The Ottomans probably first discovered gunpowder weapons via the Balkans in the 1380s, where the weapon had been known from the 1350s onward. The Ottoman-Hungarian wars of the 1443–1444 and the Crusade of Varna were crucial in the proliferation of firearms among the Ottomans, where cannon and handguns were proved to be crucial in stopping Crusader assaults and sinking Crusader ships. By 1444, the Ottomans were using cannons and matchlock arquebuses in their Balkan castles, aboard their river flotillas on the Danube and its tributaries, and in field battles

As for the integration of firearm, From the 1390s on, preceeding their European rivals by centuries, the Ottomans established a corps of permanent salaried troops who specialized in the manufacturing and handling of firearms. Bayezid I had artillery gunners paid with military fiefs, and a generation later began to employ salaried cannoneers. From the mid-fifteenth century onward there was a separate unit of armorers called the Cebeci within the sultan’s household troops who looked after and carried the infantry janissaries’ weapons, and The corps of bombardiers called the Humbaracı was established in the late fifteenth century. All this was in sharp contrast to most of the Ottomans’ European adversaries, where the gunner remained a master craftsman who had special relationship to his weapon and mostly only arm soldiers of lower social standing with gunpowder weapons, as the Ottomans equipped their elite standing troops with firearms. The Ottomans under Mehmed II also established the Tophane-i Amire, which was one of the first arsenals in late medieval Europe to be built, operated, and financed by a central government, in a time when European monarchs obtained their cannons from artisanal workshops