Development of Firearms Manufacturing Technologies in Muslim Countries According to Handwritten Sources

Abstract

This article discusses the scientific and practical conditions for the discovery and development of the gunpowder technology and appearance of firearms in the Middle East. The analysis of numerous studies on alchemy, Greek fire, the discovery of gunpowder, and the invention of firearms in Muslim and European countries and in China makes it possible to draw several important conclusions. First, the appearance of gunpowder and firearms occurs during the flourishing of medieval science in the Middle East. One can judge its achievements only by the extant treatises, finding a chronological gap between the sources that describe the compositions of gunpowder and their use in missiles and torpedoes and the information of chronicles mentioning the use of cannons. It is obvious that despite the borrowings made from the Chinese, alchemy and pyrotechnics developed independently in the Middle East, as indicated by numerous recipes for gunpowder and naphtha. The invention of primitive firearms is a natural stage in the development of alchemical science and military art of Muslims. The absence of written evidence concerning the manufacture and use of this new weapon, except for the only manuscript from the collection of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, RAS (MS C 686), is perhaps the only essential ground that makes researchers doubt that Muslims had their own firearms on a par with Europeans. Finally, the author concludes that simultaneously with the translations of Arabic scientific works into Latin, the Europeans, of course, actively adopted all the military inventions of the East, outdoing their “teachers” in this. The Iberian Peninsula became a buffer zone of these intellectual and practical exchanges.

Keywords

• военное искусство ближнего востока
• мамлюки
• рукописи по военному искусству
• алхимия
• порох
• пушки
• огнестрельное оружие
• греческий огонь