Barbary Pirate Pistol

Condition:
A ¾” chip of wood is missing at the rear of the barrel tang. The stock was broken under the lock area at one time and required a piece of new wood, approx. 5 ½” long to be replaced.

The silver piece tacked to the stock in front of the lock on the grip was also replaced at the same time. The original piece of silver being lost or looted.
Several pieces of the locks interior mechanism, including the main spring, have been replaced causing the lock plate not to fit properly into the stock but the lock does function correctly

One silver ram rod pipe near the front of the barrel is missing.
The ram rod was never intended to be used to load the pistol. It is too short and there is no channel in the stock for a ram rod of correct length to go down any farther

Total Length: 18”
Barrel Length: 11 3/8”
Ringed at muzzle, 14 gauge or .68 caliber

Flint Lock:
English or French type, grooved frizzen pr steel; covered fence over frizzen spring. Note; This covered fence is a carry over from a feature used on early miquelet and snaphgance  locks. (see pictures) chiseled designs inlayed in silver

Walnut stockwood:
Silver mounts, coarsely executed floral designs and trophies of Turkish Arms and equipment on side plate and around the barrel. A cast silver buttplate. Cast silver trigger guard with an acorn shaped front  final. Note: the mark “VB” on the buttplate, sideplate, rear ramrod pipe, trigger guard and the “V” on the top of the rear barrel band are probably false or imitation, “touch marks”, used by western European silver smiths.

Some Turkish pistols resemble more or less the western European flintlock holster pistols of the 1700’s – early 1800’s. Some of those pistols were actually made in Europe for the Turkish market others incorporated European locks and barrels. This type of pistol seems to have been the one most favored in Turkey itself, thought it was undoubtedly used also in the Balkan States. These pistols are usually decorated lavishly with silver and sometimes gold and semi-precious stones. The barrels are almost invariably held in place on the stock with bands instead of pins through the stockwood. The vast majority of flintlocks, ‘frizzens or steels’ are  grooved; both of these features are of Spanish origin. The decorations are usually coarsely executed floral designs or trophies of Turkish Arms and equipment. The stocks, locks and barrels are often inlaid or covered with brass or silver. The locks are sometimes chiseled with designs and inlayed in silver or gold. Very many of them have the underside of the forestock carved in an imitation of a ramrod.  The actual ramrod carried seperat5ly on a cord around the neck. This feature is never found on pistols for use in Western Europe.

In North Africa the pistols of more or less standard Western European. Forms of the 1700’s and early 1800’s were favored, fitted with Spanish Miquelet  Locks, English and French flintlocks or Dutch snaphance locks. Many examples of these pistols, possibly as a result of strong Turkish influence in Tunis and Algiers
Reference: Pistols of the World by Claude Blair

This is at the shop and for sale
(at the time we took the pictures)
at Tucson Guns and Western Artifacts

www.TucsonGuns.net

520-722-6886