The Turks’ involvement with Islamic history is full of surprises, almost all of which are pleasant. The first surprise is that they ever came to be involved at all. In their pre-Islamic history, Turks had created a series of empires (c. 552–840, and in western regions of the Eurasian Steppe into the 10th century) and adopted a number of religions along the way, including Manichaeism, Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, and Judaism, as well as retaining the traditional forms of shamanism. Moreover, unlike the Arabs and Persians, the Turks were not native to the Near East, their original homeland being in Mongolia. As nomads of the Eurasian Steppe, they lingered on the edge of settled civilizations, plying the routes from east to west and occasionally creating states of their own. The empire of the Uyghur Turks (744–840), for instance, had close relations with the Chinese, exchanging horses for silk (at rates favourable to the Turks), and entering into occasional marriage alliances with the Chinese ruling families. As the Huns in earlier centuries and the Mongols in later ones, their ultimate target was Chinese civilization; had they been given a choice in the matter, the Turks probably would have joined the sedentary world in China rather than the Near East. Thus, when they first entered the Islamic world it was against their will, as military slaves in the 820s.
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For over a
millennium, most Muslims lived under the rule or protection of Turks. It is not
surprising, then, that Turkish terminology and administrative practices have
left their stamp on Islamic history, particularly in the classical and early
modern periods. In fact, the word for ‘stamp’ in modern Arabic, damgha, is an
ancient Turkish word (originally pronounced ‘tamgha’), having meant ‘tribal
brand’ in pre-Islamic times and ‘commercial tax’ in the Mongol period. The
fortuitous journey of this word, from ancient Mongolia to the modern Arab
world, neatly illustrates the scope and range of the Turks’ activity in
history.
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The Turks
often chose to spread and develop Persian rather than Turkish literature. They
did produce their own literary works: the earliest Turkish documents date from
the 8th century and by the 11th century, Islamo-Turkish works were being
composed, two of which – a mirror for princes from 1068 and an Arabic- Turkish
lexicon from 1077 – are widely known. Despite this, the Turks relied on
Persians in all things literary, a fact that is captured in a proverb recorded
in the 11th-century lexicon, according to which, ‘There is no Turk without an
Iranian, just as there is no hat without a head’. Beginning in the 14th century,
and increasing in the following one, literature in both western (Ottoman) and
eastern (Chaghatay) Turkish came to be composed at Turkish courts. Hence,
Babur’s memoirs were composed in Chaghatay, though the high culture at the
Mughal court was Persian. Still, it is ironic that one of the founders of
Turkish literary culture, ‘Ali Shir Nava’i (d. 1501), wrote a polemical work on
the superiority of Turkish over Persian, the vocabulary of which is nearly
two-thirds Persian.
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The ‘crescent
and star’ symbol with which Islam is often associated is of ancient Turkish
(rather than Arab or Persian) provenance, and also that Turks have literally
nourished Islamic (and other) civilizations through their culinary influence. Yoghurt,
stuffed vine-leaves (dolma), kebabs, shawarma, and baklava, amongst many other
well-known foods, all originate with the Turks (though Turkish coffee does
not). And if the story is true that the croissant was created by Viennese
bakers in celebration of the failed Ottoman siege of their city in 1683, then –
at least indirectly – we owe them croissants too.
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A final surprise
is that a people such as the Turks who have long been associated with military
prowess have always been remarkably tolerant of, and open to, other cultures
and religions. Perhaps because of their travels along the Eurasian Steppe
Route, Turks have been exposed to numerous unrelated cultures in a way that some
other nomads were not. (By contrast, during their own seasonal migrations, the
Arabs came into contact with peoples to their north, south, and east – to their
west was the Red Sea – who were basically sedentary versions of themselves.)
For this reason, the Turks have a long history of willingly incorporating
elements of other cultures into their own, as demonstrated by their adoption of
others’ letters – not only in the figurative sense of the word, with Persian
high culture, but also literally, going through various alphabets until they
accepted the Arabic script, like other Muslim peoples. Signifi cantly, their
capacity to adapt to changing circumstances has led them, unlike the Arabs or
Persians, to adopt a Latin alphabet in the 20th century, a change undertaken not
only by Turks in Turkey, but also those in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and
Azerbaijan. In a sense, the Turks have shown themselves to be both experts at
identifying winning trends and flexible enough to align their own societies
with them. This may be seen in their adoption of Islam, of Persian as a
literary language, of gunpowder (against the grain of their indigenous traditions),
and of modernity. Arabs and Persians may protest that they are too proud of
their traditions to abandon them under pressure from
outsiders, but the Turks can retort that in adopting and adapting to the
prevailing culture – in this case, modernity – they too are remaining true to
their traditions.
