The inlay of the pattern-welded barrel is in silver wire and includes an Ottoman couplet, 'I took this musket into my hands (and) the enemy cried mercy. Those escaping its bullets rejoice'. The fact that the inscription is in Ottoman Turkish is important, since this type of gun has sometimes been claimed as Iranian. The barrel is rifled and is attached to the understock by embossed gilt copper bands. The stock is lavishly inlaid with stained bone or ivory, ebony, and brass wire – possibly gilt – in minutely worked circular medallions combined into bolder repeating patterns. The veneering and inlay of musket-stocks with fine woods, ivory and gold, silver or brass wire was part of a woodworking tradition that developed early in the Ottoman empire; the Qur'an chest made in 911 AH (1505–1506) for the mosque of Bayezid II in Istanbul, which was inaugurated in 1505, bears the signature of such an inlayer, Ahmed ibn Hasan.