May be a British gun with a persian barrel, not Indian...
The souring of Franco-Persian relations opened the way for British military assistance to Persia. Sir Harford Jones, visiting the country as Britain’s envoy in 1809, promised “a subsidy with warlike ammunition, such as guns, muskets, etc.” as well as the assistance of British officers (Wright, 1977, p. 7). The Jones mission and subsequent ones by Sir John Malcolm and Sir Gore Ouseley were soon followed by the sending of a contingent of British artillery experts led by Major Joseph D’Arcy, and by the establishment of an arsenal with a foundry in Tabrīz, Azerbaijan being the province where most of the new armed forces were concentrated. By 1812, the British had provided Persia with some 16,000 muskets and 20 cannons (Atkin, p. 135). Drouville insisted that since the Persians had received English assistance their artillery now matched that of many European countries (Drouville, II, p. 138-39). British artillery was crucial in the battle the Persians fought against the Russians near Solṭānābād in 1812 (Wright, 1977, p. 52). Yet the new hardware proved unable to sustain Persian victories, for in the battle of Aslāndūz later in the year, the Qajar army was outdone by the much better trained and equipped Russians. After the defeat, Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah declared that the ancestral lance was still the best defensive weapon (Kotzbue, pp. 160-61).
At the beginning of the 19th century, flintlocks were imported from Europe and then were adjusted to the Persian-made muskets (Meen and Tushingham. p. 91). Then different gun production techniques were introduced from Europe. At Tabrīz, the Persian gun-makers fabricated twenty thousand muskets after an English model (Donbolī, p. 133). Later, entire gun and bullet factories were imported, in 1276/1859 and in 1303/1885 respectively, and installed at Tehran. Guns from these factories were rifled (ḵān-dār) and were produced at a rate of a thousand a month (Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, Maʾāṯer wa’l-āṯār, p. 99, p. 114; cf. Maḥbūbī Ardakānī, I, pp. 196-208 for more information concerning the development of gun-making in Qajar Persia). Meanwhile, indigeneous experiments and fabrications were continued. A breech-loaded rifle (tofang-e tah-por) was devised by Moḥammad Jaʿfar Astarābādī and offered to Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah (Maḥbūbī Ardakānī, I, p. 207). In 1323/1905 at Tabrīz, Mašhadī Jaʿfar Ḵayyāṭ-bāšī constructed a kind of automatic gun which shot 70 times a minute. Its mechanism was based on that of the shuttle (mākū) of a sewing machine (Rīāżī Heravī, p. 161). However, these individual initiatives were not taken seriously, and guns and gun factories continued to be imported.
in Encyclopedia Iranica This article is available in print.
Vol. IX, Fasc. 6, pp. 628-631
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