elaborate and embossed and these are worthy of a bit of study. On my last Moroccan musket I have very deeply imaged figuring on two pieces. I must carefully remove these to see how this was done as the design is freehand and not of specific forms or shapes.

But one band is flat and an oddball. It is apparently acid etched. It is the sort of thing which would be done for a lithography or etching plate. The design is of flowers and arguably closer to French style as opposed to whatever metal illustrations would be found in North Africa - but I am guessing. I will check further if I can safely remove it.

As for the marking on the one jezail barrel, it consists only of a couple cuts in the metal. I will check and see if I can carefully clean the area to bring out the marking which is light. Fortunately there is a bit of old dirt or corrosion in it to make it a bit more legible. The issue is to determine which language it may represent. No doubt there is an overlap in the use of Arabic lettering as it may be applied to languages in that area.

As regards other language markings I do have an Indian barrel which I had translated by someone working at Dunkin' Donuts as they have an Indian employee force. Most do not know Hindi but one guy at a local place did. He translated the inscription as, "Siri ("Sheeri") Man Siri Raj Groorootam Singh". He said there was a place name he didn't recognize or couldn't quite read. I am trying to place the period of this item and with tracing of this particular Raj it should be possible.

I have a decent stock of inlay material including cabs of pearl and some red coral. I was going to order some bulk lapis lazuli as it is available locally. Copying some of the original inlay work is another one of my delusions. Also doing koftgari and niello work most of which will likely never be started much less completed.