|
Fire arms were manufactured in Georgia from
17th — 18th cc. Because of this the fire
arms were widely spread among the population. The Georgians actively used
guns in the 17th and especially 18th cc. Furthermore,
the production from Tbilisi
spread to the neighbouring countries. Flintlock guns consisted of three major
details: barrel, flintlock mechanism, and stock. The sources confirm that the
flintlock mechanisms and stocks were produced locally. As to the gun barrels,
the situation was quite different. Imported gun barrels from Crimea were
generally used to produce fire arms in Tbilisi
and the rest of Georgia.
It was because of Crimean gun barrels that the most commonly used term for
a gun in Georgia was “Kirimi”/”Khirimi”. The Ethnology and
Modern History Guns Fund of the Georgian
National Museum
(Simon Janashia Museum of Georgia) also hosts
hundreds of guns with imported Crimean gun barrels produced in the 18th
c. Tbilisi. The import of gun
barrels was well documented in the Georgian customs tax tariff, which enables
the scholars to establish guns’ prices in those times.
|
|
Key words: Georgia,
Crimea, fire arm, Crimean barrel, Tbilisi,
prices.
|