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538 Mahmut Halef Cevrioğlu

related to the petards (Ar. batrad and Sp. petardo), too . To wrap up,
45
one Morisco was knowledgeable enough to produce a whole manual on
firearms, while the other could become a petardier and gunner in the
Ottoman naval establishment. And in the end, the Arabic translation of
the manual found its way to the Ottoman Porte when the translator’s
son presented it to Sultan Murad IV . Accordingly, both al-Ribash and
46
Antonio de Ávalos had accumulated a certain knowledge of fire wea-
ponry in Spain, and helped transfer it to the Ottomans after 1609.
De Ávalos can be regarded as a member of the larger early modern
European community of foreign military labour, a phenomenon that
played a pivotal part in the making of the sovereign state order. Just
like numerous other early modern groups that were exiled and forced
to work for new rulers due to confessionalisation, de Ávalos had been
banned from his homeland because of religious politics and started to
work for the Ottomans . So far as the Ottomans were concerned, he
47
became one of the many «French, English and Dutch gun-founders
and engineers; as well as […] Venetian, Dalmatian and Greek ship-
wrights and sailors» who created the «technological dialogue» in the
Ottoman end of the larger Mediterranean basin .
48

6. An Engagement Against All Odds

Austrian resident Schmid noted that the Ottoman navy departed
from Istanbul on 9 June , after having completed its preparations.
49
The resident was surprised, however, that the fleet was not as strong
as he had predicted: he could lay his eyes on only twenty vessels. In
any case, further reinforcements in the form of Barbary galleys were

45 D. James, The Manual de Artillería of Al-Ra’is Ibrahim b. Ahmad al-Andalusi
with particular reference to its illustrations and their sources, «Bulletin of the School
of Oriental and African Studies, University of London», 42, n. 2 (1978), pp. 237-
257, on pages 237 and 243. Illustration number 25 covered the petard.
46 G. Ágoston, The Ottoman Empire and the Technological Dialogue Between Eu-
rope and Asia: The Case of Military Technology and Know-How in the Gunpowder
Age, in F. Günergun and D. Raina (edited by), Science between Europe and Asia.
Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 275. Springer, Dordrecht, 2011, p.
27-39, p. 31.
47 P.H. Wilson, Foreign military labour in Europe’s transition to modernity, «Eu-
ropean Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire» Volume 27, n. 1-2 (2020),
pp. 12-32, on pages 19 and 25.
48 G. Ágoston, Disjointed Historiography and Islamic Military Technology: the Eu-
ropean Military Revolution Debate and the Ottomans, in Mustafa Kacar and Zeynep
̧
̇
Durukal (edited by), Essays in Honour of Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Research Centre for
̆
Islamic History, Art and Culture, Istanbul, 2006, pp. 567-582, on p. 579.
49 It must be remembered that the Ottoman documentation registered the offi-
cial departure of the navy on 10 June 1633.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XX - Dicembre 2023
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)