page_title: Early modern warfare
section_title: Ottoman Empire
hierarchical_section_title: Early modern warfare / Middle East / Ottoman Empire
caption_attribution_description: Dardanelles Gun. Very heavy 15th-C bronze muzzle-loading cannon of type used by Turks in siege of Constantinople, 1453, showing ornate decoration. Taken by The Land Feb 07 at Fort Nelson, Hampshire. See Great Turkish Bombard.
context_page_description: The early modern warfare is associated with the start of the widespread use of gunpowder and the development of suitable weapons to use the explosive, including artillery and firearms; for this reason the era is also referred to as the age of gunpowder warfare. This entire period is contained within the Age of Sail, which characteristic dominated the era's naval tactics, including the use of gunpowder in naval artillery.
  All of the Great Powers of Europe and the Islamic gunpowder empires were actively fighting numerous wars throughout this period, grouped in rough geographical and chronological terms as:
  The European wars of religion between the 1520s and the 1640s and, the Franco-Spanish War, the Northern Wars, Polish–Swedish wars and Russo-Swedish Wars;
  The Russo-Turkish Wars, Ottoman–Habsburg wars, and other Ottoman wars in Europe.
  In the Horn of Africa, the Adal's conquest of Ethiopia and the involving of the Ottomans, Mamluks and the Portuguese.
  In Asia, the Persia–Portugal war, Nader's Campaigns, the Mughal conquests, the Chinese Ten Great Campaigns, and the Anglo-Mysore Wars;
context_section_description: The Ottoman Empire had been one of the first Middle Eastern states to effectively use gunpowder weapons and used them to great effect conquering much of the Middle East, North Africa, and the Balkans. In the 17th century the state began to stagnate as more modern technologies and strategies were not adopted. Specifically, the Ottoman Empire was slow to adopt innovations like boring cannon (rather than casting them in a mold), making the conversion from matchlock firearms to flintlocks, and the lightening of field guns and carriages.
  In part this was because the military elite had become a powerful force in the empire and change threatened their positions. David Nicolle theorizes that one contributing factor to the Ottoman reluctance to adopt the flintlock musket, despite its superiority over the matchlock ignition system, was the dusty climate of much of the Middle East which could cause problems with reliability.
  Overall, the Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 18th centuries has been assessed as a military producer which copies existing technologies, but does not capture the underlying process of innovation or adaption. Other research, though, complicates that view. A Chinese military manual published in 1644 compared Ottoman and European firearms in the following manner:
  Firearms have been in use since the beginning of the dynasty, and field armies in battle formation have found them convenient and useful to carry along... Since muskets have been transmitted to China, these weapons have lost their effectiveness... In battle formation, aside from various cannon such as the "three generals", the breech-loading swivel gun, and the "hundred-league thunder", nothing has more range or power than the Ottoman musket. The next best is the European one.
  The fact that Ottoman firearms were considered by 17th century Chinese writers to be superior to European firearms demonstrates that the Ottoman Empire was at least a second tier producer of muskets during this period. However, some claim that the 'European' firearms the Chinese researcher tested were actually Japanese arquebuses based on fifty-year-old Portuguese models. The design of the Ottoman matchlock is substantially different from that of the European variety and it in turn influenced the matchlocks produced in both Safavid Persia and Mughal India.
caption: The bronze Dardanelles cannon, used by the Ottoman Turks in the siege of Constantinople in 1453
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