Tag: Seljuk Turks

  • Are the Ottomans descendants of the Seljuqs?

    Are the Ottomans descendants of the Seljuqs?

    Originally Answered: Is it right to claim that the Ottomans are the descendants of the Seljuqs, or is it a Turkish propaganda?

    Originally asked question: Is it right to claim that the Ottomans are the descendants of the Seljuqs, or is it a Turkish propaganda?

    Officially not, but unofficially YES.

    Generally, the history when talked about the Turks in Anatolia, Alp Arslan and the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 is considered as the entrance of the Oguz Turks into Anatolia (one of many branches of the Turkic people), even though today historians can trace the entry of Turks a hundred years before trough traders and their new settler families, but this incident made it official.

    Battle of Manzikert in 1071

    There were numerous other branches of the Oghuz tribe inside of the Anatolia, who either to the same time or later established many principalities inside of the Anatolian land, but the Seljuk Empire was the ultimate biggest among all of them and lasted much longer and expanded into many neighbouring lands such as Iran or Levant.

    When the Ottomans came into existence, there were still many principalities around and the Ottomans one of them, trying to set food with their new state in Anatolia. With time, all of these principalities either diminished by themselves or were taken over by the Ottomans and with that, just like the Seljuk Empire in its largest extension, became the undisputed ruler of all the different branches of the Oghuz Turks in the region.

    When we take as a reference to the relationship between the Republic of Turkey, which is undisputed the successor state of the Ottomans, to say the Volume II Ottomans, then the relationship between the Ottomans and the Seljuks is not directly blood or merit-based like the above case, but rather it’s the last and true Empire which has survived here and absorbed all the former principalities and folk of the Seljuks inside of its state and still lives until today. From that perspective, yes, the Ottomans can be regarded as the Descendants of the Seljuks regarding Turkic cultural continuation tradition.

    Even today, the Republic of Turkey goes further and considers since the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, itself as the continuation of all the former Turkic Empires throughout the history and depicts it with the order of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1925 on the logo of the Presidential House:

    Entrance of the Presidential House with the historical 17 stars logo

    (Picture: Entrance of the Presidential House with the historical 17 stars logo)

    Where the 16 smaller stars are all the former Turkic empires who deceased to exist:

    -Great Hun Empire

    -Western Hun Empire

    -European Hun Empire

    -White Huns

    -Gokturk Khanate

    -Pannonian Avars

    -Khazar Khanate

    -Uighur Khanate

    -Kara Khanid Khanate

    -Ghaznavid Empire

    -Great Seljuk Empire

    -Khwarazmian Dynasty

    -Golden Horde

    -Timurid Empire

    -Mughal Empire

    -Ottoman Empire

    The last and large star belongs to the last:

    -Republic of Turkey

    You will see among the list other Turkic branches and also Turco-Mogol mixed Empires, among with disputed Hunnic Empires which is for some historians a Turkic group and for some others arguing differently. But all of them are listed as the previous Empires, being Turkey as the last successor, from a psychological and cultural state tradition context.

    Interestingly, you will not see for example the Safavid Empire inside of this list, another Turkic Empire builds in today’s Iran, not because they were the rivals of the Ottomans, but a simplistic Turkic tradition point of view, that it has mixed itself with Persian cultural assimilation, means the bloodline also according to the Ottomans broken and did not claim to be a Turkic empire, but rather a Persian cultural expansion.

    So if you go by a direct heir system of a throne which was a clear system in Western Europe through history, the Turkic tradition emphasizes the ‘’greatness and survival of a Turkic state’’. There is no additional Turkic state today, even those in Central Asia, who can claim themselves as the continuation of the empires above, which leaves the last great Turkic Empire in the world, the Ottomans and his successor, the Republic of Turkey as the only ‘’true successor of Turkic state tradition’’.

    You must understand the historical perception of certain races throughout history. The Turkic nomads were always spread into numerous steppes inside of Central Asia with a far lesser number of members than their neighbourhood such as China, which led most of the time, that they either united with the Mongols in the begin or one after another principality submitted themselves to the rule of a stronger power of Turkic principality and united themselves to a single state. It was a very often practise, that even though there were many Turkic principalities or Khanates, the tradition was that ‘’the winner takes all’’ and with that, they remove their numerous fewer numbers against the common enemy around the corner. That was also the reason that most of the time other principalities before in Europe lived over centuries side by side, but wherever the Turks entered, after a certain time, one of them has either absorbed the other small ones or they got united, which was also the fact in Anatolia, where the last of them, the Ottoman Empire has taken all the claim and survived with a new model, which we call today Turkey.

    Hope I could explain it. Thanks.

    Alexei Yahontov

  • The Road Not Taken

    The Road Not Taken

    Decades before Herzl, Benjamin Disraeli wrote a novel that grappled with Zionism

    by Adam Kirsch

    An undated portrait of Disraeli

    By the beginning of 1830, when he was twenty-five, Benjamin Disraeli was tired of England. For three years, he had been suffering from acute depression, brought on by the triple fiasco that marked his entrance into public life. Before he turned twenty-two, Disraeli had lost thousands of pounds in stock-market speculations; alienated the publisher John Murray after their plan to launch a newspaper ended in failure; and caused a scandal with his first novel, Vivian Gray, a satirical roman à clef about high society. For the young Disraeli, already supremely ambitious, these reverses had come as a terrible shock, and it took him years to recover his nerve.

    Now, with his second novel completed and the advance in his pocket, Disraeli was set on traveling. But he did not want to follow the usual itinerary of the Grand Tour, which took rich young Englishmen to the churches of Rome and the salons of Paris. Instead, he set his sights on the East—Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and Palestine. In part, he was following the example of his beloved Byron, who had created a vogue for the East in his highly colored poems. But for Disraeli, a journey to Jerusalem had more than literary significance. Although he had been baptized at the age of twelve into the Church of England, Disraeli’s very name made clear that he was a Jew, and the experience of visiting the Jewish homeland was to transform the way he thought about himself, his ancestors, and politics in general. Almost fifty years later, when he was Prime Minister of England, it would be his destiny to redraw the maps of the countries he visited as a young man.

    The first fruit of Disraeli’s pilgrimage, however, was a novel—The Wondrous Tale of Alroy, published in 1833. Disraeli wrote that he had been “attracted” to the “marvellous career” of David Alroy even as a child. But Disraeli’s Alroy bears little resemblance to the minor figure mentioned by Benjamin of Tudela, the Spanish Jew whose Travels are a classic of medieval Hebrew literature. According to Benjamin, Alroy, a Kurdish Jew, raised a revolt against the Seljuk Turks in Azerbaijan around 1160 AD. He was credited with magic powers by his followers, who proclaimed him the Messiah, but this pretension won him the hostility of Jewish leaders in Baghdad, who begged him not to antagonize the Turks. Finally he was betrayed by his father-in-law and killed, probably without winning a single battle.

    Disraeli’s Alroy is a much grander figure, a kind of Jewish Alexander the Great. In his novel, Alroy wins victory after victory, conquers Baghdad, and comes close to establishing a new empire in the Middle East. Disraeli also provides his hero with a loyal sister, Miriam, and a lover, the Princess Schirene. There is also a good deal of what Disraeli called “supernatural machinery” in the novel, including a magic ring, a secret underground temple, and the Scepter of Solomon, which Alroy must claim if he is to conquer Jerusalem.

    Disraeli writes that all this is based on Jewish tradition—“Cabalistical and correct,” he puts it—but it is clear that the real sources of the novel’s mysticism lie in The Thousand and One Nights, the Eastern tales of Byron, and the quest poems of Shelley. In general, Alroy is better understood as high Orientalist fantasy than historical fiction. Even Disraeli’s prose, the emphatic rhythms and repetitions of which suggest that some sections started out as verse, is kitschily intoxicated: “‘Ah! bright gazelle! Ah! bright gazelle!’ the princess cried, the princess cried; ‘thy lips are softer than the swan, thy lips are softer than the swan; but his breathed passion when they pressed, my bright gazelle! my bright gazelle!’”

    But if Alroy seems impossibly overripe today, its psychological core remains entirely serious. Disraeli said that he began to write the novel in Jerusalem in 1831, at a moment when he was pondering the role Jewishness might play in his own life and career. And in his hands, the story of David Alroy becomes a veiled meditation on the state of the Jews in Europe, and a parable of his own possible future.

    From the beginning of the novel, Alroy, a scion of the house of David, rages against the degradation of the Jews under Muslim rule. But as Disraeli makes clear, the condition of the Jews is hardly unbearable. On the contrary, Alroy’s uncle, Bostenay, is a rich man, and enjoys the honorary title of Prince of the Captivity. “The age of power has passed; it is by prudence now that we must flourish,” he declares. He is, perhaps, Disraeli’s critical portrait of the wealthy English Jews of his own day—men like the Rothschilds and Montefiores, who had all the advantages of wealth, but none of the dignity of power.

    Alroy, like Disraeli himself, cannot be satisfied with making money. He is an ardent patriot, disgusted by the state into which his people have fallen: “I am ashamed, uncle, ashamed, ashamed,” he tells Bostenay. When he sees a Turkish official accost his sister, Alroy impetuously kills him and flees into the desert. He is about to die of thirst when he is rescued by Jabaster, a magician and fanatical Jewish patriot. When Alroy has a dream of being acclaimed by a vast army as “the great Messiah of our ancient hopes,” Jabaster decides that the young man represents his long-awaited chance to reestablish the kingdom of David. After a series of romantic adventures, Alroy begins to put Jabaster’s plan into action, scattering the Turks and conquering Baghdad.

    But in the meantime, Alroy acquires another advisor—Jabaster’s brother and mirror image, Honain. Honain represents the tempting path of Jewish assimilation: He has achieved wealth and honor, but only at the price of “passing” as a Muslim. In his own view, however, he has not betrayed his people, but simply effected his own liberation. “I too would be free and honoured,” he tells Alroy. “Freedom and honour are mine, but I was my own messiah.” Honain introduces Alroy to the beautiful Princess Schirene, the daughter of the Caliph, and though she is a Muslim he falls in love with her. (“The daughters of my tribe, they please me not, though they are passing fair,” Alroy admits—a sentiment Disraeli himself shared.)

    But now, at the height of his fortune, with an empire in his grasp and a princess for his wife, Alroy begins to succumb to Honain’s worldly counsel. Why, he asks, should he exchange rich Baghdad for poor Jerusalem? Why not rule over a cosmopolitan empire, rather than a single small nation? “The world is mine: and shall I yield the prize, the universal and heroic prize, to realise the dull tradition of some dreaming priest, and consecrate a legend?” Alroy asks. “Is the Lord of Hosts so slight a God that we must place a barrier to His sovereignty, and fix the boundaries of Omnipotence between the Jordan and the Lebanon?” Mischievously, Disraeli even makes Alroy begin to speak in the stock phrases of modern English liberalism: “Universal empire must not be founded on sectarian prejudices and exclusive rights.”

    From a portrait by Count D’Orsay, 1834

    Jabaster tries to recall his king to the righteous, Jewish path, but to no avail. At last he attempts a coup against Alroy, but he is defeated and sentenced to death. From that moment, however, God’s favor deserts Alroy. In his next battle he is defeated, and a Muslim king, Alp Arslan, takes him prisoner. Now Honain reappears with one last, Satanic temptation: If Alroy converts to Islam, his life will be spared. But the scion of the house of David has learned his lesson. His strength is not his own but his nation’s, and individual glory means nothing next to the redemption of the Jews. He taunts Alp Arslan with his refusal, and the king, in a rage, cuts off his head.

    For Disraeli, writing at the very beginning of his own career as an English politician, the moral of Alroy was deeply ambiguous. After all, David Alroy is a gifted youth like himself, but one who sacrifices worldly ambitions for love of the Jewish people, and is exalted by that love. The novel does not endorse the Jewish sectarianism of Jabaster—Disraeli expresses a Voltairean hatred of priestcraft—but it clearly repudiates the plausible assimilationism of Honain, which leads only to dishonor and disaster. Indeed, it is Disraeli’s distinction between Jewish belief and Jewish solidarity, and his insistence that it is possible to have the latter without the former, that makes Alroy a significant proto-Zionist text. If Disraeli had obeyed the novel’s logic in his own life, if he had tried to translate Alroy’s vision to the nineteenth century, he might have become a real-life Daniel Deronda.

    Source: www.nextbook.org, 08.26.08

    “The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”

    –Benjamin Disraeli