with octagonal barrel in three stages and flared at the muzzle, the latter with silver fore-sight and inlaid along the five top flats in silver with long slender fleur-de-lys, a stylised silver tulip beyond, all between silver bands (old losses), the breech sections inlaid in silver with stylised tulips and flower-heads en suite between silver bands, the forward section struck with copper alloy lined barrelsmith’s mark reading 'Work of Mustafa' on the top flat, arched single aperture back-sight inlaid with a silver band along the top, plain tang, characteristic lock chiselled with fluting and retaining some silver decoration beneath the mainspring, figured faceted full stock (minor old damage and repairs) with wedge-shaped butt, the latter inlaid in mother-of pearl with a row of cartouche-shaped panels above a row of roundels all inlaid with red composition (old losses), the roundels between white horn lines, the bottom flat painted with white inventory number ‘W.M’ over ‘I.216’ and stamped ‘No.18’, hollowed pierced iron trigger-guard, and two iron suspension rings each on a flower-head shaped washer (ramrod missing), 101.0 cm barrel

Provenance

The Konigl. Welfen Museum, Hanover, inv. no. WMI 216

The Royal House of Hanover until circa 2001

Literature

Dr. J. Fastenau, Furher durch das Provinzial-Museum in Hanover, III. Die Waffensamlung, Hanover, 1910, p. 56

Georg Lugwig of Hanover, later King George I of Great Britain, and his brother Frederick Augustus served in the Great Turkish War at the Siege of Vienna in 1683.

For a very similar example preserved in the former ‘Turkische Commer’ of the Electors of Saxony, now in the Staatliche Kunstsammlung, Dresden, see Holger Schuckelt, Die Türckische Cammer, 2010, p. 218, fig. 208.