Frontier Arithmetic: The Afghan Jezail

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by Victrix

What about the barrels? Where did they come from? I understand they were mainly Ottoman (Turkey?) produced? Arguably the barrels are the most important because they have to be very strong and absolutely straight, with twist rifling inside in some cases. Can’t be easy to produce something like that?

A VERY good question, and I returned to Egerton (p.136),
"...Postons describes the Sindian arms as being of very superior quality, particularly the matchlock barrels, which are twisted in the Damascus style. The nobles and chiefs procure many from Persia and Constantinople, but nearly as good can be made in the country".

Op.cit. p.136,
"...the Amirs have agents in Persia, Turkey and Palestine for the purchase of swords and gun barrels".

In the listings in Egerton there are many torador matchlocks listed from Sind, all of which have the remarkably long barrels noted on the jezails, and a good number are Damascus. Many of these are from Sind, but noted with 'Afghan' type stocks.
In other listings are a good number of matchlocks, again with long barrels listed from Lahore and Delhi. Here we can see the long use of matchlocks by the Sikhs well into 19th c. These also had notably long barrels.

While the import of the quality barrels from Ottoman and Persian sources seems occasional, the making and diffusion of these long matchlock barrels would seem to have of course gone well into Khyber and environs, It seems the crafting of these barrels may well have been among the skills that developed in these areas as well.