Weaponry of the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire, founded by Osman I (r. 1290-1326), dominated much of southeastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa between the fourteenth and early twentieth century.

In the early centuries the Ottomans effectively used siege weapons and artillery, such as mortars, catapults, and large cannons, that fired both iron and stone shot. Mehmed II, also called Mehmed the Conqueror, wished to have the most modern weapons and ordered a Hungarian gunsmith to build him large cannons, one of which was used at Constantinople, that could fire 1,200-pound cannonballs.

Janissaries used scimitars, knives, stabbing swords, battle-axes, and harquebuses. Their adoption of firearms as their weapons of choice must have occurred sometime before the 1449 Battle of Kossovo Polje, making them the first elite battle-winning infantry unit in Europe to adopt gunpowder weapons as their weapon of choice.

The Janissaries were firing their weapons row-by-row from the early 16th century. It seems, however, that Janissaries started to use volley fire of the West European type only in the1590s.

Gunpowder played a crucial role in the Ottomans' conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The Turks were also skilled marksmen using muskets.
Weaponry of the Ottoman Empire

Bolas used by ancient Inca

Residing in a mountainous terrain that yielded little wood, the Inca’s most effective weapons were stones, rolled down hills or hurled from slingshots. Stones thrown from slings were the common weapon that could be used from a distance.

Inc also threw bolas. Bolas is a type of throwing weapon made of weights on the ends of interconnected cords, which hurled at the legs of enemies to bring them to their enemies.

Bolas were most famously used by the gauchos or Argentinean cowboys but that have been found in excavations of Pre-Columbia settlements, especially in Patagonia, whore indigenous peoples used them to catch 200-pound guanaco (Ilamalike mammals) and nandu (birds).

They were also used in battle by the Mapuche and Inca army. Bolas were used extensively against the Spanish, especially to cripple their horses. When the bolas were spun around, then hurled, the stones encircled that arms or legs of an enemy.
Bolas used by ancient Inca 

Modern War

Modern War
Modern war is the product of three distinct kinds of change-administrative technical and ideological. Not all of these can be seen in any straightforward was as ‘progress’, though they seem to be irreversible.

Nor have they developed at the same pace.

Military technology has produced the most striking and indeed terrifying symbols of modern war: the machine gun, the rocket, the atomic bomb.

The increased in power and sophistication of weapon system has been exponential.

Between the first general adoption of efficient forearms in these seventeenth century and the production of breech-loading guns and smokeless propellants in the middle of the nineteenth, the pace of change was slow.

Improvements in technique (professionalism, training, and tactics), rather in technology, brought the most substantial results. Later the balance altered.

Technological change may appear to be an independent process, governed only by an extent of scientific knowledge and the limits of science and manufacturing.

But military institutions have tended to be conservative than other social groups. Soldiers have seldom been in the forefront of technological development, and more often reluctant to welcome new weapons.

Tradition has always been important in fostering the esprit de corps of fighting units, and can lead to fossilization.

So can the tendency – actually increased by professionalization, which removed young princes and nobles from high command – for senior officers to be substantially older than their junior.

They are many striking examples of failure to embrace new technology, none perhaps more disastrous than that of the imperial Chinese navy, which could have had the world’s most advanced naval artillery in the early sixteenth century, but rejected it in favor of traditional ramming and boarding tactics.
Modern War

Horsemen Swarm from Asia

Horsemen Swarm from Asia
The steppes of central Asia in ancient times provided a vast belt of grazing land for tribes of nomadic herdsmen. They were highly mobile people who lived according to the rhythm of the season, following the wandering of their sheep, goats, horses, cattle or yaks. Theirs was a cold and forbidding landscape of mountains and bare plains. They had no writing and they made no stone built cities. Moreover, as wanderers they had no use for cumbersome furnishings, using only lightweight household items, chiefly of wood hides and cloth.

What is known of the nomads survives in a scattering of graves, and in texts written by observes from the settled civilizations to the east and west. The Greeks knew the Asian nomad loosely as Scythians, applying term more specifically to a group who, from the 7th century BC, set up a kingdom north of the Black Sea.

The Scythian women were rarely seen, but kept confined to their wagons and circular tents; these tents made of felt stretched over a wood framework and known as yurts, can still be seen in central Asia today. The men wore kaftans, distinctive pointed headgear and trousers – a major invention of Asian horsemen and one that made riding more comfortable. They also carried swords, shields and a bow and arrow case.

Notorious among ancient peoples for their cruelty, the Scythians were said to blind their slaves to make them easier to manage, and to drink from cups made from enemies’ skulls.

The Greek historians Herodotus described many of the Scythians’ outlandish customs, especially their burial rites which included the ceremonial slaughter of wives, servants and animals. The burial of kings, he said, took place in a great square pit. The royal corps was embalmed, its belly slit open, cleaned out, and filled with chopped frankincense, parsley and anise before sewn up again. With the bodies of slaughtered attendants and horses were piled mounds of golden vessels.

Herodotus also described that the Persian great Kings, decided to invade Scythia. With Persian King himself in command, the Persian army of 700,000 soldiers marched across the Danube to the Russian steppes. The Scythians steadily retreated while the Persians pursuit. It was indeed very strange war to Persian. There was nothing to be captured and held - no citied, no buildings, no plunder, nothing but the rimless steppe. He was fighting air.
Horsemen Swarm from Asia