- Turko-Persian tradition
The composite Turko-Persian tradition [http://news-info.wustl.edu/sb/page/normal/142.html Robert L. Canfield] , "Turko-Persia in historical perspective", Cambridge University Press, 1991] was a variant of
Islamic culture . It was Persianate in that it was centred on a lettered tradition ofIran ian origin; it was Turkic insofar as it was for many generations patronised by rulers of Turkic background; it wasIslamic in that Islamic notions of virtue, permanence, and excellence infused discourse about public issues as well as the religious affairs of the Muslims, who were the presiding elite. [http://news-info.wustl.edu/sb/page/normal/142.html Robert L. Canfield] , "Turko-Persia in historical perspective", Cambridge University Press, 1991]Origins
After the
Arab Muslim conquest of Persia,Middle Persian , the language ofSassanids , continued in wide use well into the second Islamic century (8th century) as a medium of administration in the eastern lands of theCaliphate .Robert Canfield "Turko-Persia in historical perspective", Cambridge University Press, 1991] DespiteArabization of public affairs, the peoples retained much of their pre-Islamic outlook and way of life, adjusted to fit the demands of the Islamic religion. Towards the end of the first Islamic century, population began resenting the cost of sustaining the ArabCaliph s, theUmayyads - who become oppressive and corrupt, and in the second Islamic century (8th c. AD), a generally Persian-led uprising - led by the Iranian national hero Abu Muslim Khorasani - brought another Arab clan, the Abbasids, to the Caliphal throne. Under the Abbasids, thePersianate customs of their Barmakidvizier s became the style of the ruling elite. Politically, the Abbasids soon started losing their control, causing two major and lasting consequences. First, the Abbasid Caliph al-Mutasim (833-842) greatly increased the presence of Turkic mercenaries andMamluk slaves in the Caliphate, and they eventually displaced Arabs and Persians from the military, and therefore from the political hegemony, starting an era of Turko-Persian symbiosis. [Bernard Lewis , "The Middle East", 1995, p. 87] Second, the governors inKhurasan ,Tahirids , were factually independent; then theSaffarids fromSistan freed the eastern lands, but were replaced by independentSamanids , although they showed perfunctory deference to the Caliph. Separation of the eastern lands from Caliphate was expressed in a distinctive Persianate culture that became a dominant culture in West, Central andSouth Asia , and the source of innovations elsewhere in the Islamicate world. This culture would persist, at least in the modified form of theOttoman Empire , into the 20th centuy. The Persianate culture was marked by the use of the newPersian language as a medium of administration and literature, by the rise of Persianized Turks to military control, by new political importance of non-Arabulama , and by development of ethnically composite Islamicate society.Middle Persian was a
lingua franca of the region before the Arab invasion, but afterwards Arabic became a preferred medium of literary expression. Instrumental in the spread of the Persian language as a common language along theSilk Road betweenChina andParthia in the 2nd century BCE, that lasted well into the 16th century, were manyBukharian Jews who flocked toBukhara in theCentral Asia and as a merchant class played a great role in the operation of the Silk Road. In the ninth century emerged a new Persian language as the idiom of administration and literature. Tahirids and Saffarids continued using Persian as an informal language, although for them Arabic was the "only proper language for recording anything worthwhile, from poetry to science", [Frye, R.N. 1975. The Golden Age of Persia: The Arabs in the East. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1921] but theSamanids made Persian a language of learning and formal discourse. The language that appeared in the ninth and tenth centuries was a new form of Persian, based on the Middle Persian of pre-Islamic times, but enriched by ample Arabic vocabulary and written in Arabic script. The Samanids began recording their court affairs in Arabic and in this language, and they used it as the main public idiom. The earliest great poetry in New Persian was written for the Samanid court. Samanids encouraged translation of religious works from Arabic into Persian. Even the learned authorities of Islam, theulama , began using the Persian lingua franca in public, although they still used Arabic as a medium of scholarship. The crowning literary achievement in the early New Persian language, The Persian "Book of Kings" ofFirdowsi , presented to the court ofMahmud of Ghazni (998-1030), was more than a literary achievement; it was a kind of Iranian nationalistic memoir, Firdowsi galvanized Persian nationalistic sentiments by invoking pre-Islamic Persian heroic imagery. Firdowsi enshrined in literary form the most treasured stories of popular folk-memory.Before the
Ghaznavids broke away, the Samanid rulership was internally falling to its Turkic servants. The Samanids had their own guard of TurkicMamluk mercenaries (ghulam s), who were headed by a chamberlain, and a Persian and Arabic speaking bureaucracy, headed by a Persianvizier . The army was largely composed of mostly Turkic Mamluks. By the latter part of the tenth century, Samanid rulers gave the command of their army to Turkic generals. These generals eventually had effective control over all Samanid affairs. The rise of Turks in Samanid times brought a loss of Samanid southern territories to one of their Mamluks, who were governing on their behalf.Mahmud of Ghazni ruled over southeastern extremities of Samanid territories from the city ofGhazni . Turkic political ascendancy in the Samanid period in the tenth and eleventh century resulted in the fall of Samanid ruling institution to its Turkic generals; and in a rise of Turkic pastoralists in the countryside. TheGhaznavids (989-1149) founded empire which became a most powerful in the east since Abbasid Caliphs at their peak, and their capital at Ghazni became second only toBaghdad in cultural elegance. It attracted many scholars and artists of the Islamic world. Turkic ascendance to power in the Samanid court brought Turks as the main patrons of Persianate culture, and as they subjugated Western and Southern Asia, they brought along this culture.The
Kara-Khanid Khanate (999-1140) at that time were gaining pre-eminence over the countryside. The Kara-Khanids were pastoralists of noble Turkic backgrounds, and they cherished their Turkic ways. As they gained strength they fostered development of a new Turkish literature alongside the Persian and Arabic literatures that had arisen earlier.Historical outline
The beginning of the Turko-Persian symbiosis
In Samanid times began the growth of the public influence of the
ulama , the learned scholars of Islam. "Ulama" grew in prominence as the Samanids gave special support toSunnism , in contrast with theirShiite neighbors, theBuyids . They enjoyed strong position in the city ofBukhara , and it grew under the Samanids' successors Kara-Khanid Khanate. Kara-Khanids established a dominance of "ulama" in the cities, and the network of recognized Islamic authorities became an alternative social instrument for the maintenance of public order. In the Kara-Khanid Khanate formed an ethnically and dogmatically diverse society. The eastern lands of the Caliphate were ethnically and religiously very diverse.Christians ,Jews , andZoroastrians were numerous, and also several minority Islamic sects had considerable following. These diverse peoples found refuge in the cities. Bukhara andSamarkand swelled and formed ethnic and sectarian neighborhoods, most of them surrounded by walls, each with its own markets,caravansaraies , and public squares. The religious authorities of these non-Muslim communities became their spokesmen, just as the "ulama" were for the Muslim community, they also began overseeing internal communal affairs. Thus, alongside the rise of the "ulama", there was a corresponding rise in the political importance of the religious leaders of other doctrinal communities.The ruling institution was dominated by Turks from various tribes, some highly urbanized and Persianized, some rural and still very Turkic. It was managed by bureaucrats and "ulama" who used both Persian and Arabic, its literati participated in both the Arabic and Persian traditions of high culture of the wider Islamicate world. This composite culture was the beginning of the Turko-Persian variant of Islamicate culture. As "
Persianate " it was centered on a lettered tradition of Persian origin, it was Turkic because for many generations it was patronized by rulers of Turkic ancestry, and it was "Islamicate" because the Islamic notions of virtue, permanence, and excellence channeled the discourse about public issues and religious affairs of the Muslims, who were a presiding elite.Hodgson, Marshall G. S. 1974. The Venture of Islam. 3 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press] The combination of these elements in the Islamic society had a strong impact on the religion, because Islam was disengaged from its Arabic background andBedouin traditions and became a far richer, more adaptable, and universal culture. [Frye, R.N. 1965. Bukhara, the Medieval Achievement. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, vii] The appearance of New Persian, ascendancy of Turks to power in place of the Persian Samanids, rise of the non-Arabic "ulama" in the cities, and development of ethnically and confessionally complex urban society marked an emergence of a new Turko-Persian Islamic culture. As the Turko-Persian Islamic culture was exported into the wider region of Western and Southern Asia, the transformation became increasingly evident.The early stages of Turko-Persian cultural synthesis in the Islamic world are marked by cultural, social and political tensions and competition among Turks, Persians, and Arabs, despite the egalitarianism of Islamic doctrine. The complex ideas around non-Arabs in the Muslim world [Roy P. Mottahedeh. The Shu'ubiyah Controversy and the Social History of Early Islamic Iran. International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2. (Apr., 1976), pp. 161-182] [Najwa Al-Qattan. Dhimmis in the Muslim Court: Legal Autonomy and Religious Discrimination. International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol. 31, No. 3. (Aug., 1999), pp. 429-444] lead to debates and changing attitudes that can be seen in numerous Arabic, Persian and Turkic writings before the Mongol expansion. [Nathan Light, "Turkic Literature and the Politics of Culture in Islamic World", [http://homepages.utoledo.edu/nlight/dissch3.htm Ch.3 in Slippery Paths] : the performance and canonization of Turkic literature and Uyghur muqam song in Islam and modernity, Thesis (Ph.D.), Indiana University, 1998.]
The Perso-Islamic tradition was a tradition where the Turkic groups played an important role in its military and political success while the culture raised both by and under the influence of Muslims used Persian as its cultural vehicle. [ Francis Robinson, "Perso-Islamic culture in India", in R.L. Canfield, "Turko-Persia in historical perspective", Cambridge University Press, 1991. Quotation:"... In describing the second great culture of the Islamic world as Perso-Islamic we do not wish to play down the considerable contribution of the Turkish peoples to its military and political success, nor do we wish to suggest that it is particularly the achievement of the great cities of the Iranian plateau. We adopt this term because it seems best to describe that culture raised both by and under the influence of Muslims who used Persian as a major cultural vehicle."] In short, the Turko-Persian tradition features
Persian culture patronized by Turkophone rulers. [Daniel Pipes: "The Event of Our Era: Former Soviet Muslim Republics Change the Middle East" in Michael Mandelbaum,"Central Asia and the World: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkemenistan and the World", Council on Foreign Relations, pg 79. Quotation: "..."In short, the Turko-Persian tradition featured Persian culture patronized by Turcophone rulers."..."]pread of Turko-Persian Tradition
The Turko-Persian Islamicate culture that emerged under the Persianate Samanids, Ghaznavids, and Kara-Khanids was carried by succeeding dynasties into Western and Southern Asia, in particular, by the
Seljuks (1040-1118), and their successor states, who presided overPersia ,Syria , andAnatolia until the thirteenth century, and by theGhaznavids , who in the same period dominatedGreater Khorasan andIndia . These two dynasties together drew the center of the Islamic world eastward. The institutions stabilized Islamic society into a form that would persist, at least inWestern Asia , until the twentieth century.The Turko-Persian variant of Islamicate culture was a composite tradition of the Islamic era. It was "Persianate" in that it was centered on a lettered tradition of Iranian origin; it was Turkish insofar as it was for many generations patronized by rulers of Turkic ancestry; and it was "Islamicate" in that Islamic notions of virtue, permanence, and excellence infused discourse about public issues as well as the religious affairs of the Muslims, who were the presiding elite. (Hodgson 1974 i:58).Robert Canfield "Turko-Persia in historical perspective", Cambridge University Press, 1991, pg. 12] .
The Turko-Persian distinctive Islamicate culture flourished for hundreds of years, and then faded under imposed modern
Europe an influences. Turko-Persian Islamicate culture is an ecumenical mix of Arabic, Persian, and Turkic elements blended in the ninth and tenth centuries, and eventually became a predominant culture of the ruling and elite classes of West, Central andSouth Asia .Robert Canfield "Turko-Persia in historical perspective", Cambridge University Press, 1991]The Ghaznavids moved their capital from Ghazni to
Lahore , which they turned into another center ofIslamic culture . Under Ghaznavids poets and scholars fromKashgar ,Bukhara ,Samarkand ,Bagdad ,Nishapur , andGhazni congregated in Lahore. Thus, the Turko-Persian culture was brought deep into IndiaIkram, S. M. 1964. Muslim Civilization in India. New York: Columbia University Press] and carried further in the thirteenth century.The
Seljuq successors of Kara-Khanid Khanate inTransoxiana brought this culture westward into Persia, Iraq, and Syria. Seljuqs won a decisive battle with the Ghaznavids and then swept into Khurasan, they brought Turko-Persian Islamic culture westward into western Persia and Iraq. Persia and Central Asia became a heartland of Persianate language and culture. As Seljuks came to dominate Iraq, Syria, and Anatolia, they carried this Turko-Persian culture beyond, and made it the culture of their courts in the region to as far west as theMediterranean Sea . Under Seljuks and the Ghaznavids the Islamic religious institutions became more organized and Sunni orthodoxy became more codified. The great jurist and theologianal-Ghazali proposed a synthesis ofSufism andsharia that became a basis of a richer Islamic theology. Formulating the Sunni concept of division between temporal and religious authorities, he provided a theological basis for the existence ofSultanate , a temporal office alongside the Caliphate, which by that time was merely a religious office. The main institutional means of establishing a consensus of the "ulama" on these dogmatic issues were themadrasas , formal Islamic schools that granted licensure to teach. First established under Seljuqs, these schools became means of uniting Sunni "ulama" which legitimized the rule of the Sultans. The bureaucracies were staffed by graduates of the madrasas, so both the "ulama" and the bureaucracies were under the influence of esteemed professors at the madrasas. [Frye, R.N. 1975. The Golden Age of Persia: The Arabs in the East. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, and New York: Barnes and Noble, 224-30]The eleventh to the thirteenth century's period was a cultural blossom time in Western and Southern Asia. A shared culture spread from Mediterranean to the mouth of
Ganges , despite political fragmentation and ethnic diversity.Through the centuries
The culture of the Turko-Persian world in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries was tested by invading armies of inland Asia. The
Mongols underGenghis Khan (1220-58) andTimur ("Tamerlane", 1336-1405) had effect of stimulating development of Persianate culture of Central and West Asia, because of the new concentrations of specialists of high culture created by the invasions, for many people had to seek refuge in few safe havens, primarily India, where scholars, poets, musicians, and fine artisans intermingled and cross-fertilized, and because the broad peace secured by the huge imperial systems established by the Il-Khans (in the thirteenth century) andTimurids (in the fifteenth century), when travel was safe, and scholars and artists, ideas and skills, and fine books and artifacts circulated freely over a wide area. Il-Khans and Timurids deliberately patronized Persianate high culture. Under their rule developed new styles of architecture, Persian literature was encouraged, and flourished miniature painting and book production, and under Timurids prospered Turkic poetry, based on the vernacular known asChaghatai (today calledUzbek ; of Turkic Qarluq origin).In that period prospered the Turko-Persian culture of India. Mamluk guards, mostly Turks and
Mongol s, along with Persians (now known as "Tajiks "),Khalji s andPashtuns ("Afghans"), dominated India from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, ruling as Sultans inDelhi . Their society was enriched by influx of Islamic scholars, historians, architects, musicians, and other specialists of high Persianate culture that fled the Mongol devastations of Transoxiana and Khurasan. After the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, Delhi became the most important cultural center of the Muslim east. The Delhi Sultans modeled their life-styles after the Turkic and Persian upper classes, who now predominated in most of Western and Central Asia. They patronized literature and music, but became especially notable for their architecture, because their builders drew from Muslim world architecture to produce a profusion ofmosques , palaces, and tombs unmatched in any other Islamic country.In Mongol and Timurid times the predominant influences on Turko-Persian culture were imposed from Central Asia, and in this period Turko-Persian culture became sharply distinguishable from the Arabic Islamic world to the west, the dividing zone fell along
Euphrates . Socially the Turko-Persian world was marked by a system of ethnologically defined elite statuses: the rulers and their soldiery were Turkic or Turkic-speaking Mongols; the administrative cadres and literati were Persian. Cultural affairs were marked by characteristic pattern of language use: New Persian was the language of state affairs and literature; New Persian and Arabic the languages of scholarship; Arabic the language of adjudication; and Turkic the language of the military.In the sixteenth century arose the Turko-Persian empires of the
Ottomans inAsia Minor ,Safavids in Persia, andMughals in India. Thus, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries the territories fromAsia Minor to EastBengal were dominated by Turko-Persian dynasties.At the beginning of the fourteenth century the Ottomans rose to predominance in Asia Minor, and developed an empire that subjugated most of the Arab Islamic world as well as south-eastern Europe. The Ottomans patronized Persian literature for five and a half centuries and, because Asia Minor was more stable than eastern territories, they attracted great numbers of writers and artists, especially in the sixteenth century. [Yarshater, Ehsan. 1988. The development of Iranian literatures. In Persian Literature, ed. Ehsan Yarshater, pp. 3—37. (Columbia Lectures on Iranian Studies, no. 3.) Albany: Bibliotheca Persica and State University of New York, 15] The Ottomans developed distinctive styles of arts and letters. Unlike Persia they gradually shed some of their Persianate qualities. They gave up Persian as the court language, using Turkish instead; a decision that shocked the highly Persianized Mughals in India. [Titley, Norah M. 1983. Persian Miniature Painting and its Influence on the Art of Turkey and India. Austin: University of Texas, 159]
The
Safavids of the fifteenth century were leaders of aSufi order, venerated byTurkmen tribesmen in easternAnatolia . As Safavids ascended to predominance in Persia in the sixteenth century - as the first native Iranian dynasty after more than 800 years of Arab, Turkic, and Mongol rule,Roger M. Savory,Encyclopaedia of Islam , "Safawids", Online Edition, 2005] [Roger M. Savory, "The consolidation of Safawid power in Persia", in Isl., 1965]Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , Vol. XII, [http://susi.e-technik.uni-ulm.de:8080/Meyers2/seite/werk/meyers/band/12/seite/0873/meyers_b12_s0873.html p.873] , original German edition, " Persien (Geschichte des neupersischen Reichs)".] they patronized Persian culture in the manner of their predecessors. Safavids erected grand mosques and built elegant gardens, collected books (one Safavid ruler had a library of 3,000 volumes) and patronized whole academies. [Titley, Norah M. 1983. Persian Miniature Painting and its Influence on the Art of Turkey and India. Austin: University of Texas, 105] The Safavids introduced Shiism into Persia to distinguish Persia society from the Ottomans, their Sunni rivals to the west.The Mughals, Persianized Turks who had invaded India from Central Asia and claimed descent from both
Timur andGenghis Khan , strengthened thePersianate culture of Muslim India. [Robert L. Canfield, Turko-Persia in historical perspective, Cambridge University Press, 1991. pg 20. Excerpt: The Mughas, Persianized Turks who had invaded from Central Asiaand claimed descent from both Timur and Genghis strengthened the Persianate culture of Muslim India.] They cultivated art, enticing to their courts artists and architects fromBukhara ,Tabriz ,Shiraz , and other cities of Islamic world. TheTaj Mahal was commissioned by the Mughal emperorShah Jahan . The Mughals dominated India from 1526 until the eighteenth century, when Muslim successor states and non-Muslim powers ofSikh ,Maratha , and British replaced them.The Ottoman,
Safavid , and Mughal empires developed variations of a broadly similar Turko-Persian tradition. A remarkable similarity in culture, particularly among the elite classes, spread across territories of Western, Central and South Asia. Although populations across this vast region had conflicting allegiances (sectarian, locality, tribal, and ethnic affiliation) and spoke many different languages (mostly eitherIndo-Iranian languages likePersian ,Urdu ,Hindi ,Pushtu ,Baluchi , or Kurdish, orTurkic languages like Turkish,Azeri ,Turkmen ,Uzbek , orKyrgyz ), people shared a number of common institutions, arts, knowledge, customs, and rituals. These cultural similarities were perpetuated by poets, artists, architects, artisans, jurists, and scholars, who maintained relations among their peers in the far-flung cities of the Turko-Persian world, fromIstanbul toDelhi .As the broad cultural region remained politically divided, the sharp antagonisms between empires stimulated appearance of variations of Turko-Persian culture. The main reason for this was Safavids’ introduction of Shiism into Persia, done to distinguish themselves from their Sunni neighbors, especially Ottomans. After 1500, the Persian culture developed distinct features of its own, and interposition of strong
Shiite culture hampered exchanges with Sunni peoples on Persia's western and eastern frontiers. TheSunni peoples of eastern Mediterranean in Asia Minor, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Sunnis of Central Asia and India developed somewhat independently. Ottoman Turkey grew more like its Arab Muslim neighbors in West Asia; India developed a South Asian style of Indo-Persian [S. Shamil, "The City of Beauties in Indo-Persian Poetic Landscape" - "Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East", Vol. 24, 2004, Duke University Press] [F. Delvoye, " [http://www.iias.nl/iiasn/iiasn7/south/delvoye.html "Music in the Indo-Persian Courts of India (14th-18th century)"] , Studies in Artistic Patronage, The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), 1995-1996.] culture; and Central Asia, which gradually grew more isolated, changed relatively little.Disintegration
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Turko-Persian empires weakened by the Europeans' discovery of a sea route to India, and introduction of hand guns, which gave the horsemen of the pastoral societies greater fighting capability. In India, the Mughal Empire decayed into warring sister states. Only Ottoman Turkey survived into the twentieth century. The European powers encroached into the Turko-Persian region, contributing to the political fragmentation of the region. By the nineteenth century, the European secular concepts of social obligation and authority, along with superior technology, shook many established institutions of Turko-Persia. The rulers began emulating western models of governance, and cultural similarities that were formerly so apparent among the peoples of Turko-Persia were overlaid by western political ideas.
By identifying the cultural regions of Asia as the
Middle East ,South Asia , Russian Asia, andEast Asia , the Europeans in effect dismembered the Turko-Persian Islamic world that had culturally united a vast expanse of Asia for nearly a thousand years. [Mottahedeh, Roy., 1985. The Mantle of the Prophet. New York: Simon and Schuster, 161-2] The imposition of European influences on Asia affected social affairs throughout the region where Persianate culture had once been patronized by Turkic rulers. But in informal relations the social life remained unaltered. Also, popular customs and notions of virtue, sublimity, and permanence, ideas that were entailed in Islamic religious teaching, persisted relatively unchanged. Unlike the European images of them, people saw themselves as the heirs of illustrious past, and still situated on a central stage of history.Present
The twentieth century saw an ocean of changes in inland Asia that further exposed contradictory cultural trends in the region. Islamic ideals became predominant model for discussions about public affairs. The new
rhetoric of public ideals captured interest of peoples throughout Islamic world, including the area where in public affairs Turko-Persian culture once was prominent. The Islamic moral imagery that survived in informal relations emerged as the model of ideology expressed in its most virile form in theIslamic revolution of Iran and in the Islamic idealism of the Afghanistanmujahedin resistance movement.Roger M. Savory,Encyclopaedia of Islam , "Safawids", Online Edition, 2005] [Roger M. Savory, "The consolidation of Safawid power in Persia", in Isl., 1965]Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , Vol. XII, p. 873, original German edition, " Persien (Geschichte des neupersischen Reichs)", ( [http://susi.e-technik.uni-ulm.de:8080/Meyers2/seite/werk/meyers/band/12/seite/0873/meyers_b12_s0873.html LINK] )]The
Islam ic resurgence has been less a renewal of faith and dedication than a public resurfacing of perspectives and ideals previously relegated to less public, informal relations under impact ofEurope an secular influences. They are not medieval Islamic ideals, but ideas from the past that remained vital to many of these peoples, and now are used to interpret the problems of contemporary times. [Roy, Olivier., 1986. Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan. New York: Cambridge University Press] [Ahmed, Ishtiaq 1987. The Concept of the Islamic State: An Analysis of the Ideological Controversy in Pakistan. New York: St. Martin's Press] The Turko-Persian Islamic tradition provided the elements they have used to express their shared concerns.Influence
According to Bernard Lewis: [ [http://www.tau.ac.il/dayancenter/mel/lewis.html Iran in History by B. Lewis] ] cquote|"The work of Iranians can be seen in every field of cultural endeavor, including Arabic poetry, to which poets of Iranian origin composing their poems in Arabic made a very significant contribution. In a sense, Iranian Islam is a second advent of Islam itself, a new Islam sometimes referred to as Islam-i Ajam. It was this Persian Islam, rather than the original Arab Islam, that was brought to new areas and new peoples: to the Turks, first in Central Asia and then in the Middle East in the country which came to be called Turkey, and of course to India. The Ottoman Turks brought a form of Iranian civilization to the walls of Vienna. [...] By the time of the great Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century, Iranian Islam had become not only an important component; it had become a dominant element in Islam itself, and for several centuries the main centers of Islamic power and civilization were in countries that were, if not Iranian, at least marked by Iranian civilization. [...] The center of the Islamic world was under Turkish and Persian states, both shaped by Iranian culture. [...] The major centers of Islam in the late medieval and early modern periods, the centers of both political and cultural power, such as India, Central Asia, Iran, Turkey, were all part of this Iranian civilization. Although much of it spoke various forms of Turkish, as well as other local languages, their classical and cultural language was Persian. Arabic was of course the language of scripture and law, but Persian was the language of poetry and literature".
B. Lewis stated that the scope of the new stage in the transition to the ethnic-free Islam: [
Bernard Lewis , "The Middle East", 1995, p.88.]With the firm guidance of 'ulema', the diverse native traditions were transformed to a uniform mold that crossed borders and customs. The original diverse traditions were consistently shaped to conform to specific norms embedded in the Islamic law. One notable exception in the Turko-Persian tradition was the attitude to the women. The original attitude of respect to the mothers, and protection of the sisters and daughters overcame the tenets imposed by the new religion, and survived as an inherent component of the learned new society. The idea of slaughtering mothers and daughters, incessantly proclaimed from the pulpits, remained a call for action, but not the action in the majority sphere of the Turko-Persian tradition. While the best of the Turko-Persian literature is venerated and admired, the respect for the women and the old traditions of equality generally survived to the present times, except for the areas where the Arab Islamic tradition managed to entirely replace the original native traditions. The early Turkish Muslims accepted and embraced the pre-Islamic traditions and combined them with their own in a form of
Sufi mysticism. Less prominent were the strict Islamic law (Sharia ) and concept of waging violent externaljihad against nonbelievers. Instead, as Islam was diffused into the Turkic world through Persian Sufi influences, it sought to establish a commonality of belief with the indigenous religious practices. Despite a myriad of attempts to curb it,Sufism has survived in the Turkic zone as an underlying institution of revival and alternative thinking throughout the centuries. [M. Hakan Yavuz, "Is There a Turkish Islam?", Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 24, No. 2, October 2004]References
ee also
*
Culture of the Ottoman Empire
*Islamic culture
*Persian culture
*Persianization
*Turkification
*Turkish culture
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