Jezail Matchlock

[bluelake]

Would you think this one is 19th C.--or maybe earlier?

[Philip]

Hi, Thomas
These things are notoriously hard to date for two reasons:
(1) The design remained static for centuries. Matchlocks with forked rests depicted in hunting vignettes in early Mughal Shah-namehs don't vary significantly from those in battle-scenes rendered by Jesuit artists accompanying the Qianlong Emperor's victorious campaigns in Central Asia in the 1750s, or those captured on film by British and Russian photographers in Afghanistan, Persia, and the khanates at the end of the 1800s.
(2) Not only was the technology long-lived, the guns themselves lasted a long time in active service. Old barrels of good quality were treasured heirlooms not only in the areas under consideration, but also amongst the Bedouins, Moroccans, and other peoples, who often preferred them to new ones. Guns were often restocked or otherwise refurbished, and sometimes modernized with the substitution of flint or percussion locks. I notice that your musket's buttstock is of a different color than the breech and forward areas, indicating an old repair.

Considering that some Afghan tribesmen still used jezails until a couple of generations ago, and that in some remote Indian villages, farmers were using toreadars to repel or poach marauding tigers until the 1970s, it's easy to imagine that your gun's components could possibly embrace a working life that spans a century or two.

[bluelake]

Thanks, Philip! Much appreciated.