This month's cover design is a drawing of an Ottoman artillery officer based on a color plate from the booklet, MILITARY COSTUME OF TURKEY by T. McLean. The book was originally published in London in 1818 though most of the illustrations date from about 1803.

The officer is wearing a red cap, topped with a light blue pompom. Around the cap is a yellow turban and hanging from the back are a series of yellow tassles.

The coat is dark blue with white closures and insets. Under the coat, the figure is wearing a bright green shirt and baggy pants. Both the vest and and sash are maroon. The vest is edged with white brocade. The boots are of red leather.

To my knowledge, this is the only color illustration of an Ottoman cannon of the period. While it was clearly only a prop for the artist and therefore received secondary attention in both detail and coloring, it can hopefully give us some idea about how the Ottomans decorated their guns. In this illustration the carriage is brown with dark, most likely black, bands around the carriage and wheels. The gun is also dark, once again problably intended by the artist to represent black.

If you are interested in the uniforms of the Ottomans of the Napoleonic Era, I recommend the book to you. It is available through inter-library loan from several university collections. The most valuable part of this book is the set of 32 color engravings of the Ottoman Army. I strongly suspect that this work is a combination of several other contemporary manuscripts, most particularly that of Dr. Wittman, first published in 1803. Many of the illustrations are from his book and several of the passages in the narrative are lifted word-for-word from his diary.

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