Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom

A Challenge to Medieval Society (1956)

David Ayalon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781138975606
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136277320
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia de Oriente Medio

This study of firearms analyzes the employment of such weaponry, dated more than 40 years after use in Europe, towards the close of the 1360s.

CHAPTER ONE

The Early Use of Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom

WHICH country was the first to invent gunpowder and introduce firearms is one of the most controversial issues in the history of modern times and one which still remains to be settled. Was it a Muslim country? In the present state of our knowledge this question should be answered in the negative without hesitation—a fact which makes it unnecessary at this stage to deal with the very difficult and intricate general problems relating to the introduction of firearms. It is possible to concentrate instead on trying to establish the first reliable data concerning the use of firearms in the Mamluk kingdom. We shall examine at some length the available evidence on the early use of firearms, for though any claim that the Muslim world was first in the field may be discarded for the time being, there still remains another important question: which among the Muslim countries was the first to introduce firearms?

Mamluk sources are quite a fruitful field for information about innovations, even minor ones, introduced into the military and administrative structure of the kingdom. They also make quite frequent mention of changes in the uniforms and weapons used by the armed forces, in the furūsīya exercises, etc. Yet these sources maintain complete silence on the subject of firearms. Just as in Europe this weapon all of a sudden appears in battle and the sources make no attempt to comment or offer any explanation. This peculiarity of the sources precludes us from following the history of the weapon in its experimental stages. However, some sidelights on this important stage emerge from the furūsīya literature. The reason for the silence of Mamluk and other sources is clear: in their early stages firearms were a weak weapon, being used for many years in an auxiliary rôle to the more traditional arms. Thus contemporary observers, even those with a thorough technical military knowledge, could not foresee the revolution which the new weapon would ultimately bring about in the whole art of war.¹

When were firearms first mentioned as taking part in battle? Quatremère believed that this happened in 792/1390.² In point of fact the sources supply evidence of much earlier use, and though the earliest may perhaps be anachronisms, the date suggested by Quatremère may safely be pushed back by some twenty years or more.

The two earliest testimonies encountered by the present writer are dated in 743/1342 and 753/1352 respectively. In the first it is stated (by Ṣāliḥ Ibn Yāḥyā who died after 840/1436) that when Sultan Shihāb ad-Dīn Aḥmad was besieged by his rivals in the fortress of Kerak, the garrison of the fortress mounted on its walls five mangons (manjanīqs) and many cannon (wa-madāfi‘ kathīra).³ In the second it is told (by Ibn Iyās who died about 1534) that the governor of Damascus fortified the town’s citadel very strongly and mounted cannon on its walls (wa-rakkaba ‘alayhā al-makāḥil bil-madāfi‘).⁴

If these testimonies are taken at their face value, it would follow that firearms came to the Mamluk kingdom less than twenty years after their introduction in Europe where the earliest authentic information on the use of the weapon is from about the year 1325.⁵ But only further investigation will show whether these two testimonies, given by late historians, are anachronisms or not. The difficulty is that most of the detailed contemporary chronicles for the period in question have not yet been published. Published sources do not furnish any corroborating evidence. Ibn Kathīr (died 1373), who describes the siege of Kerak at great length, does not mention the midja‘ at all though he gives us one of the most detailed accounts of the use of the manjanīq (both by defenders and attackers) ever presented by a Mamluk historian.⁶ Ibn Taghrībirdī, in his chronicle for the year 753, makes no reference to artillery throughout that year.

The first indisputably authentic evidence on the use of artillery in the Mamluk kingdom appears between the sixties and the early seventies of the fourteenth century.⁷ An eyewitness, the famous encyclopædist al-Qalqashandī, says: “I saw in Alexandria, during the sultanate of al-Ashraf Sha’bān b. Ḥusayn, at the time of the governorship of the late amir Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn b. ‘Arrām, a cannon (midja‘) made of copper and lead and fastened by iron chains. A great ball (bunduq) was fired from it from the hippodrome (maydān). The ball fell in baḥr as-silsila outside bāb al-baḥr which is a great distance.⁸” Now Ibn ‘Arrām was governor of Alexandria under Sultan Sha’bān in 767/1365⁹ and from Shawwāl 768 to jumādā 769 (May, 1366-January, 1368).¹⁰ From that date onward he was in disfavour for a long period, even to the point of being exiled, but it is not certain whether he again became governor of Alexandria.¹¹ Hence, although it is more probable that al-Qalqashandī refers to either 1365 or 1366-1368, the year of 778/1376 (Sha’bān’s death) should be considered the latest possible date for al-Qalqashandī’s midja‘.

While the date of the Alexandria cannon can be fixed only within somewhat wide limits, the date of the first use of artillery in Cairo can be established with great accuracy. In Rabī‘ II, 768/December, 1366, amir Yalbughā an-Nāṣirī, in the neighbourhood of Cairo citadel, fired at his opponents with makāḥil an-nafṭ.¹² The earliest historian to furnish the above account was Ibn Khaldūn, a contemporary of the event. It is also mentioned by al-‘Aynī and al-Maqrīzī, who were alive when the above incident occurred (al-‘Aynī’s birthdate is 1360 and al-Maqrīzī’s is 1364). Ibn Taghrībirdī, who generally copied carefully from the works of his predecessors, alludes to it twice: in his chronicle and in his biographical dictionary. Ibn Iyās, the historian, also alludes to it.¹³

It would appear that in the sixties and early seventies of the fourteenth century the use of artillery was still very limited, since almost no mention is made of it in the sources for some 15 to 20 years.¹⁴ Only in the years 791-792/1389-1390, during the fierce battles fought between Barqūq, Yalbughā and Minṭāsh for the accession to the throne, artillery figures prominently in the sieges of the Cairo citadel and of Damascus.¹⁵ After that date the employment of artillery increases steadily until it becomes one of the most common weapons of the realm.¹⁶

That the introduction and firm establishment of artillery in the Mamluk kingdom took place mainly between the sixties and the eighties of the fourteenth century may be inferred from the following fact: during this period we witness a groping for technical terms, a common phenomenon on the appearance of an innovation: words appear and disappear until at last the term destined to remain takes root and firmly establishes itself. In the above period one meets, in addition to the well-known terms midfa‘ an-nafṭ and mukḥulat an-nafṭ (abbreviated: midfa‘ and mukḥula),¹⁷ other, very short-lived terms for cannon, such as ṣawā‘iq an-nafṭ,¹⁸ ṣawārikh an-nafṭ,¹⁹ ālāt an-nafṭ,²⁰ hindām an-nafṭ.²¹ These are without doubt words used to describe firearms, as will be shown in Chapter II, pp. 9ff.

Thus the earliest certain date of the use of firearms in the Mamluk kingdom can be fixed at the close of the sixties of the fourteenth century. This is over 40 years later than the corresponding date for Europe, but it is about sixty years earlier than the first authentic report on the use of firearms in the Ottoman Empire.²² These reports on firearms in the Mamluk state are, in fact, the earliest reliable ones known to the present writer in the whole Muslim world.²³ This is not to say that the Mamluks were the pioneers of firearms in Islam. New material may come to light which might change the picture. This much is clear, however: even if the Mamluks could be shown to have a just claim to priority in the use of firearms, this would not alter the plain fact that they did not know how to take advantage of this priority and to transform them into weapons with a decisive rôle in battle, let alone weapons respected by their army.

TEXT REFERENCES

¹ This does not mean that the Mamluks were unable until the end of their rule (1517) to appreciate the importance of firearms. From about the middle of the fifteenth century they were able to perceive quite clearly the new weapon’s revolutionary nature.

² “Observations sur le feu grégeois,” JA, 1850, i, p. 237. Quatremère does not support this statement with any reference; the date given—1383—should have been 1390. See also Wiet: “Notes d’Épigraphie Syro-Musulmane,” op. cit., p. 62 and note 2. Mercier: p. 116. Dozy: “Midfa‘” in Supplément aux Dictionnaires Arabes.

³ Ṣāliḥ b. yaḥyā, Ta’rīkh Bayrūt. Beirut, 1927, p. 105, 11. 10-14.

⁴ Ibn Iyās: Badā’i‘ az-Zuhūr, ed. Cairo, 1311-1312H, vol. i, p. 196, 11. 2-3. The exact meaning of rakkaba al-makāḥil bil-madāfi‘ is not clear.

⁵ The cannon was most probably introduced in Europe between 1325 and 1350. For the dates of its introduction in various individual European countries, cf. C. Oman: A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages, vol. ii, p. 210; pp. 212-213. H. W. L. Hime: The Origins of Artillery, London, 1915, pp. 120-133. Encyclopœdia Britannica, art. “Gunpowder” and “Artillery.” H me identifies pieces of artillery (bussen) in Ghent as early as 1313-1314 (ibid., pp. 120-122; p. 127). Regarding the date of the introduction of firearms in Europe, Sarton writes: “We are tolerably certain that firearms, that is, small cannon, were used in the second quarter of the [fourteenth] century, but we cannot completely prove it in any one of almost innumerable cases.” (Introduction to the History of Science iii, pp. 725-736). Reinaud et Favé and Quatremère offer contradictory hypotheses on the countries of origin of gunpowder and artillery (JA, 1849, pp. 257-258; pp. 309-310; 313-314; 327. JA, 1850, p. 218, 235. Raschid el-Din: Mongols, p. 135. Mercier. p. 79). but they do not offer factual evidence. For the various hypotheses on the origin of gunpowder, etc., cf. Sarton: Introduction to the History of Science ii, pp. 1034-1040; iii, p. 1549.

⁶ Ibn Kathīr: al-Bidāya wan-Nihāya, Cairo, 1351-1358H, vol. xiv. pp. 201-213; p. 209, 11. 10-14; p. 213; p. 281, 11. 14-21; p. 282, 11. 14-15; p. 305, 11. 15-17. Cf. also Ibn Ḥajar al-’Asqalānī: ad-Durai al-Kāmina, Hyderabad, 1348-1350H, vol. ii, p. 171, 11. 15-16.

⁷ A most important passage describing a weapon called makāḥil al-bārūd, which either fired cannon-balls (bunduq) or projected flames (nār), is found in Ibn Fadl Allāh al-‘Umarī’s at-Ta‘rīf fī al-Muṣṭalah ash-Sharīf, Cairo, 1312H, p. 208, 11. 17-22. This passage will be discussed more fully later. If it refers to firearms, then this weapon was introduced some 25 to 30 years earlier than the earliest reliable date suggested in the present study, for al-‘Umari died in 749/1348-1349 and compiled his work in 740/1340.

⁸ Al-Qalqashandī: Ṣubḥ al-A‘shā, Cairo, 1913/19, vol. ii, p. 144, 1. 17; p. 145, 1. 2 (in another edition the page is 137). The whole passage is quoted below, on p. 21.

⁹ A. S. Atiya: The Crusade in the Later Middle Ages, London, 1938, p. 351.

¹⁰ Ibn Taghrībirdī: an-Nujūm az-Zāhira, ed. Popper, Leiden, 1909ff., vol....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter I: The Early Use of Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom
• Chapter II: Terms Used for Firearms and Gunpowder in Contemporary Sources
• Chapter III: The Attitude of Mamluk Military Society Toward the Use of Firearms
• Appendix I: Technical Information on Firearms
• Appendix II: The Earliest References to the Use of Firearms by the Ottomans, by P. Wittek
• Index of Names
• Index of Terms