CannonsDynasty: Qajar Period, Persia
Made by East Indian Company, India.
Date: early 19th century
Kept in Russia
Source: [1]
These two cannons are worth seeing. They are brass field 6-pounders produced by the Bengal East Indian Company (Fort William at Calcutta) in 1806. There is no marks of the British Army property. The pieces are beautiful and rich in decoration. There is a horse head on the chase; a flag with the Lion and Sun around the muzzle; Another Lion and Sun motif can be seen in the lower side of each cannon.توپهای جنگی ارتش ایران تولید کمپانی هند شرقی با نشان شیر و خورشید - دوره قاجار - محل نگهداری : روسیه
In the middle part between the trunnions there is a long spiral inscription in Persian (second gun). The inscription is glorifying Fath-Ali shah Qajar. "The Sultan, Sultan's son, of Sultan's son and the Khagan [King in Turkish], Khagan's son, of Khagan's son. Hero of the sea and land, God's shadow on the Earth, Shah-an-Shah …. Stronghold of the Most High, valiant winner Fath-Ali Shah Qajar. May god perpetuate His power and spread all over the world His grace and good."There is one more inscription in Persian above the base ring which is not clear. The cannons are built in the year 1221 of the Islamic calendar (1806). These cannons might have been presented to Fath-Ali Shah in the early 1800s when Britain signed a military agreement with Persia and helped the Shah with military experts and ordnance. Most likely they were captured in 1812 in the battle at Aslanduz [2] when the Russian Army under General Pyotr Kotlyarevsky [3] defeated the Persian Army under Abbas Mirza, son and heir of Fath-Ali. Vasily Potto (Russian General and historian) writes: "By the Aslanduz victory, Russians captured eleven English casting cannons with the inscription: 'From the King of Kings – to the Shah of Shahs". Peter Hopkirk also mentions about a dozen of fourteen invaluable Lindsay's guns captured by Cotlyarevsky which were claimed by the Russians as bearing the inscription: 'To the Shah of Shahs from the King of Kings' (Peter Hopkirk The Great Game: the Struggle for Empire in Central Asia, 1990).
It's worth saying that at that time Russia and Britain were allies against Napoleon. That's why British experts in the Persian Army were ordered in case of combat actions to leave immediately their formations to avoid any political confrontation with Russia. However, the storm of the Cotlyarevsky's Army was so violent that the two British experts Lieutenant Lindsay [4] (artillery) and Captain Cristy (infantry) preferred to ignore the command in order not to look like cowards taking their heels from the battlefield. All the day long they desperately tried to gather Persians and repelled Russian attacks. Captain Cristy was killed in this fight. Lieutenant Lindsay survived, later was promoted to the rank of Major-General.
