The Jeweled Gun of Sultan Mahmud I

with Ashley Dimmig

hosted by Abbey Stockstill and Musa Kazım Azimli

| The jewel-encrusted musket of Mahmud I is one of the most popular pieces at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. In this episode, curator Ashley Dimmig joins us to discuss her experience curating Islamic art and the manifold mysteries of the ornate 18th-century gun once owned by an Ottoman Sultan. These mysteries include practical questions about its design and the contents of its secret compartments as well as more conceptual puzzles about past provenance and effective presentation of Ottoman artifacts to international audience in an American city. In addition to discussing the fascinating history of the gun, Dr. Dimmig reflects on the exciting challenge of curating connections that allow every museum visitor to find an entry point into an exhibit.   

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The jewel-encrusted musket of Mahmud I is one of the most popular pieces at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. In this episode, curator Ashley Dimmig joins us to discuss her experience curating Islamic art and the manifold mysteries of the ornate 18th-century gun once owned by an Ottoman Sultan. These mysteries include practical questions about its design and the contents of its secret compartments as well as more conceptual puzzles about past provenance and effective presentation of Ottoman artifacts to international audience in an American city. In addition to discussing the fascinating history of the gun, Dr. Dimmig reflects on the exciting challenge of curating connections that allow every museum visitor to find an entry point into an exhibit.

Contributor Bios

	Ashley Dimmig has served as the Crossman Gallery Director at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater since 2022, where, in addition to overseeing all operations of the Crossman Gallery and its permanent art collection, she teaches art history in the Department of Art and Design. After completing her PhD in the History of Art at the University of Michigan (2019), she worked as the Wieler-Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow in Islamic Art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.
	Abbey Stockstill is Associate Professor and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Chair of Architectural History at UVA. Her book, Marrakesh & the Mountains: Landscape, Urban Planning, and Identity in the Medieval Maghreb, traces the development of Marrakesh in the twelfth century as a new kind of metropolis in the Islamic west, bridging multivalent identities through a sensitive manipulation of the surrounding environment.
	Musa Kazım Azimli is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia, specializing in slavery, social history, and digital humanities in the early modern and modern Middle East, with a focus on the Ottoman Empire and the Mediterranean. His dissertation, supported by the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship, reconstructs the history, spatial organization, and social legacies of Istanbul’s Imperial Slave Market through interdisciplinary methods drawn from spatial, socio-legal, cultural, architectural, and digital history.

Credits

Episode No. 593
Release Date: 28 August 2026
Recording Location: University of Virginia
Sound production by Chris Gratien
Music: kara güneş - İstanbul
Bibliography and images courtesy of Ashley Dimmig

Further Listening

	Wendy M. K. Shaw	533 11/3/22	What is Islamic Art?
	Massumeh Farhad & Simon Rettig	297 2/10/ 17	Exploring the Art of the Qur'an
	Gwendolyn Collaço	578 1/9/26	A British Burlesque Artist in Belle Époque Cairo
	Sato Moughalian	471 8/13/20	David Ohannessian: Art, Exile, and the Legacies of Genocide
	Fatih Parlak	460 4/19/20	Erken Modern Avrupa Oyunlarındaki Türk İmgesi
	Greg Thomas	366 7/11/18	George Jackson in the Sun of Palestine
	Abbey Stockstill	584 4/25/26	Architecture and Environment in the Medieval Maghreb

Images

“Jeweled gun of Sultan Mahmud I, dated 1732-1733” 

Produced by the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco) in collaboration with Wide Angle Youth Media and the Walters Art Museum for the Pearls on a String exhibition (2015–2016)

Jeweled Gun of Mahmud I (r. 1730-1754); Isma‘il (gunsmith) and Hovhannes Agha Duzian (Armenian, d. 1744) (goldsmith); Ottoman Empire, 1732/33; Later miquelet lock 1861/62 (Maker: Muhammad; Patron: Ahmed Khan); Steel, wood (ash), gold, gilded silver, nephrite, diamonds, emeralds (or beryl), rubies (or spinels), sapphire; Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, inv. no. 51.84



All of the jeweled components in the set including the gun, pen box, pen holder with reed pen, pen knife, dagger, spoon and cleaner for flash pan and lock.



Various jeweled components in the set fitted into their corresponding compartments in the butt of the gun.



Diamond-encrusted tuğra of Mahmud I on the inside of the door of the butt of the gun.



Spoon and cleaner for flash pan and lock fitted into their corresponding compartments, with the mystery compartment capped with an emerald between.



Description of Mr. Henry Walters’ Collection of Oriental Royal Arms Etc. by Robert S. Pardo, Dated 1903. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, inv. no. W.848.



Polyvocal and multimedia display of the Jeweled Gun Set of Mahmud I in the “Arts of Ottoman Lands” gallery in Across Asia



Photograph from an album of views of the interior of the Ottoman Military Museum in the Former Church of St. Irene, Constantinople (Vues de Sainte Irène, Constantinople) by Abdullah Frères, 1891. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. No. 2016.649.



Installation of arms and armor in the “Arts of Ottoman Lands” gallery in Across Asia



“The Story of the Bean Pie in Baltimore” didactic panel featuring Lakisha Rahman in Across Asia



Enameled incense burner in the “Arts of Ottoman Lands” gallery in Across Asia

Further Reading

Dimmig. Ashley. “Approaches to the Arts of Asia and Islamic Cultures in Mid-Atlantic Museums.” In Deconstructing the Myths of Islamic Art, ed. Onur Öztürk, Xenia Gazi, and Sam Bowker, 110–122. New York and London: Routledge, 2022.

Dimmig, Ashley. “Bridging the Distance: Forging Connections with Islamic Art at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.” Orientations (March/April 2023), 56–61.

Keskiner, Bora, Ünver Rüstem, and Tim Stanley. “Armed and Splendorous: The Jeweled Gun of Sultan Mahmud I.” In Pearls on a String: Artists, Patrons, and Poets at the Great Islamic Courts, edited by Amy S. Landau, 205–241. Seattle and London: The Walters Art Museum in association with University of Washington Press, 2015.

Johnson, William R. William and Henry Walters: The Reticent Collectors. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Pardo, Robert S. Description of Mr. Henry Walters’ Collection of Oriental Royal Arms Etc. 1903. Walters Art Museum, W.848.

Proser, Adriana, ed. Across Asia and the Islamic World. Baltimore, MD: The Walters Art Museum, 2023.

The Walters Art Museum: Excursions Through the Collection. Baltimore, MD: The Walters Art Museum, 2020.