transitional miquelet lock
The earliest surviving examples of these "Spanish" locks dates from the first quarter of the 17th cent., corroborated by signed examples in museums. This one is believed to be made in Brescia, ca 1630, and the gunsmith would have been working with a new, imported technology. There are stylistic elements carrying over from the wheellock era, but more germane to the students of early Ottoman firearms is the long "bridge" linking the cock pivot screw to the priming pan. This is a characteristic of virtually all miquelets made in the Ottoman Empire, the Caucasus, and Iran down to the 19th cent but is something seldom seen on their European antecedents, except for a handful of published, early specimens.
Other characteristics in common with the later (and much smaller) locks made in the Balkans are triangular jaws clamping the flint in place, and an excessively stiff mainspring. Mature versions of European locks (whether Spanish, Neapolitan, Portuguese, or their German imitations) have narrower jaws and a much more efficient mechanical design using a lighter mainspring but resulting in faster lock time due to reduced inertia in the moving parts.
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