Folia archeologica 44.

Kovács S. Tibor: Török hatás a magyar fegyvereken a 15-17. században

TURKISH INFLUENCE ON HUNGARIAN ARMS IN THE 15-17TH CENTURIES In the year 1396, Sigismund I. Hungarian king succeeded in gathering a significant European army in order to stop Turkish expansion, which was threatening more and more Christian Europe from the sixties of the 14th century. The united European army of knights, known as the "last Crusade", suffered a crushing defeat at Nicapolis at the hands of the army of Sultan Bayazid, "the Lightning". The conclusion drawn bv the Hungarians, responsible for the defence in their country, was that one cause of the Turkish success must be the quality and design of the Turkish hand-arms. At the beginning of the 15th century the Hungarian armourers began to copy the Turkish sabres, but their first experiments were not very succesful. They produced a heavy sabre-blade with the hilt of a double-edged knight's sword. Tlie result was an unmanageable mixture of a sabre and a sword, uniting all the disadvantages of these two types of arms, instead of their advantages. (Picture I. Fig. 1) The Hungarian light cavalry (the Hussars), which had a leading role in the defence of the South-Hungarian border against the Turkish empire during the reign of Matthias Corvinus (the second half of the 15th century) aid not use at all the above mentioned heavy sabres. Their hand sword was exactly like the sabre of the Turkish cavalrymen, both in form and size. The finest example of this is the weapon know as the Gothic sabre, in the Hungarian National Museum. (Picture 2, Fig. 1 ) The sabre is the work of a Hungarian master, a copy of an original Turkish sabre. This beautiful side-arm is of gilded silver. The figures of Adam and Eve and the first authetic representation of a Hussar can be seen on its ornaments. The Gothic sabre also gives us an opportunity to study the development of the Hungarian pommel on types of Turkish sabre in Hungarian armories (Picture 2). We regard the middle of the 16th century as a turning point. This is the period when the development of Hungarian and Turkish side-arms separated from each other once and for all. The dagger of János Kállai, which was made in the year 1543, is of Turkish design. (Picture 3, Fig. 1) The dagger is made of gilded silver, the style of the ornamentation is the famous Turkish "Abraham of Kütahya" style. But certain ornaments, such as dragonheads, a devil's head, a monster, acanthus leaves in the renaissance style and the Hungarian coat of arms suggest that the dagger is a Hungarian master's work. In our opinion, the other dagger, in the Picture, which is ornamented by the motif of an Italian jug, (Picture 3, Fig. 2) cannot be regarded as Turkish work either. Archduke Ferdinand of Tirol liked the Hungarian Hussars and the Turkish ornamenting style very much. A part of his weapon collection survived up to our dav and several pieces of this collection are ornamented in the Rumi style: for example the gilded silver helmet (Picture 4); the scabbard of a tuck (Picture 5); and Stephen Báthory's (Prince of Transylvania and later King of Poland) mace, moulded of silver and gilded. (Picture 6, Fig. 1) The motifs are mixture of Turkish and late renaissance elements. Some of tehese arms were manufactured in Austrian workshops. Most of them were made in Hungary or in Transylvania, but even a Polish origin cannot be excluded in the case of certain pieces.