content_output-039_5 (Q6052)

Other early uses of gunpowder recorded are: by the Saracens at Thessalonica in 904; by Salomon, King of Hungary, at the siege of Belgrade, 1073; in a sea conflict between the Greeks and Pisanians the former had fire-tubes fixed at the prows of their boats (1098), and in 1147 the Arabs used fire-arms against the Iberians. In 1218 there was artillery at Toulouse. In the Escurial collection there is a treatise on gunpowder, written, it is supposed, in 1249, and it is from this treatise that Roger Bacon is presumed to have obtained his knowledge of gunpowder; he died