In a previous article published under the title ‘Aristotle as Historical Forgery, the Western World’s Fake History & Rotten Foundations, and Prof. Jin Canrong’s Astute Comments’, I wholeheartedly supported the position taken by the prominent Chinese Prof. Jin Canrong about Aristotle and I explained why Aristotle never existed as he is known today and most of his texts were not written by him, but by the pseudo-Christian Benedictine monks of Western Europe for the purpose of the ferocious imperial and theological battle that Rome carried out against New Rome-Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire. You can find the table of contents and a link to the publication at the end of the present article.
Contents
Introduction
I. A fictional concept: the origin of the fraud
II. A construct based on posterior textual sources
III. The deceitful presentation
IV. 5th century BCE texts found in 15th c. CE manuscripts do not make ‘History’.
V. Abundant evidence of lies and deliberate distortions attested in the manuscript transmission
VI. Darius I the Great, the Behistun inscription, and Ctesias
VII. The historical Assyrian Queen Shammuramat and the fictional Queen Semiramis of the ‘Ancient Greek sources’
VIII. The malignant intentions of the Benedictine liars: from the historical Darius I the Great to the fictional Semiramis
IX. The vicious distortions of the Benedictine liars: from Ctesias to Herodotus
The Behistun inscription
Introduction
In the present article, I will offer a typical example of text falsification carried out by the Catholic monks, who did not ‘copy and preserve’ manuscripts of ancient Greek and Latin texts, as it has been mendaciously said by Western European and North American academics and lying scholars, but they purposefully falsified, distorted, concealed, destroyed and/or contrived numerous texts.
This enormous forgery took place in Western Europe between the 2nd half of the 8th century and the 1st half of the 15th century; the colonial era was launched exactly afterwards. For this reason, few manuscripts with Ancient Greek and Roman texts date before the 8th c.; in fact, most of them have been either distorted and replaced or hidden in the vast libraries still owned, controlled and administered that the anti-Christian Roman Catholic Church.
The purpose of this devious and evil effort was the fabrication of a fake narrative about the forged antiquity and the supposed importance of the Western Europeans according to the needs of world conquest, prevalence and preponderance of the pseudo-Christian Roman Catholic Church; this bogus-historical dogma, as direct opposition to and ultimate rejection of Orthodox Christianity, would be initially imposed as the ‘scientific discipline of History’ in Western Europe and subsequently projected onto the rest of the world by means of colonial invasion, indigenous identity destruction, moral integrity demolition, cultural heritage disintegration, educational subordination, economic exploitation, military subjugation, and socio-political domination.
In other words, the monastical scribes and copyists created an entirely fake Euro-centric past, which became the rotten foundation of Western Europe. This fallacy became known as Judeo-Christian world and Greco-Roman civilization. However, the decipherment of ancient languages (Egyptian hieroglyphic, Old Achaemenid Iranian, Assyrian-Babylonian, Sumerian, Hurrian, Hittite, Urartu, Ugaritic, etc) and the study of millions of original texts, which were not copies of earlier sources but contemporaneous to the events that they narrated, sounded the death knell of the era of history fabrication programs.
With the post-Soviet rise of the great continental powers (China, India, Russia, etc.), the economic-military-political-ideological-educational-academic-cultural tyranny of the Western World started being overthrown throughout the earlier colonized world. The historical forgery that the colonial rulers imposed collapsed, the falsehood of the Eurocentric dogma of World History started being revealed and rejected, and an overwhelming project of total de-Westernization appeared as a prerequisite for the liberation of the Mankind from the lies of the European Renaissance, the Western Humanities, the White Supremacism, the Western European colonialism and racism, as well as from the falsehood of numerous subsystems of the construct, such as Classicism, Hellenism, Orientalism, etc.
In our days, it is imperative for anti-colonial scholars to unveil the distortions applied to Ancient Greek and Latin texts by the medieval monks. Consequently, historians from all over the world have to work together in order to denounce and obliterate the Western fraud and the fake History of the Western Man, which consists in arbitrarily taking 14th c. CE manuscripts as authentic narratives of Ancient History.
Jean Adrien Guignet (1816–1854), The Battle at Cunaxa (401 BCE), painting of 1843; typical example of the Western European forgery and of the bogus-historical dogma that European colonials wanted to impose worldwide as ‘History’! The narrative about the Battle at Cunaxa is to be found in Xenophon’s Anabasis; the purported Ancient Athenian author (430-355 BCE) died when Alexander the Great was born, but his text is saved in manuscripts dating back to the period between the 13th the 16th centuries, namely 1600-1900 years after the writer’s death. By selecting themes from the forged Ancient Greek ‘history’, Modern European artists plunged scholars and simple people into a delusion that they call ‘History’.https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/person_89597697
I. A fictional concept: the origin of the fraud
Apparently, the present brief article cannot be an exhaustive presentation of the Western fraud, and of the historical forgery that the Western monks, manuscript copyists, collectors, academics and propagandists attempted to impose worldwide through colonial conquests, massacres and tyrannies. However, I can still enumerate the major founding myths of the Western World.
Two thematic circles of historical distortions and fraudulent claims made by the Western academia revolve around the following two entirely fabricated entities, which have conventionally but erroneously been called
a) “the Greco-Roman world” and
b) “Biblical Israel” and “Judeo-Christian civilization”.
These ahistorical entities never existed. The original concept of those notions is purely fictional, and it therefore remains always unquestioned in the fraudulent Western universities. In this regard, the sources that the Western academics evoke to support their claims are posterior, untrustworthy, forged and therefore worthless.
At times, some of those texts represent merely ancient authors’ misperceptions of earlier texts and authors; however, more often, the ancient texts have been tampered with. On other occasions, ancient texts that refute the lies of other historical sources are hidden from the general public and conventionally discussed among the Western academic accomplices.
Fake terms, nonsensical selection of artworks, intentional use of posterior sources, delusional Modern European paintings and many other techniques were involved in the fabrication of the bogus-historical dogma of the Western World; but how can a Roman relief related to events of the 1st c. CE be taken as relevant of the so-called ‘History of Biblical Israel’, since the Ancient Kingdom of Israel ceased to exist in 722 BCE and the entire population was taken captive to Assyria? All the same, if an author decides to illustrate the topic by means of an Assyrian relief, he surely risks revealing the truth, i.e. the fact that the fake Biblical world was an insignificant periphery of Mesopotamia.
In parallel with the delusion diffused at home and worldwide, the Western academia took good care to produce plenty of sick concepts and laughable notions in their effort to come up with pre-fabricated opponents. Before 100 years, this was done with Hitler and his fake Nazi ideology, which reflected Anglo-Saxon corruption, while being detrimentally opposite to the traditional German culture. Nowadays, fake Muslims are similarly produced by the Western secret services. These pawns, although ignorant, uneducated and idiotic, are foolish enough to portray the so-called Judeo-Christian civilization as the Dajjal, i.e. the Antichrist system, which was prophesied first in Ancient Egypt and in Hittite Anatolia and only much later in Christian and Muslim sources. But the Antichrist system is something real, whereas the Judeo-Christian civilization never existed; it is prefabricated delusion. Those who take it as real will be destroyed.
II. A construct based on posterior textual sources
The entire construct hinges on the deceitful presentation of several types of material forged, collected, concealed, interpreted, contextualized, narrated, repeatedly but intentionally discussed, supposedly questioned, and selectively popularized; this was due to the fact that the said material was incessantly utilized for the colonial needs and targets of the Western European powers (England, France, Holland, Spain, Portugal, and more recently the US). In fact, the Western World’s fake History was created as the ultimate support of all colonial claims.
This process happened within a system in which posterior textual sources (preserved in medieval manuscripts) have occupied the central position, whereas the ancient epigraphic material, which was contemporaneous to the historical events under study, has been deliberately disregarded.
All later discovered data and pieces of information were either adjusted to the construct or methodically hidden; this is how the original concept, pathetically believed almost as a religious dogma, remained totally unchallenged down to our days.
III. The deceitful presentation
The quintessence of the deceitful presentation involves a vicious trick; people (pupils and students, but also scholars and intellectuals, as well as the general public) are taught and made accustomed to care mainly about the absolutely insignificant dates of birth and death of historical persons (authors, rulers, etc.), and not about the dates of the manuscripts in which these individuals are mentioned as supposed authors; this situation turns readers, students and scholars into pathetic idiots.
Subsequently, we cannot seriously afford to describe Herodotus as a 5th c. BCE writer, because there is no manuscript with texts attributed to him, dating before the 10th c. CE. In addition, if we take into account the enormous number of other ancient authors decrying, denigrating and rejecting Herodotus’ absurdities and malignancy, we have to permanently and irrevocably obliterate Herodotus from the History of Mankind and consider his false, paranoid and racist texts as a double Crime against the Mankind:
first, with respect to the original narrative (to which we don’t have access as it was distorted by medieval monastical scribes and copyists) because the author attempted to disparage the superior Iranian civilization and the majestic Achaemenid universalist empire, while undeservedly praising the South Balkan barbarians, and
second, as regards the currently available text, which was forged as per the discriminatory intentions of the monks who altered and distorted it in their effort to fabricate the fake, modern divide (or dichotomy) East-West, and to offer a shred of historicity to it.
IV. 5th century BCE texts found in 15th c. CE manuscripts do not make ‘History’.
People get therefore addicted to considering as a true and original ‘work’ (of an ancient author) the manuscript (or manuscripts) in which the specific treatise, essay or book was copied perhaps 10 or 15 centuries after the author composed it. Due to a long chain of intermediaries (namely library copyists, librarians, scholars, monks, collectors, purchasers and/or statesmen), the transmitted text may have been partly or totally changed.
There is absolutely no guarantee as regards the honesty, the good intentions, the unbiased attitude, and the benevolent character of the perhaps 5, 10, 20 or 50 persons who -living in different eras and without knowing one another- may have constituted the chain of (unknown to us) intermediaries between the hand of the author and that of the last copyist whose manuscript was preserved down to our times.
Example: very little matters today whether the ancient author Diodorus Siculus or Siceliotes (西西里的狄奧多羅斯) actually lived in the 1st c. BCE or in the 3rd c. CE; quite contrarily, what is important for history-writing is the fact that the earliest known manuscript of his famous ‘Bibliotheca Historica’ (世界史) dates back to the 10th c. CE.
Consequently, the first piece of information that should be stated after the name of any ‘ancient’ Anatolian, Macedonian, Thracian, Greek, Roman and other author is the date of the earliest extant manuscript of his works.
V. Abundant evidence of lies and deliberate distortions attested in the manuscript transmission
An extraordinarily high number of original sources excavated in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, Canaan, Iran and elsewhere, and subsequently deciphered, can be dated with accuracy; example: the Annals of great Assyrian emperor Tiglath-pileser III (745-727 BCE) were written during his reign. They are contemporaneous and therefore original.
Part of the Annals of the Assyrian Emperor Tiglath-pileser III (745-727 BCE) that were written and depicted on the walls of imperial palace at Kalhu (modern Nimrud, in Northern Iraq): representation of the Assyrian campaign against Babylonia in 728 BCE; contrarily to the Ancient Greek sources, which were hypothetically preserved in manuscripts written 1500 years after the supposed author elaborated his narrative, the Assyrian texts are trustworthy and valuable sources of information, because they were formulated at the same time as the events therein narrated. But not one Ancient Greek relief or text was found to be contemporaneous with Herodotus’ fictional battle of Thermopylae.
However, in striking contrast to them, almost all the manuscripts with the works of ancient Greek and Roman authors whose texts have formed the backbone of the fraudulent historical dogma of the Western academia are not contemporaneous but posterior by, at times, 1500 or 2000 years.
Even worse, numerous ancient Greek authors’ texts were not preserved through a manuscript tradition at all; they were saved as references in posterior authors’ works. This concerns, for instance, Ctesias (克特西亞斯), an Ancient Carian (Anatolian) physician and erudite scholar, who lived and worked in the court of the Achaemenid Iranian emperor Artaxerxes II in the 5th c. BCE.
Later, willing to offer potential guidebooks to Iran and India for the use of various peripheral peoples and tribes of the Balkan region, Ctesias elaborated in Ancient Ionian (愛奧尼亞希臘語) two treatises to describe the state of things in Iran and in India. To the Western academic bibliography, his works are known (in Latin) as ‘Persica’ and ‘Indica’.
These texts were not saved integrally in manuscripts copied for the purpose of preserving Ctesias’ works, but they were preserved in Diodorus Siculus’ ‘Bibliotheca Historica’. Although he is not known through authentic and contemporaneous Iranian sources, we can deduce that Ctesias certainly spoke fluently the official language of the Empire and read Old Achaemenid cuneiform. Eventually, he may have also studied and learned Babylonian and Elamite cuneiform, namely two ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform languages and writings the use of which was maintained by Iranian scribes.
Apparently, Ctesias had a firsthand insight, as he lived for many years in Parsa (Persepolis), the capital of the Achaemenid Empire and he also traveled extensively along with the Iranian emperor. But, unfortunately, the following ordeal was produced.
VI. Darius I the Great, the Behistun inscription, and Ctesias
One century before Ctesias served Artaxerxes II, the empire of Iran was saved by Darius I the Great (大流士一世; reign: 522-486), who overthrew a usurper, namely the Mithraic (密特拉教祭司) magus Gaumata (高墨达), and by so doing, preserved on the throne a dynasty of faithful Zoroastrian (瑣羅亞斯德教徒) monarchs.
To commemorate his great victory and the consolidation of the his dynasty, Darius I the Great had an enormous rock relief and a monumental inscription (貝希斯敦銘文) engraved on the rocks of Mount Behistun (貝希斯頓山), at a distance of 150 km west of Hamadan (哈马丹; Ekbatana/埃克巴坦那) in Western Iran (15 m high by 25 m wide and 100 m up the cliff). As it can be easily understood, these events occurred after the assassination of Cambyses, at the very beginning of Darius I the Great’s reign.
It goes without saying that the successors of Darius I the Great and the imperial Iranian administration knew perfectly well the historical details and were fully aware of the imperial inscription that immortalized the event, which had obviously become the cornerstone of the imperial education.
Mount Bisotun (rather known as Behistun in Western bibliography)
The Behistun inscription
Representation of the Achaemenid Iranian Emperor Darius I the Great in the Behistun inscription; he is trampling the defeated Gaumata.
Behistun relief of the defeated Elamite ššina rebel
In the vast Achaemenid Iranian Empire, Imperial Aramaic was the lingua franca in which people from different provinces (satrapies) used to communicate; numerous official documents were translated from cuneiform to alphabetic writing and sent to the various administrators (satraps). The Behistun papyrus from the Elephantine Island (in Aswan, Upper Egypt) contains an Imperial Aramaic translation of the Inscription of Behistun; excavated in 1906-1908 by the German Orientalist Eduard Sachau and published in 1911, the text is known as DB Aram and as TADAE C2.1+3.13. About:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behistun_papyrushttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behistun_Inscriptionhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textbook_of_Aramaic_Documents_from_Ancient_Egypt
VII. The historical Assyrian Queen Shammuramat and the fictional Queen Semiramis of the ‘Ancient Greek sources’
However, one century later, when Ctesias lived in Iran, served the Iranian Emperor, and spoke Old Achaemenid Iranian (and if not, he was surrounded by the Empire’s top interpreters and advisers), something disastrously odd ‘happened’.
According to Diodorus Siculus, who explicitly stated that he extensively quoted from Ctesias’ text (Bibliotheca Historica, II 13), the imperial Carian physician and author appears to have attributed the Behistun inscription and the rock reliefs to none else than the Assyrian Queen Shammuramat (薩穆-拉瑪特), who was the queen consort of the Assyrian Emperor Shamshi Adad V (沙姆什·阿達德五世; reign: 824-811) and co-regent (811-805) during the first years of reign of her son Adad Nirari III (阿达德尼拉里三世; reign: 811-783)!
(Above:) stela of Shamshi-Adad V from the Nabu Temple at Kalhu/Nimrud; (below:) stela of Adad Nirari III from Tell al Rimush (also known as the ‘Mosul marble stele’)
(Above:) the stela of Shammuramat from the city of Assyria (Ashur); the great queen and queen mother is described as the wife of Shamshi-Adad V, the mother of Adad-Nirari III, and the daughter-in-law of Shalmaneser III (actually in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin, Germany); (below:) detail
Actually in the Maraş (Germanikeia/Kahramanmaraş) Archaeology Museum, the Pazarcık Stele was found in Kizkapanli, near the Pazarcik village, ca. 30 km SE of Maraş in Turkey; the monument was a boundary stele constructed by the Assyrian Emperor Adad-nirari III in 805 BCE. It demarcated the borders between Assyria and the Neo-Hittite kingdoms of Kummuh (later known as Commagene) and Gurgum. The queen mother Shammuramat is mentioned as taking part in the military campaigns undertaken by the Assyrian Emperor in the region.
Furthermore, in the ‘Ancient Greek’ text of Diodorus Siculus, the monumental inscription was said to be written in Assyrian cuneiform (Συρίοις γράμμασιν)! Even worse, in the same text (as preserved today), it was also stated that, in the rock relief, there was also a representation of the Assyrian queen!
Ctesias’ text, as preserved by Diodorus Siculus, is truly abundant in information, but it is historically impossible and therefore entirely forged. Due to this and many other texts, an enormous chasm was unnecessarily formed between
a) the historical queen Shammuramat of Assyria, whose historicity is firmly undeniable, due to the existence of several contemporaneous cuneiform sources excavated in Assyria, and subsequently deciphered and published,
and
b) the purely fictional Assyrian queen Semiramis (沙米拉姆) of the posterior Ancient Greek textual sources that were supposedly ‘preserved’ (but in reality deliberately distorted and forged) in the Benedictine manuscripts of Western Europe’s monasteries.
The fictional Semiramis of Western Europe: ‘Semiramis receiving news of the rebellion in Babylon’, painting by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (also known as Il Guercino; 1591-1666), 1624 (Oil on canvas, currently in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
Semiramis called to Arms, by Alessandro Leone Varotari (also known as Il Padovanino; 1588’1649)
Semiramis Building Babylon (1861) by Edgar Degas
However, if we examine closely the facts, we will surely understand what truly occurred in this case; then, we will be able to fathom how the fake History of the Western world was fabricated.
The Behistun inscription is trilingual, as it was written in Old Achaemenid Iranian (the earliest form of written Iranian languages), Babylonian, and Elamite; this was a very common practice during the Achaemenid times (550-330 BCE). The main figure of the associated rock relief is Darius I the Great, evidently the representation of a male royal.
One way or another, with respect to the Behistun inscription and rock relief, Ctesias certainly knew everything that we know today after the successive decipherments of the Old Achaemenid, Babylonian and Elamite cuneiform writings, or perhaps even more, due to the then extant oral tradition.
VIII. The malignant intentions of the Benedictine liars: from the historical Darius I the Great to the fictional Semiramis
The Behistun inscription is not Assyrian; the representation is not that of female royal; and the monument is totally unrelated to Shammuramat, who had lived 300 years before Darius I the Great and 400 years before Artaxerxes II’s physician Ctesias. More importantly, by that time, the Assyrian Empire did not occupy the lands surrounding Behistun. Accompanied by Iranian imperial officers and his associates, Ctesias certainly learned all the details of the monumental inscription that we can now read in articles, courses, lectures, books and encyclopedias.
The narrative was a triumph for Darius I the Great and a spectacular rebuttal of the vicious Mithraic Magi who had supported the defeated evil sorcerer and villain Gaumata. Apparently, writing a guidebook for Iran to help marginal people of the Empire’s Balkan periphery, Ctesias did not have any reason to say lies. Moreover, we don’t have any reason to believe that Diodorus Siculus needed to distort the truth to that extent, when copying and thus preserving Ctesias’ masterpiece for the posterity.
However, the transmission of the details about the Behistun inscription embarrassed the Benedictine copyists who wanted to denigrate Darius I the Great and to portray his great empire in a most derogatory manner. They had already proceeded in this manner, distorting other manuscripts, forging texts, and fabricating their pseudo-historical narratives at will.
That is why Ctesias’ pertinent text, which had certainly been preserved in its original form within Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheca Historica, was intentionally distorted by the Benedictine ‘Holy Inquisition of Libraries’, which fabricated the myths of today’s Western world some time after the middle of the 8th c. CE. To be accurate, Ctesias’ historical description was entirely replaced by a fictional and historically nonsensical account.
The unbelievable lies -invented and included in Diodorus Siculus’ quotations from Ctesias- risked making of the fictional queen Semiramis a world ruler! Whereas the Assyrian Empire at the end of the 9th c. BCE did not control even the western half of today’s Iranian territory, the unequivocally mythicized Semiramis had supposedly sent her armies up to India where those fictitious Assyrian soldiers were trampled by the elephants. This worthless narrative that replaced Ctesias’ original text may very well have been invented as a ‘historical’ excuse for Alexander the Great’s failure to advance deep inside India.
The fictional Semiramis of Modern Europeans: she condemns her husband Ninus to death; painting by Nicolaus Knüpfer (1609-1655), created after 1622. Currently in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.
IX. The vicious distortions of the Benedictine liars: from Ctesias to Herodotus
But if the fictional Semiramis’ Indian campaign is entirely false, so are then the preposterous narratives of Herodotus about Darius I the Great’s and Xerxes I the Great’s campaigns in the insignificant and barbarian circumference of South Balkans. These texts involved evil purposes, heinous anti-Iranian biases, fictional battles, racist discourses, vicious lies, incredibly large number of the Iranian armies, and absurdly high number of Iranian casualties.
The mendacious but idiotic Benedictine monks, who wrote those slander tales did not apparently expect that, sometime in the future, excavations would bring to light splendid Iranian antiquities, original cuneiform documentation, and trustworthy contemporaneous historical sources, whereas a systematic effort of decipherment would offer to people all over the world direct access to historical texts written in dead languages, thus irrevocably canceling Herodotus’ nonsensical report and, even more importantly, the later distortions that the Benedictine monks made on their worthless manuscripts.
In any case, had those fictional campaigns against ‘Greece’ had a shred of truth to them, they would have certainly been documented one way or another in various Old Achaemenid, Babylonian, Elamite, Imperial Aramaic, Egyptian hieroglyphic or other sources; but they were not.
Even worse, the meaningless and ludicrous battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, and their likes would have been commemorated by the Seleucids, the Ptolemies, and the Attalids all the way down to the Romans and the Eastern Romans. But we know quite well that the nonexistent, fictional past of the so-called Ancient Greek world was absolutely irrelevant to them: precisely because it had not yet been fabricated.
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Aristotle as Historical Forgery, the Western World’s Fake History & Rotten Foundations, and Prof. Jin Canrong’s Astute Comments
Pre-publication of chapter XIX of my forthcoming book “Turkey is Iran and Iran is Turkey – 2500 Years of indivisible Turanian – Iranian Civilization distorted and estranged by Anglo-French Orientalists”; chapters XVII, XVIII, XIX and XX form Part Six (Fallacies about the Early Expansion of Islam: the Fake Arabization of Islam) of the book, which is made of 12 parts and 33 chapters. Chapter XVII and XX have already been pre-published.
Until now, 15 chapters have been uploaded as partly pre-publication of the book; the present chapter is therefore the 16th (out of 33). At the end of the present pre-publication, the entire Table of Contents is made available. Pre-published chapters are marked in blue color, and the present chapter is highlighted in gray color.
In addition, a list of all the already pre-published chapters (with the related links) is made available at the very end, after the Table of Contents.
The book is written for the general readership with the intention to briefly highlight numerous distortions made by the racist, colonial academics of Western Europe and North America only with the help of absurd conceptualization and preposterous contextualization.
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Bosra (South Syria), Bahira Monastery
This process is associated with the fabrication of numerous fake terms, such as ‘Muhammedanism’, ‘Arab invasions’, ‘Arab conquests’, ‘Arab civilization’, etc. also involving the denigration of Islam as ‘religion of the Arabs’. The ‘Arabization’ of Islam is a paranoid Western Orientalist effort to reduce Islam to the level of a religion of just one nation, which – in addition – was the realm of repugnant barbarians; that’s why Orientalists and Islamologists always tried to portray the early Islamic invasions as ‘Arab’. About the reasons for which the initial Arab – Yemenite invasions (633-638) were successful, I already spoke in the previous chapter XVII (Iran – Turan and the Western, Orientalist distortions about the successful, early expansion of Islam during the 7th – 8th c. CE; see sections VI to X).
But there is certainly more to it. First, among the Islamic armies’ soldiers, who advanced after 640 either in the direction of the Iranian plateau and Caucasus or toward Egypt, the Arabs constituted already the minority. Most of the soldiers of the Islamic armies after 640 were Yemenite, Aramaean, and Axumite converts and, speaking about the Islamic armies two decades later (after 661), one has to add also new Turanian and Egyptian converts.
Major centers of Aramaean Syriac Jacobite (Monophysitic/Miaphysitic) Christianity in 7th c. CE Syria and Mesopotamia
In the Umayyad Caliphate, Medieval Greek and Syriac Aramaic were the two official languages, while Arabic was only the religious language for the Muslim minority. And the Arab warriors, who settled in Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Egypt, Iran, and elsewhere, were so few that they were racially-ethnically assimilated with the local populations. The gradual, linguistic Arabization of the local populations in Yemen and in the formerly Eastern Roman provinces of the Orient was due to the fact that Arabic was the religious language.
In the lands where Islam was spread and became the official religion, there was no Arab culture diffused, because as I already said (chapter XVII, section I), to accept Islam the Arabs of Hejaz were de-Arabized and compactly Aramaized in the first place. This means that the ethnically Arab Muslim soldiers, who fought at Yarmuk and Qadissiyyah, were not culturally Arab anymore. They were indeed culturally Aramaized Arabs, thanks to their acceptance of Islam. There is no such thing as Arab culture in Islam.
Apparently, Arab culture existed before Islam in Hejaz and the desert, involving polytheistic cults, barbarian traditions, lawlessness and total absence of rudimentary civilization. To all the surrounding, civilized nations {namely the Yemenites, the Aramaeans, the diverse nations of Iran, the Eastern Romans, the Egyptians, the Sudanese Meroites (: Cushitic Ethiopians), the Axumite Abyssinians, and the Somalis of Other Berberia and Azania}, the pre-Islamic Arabs were known as the only barbarians of the wider region, and this was valid for many long centuries.
Homs/Emessa, Syria: Saint Mary Church; seat of the Syriac archbishopric and also known as Church of the Holy Girdle, it is a historical Syriac monument built over an underground church that dates back to 50 CE. Homs is famous for its black stones and rocks of which this church and many early mosques were built.
It is enough for anyone to read the text of the Periplus of the Red (‘Erythraean’) Sea (an Ancient Greek text written by an Alexandrian Egyptian merchant and navigator of the 2nd half of the 1st c. CE), so that he gets a very clear picture. Paragraph 20 of the said text, particularly if compared with earlier or later parts of the text, is quite revelatory of the rightfully deprecatory view of the Arabs that all the other ancient nations had.
“Directly below this place is the adjoining country of Arabia, in its length bordering a great distance on the Erythraean Sea. Different tribes inhabit the country, differing in their speech, some partially, and some altogether. The land next the sea is similarly dotted here and there with caves of the Fish-Eaters, but the country inland is peopled by rascally men speaking two languages, who live in villages and nomadic camps, by whom those sailing off the middle course are plundered, and those surviving shipwrecks are taken for slaves. And so they too are continually taken prisoners by the chiefs and kings of Arabia; and they are called Carnaites. Navigation is dangerous along this whole coast of Arabia, which is without harbors, with bad anchorages, foul, inaccessible because of breakers and rocks, and terrible in every way. Therefore we hold our course down the middle of the gulf and pass on as fast as possible by the country of Arabia until we come to the Burnt Island; directly below which there are regions of peaceful people, nomadic, pasturers of cattle, sheep and camels“.
The text is to be found online here (translation by Wilfred H. Schoff):
This barbarism took an end with the preaching of Prophet Muhammad, who transferred Aramaean culture, education, intellectuality and spirituality among the Arabs. All the themes and topics discussed by Prophet Muhammad, either in his revelations (Quran) or in his explanations (Hadith), were Aramaean. Of course, and with reference to developments taking place during the middle of the 7th c., there was an evident differentiation between a) Christian Aramaeans and b) Muslim Aramaeans and Muslim Arabs; but the differentiation was only religious, and not cultural. Culturally, the groups a) and b) were identical; and religiously they differed only partly and not fundamentally. But the perfidious colonial Orientalists have always been intentionally oblivious of this fact.
Founded by Mor Mattai the Hermit in 363 CE, Mor Mattai Monastery is situated 20 km north of Mosul and consists in a major center of Aramaean Syriac Jacobite culture and faith.
Deyrulzafaran (or Derzafaran; ‘the Saffron Monastery) is mainly known as Mor Hananyo Monastery, being located 5 km from Mardin (SE Turkey) in the famous Tur Abdin region, major center of Aramaean culture, faith and letters. In the Antiquity, there was a temple dedicated to the Assyrian-Babylonian and later Aramaean divinity Shamash; it was then converted to fortress by the Romans. The Syriac monk Mor Shlemon turned it into a monastery in 493 CE. Finally in 793, the bishop of Mardin and Kfartuta, Mor Hananyo, renovated it.
Surely there are ancient Oriental parallels to what happened to the Arabs in the early 7th c.
The Aramaeans and the Phoenicians, the Egyptians and the Anatolians, the Greeks and the Romans – all those who accepted the preaching of Jesus and belonged to the early Christian communities (except for the Jewish converts) – were culturally Hebraized (in the first two centuries of our era).
There is no such thing as Aramaean or Phoenician or Egyptian or Greek or Roman culture in Early Christianity. Aramaean culture revolved around Astarte or the ‘Syrian Goddess’, Baal, and many other Aramaean deities, myths and concepts; Phoenician culture was developed around Baal and other local divinities and myths; Egyptian culture was related to Isis, Osiris, Horus and the Heliopolitan religion or the Theban dogma of Amun or the Memphitic cult of Ptah or the Hermupolitan Ogdoad. Greek culture (which had earlier involved a highly politicized theater, Olympic games, philosophy, calamitous indifference for religion, and quasi-total ignorance of spirituality) and Roman culture were already heavily impacted by numerous Oriental religious, esoteric, spiritual and cultural-behavioral systems. Then, the diffusion of Early Christianity among them (up to the middle of the 2nd c. CE) consisted in cultural Hebraization.
What happened culturally to Arabs with their acceptance of Prophet Muhammad’s preaching had occurred already to the Aramaeans, the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, the Anatolians, the Greeks and the Romans, who accepted Early Christianity in the 1st – 2nd c.
Similarly, the Ancient Hebrews were not exempt of overwhelming foreign cultural impact. When in Egypt, they were heavily impacted by Atenism (also known as Amarna monotheism), which was the official, aniconic and monotheistic religion of Pharaoh Akhenaten in the middle of the 14th c. BCE. Excerpts from the Hymns to Aten, which were composed in Ancient Egyptian and written in hieroglyphic writing by the pious monotheist and great reformer Pharaoh, were later reproduced, word by word, in the Psalms of the otherwise ‘Hebrew’ Bible.
At this point I have to also add that Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (1353–1336), after his fourth year of reign, changed his theophoric name to Akhenaten, so that it does not contain the first component, which – as name of the polytheistic Theban religion’s main god Amun – was considered as an abomination by the Egyptian monotheists, after the solemn proclamation of Atenism.
And who were the Ancient Hebrews after all? Who was Abraham? An early 2nd millennium BCE Babylonian (from Ur, Southern Mesopotamia), who abandoned his land in order to preserve his monotheistic faith and openly reject the polytheistic religion that was imposed there at the time. The Assyrian-Babylonian impact on what is called Ancient Hebrew religion or Judaism is absolute, compact, and irreversible. The Old Testament is an Assyrian-Babylonian cultural, religious, intellectual, and spiritual byproduct.
Discussion near the mosque of a village (from the 43rd maqamah of the Maqamat al-Ḥariri); by the Iraqi painter and calligrapher Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti (13th c.); the illustrations of the famous Muslim painter show that rural life continued following exactly the same Aramaean patterns before and after the diffusion of Islam.
The aforementioned approach is extremely embarrassing to colonial Orientalist forgers and to Western pseudo-Christian Evangelical, Taliban-fashion theologians, who should rather be considered as the real instigators and the original perpetrators of Islamic terrorism, which they have studiously and scrupulously produced because of their vicious anti-Islamic hatred that they have ceaselessly diffused. That is why it is vitally important for them to stick the label ‘Arab’ onto the entire phenomenon of ‘Islamic Civilization’, ‘Islamic History’, ‘Islamic religion’, and ‘Islamic armies’.
However, there is even more to it, if one examines the fundamentals of the divine revelation as spelled out in Islam’s holy text and the associated explanations. The historical reality is that Muhammad, either one accepts him as prophet or not, never pretended that he was preaching a ‘new’ religion; according to his revelation (the Quran) and explanations (the Hadith), Islam (lit. ‘submission to God’) was the only true faith (‘religion’) of Adam. In fact, according to the prophet Muhammad’s world conceptualization, there has been only one religion in the History of Mankind; it was preached by various prophets, either they were/are known to humans as such or not. All prophets were sent by God to correct deviations, because beyond the only and true religion (which involves total devotion to God), there have been across the ages numerous deformations, distortions, deliberate alterations, and pernicious modifications of the true religion, and of the preaching / revelation of the various earlier prophets.
The birth of prophet Muhammad in presence of humans and angels; miniature illustration on vellum from Rashid al-Din Hamadani’s famous masterpiece Jami’ al-Tawarikh (lit. ‘Compendium of Chronicles’), which is also known as ‘Universal History’ (Tabriz-Iran, 1307)
Prophet Muhammad on his death bed (Jami’ al-Tawarikh)
Prophet Muhammad reveals to Ali (both protected by halos of golden flames) secrets he unveiled during Mir’aj (transcendental travel to the spiritual universe); from the Ottoman Turkish ‘Tarjuma-i Thawaqib-i manaqib’ (translation of stars of the legend), which was ordered by Sultan Murad III (1574–1595) to be done (in 1590) from the Farsi abridgement (14th c.) of Aflaki; found in Baghdad and purchased by Pierpont Morgan in 1911 (MS M.466, fol. 96r). According to this tradition, ten thousand of the hundred thousand secrets were revealed to Ali as the rightful successor to prophet Muhammad. Ali had difficulty keeping them, and that is why he shouted them into a well; however, a young man made a flute from the tree, which grew from the reed in the well. People came from all over to hear the young man play, and then prophet Muhammad requested to hear the youth perform, declaring that his notes “were the interpretation of the celestial mysteries that he had confided to Ali”. The flute was used ever since as part of the Mevlevi ritual dance (samaa). Jalal ad-Din Rumi has apparently borrowed the story of the barber, who shouted the secret of the Phrygian King Midas’ donkey ears into a hole over which reeds grew, and subsequently the winds whispered the secret to all. The early spirituality of the true Islam was greatly appreciated by Muslims of the Golden Era of Islamic Civilization, but there is nothing Arabic in it.
It is the aforementioned, outspoken universality of Islam that has deeply upset and dramatically embarrassed Western Orientalist forgers, colonial radicals, Catholic-Jesuit schemers, and materialist-atheist extremists. And this explains why they tried to imitate some Eastern Roman historians of the 8th c., who collectively called all the Muslims ‘Saracens’, a deprecatory term that is historically false enough to reveal either the ignorance or the evilness of the users.
However, to Eastern Roman Christian Orthodox theologians, like John Damascene (or John of Damascus), Islam was merely the latest Christological heresy. This is what Vatican, the pseudo-Christian Evangelicals, and the anti-Jewish Zionists do their ingenious best to conceal; because the Eastern Roman Christian Orthodox truth destroys their absurd lies and diabolical conspiracies.
The multiply controversial gold coins of the Umayyad caliph Abd al Malik ibn Marwan (reign: 685-705); during his reign, there was an apparent effort to impose Arabic as the official language of the divided Caliphate and to replace Christian signs (notably the Cross) with the declaration of Islamic faith. However, the caliph ruled only on a small part of the territory that most people usually see as enormous on the mostly false maps of the Umayyad Empire, and this was due to the fact that he was facing a multiple revolt. Even worse, following a defeat, he had to be tribute to the Eastern Roman Empire. But to his greatest surprise, when he tried to pay with these new coins, the Roman Emperor Justinian II (reign: 685-695 and 705-711) refused to accept them because they were of an unknown type and of evidently unacceptable character. This attitude triggered a new war; the offense was not only the absence of Christian symbols, but also the Arabic inscription with the Islamic declaration of faith (‘bismallah, la illah illa-allah muhammad rasul allah’, i.e. ‘in the name of God, there is no god but God alone; Muhammad is His messenger’) on the reverse and the presence of three standing figures on the obverse.
As there no names written on the coins, every discussion is basically a matter of assumption, but there are specialists, who suggest that the three figures are none else than prophet Muhammad (center), Abu Bakr, and his paranoid daughter Aisha, who was the last wife of the prophet. Abu Bakr was indeed one of the early followers of Islam (the very first being Ali ibn Abi Taleb, who was the prophet’s cousin and son-in-law). Abu Bakr, was selected by a small group of vicious Meccan renegades at the time prophet Muhammad was dying – in straightforwardly anti-Islamic rejection of the solemn investiture of Ali by the prophet at Ghadir Khumm on the 16th March 632 (18 Dhu al-Hijjah), i.e. only three months before prophet Muhammad’s death (8 June 632), in the 11th year of the Islamic calendar (Anno Hegirae). The heinous, anti-Islamic nature and practices of the Umayyad dynasty, which existed only after the massacre of the rightful heir of Ali and against the will of the quasi-totality of the Muslims, is the reason for which this interpretation can be considered as possibly correct.
The much loathed and decried, lawless and illegitimate caliph sought to ‘prove’ that he was the rightful ruler and that he represented a line of succession approved by prophet Muhammad. Of course, this was preposterous because at the very end of the prophet’s life, Abu Bakr acted openly and deliberately against Muhammad’s will, whereas the rancorous and hysterical Aisha supported the killers of Fatima and later of Ali. An extra reason for which we can accept this effort of interpretation is the fact that this shameless and absolutely anti-Islamic depiction caused an unprecedented outcry (because it was taken as a clear sign of overwhelming rejection of Islam by the court at Damascus) up to the point that these blasphemous coins were all ordered to be destroyed shortly after they were minted. As his wretched empire experienced divisions, civil wars, and real trichotomy, the shy and coward Abd al Malik ibn Marwan decided not to further risk his otherwise useless throne.
The supposedly powerful (according to Western colonial liars and forgers) Umayyad Empire was a multi-divided terrain of which Abd al-Malik Marwan controlled only a small portion (highlighted in red); the lands controlled by his opponents al-Mukhtar and al-Zubayr are colored in green and blue; and the territory under Kharijite power is shown in yellow. This chaotic period (680-692) is typically called ‘Second Fitna’, i.e. conflict, sedition, or civil strife; the word has many connotations, but the most accurate description of the historical fact would be ‘civil war’.
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FORTHCOMING
Turkey is Iran and Iran is Turkey
2500 Years of indivisible Turanian – Iranian Civilization distorted and estranged by Anglo-French Orientalists
By Prof. Muhammet Şemsettin Gözübüyükoğlu
(Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
CONTENTS
PART ONE. INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I: A World held Captive by the Colonial Gangsters: France, England, the US, and the Delusional History Taught in their Deceitful Universities
A. Examples of fake national names
a) Mongolia (or Mughal) and Deccan – Not India!
b) Tataria – Not Russia!
c) Romania (with the accent on the penultimate syllable) – Not Greece!
d) Kemet or Masr – Not Egypt!
e) Khazaria – not Israel!
f) Abyssinia – not Ethiopia!
B. Earlier Exchange of Messages in Turkish
C. The Preamble to My Response
CHAPTER II: Geopolitics does not exist.
CHAPTER III: Politics does not exist.
CHAPTER IV: Turkey and Iran beyond politics and geopolitics: Orientalism, conceptualization, contextualization, concealment
A. Orientalism
B. Conceptualization
C. Contextualization
D. Concealment
PART TWO. EXAMPLE OF ACADEMICALLY CONCEALED, KEY HISTORICAL TEXT
CHAPTER V: Plutarch and the diffusion of Ancient Egyptian and Iranian Religions and Cultures in Ancient Greece
PART THREE. TURKEY AND IRAN BEYOND POLITICS AND GEOPOLITICS: REJECTION OF THE ORIENTALIST, TURKOLOGIST AND IRANOLOGIST FALLACIES ABOUT ACHAEMENID HISTORY
CHAPTER VI: The fallacy that Turkic nations were not present in the wider Mesopotamia – Anatolia region in pre-Islamic times
CHAPTER VII: The fallacious representation of Achaemenid Iran by Western Orientalists
CHAPTER VIII: The premeditated disconnection of Atropatene / Adhurbadagan from the History of Azerbaijan
CHAPTER IX: Iranian and Turanian nations in Achaemenid Iran
CHAPTER X: Iranian and Turanian Religions in Pre-Islamic Iran
PART FOUR. FALLACIES ABOUT THE SO-CALLED HELLENISTIC PERIOD, ALEXANDER THE GREAT, AND THE SELEUCID & THE PARTHIAN ARSACID TIMES
CHAPTER XI: Alexander the Great as Iranian King of Kings, the fallacy of Hellenism, and the nonexistent Hellenistic Period
CHAPTER XII: Parthian Turan: an Anti-Persian dynasty
CHAPTER XIII: Parthian Turan and the Philhellenism of the Arsacids
PART FIVE. FALLACIES ABOUT SASSANID HISTORY, HISTORY OF RELIGIONS, AND THE HISTORY OF MIGRATIONS
CHAPTER XIV: Arsacid & Sassanid Iran, and the wars against the Mithraic – Christian Roman Empire
CHAPTER XV: Sassanid Iran – Turan, Kartir, Roman Empire, Christianity, Mani and Manichaeism
CHAPTER XVI: Iran – Turan, Manichaeism & Islam during the Migration Period and the Early Caliphates
PART SIX. FALLACIES ABOUT THE EARLY EXPANSION OF ISLAM: THE FAKE ARABIZATION OF ISLAM
CHAPTER XVII: Iran – Turan and the Western, Orientalist distortions about the successful, early expansion of Islam during the 7th – 8th c. CE
CHAPTER XVIII: Western Orientalist falsifications of Islamic History: Identification of Islam with only Hejaz at the times of the Prophet
CHAPTER XIX: The fake, Orientalist Arabization of Islam
CHAPTER XX: The systematic dissociation of Islam from the Ancient Oriental History
PART SEVEN. THE FICTIONAL DIVISION OF ISLAM INTO ‘SUNNI’ AND ‘SHIA’
CHAPTER XXI: The fabrication of the fake divide ‘Sunni Islam vs. Shia Islam’
PART EIGHT. THE DISTORTED TERM ‘PERSIANATE’
CHAPTER XXII: The fake Persianization of the Abbasid Caliphate
PART NINE. FALLACIES ABOUT THE GOLDEN ERA OF THE ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION
CHAPTER XXIII: From Ferdowsi to the Seljuk Turks, Nizam al Mulk, Nizami Ganjavi, Jalal ad-Din Rumi and Haji Bektash
PART TEN. FALLACIES ABOUT THE TIMES OF TURANIAN (MONGOLIAN) SUPREMACY IN TERMS OF SCIENCES, ARTS, LETTERS, SPIRITUALITY AND IMPERIAL UNIVERSALISM
CHAPTER XXIV: From Genghis Khan, Nasir al-Din al Tusi and Hulagu to Timur
CHAPTER XXV: Timur (Tamerlane) as a Turanian Muslim descendant of the Great Hero Manuchehr, his exploits and triumphs, and the slow rise of the Turanian Safavid Order
CHAPTER XXVI: the Timurid Era as Peak of the Islamic Civilization, Shah Rukh, and Ulugh Beg, the Astronomer Emperor
PART ELEVEN. HOW AND WHY THE OTTOMANS, THE SAFAVIDS AND THE MUGHALS FAILED
CHAPTER XXVII: Ethnically Turanian Safavids & Culturally Iranian Ottomans: two identical empires that mirrored one another
CHAPTER XXVIII: Spirituality, Religion & Theology: the fallacy of the Safavid conversion of Iran to ‘Shia Islam’
CHAPTER XXIX: Selim I, Ismail I, and Babur
CHAPTER XXX: The Battle of Chaldiran (1514), and how it predestined the Fall of the Islamic World
CHAPTER XXXI: Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals: victims of their sectarianism, tribalism, theology, and wrong evaluation of the colonial West
CHAPTER XXXII: Ottomans, Iranians and Mughals from Nader Shah to Kemal Ataturk
PART TWELVE. CONCLUSION
CHAPTER XXXIII: Turkey and Iran beyond politics and geopolitics: whereto?
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List of the already pre-published chapters of the book
Lines separate chapters that belong to different parts of the book.
Iranian and Turanian Religions in Pre-Islamic Iran
CHAPTER XXV: Timur (Tamerlane) as a Turanian Muslim descendant of the Great Hero Manuchehr, his exploits and triumphs, and the slow rise of the Turanian Safavid Order
Pre-publication of chapter X of my forthcoming book “Turkey is Iran and Iran is Turkey – 2500 Years of indivisible Turanian–Iranian Civilization distorted and estranged by Anglo-French Orientalists”; chapters VI, VII, VIII, IX and X form Part Three (Turkey and Iran beyond Politics and Geopolitics: Rejection of the Orientalist, Turcologist and Iranologist Fallacies about Achaemenid History) of the book, which is made of 12 parts and 33 chapters.
Until now, 14 chapters have been uploaded as partly pre-publication of the book; the present chapter is therefore the 15th (out of 33). At the end of the present pre-publication, the entire Table of Contents is made available. Pre-published chapters are marked in blue color, and the present chapter is highlighted in gray color.
In addition, a list of all the already pre-published chapters (with the related links) is made available at the very end, after the Table of Contents.
The book is written for the general readership with the intention to briefly highlight numerous distortions made by the racist, colonial academics of Western Europe and North America only with the help of absurd conceptualization and preposterous contextualization.
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Ahura Mazda, as preached by Zoroaster and as worshipped by the monotheistic Achaemenid dynasty, was heavily impacted by Assur (Ashur), the Sargonid Empire of Assyria, and the Assyrian monotheism, which is at the origin of every Biblical and Islamic concept of monotheism.
History of Religions is a field that was never duly explored by Western Iranologists in their effort to write the History of Ancient Iran and to represent spirituality, cult, mysticism, imperial epiphany, morality and transcendental faith in Pre-Islamic Iran. And for a very good reason! As it had happened in Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia and Canaan for millennia before the rise of the Achaemenid dynasty, Iran was also the terrain in which numerous religious conflicts took place.
These spiritual and material clashes lasted long and were at times far more ferocious than a) the Catholic Frankish Crusades undertaken by the Western European rulers, b) the 4th–5th c. Christian massacres of hundreds of thousands of followers of the Ancient Egyptian, Berber, Roman, Greek and other religions, and c) the 4th–17th c. Christian killings of thousands of adepts of any theological-Christological system that happened to be considered as ‘heretical’ by the Roman Church, i.e. the Arians, the Monophysites (Miaphysites), the Nestorians, the Iconoclasts, the Paulicians, the Bogomiles, the Knights Templar, etc.
Although Western Iranologists several times managed to successfully identify the existence of opposite beliefs, concepts, cults and faiths in texts and monuments, they basically ended up with a very confusing and misleading representation of the History of Ancient Iranian religions. More specifically, they failed to systematize the presentation of all these opposite beliefs, faiths and religious systems, which were developed in Ancient Iran, and to denote them by means of independent specific names, which could eventually be merely conventional.
Yet, the existing historical sources reveal to us that without a systematized historical-religious study of the material record, the History of the Achaemenids, the Arsacids and the Sassanids will definitely remain largely incomprehensible. However, fully plunged into their catastrophic materialism, ideological militantism, and obdurate sectarianism, the racist academics of the Anglo-Saxon colonial countries have shown only little interest to accurately assess numerous historical facts on the basis of the existing textual/epigraphic evidence and to identify their reason as due to spiritual polarization, moral conflict, and religious clash.
They insidiously distorted the History of Ancient Iran by attributing socioeconomic causes and imperial motives to all the historical facts and developments that took place, thus projecting their wretched mindsets and perverse opinions onto the historical past that they purportedly wanted to ‘interpret’.
In this regard, we can find a very good example in the well-known case of turmoil that took place at the end of the reign of Kabujiya / Cambyses: the end of the great emperor, who invaded Egypt, Libya and the Sudan (i.e. Cush / Ancient Ethiopia), the pernicious attempt of the Magi to obtain imperial and spiritual power by helping the preposterous impostor Gaumata to usurp the throne, the ensuing chaotic situation, and the final prevalence of Darius I the Great testify to a formidable religious clash between two diametrically opposed and antagonistic priesthoods.
Behistun Inscription and relief, near Hamadan (Ecbatana, NW Iran): Darius I the Great steps on the body of the impostor Gaumata; the conspiracy against the Achaemenid court and the ensuing clash were entirely spiritual and religious of character. The Mithraic Magi never accepted the monotheistic preaching of Zoroaster which was sacrosanct for the Achaemenid court. That’s why in later periods the Mithraic Magi traveled to Rome and imposed their evil polytheism there.
This terrible confrontation reveals an enormous opposition between the irrevocably monotheistic Zoroastrian Achaemenid dynasty, imperial court, administration and the Zoroastrian priests (from one side) and (from the other side) the polytheistic Mithraic Magi, who repeatedly attempted to subvert Iran, control the imperial court, and then corrupt Zoroastrianism. The earliest cosmological myths and mysteries of Mithra (or Mehr), which seem to originate from the wider Khorasan region (today’s Northeastern Iran, Southeastern Uzbekistan, Northwestern Afghanistan, and Tajikistan), recount his exploit to slay the ‘celestial bovines’; much later, following the diffusion of Mithraism across Central and Western Europe, this trait gave birth to the evil religious, spiritual, and cosmological concept of tauroctony.
For the Achaemenid court and the vicars of Zoroastrian monotheism, Mithraism was an abomination. Different mythologization of the same divinity denotes always the existence of very divergent priesthoods, and it therefore testifies to a very dissimilar religion. One should never confuse between a) Mithra (Mehr) as a Zoroastrian divinity subordinated to Ahura Mazda and b) Mithra as the central divinity of Mithraism to which a totally contrasting array of counterfeit mythical themes were ascribed. About:
Parthian relief from Zahhak Castle in East Azerbaijan province, Iran: a bird (possibly eagle) stands on the back of a ball. This may be the very original mythical narrative and form of Mithraic tauroctony.
A negative consequence of Cyrus the Great’s conquest of Babylonia is the fact that the contact with the millennia-long, spiritually powerful, polytheistic Babylonian priesthood of Marduk strengthened the Mithraic Magi enormously and enriched the Mithraic theology considerably. It was then that numerous polytheistic Babylonian concepts, traits, elements, themes and trends were transferred into the early Iranian Mithraism, notably the motif of the dying and resurrected Tammuz, the concept of ‘ab ovo’ Creation, the narrative of the powerful hero and hunter (with the traits of Gilgamesh / Nimrud being passed onto the Iranian Verethragna), and the theme of the mystical banquet. About:
Above: Terracotta plaque of the Amorite Period (2000-1600 BCE) of Babylonia, depicting the earliest representation of Tammuz (Dumuzid in Sumerian) dead in his coffin, before his resurrection; below: Marduk depicted on a Kudurru stele of the Kassite Babylonian king Meli-Shipak II (1186-1172 BCE), one of the last kings of the Kassite dynasty.
Zoroastrianism stands in firm opposition to the ‘ab ovo creation’ concept (which is the earliest form of the evil and pathetic ‘Big Bang’ theory):
The strong Zoroastrian faith of the Achaemenid rulers, their steadfastness, and their prevalence throughout the empire (xšāça) prevented the evil Magi from controlling spiritually and fanaticizing the masses with the aforementioned mythological topics in the central Iranian provinces, namely the Iranian plateau. However, Mithra and his evil Magi traveled southeastwards to the Indus Delta region and westwards to Anatolia, Caucasus and Scythia (Russia–Ukraine).
Actually, what had happened with the Iranian conquest of Babylonia was that the millennia-long Assyrian monotheistic–Babylonian polytheistic controversy, which had caused a myriad of wars in Mesopotamia and throughout the Orient before the rise of Cyrus the Great, found other means of expression, being reproduced among other nations. In fact, the Mesopotamian spiritual-religious confrontation was simply transplanted within Achaemenid Iran. It was not a matter of mere coincidence that the Achaemenids appeared as the spiritual, intellectual and cultural offspring of Sargonid Nineveh; it was a normal consequence of the fact that Zoroaster had lived in monotheistic Nineveh, was educated there, was initiated into the Assyrian imperial universalism, and later tried to transfer the doctrine among Iranians.
The first film (movie) in the History of Mankind; the monotheistic Assyrian Emperor Tukulti Ninurta I (1244-1207 BCE) is portrayed twice, standing and then kneeling, in front of the aniconic representation of God as baetylus (betyl, i.e. a meteorite). From the Temple of Ishtar at Assur (Assyria), Iraq; nowadays in Pergamon Museum, Berlin, Germany
In terms of History of Religion, Cyrus the Great’s conquest of Babylonia (539 BCE) reversed, revenged and canceled the earlier downfall of Assyria and Nineveh (614-612 BCE) to the Babylonian armies of Nabopolassar I. In terms of Imperial History, Cyrus the Great postured as the God-blessed savior and the genuine restorer of the Sumerian – Akkadian – Assyrian-Babylonian universal(ist) monarchy, denouncing (and overthrowing) the Nabonid dynasty of Babylonia (625-539 BCE) in the same manner the Sargonids of Assyria (722-609 BCE) had decried Babylonian polytheism and Elamite insanity for millennia. About:
Epiphany of the only God Ashur (Assur) above the Tree of Life, next to it the Assyrian emperor Ashurnasirpal II (883-858 BCE), represented twice, officiates as emperor and as high priest, under the blessing of Assur. From the throne room of Kalhu (modern Nimrud in North Iraq), capital of Ashurnasirpal II
Of course, despite the evident Assyrian spiritual, intellectual, cultural and artistic impact, Zoroastrian monotheism is an original religious phenomenon and all the therein incorporated Assyrian monotheistic concepts were stated in purely Iranian terms and codes, symbols, connotations and forms. But this fact triggers two very simple questions:
– What did the original Iranian religion before Zoroaster look like?
– Was the original Iranian religion before Zoroaster a religious system that looked closer to Zoroaster’s preaching or to an early form of Mithraism?
Due to the lack of textual evidence antedating the establishment of the Iranian monarchy by Cyrus the Great, it is difficult to respond straightforwardly to these questions. Old Achaemenid cuneiform seems to have been invented by Assyrian imperial scribes only few decades prior to the establishment of the Iranian monarchy; the Iranian imperial scribes were indeed well-educated in Sargonid Nineveh at the time of Assurbanipal (669-625 BCE); that’s why they were also perfectly acquainted with, and very well versed into, Assyrian-Babylonian, Elamite, and (to some extent) Sumerian languages and cuneiform writings (Sumerian was already a dead language for 1500 years before the early Achaemenids; so to them it was like Latin to Western Europeans today).
Assur in Assyria (above) & Ahura Mazda in Iran (below)
Ashurnasirpal II is hunting under the auspices of Ashur
Darius defeated his enemies under the auspices of Ahura Mazda
However, we have several indications that, among the Iranian-Turanian nations, there was a long past of grave religious conflicts that ended with the prevalence of Zoroastrianism under Cyrus the Great.
First, all posterior sources narrate the ‘mythical’ and ‘heroic’ stages of Iranian Pre-history and Proto-history as reflecting a dual environment of permanent conflict between the Good and the Evil. Negative thought, word, action or deed among humans is indeed of spiritual origin and impact (Ahriman).
Second, the basics of Zoroastrian cosmogony and cosmology, the context of Zoroastrian moral world vision, and the quintessence of Zoroastrian soteriology show a certain number of potential parallels with Tengrism, i.e. the earlier form of Turanian religion. And this is exactly what has been missing until now in every historical-religious research about the Achaemenid Empire: the strong link between the pre-Zoroastrian Iranian–Turanian religious monotheistic system and Tengrism. There are many linguistic affinities in this regard; furthermore, basic Zoroastrian religious terms reflect pre-Zoroastrian monotheistic fundamentals that had evidently Turkic origin. The topic is very vast, but at this point, I will try to place it in a brief diagram:
Zoroastrianism is the religion based on Zoroaster’s preaching, which consists in the systematization of earlier Turanian Tengrism, after a deep spiritual study of Assyrian monotheism, cosmogony, cosmology, mythical worldview, imperial universalism, eschatology and soteriology; it seems that what Zoroaster, the Turanian prophet from Atropatene / Azerbaijan truly did was to contextualize elements of the early Tengrism and Tengri-related concepts within the Mesopotamian spiritual-cultural order, while preserving the Turanian–Iranian terms; he therefore created a new dogma and doctrine.
Supreme symbols of Tengrism: the sacred circle in the interior of the Mongolian yurt
Since the Mithraic Magi of the Achaemenid times were so evidently subversive against the universal empire of Cyrus the Great and Cambyses, we can deduce that the early Iranian Magi, who opposed Zoroaster and his system, defended an earlier, polytheistic system of faith that was in straight clash with the pre-Zoroastrian form of Tengrism, which was the original faith of the Turanians and the Iranians before the establishment of the Achaemenid dynasty. A series of systematic linguistic studies and historical-religious researches about the said topics would lead to impressive results. About:
2500 Years of indivisible Turanian – Iranian Civilization distorted and estranged by Anglo-French Orientalists
By Prof. Muhammet Şemsettin Gözübüyükoğlu
(Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
CONTENTS
PART ONE. INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I: A World held Captive by the Colonial Gangsters: France, England, the US, and the Delusional History Taught in their Deceitful Universities
A. Examples of fake national names
a) Mongolia (or Mughal) and Deccan – Not India!
b) Tataria – Not Russia!
c) Romania (with the accent on the penultimate syllable) – Not Greece!
d) Kemet or Masr – Not Egypt!
e) Khazaria – not Israel!
f) Abyssinia – not Ethiopia!
B. Earlier Exchange of Messages in Turkish
C. The Preamble to My Response
CHAPTER II: Geopolitics does not exist.
CHAPTER III: Politics does not exist.
CHAPTER IV: Turkey and Iran beyond politics and geopolitics: Orientalism, conceptualization, contextualization, concealment
A. Orientalism
B. Conceptualization
C. Contextualization
D. Concealment
PART TWO. EXAMPLE OF ACADEMICALLY CONCEALED, KEY HISTORICAL TEXT
CHAPTER V: Plutarch and the diffusion of Ancient Egyptian and Iranian Religions and Cultures in Ancient Greece
PART THREE. TURKEY AND IRAN BEYOND POLITICS AND GEOPOLITICS: REJECTION OF THE ORIENTALIST, TURKOLOGIST AND IRANOLOGIST FALLACIES ABOUT ACHAEMENID HISTORY
CHAPTER VI: The fallacy that Turkic nations were not present in the wider Mesopotamia – Anatolia region in pre-Islamic times
CHAPTER VII: The fallacious representation of Achaemenid Iran by Western Orientalists
CHAPTER VIII: The premeditated disconnection of Atropatene / Adhurbadagan from the History of Azerbaijan
CHAPTER IX: Iranian and Turanian nations in Achaemenid Iran
CHAPTER X: Iranian and Turanian Religions in Pre-Islamic Iran
PART FOUR. FALLACIES ABOUT THE SO-CALLED HELLENISTIC PERIOD, ALEXANDER THE GREAT, AND THE SELEUCID & THE PARTHIAN ARSACID TIMES
CHAPTER XI: Alexander the Great as Iranian King of Kings, the fallacy of Hellenism, and the nonexistent Hellenistic Period
CHAPTER XII: Parthian Turan: an Anti-Persian dynasty
CHAPTER XIII: Parthian Turan and the Philhellenism of the Arsacids
PART FIVE. FALLACIES ABOUT SASSANID HISTORY, HISTORY OF RELIGIONS, AND THE HISTORY OF MIGRATIONS
CHAPTER XIV: Arsacid & Sassanid Iran, and the wars against the Mithraic – Christian Roman Empire
CHAPTER XV: Sassanid Iran – Turan, Kartir, Roman Empire, Christianity, Mani and Manichaeism
CHAPTER XVI: Iran – Turan, Manichaeism & Islam during the Migration Period and the Early Caliphates
PART SIX. FALLACIES ABOUT THE EARLY EXPANSION OF ISLAM: THE FAKE ARABIZATION OF ISLAM
CHAPTER XVII: Iran – Turan and the Western, Orientalist distortions about the successful, early expansion of Islam during the 7th – 8th c. CE
CHAPTER XVIII: Western Orientalist falsifications of Islamic History: Identification of Islam with only Hejaz at the times of the Prophet
CHAPTER XIX: The fake, Orientalist Arabization of Islam
CHAPTER XX: The systematic dissociation of Islam from the Ancient Oriental History
PART SEVEN. THE FICTIONAL DIVISION OF ISLAM INTO ‘SUNNI’ AND ‘SHIA’
CHAPTER XXI: The fabrication of the fake divide ‘Sunni Islam vs. Shia Islam’
PART EIGHT. THE DISTORTED TERM ‘PERSIANATE’
CHAPTER XXII: The fake Persianization of the Abbasid Caliphate
PART NINE. FALLACIES ABOUT THE GOLDEN ERA OF THE ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION
CHAPTER XXIII: From Ferdowsi to the Seljuk Turks, Nizam al Mulk, Nizami Ganjavi, Jalal ad-Din Rumi and Haji Bektash
PART TEN. FALLACIES ABOUT THE TIMES OF TURANIAN (MONGOLIAN) SUPREMACY IN TERMS OF SCIENCES, ARTS, LETTERS, SPIRITUALITY AND IMPERIAL UNIVERSALISM
CHAPTER XXIV: From Genghis Khan, Nasir al-Din al Tusi and Hulagu to Timur
CHAPTER XXV: Timur (Tamerlane) as a Turanian Muslim descendant of the Great Hero Manuchehr, his exploits and triumphs, and the slow rise of the Turanian Safavid Order
CHAPTER XXVI: the Timurid Era as Peak of the Islamic Civilization, Shah Rukh, and Ulugh Beg, the Astronomer Emperor
PART ELEVEN. HOW AND WHY THE OTTOMANS, THE SAFAVIDS AND THE MUGHALS FAILED
CHAPTER XXVII: Ethnically Turanian Safavids & Culturally Iranian Ottomans: two identical empires that mirrored one another
CHAPTER XXVIII: Spirituality, Religion & Theology: the fallacy of the Safavid conversion of Iran to ‘Shia Islam’
CHAPTER XXIX: Selim I, Ismail I, and Babur
CHAPTER XXX: The Battle of Chaldiran (1514), and how it predestined the Fall of the Islamic World
CHAPTER XXXI: Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals: victims of their sectarianism, tribalism, theology, and wrong evaluation of the colonial West
CHAPTER XXXII: Ottomans, Iranians and Mughals from Nader Shah to Kemal Ataturk
PART TWELVE. CONCLUSION
CHAPTER XXXIII: Turkey and Iran beyond politics and geopolitics: whereto?
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List of the already pre-published chapters of the book
Lines separate chapters that belong to different parts of the book.
CHAPTER XI: Alexander the Great as Iranian King of Kings, the fallacy of Hellenism, and the nonexistent Hellenistic Period
CHAPTER XXV: Timur (Tamerlane) as a Turanian Muslim descendant of the Great Hero Manuchehr, his exploits and triumphs, and the slow rise of the Turanian Safavid Order
Pre-publication of chapter XV of my forthcoming book “Turkey is Iran and Iran is Turkey – 2500 Years of indivisible Turanian – Iranian Civilization distorted and estranged by Anglo-French Orientalists”. Along with Chapter XIV and Chapter XVI, Chapter XV belongs to Part Five {Fallacies about Sassanid History, History of Religions, and the History of Migrations}. The book is made of 12 parts and 33 chapters. Chapters XIV and XVI have already been made known in pre-publication here: https://megalommatiscomments.wordpress.com/2023/02/02/iran-turan-manichaeism-islam-during-the-migration-period-and-the-early-caliphates/ and
The two most ferocious enemies and spiritual masters delivered a merciless attack on one another: Kartir (above) as depicted in the relief of Naqsh-e Rajab, and Mani (below) as portrayed on his personal, rock crystal seal that bears the inscription “Mani, messenger of the messiah”
Long before the rise of the official Roman Christianity in the Roman Empire, the founder of Manichaeism, Mani invented a magnificent and most perplex Cosmogony and Eschatology that consisted also in an alternative dogma to the various Christian theological doctrines that contradicted one another; he postulated two absolutely different hypostases named Jesus, one material and perverse and another luminous and highly soteriological. Eventually, this could be the most formidable Iranian state religion to oppose Roman Christianity at all levels; but Manichaeism was totally opposed to all things Iranian in the first place.
Mani was an Iranian born in 216 CE in Tesifun (Ctesiphon), which was one of the Iranian capitals of the Arsacid and Sassanid times in Central Mesopotamia. Mani’s father was an Elcesaite Jewish Christian from Ecbatana (in Media, today’s Hamadan) and his mother was a Parthian. Following early spiritual revelations and major transcendental experiences that he had when 12 and 24 years old, in which his soul (usually described in Manichaean texts as the ‘spiritual twin’ or ‘syzygos’ in Greek Manichaean texts) called him to preach the true faith of Luminous Jesus, Mani traveled to India and spent some time there avidly studying all of the then known religions, doctrines, dogmas, faiths and esoteric systems of theurgy.
Afterwards, he returned to Iran and, in very young age, wrote a book titled ‘Shabuhragan’ (‘the book of Shapur’ – so the book was dedicated to the Sassanid Iranian Emperor), which became the major holy book of Manichaeism. Mani solemnly presented the mystical and revelatory book personally (242 CE) to Shapur I the Great (240-270 CE), one of the greatest monarchs of all times worldwide. This act was tantamount to divine designation of the Iranian monarch as the World Savior.
———————— Mani, Prophet of Manichaeism —————————
From left to right: Mani, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus; the four major prophets of the Manichaeans
The immaculate birth of Mani: he emerged from the breast of his mother
Mani’s Parents as depicted on a fragment of hanging scroll (decoration with gold and pigments on silk), 14th c. China
10th c. Manichaean Elects depicted on a wall painting from Gaochang (Qocho) near Turfan, Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang)
Uighur Manichaean Elects from a 10th c. wall painting in Qocho, near Turfan, Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang)
Manichaeans expressing adoration for the Tree of Life, which is located in the Realm of Light; drawing from a 10th c. wall painting in the Bezeklik Cave 38 (25 by Albert Grünwedel), near Turfan, Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang)
Mani’s death (hanging from a palm tree in front of the Gundeshapur University) as depicted on a miniature from the ‘Shahnameh Demotte’ (also known as Great Mongol Shahnameh), from Ilkhanid Iran (ca. 1315); today in the Riza Abbasi Museum, Tehran
Mani presenting his painting to Bahram I: from the miniature of a 16th c. manuscript of a text by Ali-Shir Nava’i
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Prophet for his followers, who were the first in World History to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific, Mani (or Mani Hayya in Syriac Aramaic, i.e. Living Mani) was the world’s most multifaceted and multitalented mystic, spiritual preacher, universal visionary, magician, hierophant, erudite scholar, historian of religions, linguist, art theorist, painter, intellectual, thinker, and founder of religion of all times. In spite of his overwhelming rejection by the imperial priesthood of Iranian Mazdeism after Shapur the Great’s death, despite the enduring Christian anti-Manichaean hysteria, and notwithstanding the vertical disapproval of Manichaeism (mainly known as Manawiyah in Arabic – الـمـانـويـة) by Islam, Mani is by all criteria a unique and unsurpassed apostle.
At very young age, Mani was able to select elements from almost all the religions and esoteric systems of his times that existed between India, Central Asia, and the Mediterranean, to reshuffle them, to proclaim Zoroaster, Buddha, and Jesus as earlier prophets, to invent an entirely original Cosmogony, to entwine it with an apocalyptic revelation of the destiny of the Mankind, to add a fully structured eschatological soteriology, and to preach the entire system without the slightest tergiversation or nebulousness, adding to it a sacerdotal hierarchy and enriching / reconfirming it with impressive miracles (levitation, teleportation, faith healing, etc.).
In addition to the above and to the texts that he wrote in Syriac Aramaic and Middle Persian, Mani also invented an independent alphabetic writing system (presently known as the ‘Manichaean writing’); in this regard, it is essential to underscore that the term does not denote religious contents but the new, invented by Mani and based on Aramaic, alphabetic characters. The primary sources of Manichaeism and the Manichaean holy books were written in Syriac Aramaic, Middle Persian, and Manichaean writings. Translations were widely produced in the above writings and also in Parthian, Sogdian, Tocharian, Coptic, Greek, Latin, Old Uyghur, and Chinese.
Shapur I met Mani in-between his numerous battles and victories against the Kushan Empire and various other Asiatic states in the East and the Romans in the West. This was the best documented encounter between an emperor and a prophet in the History of the Mankind, almost 1000 years after Prophet Jonah was summoned by Sargon II, Emperor of Assyria and Emperor of the Universe. Shapur I did not adhere to Mani’s doctrine but evidently facilitated its diffusion.
To the eyes of the King of Iran and Aniran, Mani’s almost all-encompassing dogma could facilitate a unique opportunity to reunify the Achaemenid state’s territories from the plains of Ukraine to Egypt and from Western Anatolia to the Indo-Scythian kingdom’s lands, and further beyond, to the Pamir and the Tian Shan Mountains. Manichaeism could therefore function as the perfect tool of universal unification and the Manichaean Iran could be the melting pot of various Oriental nations, religions, esoteric systems, traditions and cultures, at a moment when west of Iran, the Roman Empire had already become a genuinely Oriental but counterfeit Empire.
Despite the fact that he was a co-ruler with his father (Ardashir I) and he therefore was viewed as a foremost pioneer of the widely supported Zoroastrian restoration, Shapur I was able to understand that his state religion, Mazdeism (a late form of Zoroastrianism that greatly differed from the religion of the Achaemenids), although enthusiastically attractive to his central provinces’ inhabitants, could never garner as many supporters from India, Central Asia, Africa and Europe as Mani’s new but practically more universalistic doctrine was clearly predestined to.
Manichaeism expanded rapidly and tremendously during the reign of Shapur I. As it was expected, there were few Persian adepts; but there were many Aramaeans, Turanians, Sogdians, Egyptians, Cappadocians and other Anatolians, Macedonians and Romans. Turanians across Central Asia and Siberia particularly embraced the new faith, which could prevail worldwide, if Shapur the Great’s successors followed his farseeing attitude. But a formidable Turanian mystic had deliberately seen fit to do otherwise: Kartir (or Kerdyr). Apparently, his will lay elsewhere, and this fact changed World History, averting the Manichaeization of Mankind.
Hormizd I continued his father’s attitude, but ruled only for a year; there are several indications that he was under the influence or the guidance of Mithraic Magi and this may have brought a sudden end to his reign. Hormizd I rose to power under very dark circumstances, even more so because he was his father’s third son. Bahram I, who was Shapur the Great’s firstborn son, sided firmly with the powerful mystic, hierophant, and spiritual theoretician of the imperial Sassanid doctrine Kartir, who seems to have prepared the premature end of Hormizd I’s pro-Mithraic reign.
——————— The Gallery of the Unchallenged Sassanids ———————–
Illustration of a Firuzabad relief depicting Ardashir I’s victory over Artaban IV, the last Parthian Arsacid; made by the French Orientalist painter and traveler Eugene Flandin in 1840
The coronation of Ardashir I (224-242 CE); he receives the ring of kingship by Ahura Mazda
The illustrious relief of Shapur I’s victory (Urfa-Urhoy/Edessa of Osrhoene; 260 CE) of the Roman Emperor Valerian, who is depicted as kneeling in a most humiliating manner; Naqsh-e Rustam, the imperial Achaemenid burial site
Broader views
Colossal statue of Shapur I (reign: 240-272) in the Shapur Cave, near Bishapur (7 m high): it was carved from one stalagmite
The famous cameo of Shapur I’s victory over Valerian
Bust of Shapur II (reigned from 309 to 379); one of the longest reigning rulers in history, he was crowned on his mother’s womb.
The coronation of Ardashir II (379-383) as depicted on the relief of Taq-e Bostan Paradise (imperial garden); Ahura Mazda offers him the ring of kingship, whereas Mithra (Mehr) holds the barsom, a sacred object used in rituals.
Peroz I (reign: 457–484) hunting argali
Kavad I (reign: 488–496 and 498–531) hunting rams
Khusraw (Chosroes) I Anushirvan (‘Immortal Soul’; reign: 531–579) hunting
Coptic woolen curtain with representation of Khusraw I fighting Axumite Abyssinian forces in Yemen
Khusraw I
The Iranian ambassador (probably dispatched by Khusraw I) at the court of Yuan of Liang dynasty (梁元帝) in Jingzhou, early 6th c. in later representation
The rebellious son (against Hormizd IV)Khusraw II Parvez (reign: 590 and 591-628) in boar hunting
Picture and design from the ceiling of Ajanta Cave 1 with the representation of the Iranian ambassador (apparently dispatched by Khusraw II Parviz) at the court of the Dravidian king Pulakesin II (610–642) of Vatapi (the Badami Chalukya kingdom)
Coin of the last great Sassanid Emperor Khusraw II Parviz
This is one of the first Umayyad coins: minted in Basra (AH 56 675-6 CE) at the time of the first Umayyad caliph Mu’awiya I, it mentions the local governor Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad. The similarity with the imperial Iranian Sassanid coins, particularly those of Khusraw II Parviz, demonstrates the viciously anti-Islamic nature and character of all those who opposed Ali ibn Abi Taleb as the first caliph of the Islamic state, and ended up with the son of Prophet Muhammad’s worst enemy (Abu Sufyan) founding the Umayyad Caliphate in Damascus (i.e. far from Medina) and declaring himself as the “Khusraw of the Arabs”.
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With the rise of Bahram I, every sense of tolerance disappeared from the Sassanid Empire once for all. Kartir’s influence and prevalence in imperial doctrinal matters and in their implementation took almost the form of a terror regime, also involving incessant pogroms of any other faith beyond Mazdeism, which was a form of late Zoroastrianism that was then thought to be the ‘genuine return to Achaemenid Zoroastrian orthodoxy’. Kartir contributed greatly to Mazdeism, but he was not the sole contributor; on the contrary, he was the only to conceptualize and contextualize an imperial doctrine of cosmological dimensions, heroic moral standards, and fully exuberant human commitment. For the Turanian founder and standard-bearer of Sassanidism, men live only to be heroes, and it cannot be otherwise.
In an effort to reinstate the importance of Ancient Iran’s foremost religious center Adhur Gushnasp (where the original copy of the Avesta was kept and the original Fire was always burning), all Sassanid emperors, after being crowned in Tesifun (Ctesiphon), had to walk on foot the enormous distance (ca. 600 km) between their Mesopotamian imperial capital and their religious capital in the northern part of Zagros mountains (located at an elevation of ca. 3000 m, near today’s Takab, in NW Iran); this was something that neither the Achaemenids nor the Arsacids had done.
However, Kartir (in several texts, his name is spelled as Kerdyr) elaborated a state religious system of excessive veneration of the Iranian past with uniquely stressed references to ancestral heroism; Zoroastrian spirituality, Achaemenid metaphysics, and Arsacid ethics evaporated within Kartir’s religious invention in which only heroic deeds and ferocious battles were viewed as the designated way for Iranians to reach their ancestors’ universal apotheosis. Kartir’s imperial world conceptualization, vision, doctrine, and historical role generated a very divisive, sectarian environment across Iran; this situation has indeed some parallels with the Christological disputes (Docetism, Arianism, Monophysitism/Miaphysitism, Nestorianism, etc.) within the Roman Empire.
Kartir’s system, i.e. Imperial Mazdeism (or Sassanidism), demanded the imperative persecution of Mithraists, Christians, Gnostics, Manichaeans, Buddhists, and all the rest. The well-known Christian persecutions in the Roman Empire pale indeed with the destiny that Christians met in Sassanid Iran after the rise of Bahram I and the prevalence of Kartir. It was then that Mani, who was arrested when entering the Iranian city-university Gundeshapur, was imprisoned and later killed, eventually crucified. In this regard, I have to add that there have been several parallels -in historical, literary and theological sources- between Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem and Mani’s entry to Gundeshapur. However, not all the authoritative historical sources make state of Mani’s crucifixion.
Gundeshapur was the pre-Islamic world’s largest, richest and most advanced educational institution, library, museum, translation and scientific research center. Gundeshapur (lit. ‘the military city of Shapur’; گندیشاپور) was known in Syriac Aramaic as Beth Lapat, and it was located not far from Susa, east of Tigris river (few km south-east of today’s Dezful in SW Iran). The city-university was one of the few Iranian imperial centers and cities that were not destroyed during the Islamic invasion, and later most of its wealth and the academics were transferred to Abbasid Baghdad (750 CE) in order to set up the Islamic city-university Bayt al Hikmah (House of Wisdom).
Kartir’s ‘white terror’ and ‘purification pogrom’ shed rivers of blood and caused enormous migration movements among the Sassanid Empire’s minorities; Christians started leaving through Syria, Arabia and Yemen to India (like the ancestors of present day Malabar: the Malankara Nasrani or St Thomas Christians) or to Central Asiatic territories that were out of the Sassanid control. The Manichaeans spread worldwide; others moved to the Roman Empire, various groups settled in Caucasus, and larger numbers escaped in Central Asia, India and China. In a way, the diffusion of Nestorian Christianity and the spread of Manichaeism among the Turanians in Central Asia and Siberia are due to Kartir’s pogroms. The terrible persecution did not last only during Kartir’s lifetime; it was repeatedly carried out every now and then until the collapse (636-651 CE) of the Sassanid Empire.
Among Turanians and Muslims, but also within the context of Parsism, Kartir underwent almost a real process of damnatio memoriae; it is impressive that Tabari, Islamic times’ greatest historian, did not mention him at all, although he described religious persecution during the Sassanid era. Perhaps the reason for this compact silence about Kartir in Islamic sources, which ends only with Ibn al Nadim and his famous Kitab al-Fihrist, is due to two inscriptions of Kartir: one on a relief from Naqsh-e Rustam and the other from the Kaaba-e Zardosht (Zoroaster’s Kaaba), a sacred building in Naqsh-e Rustam.
— The major Sassanid high places of spirituality and sacred Imperial rule —
The only standing in its entirety building of the Sassanid times, Kaaba-e Zardosht, is located at Naqsh-e Rustam, in front of the tombs of the Achaemenid emperors that are hewn in the rock (few kilometers northwest of Parsa/Persepolis).
Istakhr: the few remains of the grandiose Sassanid capital which was located not far from Parsa (Persepolis), the ancient Achaemenid capital, in Fars
Istakhr
Adhur Gushnasp – Praaspa – Takht-e Suleyman (the ‘throne of Solomon’ as per the Islamic traditions): the sublime religious capital of Zoroastrian Orthodoxy was located in the northern part of the Zagros Mountains; the Sassanid emperors were walking from Tesifun (Ctesiphon) in Central Mesopotamia to reach the shrine where the only copy of the Avesta was guarded.
Takht-e Suleyman is located near Takab, at an elevation of 3000 m
Zendan-e Suleyman (‘the prison of Solomon’) is an ateshgah (fire temple), close to the Sacred Lake and the enclosure of Takht-e Suleyman.
Tesifun (Ctesiphon), in today’s Central Iraq (25 km south of Baghdad): Taq-i Kasra is the major remaining monument from the second Sassanid capital, which was the world’s most populous city during the period 550-630 CE.
Taq-i Kasra (طاق كسرى; also known as Ayevan-e Kesra/ایوان خسرو; Iwan/Arch of Khusraw)
Taq-e Bostan (5 km from Kermanshah): the Sassanid Paradise (imperial garden, which was established after the axioms of the imperial doctrine and the prescriptions of the Zoroastrian cosmological conceptualization), left an irrevocable impact on Iranians, before and after Islam. The Sassanid arches, reliefs and inscriptions are the major monuments around the Sacred Lake, but Islamic times’ Iranian-Turanian dynasties left also their input.
Taq-e Bostan
Shushtar, near Susa: the remains of an impressive hydraulic system established during the Sassanid era
The Mithraic temples at Bishapur, near Kazerun, in the southernmost confines of Zagros
The Sassanid walls and fortifications at Derbent (Eastern Caucasus), in today’s Russia
Near Zabol and the tri-border area (between Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan), Kuh-i Khwajah (کوه خواجه) is a major Iranian site in front of the Sacred Lake Harun.
Kuh-i Khwajah (Mount Khajeh)
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In these inscriptions, Kartir makes state of his miraculous ascent to the heaven, a spiritual event later reproduced within Arda Wiraz Namag, a Sassanid times’ sacred book of Mazdeism, this time about the pious mystic Arda Wiraz. The issue of divine ascent to the heaven (known in Arabic as Isra and Mi’raj) was narrated later within the Quran about Prophet Muhammad (in chapter 17, Al Isra).
It is however interesting that Kartir’s (or Kerdyr’s) name has evident Turanian mythological meaning, but a very negative one (Ker). And in the famous relief of Naqsh-e Rajab, Kartir is depicted with his right hand making the well-known but ages-old sign of Bozkurtlar (‘Gray Wolves’).
Kartir’s inscription on the Kaaba-e Zardosht
Kartir depicted on the Naqsh-e Rajab relief; he apparently makes the very well known sign of the Bozkurtlar with his right hand.
The early diffusion of Manichaeism in Alexandria, NW Africa, and Europe makes it clear that, if Mani’s religion had even minimal support, let alone sponsorship, from the Sassanid state, it would supersede all other religions, faiths and esoteric systems across the Roman Empire. Tolerance toward Manichaeism ended in Sassanid Iran in 271 CE. And yet, the diffusion of the Manichaean faith across the Roman Empire was such that in 296 CE the Roman Emperor Diocletian had to issue a decree, ordering the slaughter of all Manicheans and the destruction of their books.
In the last three-four decades of the 3rd c., a great number of Aramaeans, Anatolians, Egyptians, Berbers of Northern and Northwestern Africa, Macedonians and Romans were Manichaean. As per the Roman Emperor’s description, the Roman Empire was shaken from its foundations. On 31st March 302, the leading Manicheans of Alexandria were burnt alive. During the Christianization of the Roman Empire, Manichaeism continued spreading from North Africa to Iberian Peninsula, Gaul and throughout Europe.
Many Manichaean ‘elects’ (: monks) existed already in Rome. And Fathers of the Christian Church were Manichaean for some years, like St. Augustine of Hippo. Manichaeism was a well-organized church with bishops, monks and sacerdotal hierarchy; several Christian Roman Emperors, like Theodosius I (379 – 395 CE) had to issue decrees and undertake campaigns to prevent Manichaeism from supplanting Christianity. However, the extent of Manichaean impact on Christian theology is another, totally different topic, which is vast and tenable.
This shows that, speaking about ‘one more Iranian religion’ spread across the ‘West’, namely the Balkans, Italy, and other parts of Western Europe, an unbiased scholar refers to Manichaeism, which -in addition to Mithraism- left an everlasting impact on Western Europe. In fact, during the so-called ‘Medieval times’ (which should be properly named ‘Christian and Islamic times’) in Central, Western and Southern Europe, the official religion (Christianity) and its true challenge and religious opposition (Manichaeism) were both of Oriental origin, nature and character. This undeniable fact highlights the Oriental impact on European civilization, thus rendering Europe an annex of Asia. In fact, Manichaeism determined European History and Civilization more than any indigenous religion or philosophy. It is true that for a moment, Manichaeism seemed to be extinct in the Western Roman Empire (around the 5th c.) and in the Eastern Roman Empire (during the 6th c.). However, it resurfaced soon afterwards.
The expansion of the Sassanid Empire of Iran
Eastern Roman Empire (395-1453), Sassanid Empire of Iran (224-651), and the Rashtra Empire of the Gupta dynasty (ca. 270-550)
General reading and bibliography can be found here:
Sassanid silk twill textile with the representation of the holy bird Simurgh whose name means “thirty birds”; Simurgh was the emblem of the Sassanid Empire of Iran. The sacredness of Simurgh survived during Islamic times.
Sassanid silver plate with representation of the holy bird Simurgh
Silver plate showing lance combat
Silver cup with a hunting Shah
Aramaean Christian cornelian gem of the Sassanid times with representation of the Biblical theme ‘the Sacrifice of Abraham’
Head of Sassanid scepter
Relief with a high ranking Sassanid official
Wall paintings from Kuh-i Khwajah
Relief over the Arch of Taq-e Bostan with angelic divinities
Pre-publication of chapter XIV of my forthcoming book “Turkey is Iran and Iran is Turkey – 2500 Years of indivisible Turanian – Iranian Civilization distorted and estranged by Anglo-French Orientalists”. Along with Chapter XV and Chapter XVI, Chapter XIV belongs to Part Five {Fallacies about Sassanid History, History of Religions, and the History of Migrations}. The book is made of 12 parts and 33 chapters. Chapter XVI has already been made known in pre-publication here: https://megalommatiscomments.wordpress.com/2023/02/02/iran-turan-manichaeism-islam-during-the-migration-period-and-the-early-caliphates/
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Nisa, Turkmenistan: the original Parthian Arsacid capital
Nisa, the Parthian Fortress
To the Anti-Mithraic nature of the Arsacid rule and to the philhellenism of the Parthians are due the main reasons for all the Iranian-Roman wars (54 BCE – 628 CE) that took place under either the Arsacid or the Sassanid dynasty, before and after the Christianization of the Roman Empire. For those who accepted Alexander the Great as an Iranian king of kings (after the example of Cyrus the Great) on the basis of his purely Oriental claims and his genuinely Iranian deeds, the fact that a remarkable Mithraic penetration took place across the territories of various states of Epigones was unacceptable. This fact has always been deliberately obscured by the colonial Orientalist forgers.
It is however easy to observe that no war took place between the Parthians and the Romans prior to the Mithraic prevalence in Pontus, Commagene, Cappadocia, Cilicia, Western Anatolia, and the Balkans at a time the Romans were gradually expanding in the East. The Parthians viewed the Romans as a successor to the Epigones and had rather good relations with the Anti-Mithraic Romans.
The main reason for the Parthian interference in the regions of Caucasus, Armenia, Anatolia, North Mesopotamia and Syria was the rise of Mithraism in those lands. In Armenia, more specifically, the problems started when a Parthian Arsacid offspring, Vonones I, took power there (12-18 CE), after being overthrown as pro-Mithraic in Parthia where he had ruled for four years only. Of course, it is not a coincidence that the Parthian noble, who overthrew Vonones I, i.e. Artaban II, was his predecessor’s nephew and originated from the Dahae Turanian tribe. More significantly, he had previously ruled Atropatene, i.e. the most sacrosanct land of the Empire. All the elements of the conflict appear to be religious of nature and character; they seem to testify to a formidable clash between Zendism, i.e. the monotheistic orthodoxy, and the Mithraic polytheistic heresy. About:
Parthian golden necklace, 2nd c CE, Reza Abbasi Museum
Parthian long-necked lute
Parthian funerary objects from Nineveh
Statue of Parthian nobleman from Shami, Khuzestan
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The rise of the Sassanid dynasty (224-651 CE) was not the result of an ethnic clash (Persian vs. Turanian) or a tribal dispute; it was a resolute effort of some Persian Iranians to bring about, at the local level first, the irrevocable termination of the Mithraic subversion. The uniquely totalitarian rule of the Sassanid was successful in eliminating every trace of Mithraic Magi from the empire which, as I already said, was named for the first time Iran (or rather Iranshahr/ Ērānshahr: ’empire of Iranians’).
However, the rise of the Sassanids in Iran (224 CE) was contemporaneous with the rise of Mithra Sol Invictus in Rome; this ominous fact deteriorated the relationship, further discrediting Rome in the eyes of the Iranian Zoroastrian monotheists. Few scholars have observed that Ardashir I overthrew the last Parthian monarch (after the famous battle of Hormozdgan, somewhere in today’s Iranian Khuzestan, on 28 April 224 CE) only two years after the assassination (11 March 222 CE) of the Roman Emperor Elagabalus (or Heliogabalus; official imperial name: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus), who was the son of an Aramaean noble lady and a Roman aristocrat.
Quite revelatory for Rome’s overwhelming Orientalization and emphatic Mithraization is the fact that Elagabalus, before ruling Rome for four years, had been the high priest of the Aramaean sun god in Heliogabalus’ temple in Emessa, i.e. today’s Homs in Syria. This crucial fact was apparently known to the monotheists and their venerable mystics in Iran.
————————— Parthian Arsacid coins and bas-reliefs ———————————–
Coin of Mithridates II of Parthia, Ray mint
Phraates IV (reign c. 38–2 BCE) ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΝ ΑΡΣΑΚΟΥ ΕΥΕΡΓΕΤΟΥ ΕΠΙΦΑΝΟΥΣ ΦΙΛΕΛΛΗΝΟΣ
Mithridates I’s victory depicted on a relief at Hung-e Azhdar (also written as Xong-e Ashdar), Izeh (SW Iran); Mithridates I (195-132 BCE) reigned after 165 BCE.
Behistun relief of Vologases III (reign: 110–147 CE)
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Another critical development that had taken place in Rome few years before Elagabalus became a typically Oriental emperor was the issuance (212 CE) of the Edict of Caracalla, which is rather known as Constitutio Antoniniana; according to this groundbreaking dictate, all free men in the Roman Empire were given full Roman citizenship. This development eliminated every ‘political ideological’ or ‘ethnic identitarian’ theory, belief or pretension.
For important historical nations like the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Aramaeans, the Jews, the Berbers, the Carthaginians, the Macedonians, and the Ionians, the Edict of Caracalla was clearly tantamount to irrevocable ‘act of death’: it definitely meant complete voluntary renunciation of one nation’s own imperial or political concept (and practice) of governance and explicit abnegation of own rule, royal or political tradition, and cultural-ethnic identity. By accepting (as they all did without the slightest opposition) the Edict of Caracalla, the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Jews, the Macedonians and all the rest accepted that they were merely Egyptian-speaking, Phoenician-speaking, and Berber-speaking Romans (and so on for the rest).
The concept of the Oriental Universal Empire was thus imposed one century before the Christianization of the Roman Empire. One must however add that this occurred due to devious machinations and administrative acts and not in proper terms of spiritual evocation and genuine, solemn, imperial inauguration; it was very lowly and evidently unholy.
However, Rome’s Mithraization was indeed a counterfeit Iranization. This fact has been systematically concealed by modern historians and historians of religion. But in this manner, to the eyes of the Iranian monotheists, Rome became -and for very good reasons- the abode of Ahriman (: Satan) as per the viewpoint and the criteria of the Iranian Zoroastrian monotheists. Why this is so we can understand, if we truly pay attention to what happened in Rome during the 3rd c. CE.
The blasphemous apotheosis of the Roman emperors started being related to an evident identification with Sol Invictus, and in 220 CE Elagabalus replaced Jupiter with god Elagabalus who was conceived as Sol Invictus – Mithra. The equation of a human with a god had always been an evil monstrosity for Iranian Zoroastrian monotheists. Not one emperor could ever be accepted as ‘god’ in Iran, and actually this never happened. The Achaemenids and later Alexander ruled the Iranian province of Egypt as Horus (: the Living Concept of the Messiah) to be there considered as pharaohs, but this was a phenomenon apart that did not concern the main provinces of the Empire.
This was not the beginning of Mithraic prevalence in Rome, but it was the first time a Roman emperor was officially believed to be Mithras Incarnate. This practice was repeatedly attested in almost all the other Roman emperors, who were venerated as Sol Invictus (Undefeatable Sun) and accordingly were portrayed with radiant crowns.
In fact, the Mithraization of the Roman religion, empire, cultural and imperial life was a compact development that did not involve only the erection of hundreds of Mithraea across the vast country but also the systematic and overwhelming spiritual, religious, mythological, theological transformation of several (Aramaean, Anatolian, Phoenician, Caucasian, Berber, Roman, Macedonian, Ionian, Celtic and many other European) divinities into mere aspects of Mithra.
This abominable situation was tantamount to unprecedented and foremost Ahrimanization (: Satanization) of the Western confines of the Earth; consequently, it had to be dealt with and rectified or annulled. This was the universal raison d’être of the Sassanid emperors of Iran; they had to eliminate the evilness of those who had already proved to be untrustworthy successors of Alexander the Great and impotent custodians of his legacy, i.e. an illustrious effort of readjustment of Achaemenid Iran.
The Sassanid armies repeatedly defeated many Roman armies; they even captured Roman emperors. Unfortunately, this was not enough, as it could not change much the evil religious practices in Rome. Despite Valerian’s disastrous defeat at Urhoy (Edessa of Osrhoene; today’s Urfa in Southeastern Turkey), the subsequent (260 CE) invasion of Cappadocia by Shapur I (Ardashir I’s son; 240-270 CE), and the stunning deportation of 400000 Cappadocians in Iran, Aurelian (270-275) was proclaimed Sol Invictus as official Roman god on 25th December 274 CE, thus further advancing the process of Orientalization, Mithraization and counterfeit Iranization of the Roman Empire. Little mattered to the Iranians the fact that few faithful and benevolent praetorian guardians murdered the infamous emperor.
Rome had progressively become ‘Aniran’, i.e. the Non-Iran – an evil and chaotic periphery under the full control of Ahriman. To the Sassanid monotheistic emperors and priests, this development meant that, in 275 CE, Rome was indeed a counterfeit Iran the existence of which the Sassanid kings of kings could not accept anymore.
The Mithraization of the Roman Empire was highly accentuated in the reign of the most Mithraic Roman Emperor Constantine I (306-337 CE). Noticeably, in the Arch of Constantine, several statues of Sol Invictus are depicted; Constantine I was portrayed as Sol Invictus Mithra on coins dating in the period 315-325, and as late as March 7th 321 CE, he proclaimed the Day of Mithra, Dies Solis, as the official Roman day of rest. The only development left to take place beyond that point was the association of the forged narratives about the historical Jewish rabbi Jesus with the themes of the mythical-mystical evangelization of the Anti-Iranian, Roman Mithra as End Times’ Savior. This progressive amalgamation, after being unconditionally wrapped in voluminous theological indoctrination, became known as the Official Roman Christianity, as the parallel, but fundamentally different, Hebrew concept of Messiah was entirely absorbed, irrevocably disassembled, and egregiously distorted within the Mithraic Roman specter named ‘Jesus – Christ’.
General reading and bibliography can be found here:
—— ARAMAEAN CARAVAN SITES UNDER PARTHIAN ARSACID INFLUENCE ———
Dura Europos
Temple of Bel
Dura Europos, Temple of Bel relief: Bel (far right), Baalshamin (far left) and the Aramaean gods Iarhibol & Aglibol in-between
Dura Europos, Temple of Bel wall painting: Julius Terentius performing a sacrifice
Dura Europos, Temple of Bel wall painting: Conon offers a sacrifice
Detail from the previous wall painting
Hatra
Hatra military commander with a votive statuette (offering)
Hatra: the Mithraic version of Nergal, an Ancient Assyrian mythological-cosmological concept that the Aramaean polytheists personified as the god of the Nether World.
Pre-publication of chapter XXIV of my forthcoming book “Turkey is Iran and Iran is Turkey – 2500 Years of indivisible Turanian – Iranian Civilization distorted and estranged by Anglo-French Orientalists”; chapter XXIV constitutes the Part Ten {Fallacies about the Times of Turanian (Mongolian) Supremacy in terms of Sciences, Arts, Letters, Spirituality and Imperial Universalism}. The book is made of 12 parts and 33 chapters.
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The Enthronement of Genghis Khan (1206); miniature of a 15th c. manuscript of the World History, known as Jami’ al-tawarikh (‘Compendium of Histories’), of Rashid al-Din Hamadani
Few years before Jalal ad-Din Rumi and Haji Bektash were born, another distinct erudite Muslim scholar, pioneering scientist and astronomer, statesman and diplomat of universalistic aspirations was born: Nasir al-Din al Tusi (1201-1274). This great man’s life was a ceaseless demonstration of the scholarly-intellectual courage to view ‘borders’ as nonexistent, ‘religions’ as immaterial, ‘states’ as worthless, and ‘institutions’ as useless. He was the epitome of human genius in every sense.
Nasir al-Din al Tusi was not the elect of spiritual hierarchies like Muḥyiddin ibn Arabi; he did not have the Love for God that we attest across the poems of Rumi, but he replaced it with the love for God’s celestial creatures that he studied incessantly and in a worldwide pioneering manner. Nasir al-Din al Tusi was not a man of spiritual potency like Shams-e Tabrizi, and in contrast to Haji Bektash, he did not have great interest to actively participate in mystical orders, which however he had the chance to frequent for long, study in-depth, and comprehend their function and limits. He did not envision atemporal heroic figures and he did not conceive apocalyptic symbolisms, as he was very different from Ferdowsi and Nizami Ganjavi, but he managed to be highly appreciated and demanded by his times’ most formidable warriors, heroic conquerors, and secretive rulers. And contrarily with Nizam al-Mulk, who specified the rules of perfect governance, Nasir al-Din al Tusi used these rules to make kings’ and emperors’ governance useful to him and beneficial to mankind.
Above all, Nasir al-Din al Tusi was the Muslim, who personally controlled the various stages of the Mongol invasion and -most demanded- destruction of Baghdad (1258). Through his personal involvement as mediator or envoy, he helped the Buddhist Mongol emperor Hulagu (1218-1265) carry out the total demolition of the Abbasid capital. This historical event was not a ‘major historical development’ as many are inclined to believe today, because for many hundreds of years, Baghdad had lost its earlier importance as center of the world’s most immense and most formidable empire; in the middle of the 13 th c., the greatest capital of the Islamic world did not anymore have its hitherto unsurpassed significance as the world-center for letters, sciences, academic life, exploration, manuscript collection and translation, archivism, and arts. Baghdad was then only the shadow of the former Abbasid glory and splendor.
It has however to be underscored that the above description of the one-time Abbasid opulence was not the only way Muslims across the Islamic world viewed Baghdad at the time; the fallen Abbasid capital was also viewed as the palace of cruel rulers and unjust caliphs who imprisoned, poisoned and massacred several descendants of Prophet Muhammad and Ali, as the headquarters of deceitful potentates who misinterpreted Islam only to adjust it to their material needs and interests, and as the location of impotent, decayed ‘caliphs’ who for no less than ca. 350-400 years were more powerless than a single soldier and depended therefore on the mercy of the various secessionist emirs, sultans and shahs, who held the real imperial power in the regions of their states. In other words, for most of the then Muslims, Baghdad was not anymore a ‘glory’ but a disgusting ‘shame’.
Furthermore, long before the 13th c., numerous centers of Islamic spirituality, mysticism, letters, sciences, arts, philosophy and theology had already been established between the Atlantic Ocean and China and from the steppes of Siberia to the coast of today’s Tanzania and Mozambique. The annihilation of Baghdad’s library (with an estimate of about a million manuscripts) would not be and actually was not a detrimental and calamitous fact, as the mendacious modern Western historians and Orientalists try to depict. Spiritual, intellectual, academic, scientific, philosophical, and artistic life and creativity would continue and did indeed continue elsewhere.
In addition, very few contemporaneous Muslims ‘cried’ for the fall of the Abbasid capital; one of them was the already famous Saadi Shirazi (1210-1291), one of Iran’s greatest poets who exerted enormous impact on Iranians and Turanians. But at the time, this side was rather an insignificant minority.
Last, one must also point out that this event was not a religious war, and it was not then viewed as such, because there were many Muslims on the side of Hulagu, and of his official envoy Nasir al-Din al Tusi. They viewed the destruction of Baghdad as a God-sent present.
Colonial Orientalists shed interminable crocodile tears for the loss of what was indeed the greatest accumulation of manuscripts, written sources, and academic – intellectual heritage throughout the History of Mankind before modern times. The hypocritical Western academic attitude constitutes only a deceitful attempt and a divisive racist policy intended to generate frictions among Muslims and to turn fake entities, like the so-called ‘Arab Sunnis’ and the ‘Shia Iranians’, against one another. At the same time, the fallacious representation of this minor historical event helps produce Anti-Turanian, Anti-Turkish, Anti-Mongolian, and Anti-Buddhist hatred and rancor among uneducated, ignorant and idiotic Muslims.
In fact, any material record, any accumulation of written documentation, any library and archival institution has no value per se; humans and human life give its value to everything material. The treasures of 13th c. Baghdad’s libraries were to great extent copied and diffused from Andalusia to China. In any case, Baghdad would never again regain its 8th–9th c. position as the leading center of world’s knowledge, wisdom, science and spirituality; 500 years after its foundation, the Abbasid capital resembled, truly speaking, a mortuary.
As far as today’s ignorant and uneducated Muslims are concerned, it is extremely nonsensical and unprecedentedly shameful to express indignation for Baghdad’s destruction at the hands of Hulagu. What would actually their 18th, 19th and 20th c. ancestors have done, had Hulagu (or anybody else) not destroyed Baghdad? Judging from modern Muslims’ disgustingly materialistic approach to life and indifference for their own cultural heritage, they would have stupidly and inanely sold all these hundreds of thousands of supposedly remaining manuscripts to European and North American explorers, antiquaries, agents, diplomats, Orientalists, merchants and travelers, as they already did with what was left in other places. So, perhaps one can conclude that Hulagu’s only mistake was that he did not exterminate the entire population of the wider region to adequately purify the land, and thus prevent its putrefaction at a later age.
Nasir al-Din al Tusi was born in Tus to a theologian and jurist father; he studied in Neyshapur, Hamadan, Mosul and Baghdad. He encountered Attar of Neyshapur and Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi, who was a student of Muḥyiddin ibn Arabi and a friend of Jalal ad-Din Rumi. Although he was familiar with spiritual exercises, mystical doctrines, and philosophy, Nasir al-Din al Tusi had a greater interest for medicine, mathematics, natural sciences, and astronomy. In rather young age, he was already viewed as an exemplary young scientist and scholar, and he was noticed by many known and surreptitious people.
Among the latter, the Isma’ili governor of the city Sartakht in Quhestan (: i.e. ‘mountainous land’: the southeastern part of Khorasan) invited him (1233) to work on several projects. Writing about teaching ethics to children and conversing with a high dignitary of the Isma’ili (the so-called ‘Sevener Shia’) administration, which also controlled several cities and provinces (except their headquarters, which constituted a real enclave inside the caliphate), Nasir al-Din al Tusi became familiar with the practices of governance held by mystical orders; he emphatically disliked this.
Nasir al din al Tusi with his associates and students, working in the then world’s most important observatory at Maragheh, East Azerbaijan-Iran; miniature of manuscript dating back to 1562, 300 years after the erection of the Maragheh Observatory
Two pages from a manuscript of Nasir al Din al Tusi’s ‘Treatise on the Astrolabe’ that dates back to 1505 (found in Isfahan).
Two pages from Nasir al Din al Tusi’s ‘Compendium of treatises on Astronomy and Mathematics’ from a manuscript dating back to 1279
Kitab tahrir al-usul li-Uqlidis (Commentary on Euclid’s Elements); each page with 19 lines of Maghribi script within double rules (with numerous diagrams); from: Fes (Alawi Morocco), al-Matba’ah al-‘Amirah, Khidmat al-‘Arabi al-Azraq (colophon with name of Sultan Muley Hassan), [1 Nov. 1876 CE =] 13 Shawwal 1293 H.
The Tusi couple from Vatican Arabic manuscript 319
Kitab Tahrir Usul li’Uqlidis (Elementorum Geometricorum) recension by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, first printed edition by the Medici Press (Typographia Medicea), Rome, 1594
Modern reconstruction: the dome of the Maragheh observatory
Central Tower of the Maragheh Observatory
Contemplation and Action: the Spiritual Autobiography of a Muslim Scholar – Nasir al-Din Tusi by Seyyed Jalal Hosseini Badakhchani
Nasir al Din al Tusi’s Maragheh Observatory and Library with 400000 manuscripts
Al Maragheh
Tashkent manuscript of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi’s treatise ‘Collection of Arithmetic’ (Jami’ al-hisab bi-‘l-Takht wa-‘l-turab), folio 120
However, he also had the experience of staying long in Alamut, the Isma’ili order’s headquarters which were located in an almost inaccessible mountainous region in Alborz, namely the range that separates the Caspian Sea from the Iranian plateau. There, Nasir al-Din al Tusi’s fame as a scientist and philosopher grew among the local Isma’ilis tremendously, and he became widely known across the Islamic world. He thus lived no less than 20 years in Alamut, being cut off from the rest of the world, but surrounded by dozens of thousands (if not more) of manuscripts.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-institutional-economics/article/nasir-addin-tusi-on-social-cooperation-and-the-division-of-labor-fragment-from-the-nasirean-ethics/866D4BA0EA8C7BA5493767E465113B63 This was a period in which the entire world was transformed into a Turanian Eurasiatic Empire. The achievement was unprecedented, but the method was known. Simply the family of Temüjin Borjigin (later known as Genghis Khan; 1162-1227) eclipsed by far the family of Seljuk. There is a slight but noticeable difference in the attitude of both families’ patriarch; whereas Seljuk fled straightforwardly to another region, Temüjin fought numerous battles before prevailing among first the Mongols and later the various Eastern Turanian (: Mongolian) nations. Whereas Temüjin was elected khan of the Mongols in 1186 (when he was 24 years old), it took him 20 years of incessant battles to prevail among all the surrounding Turanian nations, i.e. the Naimans, the Merkits, the Tatars, the Khamag Mongols, and the Keraites. Only in 1206 Temüjin became the undisputed and sole ruler of all the Eastern Turanian nations, thus controlling a sizeable nomadic empire.
Genghis Khan: from a 14th c. Yuan era Chinese album originally painted in 1278
Börte & Genghis Khan from a 16th c. manuscript: along with Hoelun Ujin, the emperor’s mother, she was the person that impacted the conqueror most.
However, long before Temüjin’s spectacular successes in the South (China) and the West (Central Asia, Western Siberia, Iran, Caucasus and Eastern Europe) took place (which occurred only after he was 50 years old), critical developments had happened to his family, and they determined the future of his offspring and the destiny of his immense empire. At a certain moment, during Temüjin’s early combats, his principal wife Börte (who was by then already pregnant) was taken captive by Temüjin’s contenders for some months. This event decisively compromised the way she was viewed afterwards; when she was liberated only few months later, she gave birth to Temüjin’s son, Jochi (1182-1227).
These circumstances did indeed cast a doubt about Jochi’s real father. Although Temüjin fully and unreservedly recognized Jochi as his first son, the story reached the ears of his other three sons (from Börte) at a later moment; this development irrevocably compromised Jochi’s chances to succession. Among Temüjin’s next sons, i.e. Chagatai (1183–1242), Ögedei (1186–1241), and Tolui (1191–1232), Chagatai announced his intention never to accept Jochi as Temüjin’s succession; to properly address the situation, Temüjin appointed Ögedei, his third son, as successor to both, remove doubts and castigate disloyalty. Jochi died few months before his father, but the aforementioned situation predetermined the future of the four brethren’s sons, and actually caused several conflicts among them and even among the younger generation, i.e. Temüjin’s grandchildren.
Basic source of information for the early stages of the Mongolian Turanian Empire is the ‘Secret History of the Mongols’; page from a 1908 Chinese edition (Mongolian text in Chinese transcription, plus a small glossary next to each column); the imperial historiographical source was written in Mongolian little time after the death of the great conqueror by an anonymous author as per the traditional imperial criteria. All surviving texts are transcriptions in Chinese characters and translations that date back to the 14th c. when the early Ming dynasty administrators wanted to offer an imperial narrative about the previous dynasty. A modern English translation of the Secret History of the Mongols can be found here: https://jigjids.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/the_secret_history_of_the_mongols_the_life_and_times_of_chinggis_khan1.pdf
‘Secret History of the Mongols’: the oldest copy preserved in Ulaanbaatar, capital of Mongolia
Mausoleum of Genghis Khan in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China (not a personal tomb)
Temüjin was a staunch monotheist, and he observed the traditional rites of his religion, Tengrism. The early Turanian religion is a form of monotheism based on transcendental experience, spiritual exercises, utmost morality, military discipline, and universal perception of the world. Sticking always to meritocracy and combating favoritism, Temüjin was an extroverted man with great interest for the religious and spiritual beliefs of surrounding nations: he was therefore in constant contact with Buddhist monks, Manichaean Elects, Nestorian Christian clergymen, Muslim imams, and Taoist priests, being conversant in their respective faiths and cults. When he was not at the battlefield, Temüjin had also literary interests and to fight illiteracy, he introduced among Mongolians the Uyghur writing system, which had been attested as early as the 5th c. CE in Sogdian characters, being therefore of Aramaic origin.
The great expansion of Temüjin’s empire occurred in the period 1206-1227, when the situation across his realm was already stable, solid and untroubled. Until 1211, Temüjin (Genghis Khan) conquered the nomadic Tangut Empire (‘Western Xia’ dynasty), another Turanian Empire located west of Temüjin’s territory. In the period 1211-1215, invaded the Northern Chinese kingdom (Jin dynasty), sacking Zhongdu (: the old Beijing city, capital of Jin China) in the process; the North Chinese king Xuanzong fled to the South, therefore losing more than half of his territory to Temüjin. In 1218, the ever improving armies of Genghis Khan defeated Qara Kitai, another nomadic Turanian Empire that was located west of the already demised Tangut Empire. This means that for the first time in the History of Eurasia an empire controlled all the lands between Lake Balkhash (in today’s Eastern Kazakhstan) and the coastlands of Northeast Asia, also including the northern half of today’s China. By that time, Temüjin’s empire bordered with the Turanian Empire of Khwarazm (Chorasmia) that stretched from the eastern coastlands of the Caspian Sea to today’s Eastern Kazakhstan and down to the Persian Gulf and Straits of Hormuz.
Central, Southern, Northern and Eastern Asia in the early 13th century
Genghis enters Zhongdu (Beijing) in 1215; miniature from Jami al-tawarikh
The campaigns Genghis Khan in the period 1207-1225
From 1219 to 1223, an incredible thunderstorm hit Western Asia and Eastern Europe. Following the devastating defeat of Khwarazm (1221), Temüjin’s armies invaded the western parts of Central Asia and today’s Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, engaging in successive ferocious battles; in one of them, Chagatai’s firstborn son Mutukan died (in Bamian). During the next two years, Eastern Anatolia, Caucasus, Crimea, today’s Ukraine and today’s Russia’s southern half were conquered by the Turanian armies led by Temüjin’s family members and relatives. The Christian state of Kievan Rus (which is spiritually rather than ethnically related to Modern Russia) collapsed after the defeat in the Kalka River battle.
Jalal al-Din Mangburni (also known as Jalal al-Din Khwarazmshah), the last of Khwarazm, crosses the Indus River trying to escape from the Mongolian forces; from a late 17th century manuscript of Jami al-tawarikh (by Rashid al Din Hamadani)
With the invasion of the multi-religious Turanian Cuman–Kipchak confederacy and following the annexation of the Muslim Turanian Khanate of Volga Bulgaria, the first two sizeable Turanian kingdoms in Europe took an end, after having lasted for more than 400 years. The khanate of Volga Bulgaria had been a Muslim state since 922 (so for more than 300 years before its demise), thus representing a major chapter of Europe’s Islamic past and identity. This highlights the fact that Islam antedates Christianity in Eastern Europe. As a matter of fact, the Volga Bulgarian ruler Almış sent an embassy to Baghdad, asking for religious instructors; in response to his demand, Ibn Fadlan (ca. 880 – ca.960) was dispatched at once to teach Islamic faith, theology and jurisprudence there. About:
Little resistance was attested following the Turanian conquests undertaken by Genghis Khan’s (:Temüjin’s) armies, and this is due to the religious-cultural tolerance that prevailed everywhere after the largest part of Eurasia was invaded and unified in about 20 years. The only significant rebellion took place in Tangut, and it was squelched by Temüjin who died next year.
Ögedei became the 2nd Khagan of the Turanian Mongolian Empire. In the period between 1227 and 1241, he carried out military campaigns across Central Asia, Khorasan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Caucasus (1230), he invaded Korea (1231), and he completed the invasion of China (1230-1234), bringing about the final fall of the Jin dynasty. His armies carried out numerous campaigns in the wider Caucasus region (1232-1240), squelching revolts and conquering remote mountainous spots. During the period 1235-1241, Ögedei’s firstborn son Güyük Khan (1206-1248) and other relatives and generals invaded Eastern, Southeastern and Central Europe; Güyük Khan’s half-brother Kadan, Jochi’s second son Batu (c. 1207–1255) and Mutukan’s son Büri (Chagatai’s grandson) were also present in the invasions, leading armies and engaging in battles and sieges; the former territories of Kievan Rus and today’s Poland, Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and parts of Germany were swept and conquered.
Chagatai outlived his younger brother and 2nd Khagan of the Turanian Mongolian Empire by one year; with Ögedei as Khagan, Chagatai was entrusted with the administration of a vast Central Asiatic territory, which became later known as the Chagatai Khanate and under different forms and dynasties survived until ca. 1700. With capital at Almaligh (close to today’s Chinese – Kazakh border in Eastern Turkestan / Sinkiang), Chagatai favored Tengrism over Islam, causing hostility among his country’s Muslims, whose bulk inhabited the western and southern provinces of the vast state. Quite contrarily, he tolerated Nestorian Christianity, Manichaeism and Buddhism.
After participating in his father’s and older brother’s campaigns, Tolui sacrificed himself to save Ögedei from an illness caused by China’s spirits of Earth and Soft Waters; as per the description available in ‘The Secret History of the Mongols’, the earliest historical record in Mongolian language, Tolui by his own will drank a cursed potion to appease the spirits and heal his brother, therefore dying in the process.
Genghis Khan and Jochi standing in the left
Jochi Mausoleum, Ulytau-Kazakhstan
The funerals of Chagatai Khan
Coronation of Ögedei, from a 14th century’s manuscript of Rashid al-Din Hamadani’s Jami’al Tawarikh
Ögedei portrait from the times of Yuan dynasty 47×59 cm
Tolui
Mongol army captures a city of the Kievan Rus state (16th c. Russian miniature)
Among the generation of Genghis Khan’s grandsons prominent role played the following:
i. Ögedei’s sons Güyük Khan (1206-1248; 3rd Khagan of the Turanian Mongolian Empire for the period 1246-1248), Godan Khan (1206-1251), and Kadan;
ii. Chagatai’s sons Mutukan (died 1221), Baidar (who participated in the European campaign and was present in the election of Güyük Khan in 1246), and Yesü Möngke (Khan of Chagatai Khanate for the period 1246-1252, after and before Mutukan’s son Qara Hülegü, who was twice Khan of Chagatai Khanate: 1242-1246, 1252);
iii. Tolui’s sons were the luckiest in terms of posterity and imperial prevalence. Tolui was the regent of the empire for a certain period. His historically important sons were: Möngke Khan (1209–1259) 4th Khagan of the Turanian Mongolian Empire (1251-1259), Kublai Khan (1215–1294) Emperor of China (1st Emperor of the Yuan dynasty: 1271-1294) and 5th Khagan of the Turanian Mongolian Empire (1260-1294; however his imperial power at this level was only nominal due to the empire’s division), Hulagu Khan (1217–1265) who was tasked by Möngke Khan in 1251 to destroy Western Asia’s remaining Islamic states, and Ariq Böke (1219–1266; known for his Nestorian Christian sympathies) Khagan of the Mongol Empire (a title with only nominal value due to the empire’s division), who clashed with Kublai Khan and finally got imprisoned and then poisoned;
The empire of Möngke Khan
iv. Jochi’s sons Orda Ichen (c. 1206–1251; participant in the invasion of Kievan Rus’ in 1237-1242) Khan of the Golden Horde Eastern Half (White Horde; 1226-1251), Batu (c. 1207–1255) Khan of the Golden Horde Western Half (Blue Horde; 1227-1255), and Berke, Khan of the Golden Horde Western Half (Blue Horde; 1257–1266), who was the first member of the Genghisid family to have become Muslim.
From the above, it can be understood that, despite the consented, appropriate and fair-minded division of Genghis Khan’s empire among his sons and grandsons, several disputes took place, and soon after Güyük Khan’s tenure as the 3rd Khagan, the supreme title shifted to the progeniture of Tolui; nevertheless, the empire was so immense to possibly supervise that Möngke Khan was practically the last to be effective as Khagan of the Turanian Mongolian Empire.
Many depict the great events of the period 1219-1258 as a unique moment in the history of mankind, but in reality, Eurasia had indeed experienced several similar cases before. Where does the difference lie then? This is easy to answer. Contrarily to earlier spectacular invasions, which had repeatedly crisscrossed Eurasia in the past, the Turanian Mongolian invasions of the 13th c. occurred at a time when historiography had already greatly progressed. Numerous nations had developed their own writing systems and great amounts of historical records were scrupulously kept in state archives, involving state annals and correspondence, royal chronographers, etc. In addition, diverse types of ample documentation, such as literary, theological, philosophical and other texts mentioning and commenting historical events, offer a wide-angle view of the facts. That is why these events are incomparably better documented, and this makes an enormous difference.
One has however to observe a major new trait – something that finds early parallels only in the Achaemenid court of Darius I the Great at Parsa (Persepolis). For the first time after the procession of the subject nations’ representatives in the Apadana audience hall of Darius the Great’s palace occurred in the last years of the 6th c. BCE, Western nations’ defeated rulers, subjugated princes, and humiliated diplomats made headway to an Eastern imperial capital to attend a splendid event whereby they were summoned as humble servants of their superior potentates.
This sublime event of worldwide importance was Güyük’s enthronement as the 3rd Khagan of the Turanian Mongolian Empire; it took place on 24th August 1246, at Karakorum, Güyük’s capital. The Seljuk Sultans of Anatolia, the Abbasid caliph, the sultan of Delhi, the shadowy kings of Georgia, Armenia, and Vladimir (a city 200 km east of Moscow), the king of Poland, the pope of Rome, and other marginal Western rulers sent their representatives or attended the spectacular ceremony, i.e. the Great Kurultai (‘tribal assembly’). The scenery reminds us of the famous bas-reliefs of Parsa (Persepolis) where Ionians, Libyans, Egyptians, Sogdians, Indians and others were depicted bearing tribute, present and homage to the Achaemenid King of Kings.
Letter written in Farsi and sent by Güyük Khan’s emissaries to Pope Innocent IV, demanding his submission (1246)
After Güyük Khan’s death, two kurultais were held, but his sons Naqu and Khoja did not make their case strong, and the title of Khagan passed on to Tolui’s sons, and more specifically to Möngke Khan. It is however wrong to call the events ‘Toluid revolution’, because everything occurred in full compliance with the Turanian-Mongolian tribal traditions and moral order; no revolution took place among the Turanian Mongolians; this is a Western colonial invention.
Möngke Khan ruled for eight years (1251-1259) over an area of over 30 million km2 (this is double the size of today’s Russia). The entire territory of today’s China and Vietnam, the northwestern part of today’s India, and other parts of SE Asia were invaded in the 1250s. Progressively, until the end of the 13th c., the Turanian Mongolian Empire reached the size of 37 million km2, being of course significantly decentralized into smaller structures. More than any other person among all his relatives, Möngke Khan had a genuine sense for imperial administration, taxation, systematization, organization and coordination. He definitely had to suppress various rebellions here and there, but he was not cruel and he pursued a rather tolerant approach to all the major religions of his vast empire.
Möngke Khan supported Buddhism, discussed with Christian priests of every denomination, engaged in conversations with Taoists, Manichaeans and Muslims, and although his brother Hulagu destroyed the Nizari Isma’ili enclave at Alamut and demolished Baghdad (thus terminating the Abbasid Caliphate), they both (Möngke and Hulagu) offered tax exemption to the Najaf Muslim community that had opposed for many long centuries the Abbasid cruelty and corruption. About:
As early as 1251, Hulagu was entrusted (by Möngke) with the elimination of four Islamic states: the Assassins’ domain (the Nizari Isma’ili enclave), the Abbasid Caliphate, the Ayyubid state of Damascus, and the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt. Although it looks like a Buddhist’s attempt to destroy the most important of the remaining Islamic states, the demolition of the Isma’ili enclave (the state of those who are today falsely called ‘Sevener Shia’) really saved the Islamic world from an evil cancerous tumor and at the same time catapulted Nasir al-Din al-Tusi to supreme position among the top scholars, scientists and intellectuals of the world’s only formidable empire.
Kale-ye Alamut
The 26th Nizari Ismaili Imam Ala al-Din Muhammad (the Elder of the Mountain) in the Travels of Marco Polo
In 1253, Hulagu advanced westwards with no less than 20% of the entire military force of the Turanian Mongolian Empire. He crossed Transoxiana, invaded Khwarazm (Chorasmia) and Khorasan, and reinstated the imperial order. The major problem caused by the existence of the Nizari Isma’ili ‘state’ (i.e. the clandestine organization and the unreachable enclave) was that it did not function as an ordinary, regular state, but as a secretive clandestine organization with members dispersed across vast territories of the Muslim world and with an impregnable mountainous headquarters (Kale-ye Alamut, i.e. the Alamut Castle in Alborz Mountains) from where all the instructions for the members’ subsequent actions, tactics and schemes were dispatched by various camouflaged agents – at the unbeknownst of all the rest. In other words, it was the first time in World History a spiritual order attempted to get involved in the governance of the Muslim world as such. Even worse, this was not undertaken by means of frontal opposition to the caliph, like the rebellions against the Umayyad and the Abbasid caliphs, but in an evidently subversive manner.
Hulagu undertook the systematic elimination of Isma’ili governors of various regions, notably Quhistan (today’s Eastern Iran and Western Afghanistan) and Qumis (Eastern Iran between Gorgan and Dasht-e Kavir), before attacking Alborz Mountains from three different directions and finally demolishing Alamut Castle in December 1256. The events have been detailed in the Tarikh-i Jahangushay (‘The History of The World Conqueror’ /تاریخ جهانگشای), a voluminous masterpiece elaborated in Farsi by Ala al-Din Ata-ullah Juvayni (جوینی علاءالدین عطاءالله), a prominent Iranian historian (1226-1283) whose father had served as minister of Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu, the last ruler of Khwarazm, and of Ögedei Khan. Juvayni (from Joveyn in Khorasan) was also employed as an imperial administrator at Karakorum, and then he followed Hulagu in his campaign, therefore offering unprecedented insight and fascinating descriptions of the various events. Less than 14 months later, Juvayni was next to Hulagu during the siege of Baghdad. Meanwhile, Hulagu founded his new capital at Maragheh, not far from Lake Urumiyeh’s southeastern coasts
The fall of Alamut in miniatures of historical manuscripts
Nasir al-Din al-Tusi’s reputation ran very high at those days; that’s why he was invited to join Hulagu’s camp and become his adviser and diplomat. Hulagu was highly educated and had great consideration for scholars, polymaths, scientists, poets and authors. In total contradiction to nonsensical narratives of the modern uneducated theologians and Islamists, who are idiotic enough to portray Hulagu as an oppressor or a barbarian, the great emperor relied always on erudite academics and actually promoted the scientific research in a most determinant and resolute manner – more than any other ruler of his time. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was then tasked to negotiate with the imam of the Isma’ilis Rukn al-Din Khurshah and to convince him to submit to the imperial authority, save his family, and dissolve his order.
When demolishing Alamut Castle, Hulagu followed Nasir al-Din al-Tusi’s and Juvayni’s advice, and they saved all the astronomical instruments that were found in the vast library, which had earlier functioned under the auspices of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. Armillary spheres, astrolabes, manuscripts with astronomical observations and tables, books, copies of the Quran, and important documents were rescued, whereas the rest – and more in particular any literature related to the heretic faith and the malignant activity of the secretive Isma’ili order – was consumed by the fire. Hulagu indulged every scholarly and intellectual curiosity, and Juvayni narrates how he initially saved the biography of Hassan-i Sabah (1050-1124), the obscure figure credited with the rearrangement of the Isma’ili order and its transformation into an evil, secretive and terrorist organization, but after reading the evilness contained therein, he burnt it by himself!
So great Nasir al-Din al-Tusi’s reputation as astronomer and astrologer was that Hulagu wanted to dispatch him to Karakorum, because Möngke demanded one leading erudite in his capital; Tusi accepted, but finally this journey was spared due to Tusi’s effective negotiation skills and successful astrological advice delivered to Hulagu. Due to Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Hulagu’s army invaded the otherwise believed impregnable Alamut Castle with few casualties; Tusi’s negotiation skills caused a certain defeatism among the ranks of the Isma’ilis, as their peaceful dispersion was promised to be tantamount to survival.
Subsequently, Hulagu consulted Tusi about the then forthcoming assault on Baghdad. This was a serious issue, because among the Turanian Mongolian army soldiers, several rumors were circulating about an eventual extraordinary disaster which would eventually befall them, if they shed the blood of the last caliph who was a descendant of Prophet Muhammad’s uncle (Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib). The rumors would have not been easily accepted, had there not been a time-honored Turanian Mongolian tradition, which prohibited the spilling of royal blood. After observing the stars and finding that the celestial conditions were auspicious, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi assured Hulagu that his victory was certain and that he would replace the corrupt and idiotic caliph on the throne of Baghdad
The Battle of Baghdad (1258)
The siege of Baghdad (Supplément persan 1113, fol. 180v-181 ca. 1430)
The events that took place outside the gates of Baghdad during the last days of January and the first days of February 1258 bear witness to the nauseating corruption and the utmost paranoia that characterized the evil dynasty, which – in the Name of Allah – persecuted and executed great numbers of descendants of Prophet Muhammad only to serve filthy interests, secure material wealth, uphold imperial power, and ensure contemptible continuity. The idiotic attitude of the last caliph Al-Musta’sim, who could not even understand that his end had come and continued living carefree like all his predecessors over the previous 300 years, fully justifies the kind of death that he underwent (wrapped in carpet and crushed by horses).
During the siege of Baghdad, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, acting as Hulagu’s chief envoy, delivered imperial messages to the senseless caliph and supervised the evacuation process, when an important part of the local population abandoned the city and surrendered. Tusi and the last vizier of Al-Musta’sim were able to save all Islamic shrines, holy sites, and monuments of Iraq, and to make the local Muslim population come to senses and realize that the end of Abbasid Baghdad was something good even for Muslims. Tusi was instrumental in convincing most of the Muslims that the Abbasid court’s pseudo-Islamic theologians were sectarian fanatics and evil blasphemers. Actually, many Iraqi cities’ populations welcomed the Turanian Mongolian armies. Such was Tusi’s success that many rumors started circulating that he had persuaded Hulagu to accept Islam and that the End of Times was about to come, since Hulagu’s armies had come from Turan (there are certain Ahadith that can be interpreted in this manner); of course, this was an exaggeration, because Hulagu died as a Buddhist.
Doquz Khatun, Hulagu’s most influential wife, was a Keraite Turanian princess that accompanied him in the campaigns to Asia’s southwestern confines. She was a Nestorian Christian (which was quite common among the Keraites) and because of this, she proved to be highly beneficial to Iraq’s Christian populations which were all Nestorians. The Church of the East (as the then Seleucia-Ctesiphon-based Nestorian Patriarchate was named) prospered indeed under Hulagu and his successors, the rulers of the vast Ilkhanate; the portion of the Turanian Mongolian Empire allotted to Hulagu comprised of all territories stretching between Indus River in the East and Sakarya River in the West (Anatolian Seljuks were a vassal state), and between Amu Daria River and the Caucasus Mountains in the North to Euphrates River in the South (totaling ca. 5 million km2).
Hulagu Khan and Doquz Khatun; miniature of a 14th c. manuscript of Jami’al Tawarikh
Thanks to the upgraded conditions of life of the Nestorian Christians in the Ilkhanate, it is not therefore strange that Nestorian Aramaean artists of those days, while depicting the Exaltation of the Cross by St. Constantine and St. Helena, depicted around the Cross the two saints of Christianity with the features of Hulagu and Doquz Khatun, thus equating them as the ‘new’ St. Constantine and St. Helena.
Because of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi’s extraordinary services, Hulagu rewarded him with the library of Baghdad (Bayt al Hikmah), and the great astronomer saved dozens of thousands of manuscripts and other valuable items, taking them to Maragheh, the new capital of Hulagu’s empire. Furthermore, the treasures of all the waqfs (i.e. foundations collecting donations for religious or charitable purposes) of Baghdad and Iraq were forcefully given to Nasir al-Din al-Tusi in order to enable him to finance the erection of the then world’s leading Observatory at Maragheh. Following the death of Möngke in 1259, Tusi did not need to travel to Karakorum, and then he concentrated his scientific prowess and intellectual genius on the operation of the Maragheh Observatory, on the cooperation of numerous Muslim, Jewish, Nestorian Christian, Buddhist and other scholars in that magnificent venue, and on the preparation of his Zij-i Ilkhani, an extraordinary series of astronomical tables that consisted in an official imperial document dedicated to Hulagu Ilkhan (this title was attributed to Hulagu by Kublai Khan, after he defeated their youngest brother Ariq Böke).
Hulagu Khan and Dokuz Khatun depicted as the New St. Constantine and the New St. Helena in the miniature of an illustrated Syriac Aramaic Bible of the 13th c.
Rather known for his famous ‘Tousi couple’ (a mathematical device in which a small circle rotates inside a larger circle twice the diameter of the smaller circle), Nasir al-Din al-Tusi was not the only author of Zij-i Ilkhani. The extraordinary opus was the result of a uniquely international team of astronomers and astrologers, who worked under the guidance of Tusi, involving amongst others Bar Hebraeus {1226-1286; known as Mor Gregorios Bar Ebraya in Syriac Aramaic, Ebn al-‘Ebri in Arabic and Abulpharagius in Latin, he was the chief-bishop of the Aramaean (Syriac) Jacobite Orthodox -Monophysitic/Miaphysitic- Church across the Ilkhanid Empire}, Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (1236-1311), Muhyi al-Dīn al-Maghribī, Mu’ayyid al-Din al-‘Urdi, Hulagu’s Chinese astronomer Fao Munji, and many others.
Page from Bar Hebraeus’ treatise Hewath Hekmetha (Butter of Wisdom), (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Or. 83, fol. 32r)
Zij-i Ilkhani includes data and observations made during a period of 12 years, starting as early as 1260. The magnificent opus was published at the time of Hulagu’s son Abaqa Khan (1265-1282) and became the model that many posterior Muslim astronomers and astrologers followed. Later astronomical tables and texts produced in Maragheh were translated from Arabic and Farsi to Greek by Gregory Choniades, who was the student of Shams ad-Din al-Bukhari, another Turanian astronomer who had worked at the illustrious Maragheh Observatory.
Page from a manuscript of Zij-i Ilkhani
Such was the success of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi’s Observatory that Kublai Khan, Hulagu’s brother, trying to compete in terms of imperially promoted scholarship and pioneering research, had another observatory built in China at Gaocheng in 1276 under the supervision of the famous Chinese astronomer Guo Shoujing (郭守敬; 1231–1316). Around 150 years later, Ulugh Beg, the Timurid Emperor of Samarqand, who was his time’s worldwide leading mathematician and astronomer, studied the remains of the Maragheh Observatory to build his own observatory in his empire’s capital.
Guo Shoujing
Geometric model of Chinese Astronomy
For the exemplarily universal scholar Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, Bar Hebraeus, chief-bishop of the Syriac Church in the Ilkhanid Empire, wrote in his Chronography the following:
“He constructed instruments for the observations of stars, and the great brass spheres that were more wonderful than those that Ptolemy set up in Alexandria, and he observed and defined the courses of the stars. And there were gathered together about him in Maragheh … a numerous company of wise men from various countries. And since the councils of all the mosques and the houses of instruction of Baghdad and Assyria were under his direction, he used to allot stipends to the teachers and to the pupils who were with him”.
This unsurpassed example of universal scholarship, erudition and intellectual genius disturbed at the time various uneducated, obscurantist, pseudo-Muslim theologians, like Al-Safadi (1296-1363); expressing the Mamluk state’s anti-Ilkhanid propaganda, he wrote against Nasir al-Din al-Tusi deprecatory comments, which were later reproduced by the idiotic religious authorities of the decayed Ottoman Empire in their catastrophic opposition to Safavid Iran, an attitude that ruined both empires. Even worse, over the past decades, anti-Tusi inflammatory speech is tantamount to Islamic terrorism.
The only historically pertinent response to the illiterate and uneducated pseudo-Muslims, who pathetically self-define themselves as ‘Sunnis’ and incessantly regret for the ‘fall of Abbasid Baghdad’ to the ‘barbarians’ is that, only thanks to the destruction of that wretched and worthless state and city, Islamic sciences reached their culminating point at Maragheh few decades later, and then at Samarqand, in the Mughal Empire of Hindustan, and elsewhere. Speaking with sadness about the demolition of the Abbasid Caliphate’s capital is typical camouflage for either idiotic Islamist politicians or criminal suicide-bombers. About:
Hulagu died in 1265 in his capital Maragheh and was buried on an island of the Lake Urumiyeh {: ‘the non-(Eastern) Roman’, because the Eastern Roman Empire never expanded over those regions} at a location still unidentified. For over 400 years, not one ruler had achieved to control so firmly the entire region over which he reigned. Even more importantly, as he ruled one of the four parts of Genghis Khan’s vast empire, his reign greatly facilitated contacts, exchanges, and movements.
Numerous nomadic populations and pastoralists moved across vast or small distances from Eastern and Central Siberia to either China or Europe, and from Central Asia either toward Caucasus, Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia or in the direction of Iran, the Indus River valley and further on to the Deccan (today’s India’s South). During the 13th, 14th, 15th and the early 16th c., practically speaking all the ethnic groups and nations of Eurasia and North Africa were greatly amalgamated with the incessant waves of new comers. From Sahara and Central Europe to the Bering Strait an indivisible ethnic-cultural entity was formed only to be locally accentuated and highlighted in some regions where major ancient civilizations had been developed.
A ‘universal man’ was then effectively created, no less than 600-700 years before the so-called ‘global world order’ that was calamitously announced at the end of the 20th c. only as an atrocious and vindictive reaction against most of the people worldwide. But back in the 13th, 14th and the 15th century, the only barbarians, who made the exception across Afro-Eurasia, were the Western European pseudo-Christian monarchs and their master, namely the heretic and schismatic pope of Rome, who was anathematized in 1054 by the Michael Cerularius, the Patriarch of New Rome Constantinople.
In this regard, ethno-linguistic and theological-religious diversity helped only underscore spiritual, cultural and imperial unity. In reality, the various empires and kingdoms were basically the specular reflection of one another. The major axes of differentiation were between nomads and pastorals (whereby the nomads viewed the pastorals as enfeebled) and between rural dwellers and urban inhabitants (whereby the rural populations considered the urban denizens as corrupt and degenerate).
The split of the Mongolian Empire
Hulagu’s vast empire (known basically as the Ilkhanate; 1256-1353) survived for almost 100 years after his death; taking into consideration the earlier divisions that existed across those regions and the massive migrations that occurred during the reign of Ilkhan’s successors, we can conclude that the Ilkhanate was a success story. In China, the Yuan dynasty (established by Kublai Khan) lasted also slightly less than one century (1279-1368). The Chagatai Khanate did not last much longer in its initial and integral form (1226-1347); after that term, it was decomposed and underwent several metamorphoses; its eastern part survived as Moghulistan (1347-1487), only to be later diminished and subdivided (Turfan Khanate, 1487-1690; Yarkand Khanate 1465-1705). Last, the Golden Horde survived longer, but only through early divisions (White Horde and Blue Horde) and subsequent multi-divisions (Great Horde, Crimean Khanate, Kazan Khanate, Astrakhan Khanate, Nugai Khanate, Sibir Khanate and Kazakh Khanate).
Since the times of the Ilkhanate, the entire landmass of Central Asia, the Iranian plateau, the Indus River Valley, the Ganges River Valley, Zagros Mountains, the South Caucasus region, Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia were practically speaking inhabited by populations of the same ethno-linguistic background and cultural identity. Since those days, the majority of the population either in Anatolia or in Iran was Turanian. As a matter of fact, the Ilkhanate could work as the ideal prototype for all posterior Oriental monarchs.
Being a paradigm in every sense, the Ilkhanate was a religiously tolerant empire whereby Tengrists, Shamanists, Nestorian, Monophysitic / Miaphysitic and Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Yazidis, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Manichaeans, and others lived peacefully under an initially Buddhist and later Islamic imperial court. The Safavids attempted to imitate and reinstate the Ilkhanate, but they failed because of their sectarianism; when at the end of the 16th c. they favored theologians instead of mystics, they heralded the final fall Iran. Contrarily, the Ottomans ignored the Ilkhanate model only to further expand to troublesome and otherwise worthless territories, which simply made their empire weaker and prompt to multi-division; the poor Ottoman choice was also the result of evil, pseudo-Islamic theological sectarianism – or to put it better sectarian opposition to Safavid sectarianism.
Abaqa Khan (1234–1282) had to engage, during his reign (1265-1282), in many battles against the Golden Horde (for control of, and prevalence in, the Caucasus region; until Berke Khan’s death in 1267), the Chagatai Empire (because Baraq Khan tried to detach Khorasan from the Ilkhanate in 1270), the remains of the Nizari Isma’ilis (that tried to reassemble), and the Mamluks of Egypt (twice: 1271 and 1281, and always within the context of wider alliances, i.e. Golden Horde and Mamluks against the Ilkhanate, the Eastern Roman Empire, Armenia and the last Crusaders). Abaqa Khan was also the son-in-law of Michael VIII Palaiologos of the Eastern Roman Empire, because he got married with the basileus’ daughter Maria Palaiologina, who was initially dispatched to become Hulagu’s wife, but arrived after the great emperor’s death. However, Abaqa Khan was a religiously tolerant Buddhist in whose coins sometimes the Christian cross was depicted under the evocation of the Christian Trinity (in Arabic). Maria Palaiologina played an important role in the Ilkhanate after the death of Doquz Khatun, Hulagu’s Nestorian wife.
Abaqa Khan’s brother Ahmed Tekuder (1246-1284) reigned for two years (1282-1284) after his elder brother died; in young age, he was baptized Nestorian Christian, but later he accepted Islam. However, he faced fierce opposition and many intrigues from the part of Abaqa Khan’s son Arghun, a Buddhist. After many battles (of purely tribal, not religious, background), Tekuder was accused of misgovernance in trial, condemned and executed.
Abaqa enthroned with one of his wives (most probably Dorji Khatun)
Three generations of the Ilkhanate in just one miniature. Abaqa on a horse; his son Arghun stands next to him under the imperial umbrella, holding his own son, Mahmud Ghazan, with his right arm.
Gold Dinar of Abaqa Khan, Isfahan Mint; obverse: (in Arabic) Al-Mulku Lillah, La Ilaha Illa Lah Muhammad Rasul – lallah Sallallahu Alayhi vasallam; reverse: Qa An Shah A’lam Ilkhan Al-A’azam Abaqa Khalada mulk allah
Arghun (1258-1291) was a pro-Christian, Buddhist emperor, who persistently tried to strike a Franco-Mongol alliance against the Muslim control of Palestine and Egypt; he did not view this in terms of religious enmity or rivalry, but clearly as an internal Turanian-Mongolian tribal contention. Any modern scholar, who disregards this reality, totally misinterprets that historical period, therefore failing to represent the main factors’ real motives and targets. Today’s Muslims and Christians, who attempt to view the then historical developments through distortive sectarian lenses, only generate problems; they create confusion to themselves, stay in ignorance, and are subsequently absorbed by fanaticism. The Mamluks were disdained by most of the Turanians (since the early Islamic times) as a disparate and disorderly element with no tribal ancestry, and this was actually a historically correct judgment.
There is no difference in this regard between the Genghisid Buddhist Arghun of the Ilkhanate, the (‘Sunni’) Ottoman Selim I, the (‘Shia’) Safavid Isma’il I, and the (‘Sunni’) Timurid Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire across South Asia. To all of them ancestry mattered; and the Mamluks did not have any. They were Turanian soldiers, who first acted individually, then made an alliance among them and formed a kind of international military class, and in the process ruled various unrelated lands, initially in the name of the caliph. So, their origin could be retraced either to all the branches of Turanian nations or to selected youngsters taken from among other nations, basically from either the Caucasus region or Egypt. However, no one takes seriously a group of experienced military warlords without tribal connection, tradition and ancestry, i.e. a group of deracinated soldiers who therefore fight for material goods and power, and not for honor. This is the whole matter. There is an extra, rather minor point. Many Mamluk originated from the Western Turanian branch of Cumans and the Kipchak, who were never taken in great esteem by the Eastern Turanians.
During Argun’s reign (1284-1291), the various posts were distributed among the emperor’s relatives; Argun’s cousins Jushkab and Baydu were entrusted with Baghdad and Mesopotamia; his brother Gaykhatu was tasked to maintain control in Anatolia, along with his uncle Hulachu. Khorasan was given to Argun’s son Ghazan and his cousin Kingshu. And the Jalayir tribesman Buqa, who helped Argun against his uncle and predecessor, got awarded with the top military and administrative positions. Argun had a close relationship and firm alliance with his powerful uncle Kublai Khan, but his mismanagement of the Ilkhanate was disastrous.
Gaykhatu (in Mongolian: Gaikhat, which means ‘surprising’) reigned for four years (1291-1295), after being the governor of Anatolia during the reign of his brother; although a staunch Buddhist (he was given the Tibetan honorific Rinchindorj, i.e. ‘diamond’), he got married also with Muslim princesses, notably Padishah Khatun who originated from the Qutlugh-Khanid vassal state, which was ruled by an ethnically Khitan dynasty in the region of Kerman. This is one more indication that in reality the Ilkhanate was a totally secular state, and that the ‘court religion’ was an individual expression of spirituality and not an imperial state order imposed on the society. Gaykhatu faced fierce opposition to his election (in the typical Turanian national assembly, the Kurultai, which was held in Ahlat, in today’s Eastern Turkey) by several disorderly elements that supported Baydu, his cousin.
Farman by Gaykhatu, dating back to 1292 and mentioning names of Shiktur Noyan, Aq Buqa, Taghachar and Sad ud-Din Zanjani
Gaykhatu enthroned: from a manuscript of Shams al-Dîn Kâshânî (Bibliothèque nationale de France; Département des Manuscrits, Division orientale, Supplément persan 1443 f.241v)
Gaykhatu’s reign was consumed in numerous internal fights, such as the uprising of Afrasiab of the Hazaraspid dynasty (a Turanian-Iranian vassal state in today’s Lorestan, Western Iran), the rebellion of several Turanian vassal states in Anatolia (notably the Karamanids, the Chobanids, the Eshrefids, and the Menteshe), and the plots of Taghachar in Iran. However, Gaykhatu was the first ruler in Western Asia and Europe to ever print paper money (Jiaochao /交钞), which was first introduced in China ca. 150 years earlier and then widely used at the times of Kublai Khan. In 1295, Gaykhatu, who despite his libertine morals liked Nestorian Christianity, was betrayed by several magistrates, who sided with Baydu, and thus his reign ended with his assassination.
Gaykhatu interrogates Shigtûr Noyan, ally & cousin of Arghun; miniature by Sayf al-Vâhidî. Hérât. Afghanistan (Bibliothèque nationale de France; Département des Manuscrits, Division orientale, Supplément persan 1113, fol. 208)
Baydu ruled only for few months in 1295, failing to oppose the centrifugal forces of the vast state where new populations had meanwhile settled, mixed with indigenous nations, and became a tool in the hands of every experienced and ambitious soldier. Born as a Buddhist, sympathizing with Nestorian Christianity, and wearing a cross, Baydu tried to befriend the outright Muslim majority of his ailing empire. However, his clash with Ghazan, Argun’s son, brought an end to his reign and life.
Mahmud Ghazan (1271-1304) was the first Ilkhan who accepted officially Islam; his reign (1295-1304) seems to be a period of stabilization in a vast empire composed of disparate elements stirred up by many newcomers. His strong advantage was that he had the chance, before rising to the throne of the Ilkhanate in Tabriz at the age of 24, to experience conditions of court plots, family betrayals, tribal rivalries, military conflicts, imperial alliances, administrative doldrums and governmental prowess during four different reigns within the span of only 13 years. He engaged in many wars against the Mamluks of Egypt in Syria and the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia. Despite his conversion to Islam, he pursued the traditional Mongolian tendency to shape a Franco-Mongolian alliance, but he also failed in this effort.
In Ghazan’s times, the traditional religious tolerance that prevailed among Mongolian Turanians and the secular nature of the Ilkhanate took a severe hit; this was not due to Mahmud Ghazan himself, but to people around him. Buddhists were persecuted, Nestorian churches were looted, and Monophysitic/Miaphysitic Christian churches were demolished. A certain portion of the Ilkhanate’s Muslims, particularly those living in Syria and Anatolia, started being fanaticized at those days, due to the false and sectarian rhetoric of the entire Islamic History’s most ominous and most calamitous figure, namely the pseudo-Muslim theologian Ibn Taymiyyah whose demented thoughts represent a form of Christianization of Islam.
Conversion of Ghazan to Islam; Ghazan was born as a Buddhist, and converted to Islam as part of an agreement upon accession to the throne.
Ghazan studying the Quran
This type of religious fanaticism was earlier attested among 4th–5th c. Christians across the Roman Empire. The evil propagators of this fanaticism, who appeared for the first time within the Islamic world during the reign of Ghazan, immediately started dividing Muslims across historically nonexistent sectarian lines. To do this, they carried out an enormous effort of falsification, misrepresenting the earlier Islamic History through use of distortive sectarian lenses. They also spread vicious hatred against previous historians, scholars, erudite polymaths, astronomers, philosophers, poets and thinkers.
Ibn Taymiyyah’s ignorant, heinous and besotted followers diffused the fallacy that they were ‘Sunni’ and that their opponents were ‘Shia’; they therefore tried to adjust the earlier Islamic History as per the needs of their evil mindset, immoral nature, sick mentality, inhuman behavior, materialistic goals, nonsensical ideas, and obscurantist theories. This evil system that had absolutely nothing to do with the true, historical Islam survived during many centuries by means of deep and ceaseless hatred for the others, and through promotion of paranoid sectarianism and evil intolerance. In fact, it was substituted to true Islam and it eradicated the religion preached by Prophet Muhammad.
Then, at the end of the 18th c., this theological system was selected by the colonial powers as a fantastic tool for the final elimination of Islam through its transformation into a monstrous political ideology deprived of any spirituality; it was then adjusted to a modern pseudo-theology and pseudo-ideology (‘political islam’), which have nothing in common with the preaching of Muhammad and the teachings of Ali. Only due to Ibn Taymiyyah’s system, second rank figures of Early Islam, the likes of Abu Bakr, Umar ibn al Khattab, Uthman ibn Affan, Khalid ibn al-Walid, and Aisha Bint Abi Bakr, became important in the sick imagination of the fooled followers of Ibn Taymiyyah and his worthless ‘school’; suffice it to read the true historians of Islam, notably Tabari, and you find all those minor figures reduced in their real dimensions.
For this reason, the ignorant and sectarian followers of Ibn Taymiyyah deliberately disregarded Tabari, which is far more valuable than the Quran and the Ahadith for the History of the first three centuries of the Islamic Era; consequently, today’s fake Muslims, who are the perfect tools of the English and the American secret services, fully misinterpret the Quran (because they don’t rely on Tabari’s Tafsir) and conceal many facts and aspects of the historical truth that are to be found in Tabari’s Tarikh, while offering ridiculous excuses for their absurd propaganda and sectarian evilness.
Ghazan and his wives at the court; from the miniature of a 13th c Mongol manuscript
Seal of Mahmud Ghazan, over the last two lines of his 1302 letter to Pope Boniface VIII. The seal was given to Ghazan by the sixth Great Khan (Emperor ChengZong of Yuan; also known as Temür Khan). In Chinese (王府定國理民之寶) it reads “Seal certifying the authority of his Royal Highness to establish a country and govern its people”. There are two lines vertically overwritten on the seal; the text is Mongolian and the writing is the Old Uyghur script, which was formed on the basis of Aramaic (from the Vatican Archives).
Based on his experience, Ghazan realized that too many powerful noblemen, court advisers, and military warlords constituted a potential danger for any emperor; he therefore eliminated many people around him at the top of the imperial hierarchy. He maintained excellent relations with Yuan China and the Great Khans, while also improving his relations with the Golden Horde; however, he had to engage in battles against the Chagatai khans in Central Asia and to fight with the Mamluks in Egypt. He also faced strong opposition within his empire, but he was able to squelch the revolts of Baltu, Nawruz, and Sulemish. His war against the Mamluks consists in an extra proof that conflicts among the major states of those days mainly did not have religious motives. Ghazan allied with Georgia, Armenia and the Crusaders against the Mamluks, and advanced in Syria, but in the last war between the Mamluks and the Ilkhanate (1299-1303), he failed to invade Egypt.
Mahmud Ghazan, in striking difference with several religious, administrative and military authorities of his empire, was a religiously tolerant ruler and had special interests for the arts, the sciences, the letters; he sponsored every exploration and innovation. Due to his own interest and thanks to his own support, a World History was then elaborated -for the first time in the history of mankind- by Rashid al-Din Hamadani, a Jewish Iranian multilingual polymath and author. Its title shows the nature of the enormous composition (in three volumes) of which only a part was preserved until today: Jāmi’ al-tawarikh (جامع التواريخ / lit. the ‘gathering of histories’, i.e. the collection of earlier written chronicles). It is the first historiography that was based on historical sources of so diverse peoples and civilizations as Iran, Turan, China, the subcontinent, North Africa, and Western Europe
Mahmud Ghazan tolerated all Islamic spiritual orders and schools of philosophy and theology, exempted Christians from taxes, rebuilt Christian churches, preserved the Mongolian oral traditions, and offered safe passage to his empire’s Buddhists who wanted to move to Tibet. Being a multilingual, he supported improvements in technology, arts and crafts, introduced new measures, coinage, administrative methods, and fiscal policy, and reformed his empire’s military organization.
Öljaitü (1280-1316) was the last of all important successors of Hulagu, succeeded his brother, and reigned for 12 years (1304-1316). Not only he represents the Ilkhanate’s religious tolerance and secular character better than any other Ilkhan, but he also seems to have been the man who changed more religions in his life than any other person anytime anywhere! He was born Buddhist; he later accepted Christianity (1291-1295; being baptized as Nikolya – Nicholas); then in 1295, he adhered to Islam, and while an emperor he stopped siding with theologians, who are mistakenly portrayed as ‘Sunni’ today, and wholeheartedly embraced the spiritual faith and the teachings of Muslims, who are currently considered to be ‘Shia’ (those terms were not used at the time and in any case are totally invalid). After he became Muslim, his official imperial name was Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad Khudabanda Öljaitü Sultan
Khan Öljaitü accepts the Yuan China ambassador; miniature from Majma’ al-Tavarikh
Öljaitü supported the sciences, the letters, and the arts, subsidized the works of the Maragheh Observatory, tried hard to establish peace among the four emperors, i.e. the descendants of Genghis Khan (Ilkhanate, Golden Horde, Chagatai, and Yuan China), managed to squelch uprisings in the areas of today’s Afghanistan and North Iraq, advanced in Syria against the Mamluks, invaded Damascus, and in 1315 started an invasion of Hijaz in order to exhume and desecrate the corpses of Abu Bakr and Umar, who were viewed as the true traitors of Prophet Muhammad by the majority of his empire’s Muslims. More importantly, he founded a splendid new capital, Soltaniyeh (southeast of Tabriz), where one can still visit today his mausoleum, which is worldwide acknowledged and admired for its superb dome and impressive architectural structure.
The Letter of Öljaitü to Philippe le Bel, written in classical Mongolian script, bears the Chinese seal reading “真命皇帝天順萬夷之寶”, which was bestowed by Emperor Chengzong of Yuan China. The huge roll measures 302×50 cm.
Translation of Öljeitu’s message by Buscarello de Ghizolfi, on the back side of the letter (visible here)
Öljaitü’s son Abu Sa’id Bahadur Khan (1305-1335) ruled for almost 20 years (1316-1335) after his elder brothers and father died. Although very young, Abu Sa’id managed to win over the invading armies of the Golden Horde near Mianeh in Southern Azerbaijan (1319). He was viewed as a ‘hero’ (Baghatur in Mongolian), but he had to face in 1322 the rebellion launched by the infamous mystic named Chupan, who declared himself to be the Mahdi (i.e. the Islamic Messiah) in the Caucasus region. He tried to improve relations with the Delhi Sultanate, the Mamluks, and Venice (commercial treaty of 1320). Known also as al-Sultan al-Adil (the Just Sultan), he composed music, wrote poetry, and was a rarely educated and cultured monarch; that’s why Ibn Battuta wrote very flattering comments about him.
The Ilkhanate times were a transformative period for all the lands between Central Asia and Anatolia; after the 13th c., there was no Persian element left across the heavily Turanized Iran, except the language (Farsi); but Farsi had already been the language of Culture and Poetry of all Turanians. Anyway, after the dissolution of the Ilkhanate and down to our times, in reality “Iran” has been “Turan”, and “Turan” has been “Iran”.
However, after his death and after the one year reign of Arpa Ke’un, the Ilkhanate was dissolved and replaced by a multitude of small states. The territory of Hulagu’s empire was divided among the Muzaffarids, the Kart dynasty, the Chobanids, the Injuids, the Jalayirids, the Sarbadars, the Mihrabanids, the Artukids, the Ayyubids, the Eretnids, the Candar, the Karamanids, and many other tiny kingdoms. This was the situation, when a great conqueror and unifier was born (in 1336): his name was Timur. He was a mighty Chagatai warrior, although one of his legs was shorter than the other; that’s why in Farsi, he became rather known as Timur-i Lang (Tamerlane). About:
Вторжения народов моря, Египет, империя хеттов, ее ахейские союзники, Лукка/Пелесет, Троянская война, преднамеренная ложь Гомера и современная европейская подделка «Древняя Греция»
Book review of the book ‘Trojan Horse of Western History’ by Anatoly V. Belyakov and Oleg A. Matveyshev
Рецензия на книгу Анатолия В. Белякова и Олега А. Матвейшева «Троянский конь западной истории»
Yazilikaya, 1.5 km NE of Hattusa: the modern name of the Hittite religious capital and rock sanctuary; the most important sacred location for the Hittites, the other Anatolian nations, and the Achaean allies of the Hattusa emperors
Содержание
Введение
I. Цивилизованный восточный мир и южно-балканская периферия
II. Хеттский имперский порядок и беспорядочные варвары Западной Анатолии, Южных Балкан, Крита и Анатолийского моря
III. Нашествия народов моря как определяющий исторический факт и Троянская война как бесполезная ложь
IV. Что скрывается за фальшивым термином «ахейский мир»?
V. Без глубокого понимания египетской, хеттской, анатолийской, ханаанской и месопотамской цивилизаций невозможно понять их отсталую периферию
VI. Почему исторические источники Диона Златоуста заслуживают доверия, а отговорки Гомера оказались отвлекающим маневром
VII. Абсолютное очернение позднеантичных греков древнеегипетским первосвященником как цели человеческой истории.
VIII. Египетский жрец, собеседник Диона Златоуста, читал «Анналы» Рамзеса III.
IX. Фальшивый термин «Древняя Греция» мешает нам оценить разрушительную неудачу Гомера.
Х. Заключение
Contents
Introduction
I. The civilized Oriental World & the South Balkan periphery
II. The Hittite imperial order and the disorderly barbarians of Western Anatolia, South Balkans, Crete and the Anatolian Sea
III. The Sea Peoples’ invasions as a determinant historical fact and the Trojan War as a worthless falsehood
IV. What is hidden behind the false term ‘Achaean World’?
V. Without an in-depth comprehension of the Egyptian, Hittite Anatolian, Canaanite and Mesopotamian civilizations, no one can possibly understand their backward periphery
VI. Why Dio Chrysostom’s historical sources are trustworthy and Homer’s pretenses are proven red herring
VII. The absolute denigration of the Late Antiquity Greeks by the Ancient Egyptian high priest as the destination of Human History
VIII. Dio Chrysostom’s Egyptian sacerdotal interlocutor had read Ramses III’s Annals
IX. The fake term ‘Ancient Greece’ prevents us from assessing Homer’s devastating failure
X. Conclusion
Introduction
What follows is an extensive discussion of the topics presented and the approaches employed in the aforementioned, passionately and impressively elaborated book (St. Petersburg: Piter, 2015 – 256 p.: pic / ISBN 978-5-496-01658-2) that I came to know through an astute Russian friend, shrewd thinker and avid reader.
Links to the Russian and English Wikipedia do not constitute an approval of the texts of the respective entries, but are offered for those among the non-specialized readers of my book review, who wish to launch their own search, starting with the references and the bibliography available of those entries.
Throughout the present article, I use the term ‘Anatolian Sea’, instead of ‘Aegean Sea’ which is certainly a historically valid appellation and form of reference. However, the latter term is academically inaccurate. This is so because throughout the last five millennia, we have attested that civilizations, forms of spirituality, religious faiths, cultural trends, ethnic migrations, cults, esoteric beliefs, intellectual movements, artistic and aesthetic tendencies spread from Anatolia to the sea in question, and thence to the South Balkans, and not vice versa. When it comes to Anatolian Sea, which is undeniably a semi-closed sea, we observe that, although various influences and diverse ethnic groups arrived there from the South (Libya), the Southeast (Egypt and Canaan/Phoenicia), and the North (Thrace, Macedonia and the central part of the Balkan Peninsula), the local evolution, historical creativity, and their main factors and aspects depended on Anatolia.
All these scattered islands constitute therefore the Anatolian archipelago and they consist in sheer projection and prolongation of the Anatolian civilization. This was particularly ostensible whenever both lands, Anatolia and South Balkans, belonged to the same empire. Within the Eastern Roman Empire and the Ottoman Caliphate, Anatolia constituted the epicenter and the South Balkans represented a marginal circumference. All the islands in-between depended on Anatolia and never formed an entity of their own.
——- Response to a friend and comments about the aforementioned book ———
Dear Fedor,
Now, I will write down several remarks and comments about the book of Anatoly V. Belyakov and Oleg A. Matveyshev that I have just read thanks to your email; I did not know either the book or the authors, that’s why I found a genuine interest in searching about the authors before reading the book. So, I realized that both are younger than me; Belyakov was born in 1971 (Анатолий Владиславович Беляков) and Matveyshev (Олег Анатольевич Матвейчев) one year earlier; the latter happens also to be a deputy in the Russian Parliament. Both have worked together on several other publication projects, and both have published many books and articles. About:
Their topics cover History and Politics in general, and they seem to have an interest in finding attractive topics to which they intentionally offer rather alternative approaches. They did the same with the ‘Trojan Horse of Western History’. Despite the fact that they are not field specialists, they did their best to offer readers a truly comprehensive presentation about how
a- the modern science of Philology (Classics) discovered Homer and his epics,
b- Archaeology was used by amateurs for the sake of their delusions,
c- the Ancient Ionian epic tradition was transformed into Alexandrian librarians’ tasks in the Antiquity, and
d- a multitude of topographical-geographical details can drastically change our reading and perception of the narratives.
It is clear that they apparently visited the area they spoke about. In addition, they offered readers (in the unit ‘In lieu of an afterword’) a theoretical polarization around Modern European academic considerations and philosophical postulations. Being well knowledgeable in a varied number of topics (which is still not easy to encounter nowadays in Western Europe and North America), they contextualized their work in an admirable manner. Their book is certainly rewarding for the general readership, and also for the people who have the suspicion that things may not have been as they have been narrated in modern times’ schools and universities.
In fact, I don’t have crucial remarks to make for the book itself, but this does not end but it rather starts my response. As you can guess, the research you first undertake predestines and predetermines the book that you will write afterwards. There lies the major problem. As a matter of fact, there are also other critical issues for the authors, and even more serious troubles for the entire Russian academic-intellectual class. You will see why while reading what follows. From now on, I will concentrate my review on several specific points.
I. The civilized Oriental World & the South Balkan periphery
First Point: lack of study of Ancient Egyptian, Ugaritic Canaanite, and Assyrian Babylonian sources
The authors are evidently unaware of the existence of critical historical sources pertaining to the History of the Anatolian Sea (also known as Aegean Sea) around the end of the 2nd millennium BCE. This fact dramatically narrows the effort undertaken to show an alternative interpretation of the Trojan War.
Both authors are well versed in Ancient Greek literature and they occasionally mention Hittite historical texts. It is clear that they did not study Hittite historical sources (in translation since they are not specialists) as extensively as they should have had. The problem is that they did not acquire a sufficient background in Hittite History which would enable them to fully comprehend the nature of the historical developments that took place in the western confines of the Hittite Empire and beyond; I say so, because the Hattusha-based emperors did not always control the western circumference of Anatolia. About:
There is also a serious lack of Ugaritic Canaanite cuneiform documentation, and the authors seem to believe that Canaan did not play an important role in the maritime trade throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, the Anatolian and the Black Seas; this is wrong. Ugaritic texts are the first to document the fall of the Hittite Empire. Even more importantly, similar Ugaritic Canaanite epics antedate by several centuries the Ancient Greek epics. About:
Good knowledge of the Assyrian-Babylonian and Elamite sources of the 13th and the 12th c. would help the authors to better assess all the facts that took place at the epicenter of the then known world, i.e. the triangle between Susa (Elam), Niwt (Thebes of Egypt), and Hattusha; in fact, only when you know what happens in the center of the civilized world, you can approximately grasp the reasons for what occurred in the periphery and the margins. However, the authors did not explore these historical sources.
Хеттское царство и страны Верхней Месопотамии в правление Тудхалии IV и его сыновей (2-я половина XIII — начало XII в. до н. э.): новые гипотезы и источники
In mystical gesture, Hammurapi (standing) receives the royal insignia from Shamash
The zikkurat (Mesopotamian step pyramid) of Dur Kurigalzu in today’s Aqarquf (30 km from Baghdad) in Iraq; the Babylonian name means ‘fortress of Kurigalzu’, namely of the Kassite king Kurigalzu I (died around 1375 BCE) whose name in Kassite means ‘shepherd of the Kassites’. After the Hittite conquest of Babylonia by Mursilis I (1596 BCE), the Hittites descended from Zagros Mountains and established the Kassite dynasty of Babylonia (1596-1155 BCE), which was terminated with the Elamite invasion of Babylonia. About: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dur-Kurigalzuhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurigalzu_I / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassiteshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassite_dynasty
The Kassite king of Babylonia Meli-Shipak II (1186-1172) on a kudurru (boundary stone)
And indisputably, the Iranian plateau, South Balkans, and the Horn of Africa constituted the fringes of the great Oriental Empires of the 2nd millennium BCE where the then world’s most advanced civilizations flourished. Indicatively, Kerma in Sudan (earlier an independent Cushitic kingdom but incorporated in Kemet / Egypt during the 2nd half of the 2nd millennium BCE) was more important than Mycenae and Dur Untash (presently Chogha Zanbil) was more important than Troy.
The Elamite zikkurat at Chogha Zanbil (30 SE of Susa in SW Iran) was known as Dur Untash in the Antiquity (after its Assyrian name); dedicated to the Elamite god Inshushinak and built by the Elamite king Untash Napirisha around 1300 BCE, it was the epicenter of the religious capital of Elam (which was called Haltamti in Elamite).
The name of the Elamite king Untash Napirisha written on an axe.
Statue of Napir-Asu, wife of the Elamite king Untash Napirisha, in Louvre Museum
The worst deficiency in the authors’ research, documentation collection, and study is the lack of consideration of Ancient Egyptian sources pertaining to the fact that they examine. Yet, there is a vast documentation in Egyptian hieroglyphics about the great variety of peoples and nations that lived in Western Anatolia and in the islands of the Anatolian and the Eastern Mediterranean seas.
Рамсес III — последний великий правитель Древнего Египта
Ramses III offers incense; wall-painting from Ramses III’s tomb (KV11)
Isis and Ramses III as depicted on a wall painting of the tomb of Prince Amun-her-khepeshef
The mortuary temple of Ramses III at Medinet Habu (Luxor West); many walls and columns were used for the presentation of his Annals, involving texts and bas-reliefs.
The first pylon
Aerial view
Ramses III’s names on the walls of the Khonsu temple at Karnak
What comes as an even worse outcome of the lack of study of Ancient Egyptian, Assyrian Babylonian, and Ugaritic Canaanite cuneiform historical sources by the authors is the fact that the associated documentation relates to another event far more important than the Trojan War that the authors totally ignore, namely the invasions of the Sea Peoples.
The northern side of the external wall of the temple of Medinet Habu is almost entirely covered by inscriptions and bas-reliefs relating to the battles and the victory of Ramses III over the Sea Peoples.
This situation generates an enormous contrast of which the authors are unaware: we have historical (: contemporaneous) sources for a major event, whereas we have only posterior, mythological and literary sources for a minor, and in any case ambiguous and controversial, fact. This situation, in and by itself, concludes the case of the entire literature about the Trojan War; yet the authors of this book know nothing about it.
As a matter of fact, the invasions of the Sea Peoples determined the World History.
Contrarily, the Trojan War is a historically insignificant circumstance that impacted first, the imagination of people many hundreds of years after it happened and second, the delusion of present day European and Greek racists, chauvinists, revisionists and extremists, who want to rewrite World History as per the false narrative of an otherwise obscure figure, namely Homer. That’s why they take his controversial narratives at face value whereas the authors intelligently enough denounce them as utterly false.
So, what I want to say in brief, as regards Point I, is that the argumentation presented in this book would be much stronger and more convincing, if the authors had spent time reading Ancient Egyptian, Assyrian-Babylonian, Ugaritic-Canaanite historical sources and focused more on Hittite historical documentation.
II. The Hittite imperial order and the disorderly barbarians of Western Anatolia, South Balkans, Crete and the Anatolian Sea
Second Point: lack of knowledge (let alone mention) of the Sea Peoples’ invasions
By failing to study, examine, and integrate this topic (Sea Peoples’ invasions) in their research, the authors did not simply omit one of the most important worldwide events of the 2nd half of the 2nd millennium BCE. They mainly proved to be unable to correlate the two events which were linked to one another in terms of cause and effect; this is so because the Trojan War (and by using the term, I don’t mean Homer’s narrative but the original fact of which the Homeric epic was certainly an intentional distortion) triggered the invasions of the Sea Peoples.
I expanded on the topic twice back in the early 1990s; in my speech in the Second International Congress (1991), I presented in French the topic: “The Sea Peoples and the End of the Mycenaean World”:
Les Peuples de la Mer et la Fin du Monde Mycénien. Essai de Synthèse Historique
Atti e Memorie del Secondo Congresso Internazionale di Micenologia (Roma-Napoli, 14-20 Ottobre 1991); (published by the Gruppo Editoriale Internazionale, Roma, 1996) My speech is available online here:
Then, in the academic periodical JOAS, I published (in 1994) a comprehensive contextualization of the invasions of the Sea Peoples; the article was written in Greek:
Η Ευρύτερη Περιοχή της Ανατολικής Μεσογείου κατά τον 13ο και τον 12ο Αιώνα και οι Λαοί της Θάλασσας (The wider region of Eastern Mediterranean during the 13th and the 12th c. and the Sea Peoples)
Journal of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 6 (1994), p. 1-50 (with French résumé)
Ramses III smiting Sea Peoples in front of god Amun: reliefs and texts on the pylon of the Medinet Habu temple (Luxor West)
Representation of one of the battles that Ramses III had to deliver to vanquish and disperse the barbarian Sea Peoples; bas-reliefs and texts from the northern side of the outer wall of the temple at Medinet Habu
Ramses III’s tomb
Ramses III held Sea Peoples captives celebrates his victory in front of Amun and Maat, who was the Ancient Egyptian representation of the Divine Order against which the disorderly barbarians had rebelled; from the second pylon of the Medinet Habu temple
The preservation of the Universal Harmony and the Divine Order was the spiritual aspect and ultimate target of Ramses III’s battles against and victory over the Sea Peoples; this is particularly demonstrated in his tomb at the Kings’ Valley (Western Thebes: KV11) where in two panels an harper is depicted at work, in front of first, Onuris-Shu (a pre-creational aspect of the Divine, which through war brings Order instead of disorder and chaos/above) and second, Shu-Son of Ra (conceptualization of an aspect of the Divine that establishes analogies of energy and action between the pre-creational chaos and the creational order/below). In other words, the irrevocable victory of Ramses III over the chaotic and barbarian elements (: the Sea Peoples) was undeniably of cosmic consequences.
KV11: the tomb of Ramses III
Detail from the wall paintings
Red granite sarcophagus of Ramses III (Louvre)
In brief, I will now describe the sequence of the historical developments that took place at the time, pinpointing the most determinant situations and facts.
I- There were no ‘Greeks’ in the wider region of South Balkans, Anatolian Sea, Western Anatolia, Crete, and Cyprus, during the 3rd or 2nd millennium BCE; there were many different nations of indigenous (Anatolian and Balkan), Semitic, and Hamitic (‘Libyan’/Berber) backgrounds. And there were few Indo-European invaders (the Achaeans). So, the term ‘Greek’ is mistaken, if not distorted. This is so because the Achaeans constituted only one of the Ancient Greek tribes.
II- The establishment of a powerful imperial capital in Hattusha, at the center of the Anatolian plateau, generated several reactions among the diverse populations that lived in the Eastern (Hayasa, Azzi, Ishuwa), Northern (Kashka) and Western (Masa, Wilusa, Seha, Arzawa, Lukka) confines of Anatolia, because these regions were inhabited by barbarian, disparate and disorderly elements that did not want to accept the imperial order. This is a constantly encountered topic in the historical sources of the Hittites.
III- The Hittite Empire was a multiethnic empire with several official languages and writings; there was one imperial religion and several local spiritual variants; this already means that there were several nations that wholeheartedly contributed to the imperial rise of Anatolia (Hittites/Nasili, Hatti, Luwians, Pala) and other ethnic groups or tribes that escaped the imperial order. Southern provinces (Kizzuwatna, Tarhuntassa, and even the Amurru/Amorrites in today’s NW Syria) accepted the imperial more easily.
IV- The indigenous populations of the Western confines (the term ‘Lukka’ covers a great number of tribes) rebelled quite often, notably when the Hittite armies were engaged in the empire’s most important war fronts opposite the Hurrians of the Mitanni Empire (and after the middle of the 13th c. the Assyrians) and the Egyptians in the territory of today’s S-SE Turkey and NW Syria.
V- The indigenous populations of the South Balkans seem to have been of the same ethnic and cultural background as the indigenous Anatolian Lukka and therefore allied with them. They were called ‘Peleset’ in Ancient Egyptian texts; this term is identical to the Pelasgians as mentioned (or rather mythologized) in the posterior sources of the 1st millennium BCE Ancient Greeks.
VI- Populations of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds inhabited Crete, Alasia (Cyprus) and the islands of the Anatolian Sea; this is not only highlighted by the numerous names of peoples and ethnic groups that the Ancient Egyptian sources mention with respect to this region, but it is also evidenced by the existence of many different, hitherto undeciphered, writings that have been unearthed in the periphery in question: Linear A, the so-called ‘Cretan’ hieroglyphic writing, another ‘Cretan’ hieroglyphic writing, the ‘Eteocretan’ alphabet, the Phaistos disc writing, the so-called Cypro-Minoan syllabary, and the Cypriot syllabary; all of them antedate the Linear B, which was the (already deciphered in the early 1950s) writing system of the 2nd millennium BCE Achaeans. Archaeological findings (many different small palaces in those islands) and interdisciplinary discoveries of historico-religious nature (reference to the ‘Horus of Kaeftiu’ made in Ancient Egyptian inscriptions) bear witness to why the Ancient Egyptians used also the collective description ‘Nine Bows’ for this region where African Berbers, Anatolian Luwians, Semitic Canaanites, and Egyptians were amalgamated with indigenous Peleset/Pelasgians. There were many tiny kingdoms and no centralized authority with some ethnic groups being spiritually and culturally guided from Egypt, and others from Anatolia, Canaan and Libya. About:
VII- The Ahhiyawa (Achaeans or Achaians) were a rude foreigner invader in the South Balkans, and as such they were reviled by the indigenous Pelasgians/Peleset and their Lukka allies, who constituted the outright majority of the local population. The Hittite – Achaean linguistic proximity suggests a conceptual kinship with the Hittites; however, one has to notice that the tremendous difference is that the Indo-European Hittites managed to impose an imperial authority in the central plateau of Anatolia and thus become a major power of the then known world, whereas their Achaeans relatives in South Balkans were always divided in many small and instable kingdoms that were overwhelmingly but rightfully loathed by the subjugated local populations, namely the Pelasgians/Peleset.
VIII. The rise in force of the Hittites in the Oriental chessboard (particularly after the sack of Babylon by Mursili I at the very beginning of the 16th c. BCE) coincides with the liberation of Kemet/Egypt from the Hyksos barbarians and the foundation of the 18th dynasty of Egypt, which brought about a period of incessant rivalries among the major powers and alliances of the then known world, namely the Hittites, Assyria, and Elam against the Hurrians (Mitanni kingdom), Cassite Babylonia, and Egypt. It is during that period that the Achaeans, always as allies of the Hittites, seem to prevail in the South Balkans, the Anatolian Sea, and Crete.
IX. With the focus of the Hittite military machine made on the East and mainly opposite the Hurrians and the Egyptians, the Hattusha-based Emperors needed their Achaean allies in the West to take the initiative and secure the local order throughout the South Balkans, the Anatolia Sea, Crete, and the western confines of Anatolia. For this to be done, the Ahhiyawa had to establish (which they did) settlements in the Anatolian coastland in order to intervene in favor of their Hittite allies every time a Lukka rebel would cause instability. It was clear that Hattusha did not have enough soldiers to transfer to a second front when all the stakes were placed on Amurru, i.e. today’s Syria’s northwestern provinces where the major battles used to take place at the time (notably the famous Battle of Kadesh).
X. The disorderly forces of Western Anatolia, South Balkans, Crete and the Anatolian Sea were in a position to control several maritime trade routes, particularly after making an agreement with Egypt, at the detriment of the Hittites and their Achaean allies. At this point, I have to state that, although it is plausible and reasonable to identify the ‘king of Ahhiyawa with the Achaean ruler of Mycenae, this cannot be conclusively accepted, as long as we don’t find the name of the Ahhiyawa capital in Hittite sources. Ancient Egyptian texts mention many cities in the region in question, but in the Boğazköy (Hattusha) Archives, we attest only a few, notably Miletus and Ephesus. And it is quite clear that there was never a major Achaean kingdom in the wider area; quite contrarily, and according to the posterior descriptions of the Homeric epics, there were many petty kings and tribal chieftains in those narrow valleys and constricted plains in-between the south-Balkan mountains. All the same, for the time being, we have to content ourselves with the assumption that the imperial Hittite documents refer merely to the most important among all these trivial warlords. About:
From the northern side of the outer wall of the Medinet Habu temple
The naval battle
An Egyptian ship attacks a Peleset (Pelasgian-Philistine-Palestinian) ship
Ramses III savors his victory at Djahi over the Sea Peoples
III. The Sea Peoples’ invasions as a determinant historical fact and the Trojan War as a worthless falsehood
XI. The urgent demand of the Hittite Emperor addressed to the Ahhiyawa king concerned a badly needed Achaean intervention in Western Anatolia against the rebelled forces of the Lukka and their allies. This means that the Anatolian Empire was being financially asphyxiated because of the Lukka-Egypt commercial alliance. Wilusha (Ilion) and Taruisha (or Taruiyah/Troy) was a critical part of the Lukka confederation. It is to be noted that all the disorderly elements have customarily been regrouped in confederations, avoiding the establishment of a unified and unitary empire. It is therefore clear that it is this Achaean intervention in Western Anatolia that was later mythologized as Trojan War; although undertaken for the benefit of the Emperor at Hattusha, the epic literature later developed around the military campaign did not mention the Hittites anymore, because soon after an initial Achaean success, the disaster fell on both, the Hittites and the Achaeans. The troublesome situation appears clearly in-between the lines of the Hittite treaty between Muwattalli II and Alakšandu (Alakshandus) of Wiluša (Ilion). From this Anatolian Luwian origin name originates the well-known Macedonian and Greek name Alexandros, which was the true name of Paris, prince of Troy, according to the Homeric epics. However, it is improbable to identify the historical ruler of Ilion with the mythological person to whom so many extraordinary and dubious stories have been attributed in the myth. About:
Medinet Habu is also one of the Ancient Egyptian monuments that preoccupied many Egyptologists since the very dawn of Egyptology; these are some of the notes that J.-F. Champollion took with respect to the hieroglyphic inscriptions ton the right tower of the temple’s second pylon.
The Sea Peoples and their invasions by land and by sea up to Egypt where they were defeated in three successive battles by Ramses III at the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 12th c. BCE; dates of the events can vary among scholars, due to the co-existence of several chronological systems; the search for the reasons of these invasions ended up with the formulation of numerous interpretational schemes and scenarios most of which are irrelevant. This is so because many non-specialized authors wanted to advance their agendas by interpreting these events in one or another way and in the process they disregarded the existing textual documentation.
Western Anatolian Lukka mentioned in the Abishemu Obelisk from Gubla (جُبَيْل; Jubayl or Jbeil; Keben or Kebeny in Ancient Egyptian; Byblus in Ancient Greek and Latin) in Lebanon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abishemu_obelisk
Sea Peoples held captive
Sea Peoples depicted on the walls of the Medinet Habu Temple
Berbers (Lebu: Libyans)
Peleset/Pelasgians/Philistines alive …
… and dead
Sherden
Shekelesh
Danaans
Tjeker (Teucri) and Peleset as depicted in the Annals of Ramses III
Peleset/Pelasgians/Philistines as depicted in Akrotiri, Santorini Island
Egyptian Art from Knossos
Caphtor-Keftiu-Carians, as members of the anti-Hittite Lukka alliance, depicted on the walls of the Knossos edifice, which is not a palace as many still believe. The ahistorical and absurd term ‘Minoan’ helps concealing the fact that several different ethnic-linguistic groups lived side by side in Crete in the small cities-kingdoms, which is testified by the diverse writing systems, temples, palaces, and structures of independent societies that we find in many locations. The terribly unprofessional, entirely wrong and overwhelmingly biased ‘excavations’ undertaken by the racist colonial rascal Arthur Evans (in the early 20th c.) and the extensive but purely hypothetical restorations only obscured our knowledge about 2nd millennium BCE Crete. Evans’ interminable mistakes have been revealed and denounced over the past decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caphtor
This is how idiotically Arthur Evans restored the Knossos wall painting. Below, you can see how modern scholars correct the messy and lousy work of the disreputable English colonial.
XII. Last, whatever the Trojan War may have been in the historical reality (and not in the posterior mythologization), the end result was truly calamitous for the Achaeans.
In fact, the overwhelming historical phenomenon that we call, according to the Ancient Egyptian texts, ‘Invasions of the Sea Peoples’ deleted from the surface of the Earth every remnant and every trace of Achaean kingdom. As a matter of fact, on the basis of the existing historical sources, the invasions of the Sea Peoples can be portrayed as a thunderous reaction to an earlier, antagonistic and calamitous, event (and by this I mean the Trojan War); as protracted war activities, this enormous historical development lasted about two decades and constituted the most brazen attack of Barbarity against the World Civilization. At the end, only Egypt was able to resist to their attacks, and Mesopotamia remained intact; but civilization in Hittite Anatolia, Canaan, and the Achaean fortresses collapsed. The Sea Peoples’ invasions involved the following:
a- a well-prepared ‘conspiracy’ in their lands of origin (Western Anatolia, Anatolian Sea, Crete and South Balkans): this textual reference suggests clearly that some local ethnic groups turned violently against others;
b- a series of formidable and ultimately successful rebellions against several local kingdoms that they collapsed: this only confirms the veracity of several conclusions of many specialized archaeologists according to whom the ‘Mycenaean world’ fell to pieces due to the ‘burning of the Mycenaean palaces’;
c- a precipitated attack against Hattusha and destruction of the capital of the Hittite Empire: this sudden, unexpected, and earlier unimaginable development took place apparently, when the bulk of the Hittite army was not there, and had a devastating psychological impact that determined the historical evolution;
d- the continuation of attacks against Amurru (in today’s NW Syria), Canaan and Alasia/Cyprus, which involved also the destruction of Ugarit, the then world’s most advanced, multilingual center of academic learning and translation;
e- the devastation of the Canaanite coast lands, and
f- three successive attacks against Kemet/Egypt, during which Ramses III managed, by means of detrimental spiritual superiority (according to the Ancient Egyptian texts) to vanquish the Sea Peoples in three successive land and sea battles, thus dispersing them once forever.
IV. What is hidden behind the false term ‘Achaean World’?
Completing this unit, I have to highlight on a common mistake made by many historians and archaeologists who attempt to carry out the very difficult task of reconstructing and representing the historical reality of 2nd millennium BCE Western Anatolia, Anatolian Sea, Crete, and South Balkans; I define the entire work as difficult because, despite the abundance of the material record, the historical sources are scarce because -as I already said- this region was peripheral to the center of the then civilized world. The scarcity of historical sources’ references to this area has to also be associated with the existence of several undeciphered writings, which -if decrypted, read and studied- would shed more light on the topic.
The repeatedly made common mistake is that, by using the absolutely false term ‘Mycenaean Greece’ (instead of ‘2nd millennium BCE South Balkans, Anatolian Sea, and Crete’), historians and archaeologists get confused and seem to believe that only one nation or ethnic group lived in the said region. This is extremely wrong and misleading. Quite unfortunately, many different nations and ethnic groups coexisted in the said circumference, and this did not happen peacefully, but involved many strives, clashes, insurgences, riots, rebellions, destructions, population relocations, migrations, and -last but not least- scores of casualties.
When we use the expression the ‘Achaean world’, we therefore don’t mean all the populations of Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Sparta, Orchomenos, Salamis, etc., but only the Achaean inhabitants of those locations, who were safely accommodated within their fortresses, whereas the outright majority of those places were the Pelasgian / Peleset natives, who were oppressed and enslaved by their Achaean masters, whom they vehemently loathed. At this point, I have to make clear that the absurd term ‘Mycenaean world’ is totally wrong, because certainly Mycenae was not the capital of a unified empire, but of an independent and rather minuscule kingdom.
What is called as ‘Mycenaean Greece’ is a multi-composite fallacy and a sheer projection of a deliberately distorted 1st millennium BCE ‘Ancient Greece’ onto the 2nd millennium BCE South Balkans. There were no Greeks in the South Balkans during the 2nd millennium BCE; there were only Achaeans. But there were also the ethnically different Peleset / Pelasgians / Philistines who had ethnic-cultural affinities with the Western Anatolian Lukka and reviled the Achaean invaders and oppressors as much as the Lukka loathed the Hittite imperial order in Anatolia. Even worse, the kingdom of Mycenae was only one of the numerous tiny Achaean kingdoms, which were facing constant Pelasgian rebellions until, following their brazen but ill-fated attempt against Troy (a major Lukka ally), they were destroyed by the Pelasgian-Lukka anti-Hittite and anti-Achaean alliance and attack, which ended it up in what became known as Sea Peoples’ invasions due to the Ancient Egyptian Annals.
In fact, the wider region of Western Anatolia, Anatolian Sea, Crete and South Balkans was a most tormented area during the 2nd millennium BCE. Scholars, who depict the then daily life in those peripheries as an ‘idyllic’ environment, deliberately misrepresent the historical reality in a most fallacious and vicious manner. It was not actually one ‘world’, but many opposite entities; the deep enmities, the incessant hostilities, the foreign involvement (Hittite and Egyptian), the different religions, the diverse spiritual concepts, the deeply opposite symbols, the ferocious hatred against one another, the anti-Hittite, anti-imperial odium of the disorderly barbarians, and their evil attitude (to strike an alliance with Kemet/Egypt only for their anti-Hittite purposes) did not bode well for the extremely small Achaean minority in the South Balkans.
Achaeans from Pylos, 1350 BCE
Achaeans from Tiryns, 1250 BCE
Peleset-Pelasgian-Philistine Art from Prosymna (near Argos, Peloponnesus); known as the amphora with octopus, it is not a sample of Achaean Art, as the absurd pre-historic archaeologists still assume.
Peleset-Pelasgian-Philistine statue from Phylakopi, Milos Island 14th c. BCE
The Achaean effort to establish a foothold in Miletus and Ephesus and thence to support their major allies in Hattusha was a heroic deed, and without it there would have never been Homeric epics. This is so because the transportation of army in the Western confines of Anatolia would certainly weaken the tight control that they had to maintain in South Balkan mainland, thus critically endangering the safety of their fortresses. Unfortunately, the brazen and admirable effort was predestined to doom due to the fact that the populations of the Lukka-Peleset alliance (i.e. the Sea Peoples before the beginning of their invasions) outnumbered the Achaeans 10 to 1 or even more.
V. Without an in-depth comprehension of the Egyptian, Hittite Anatolian, Canaanite and Mesopotamian civilizations, no one can possibly understand their backward periphery
No one can properly and pertinently study the History of Western Anatolia, Anatolian Sea, Crete and South Balkans during the 2nd millennium BCE without having first passed several postgraduate degrees in Assyriology, Egyptology, Hittitology and Northwest Semitic Studies (Ugaritic, Canaanite, Phoenician, etc.). The spiritual, mystical and religious differences among the different pharaohs only reflected the deep socio-religious divisions that existed in 2nd millennium BCE Kemet/Egypt, subsequently projecting them onto the peripheral lands that depended on the Valley of the Nile.
The rise and fall of the monotheistic religion proclaimed by Akhenaten (Atonism or Atenism) divided Egypt in an irreparable manner. The strong counter-revolutionary reaction of the Amun clergy and their military pawns, as well as the white terror released by Ay, Horemheb and their successors of the 19th and the 20th dynasties turned Egypt into a horrendous dictatorship and a deeply and irrevocably split up society. This situation is the reason for which the Hebrews and, along with them, many Egyptian monotheists left the country under Moses and crossed the Red Sea to reach the Sinai in what is today the northwestern confines of Saudi Arabia (Sinai is not what we now call the Sinai Peninsula!). About:
Long before Moses, David, Jesus and Muhammad, the great monotheist Pharaoh Akhenaten (left) and Queen Nefertiti (right) rejoice uttering the Hymn to Aten, while receiving the blessings of Only God Aten. The resolute abolition of the blasphemous polytheistic cult of Amun of Waset (Thebes of Egypt) was worldwide the most important historical event that took place during the 2nd millennium BCE – far more important than the Exodus or the Sea Peoples’ Invasions. Eclipsing by far Abraham’s departure from Ur and the locally imposed polytheistic regime, Akhenaten proved to be the World History’s most determinant ruler from the days of Sargon of Akkad (24th c. BCE) to the time of Sargon of Assyria (8th-7th c. BCE). That is why he is so much reviled by Jesuits and Zionists alike.
Akhenaten as sphinx
Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their children adore Aten, who emits rays ending in Life offering palms (above); Akhenaten’s successor Tutankhaten (later Tutankhamun) and Ankhes-enpa-Aten (later Ankhesenamun) live under the auspices of Aten (below), before the Satanic restoration of Amun polytheism carried out following the conspiracy of Ay and Horemheb.
Still, after the Amun polytheistic restoration, there were few monotheistic pharaohs (like Ramses II and Ramses III), who managed to encrypt their spiritual and mystical choices in their five Pharaonic names, which constituted a superior and hitherto unmatched level of personal ideology, moral theory, and imperial spirituality; this is so because each name was an entire sentence that served as a most sophisticated field of semantics and semiotics, and after his ascension every Pharaoh was expected to live and deliver according to the values, virtues and principles solemnly declared in his five names. About:
The Theban Trinity as depicted on the walls of the Medinet Habu mortuary temple of Ramses III: every esotericism and mysticism originates from a situation in which a destitute, impotent and persecuted priesthood is forced to act clandestinely in order to survive and preserve its existence by initiating members into an otherwise prohibited faith. After the Amun Theban polytheistic restoration, all monotheists were forced to conceal their faith and to appear as publicly adoring Amun; it would be impossible for Ramses III to rule without showing in public his faith to the abomination of the Theban Trinity.
The vast sacerdotal complex of Karnak, center of the Theban Trinity cult, was larger and more populous than several tiny Achaean kingdoms or Peleset-Pelasgian states.
A copy (from 1939) of the hieroglyphics and other figures embossed on the outside of an Egyptian water clock or ‘clepsydra’ which was discovered in the Temple of Karnak, Luxor, Upper Egypt, and dates from the rule of King Amenhotep III (1388-1351 BCE). The top row shows a series of planet gods and the 36 decan stars – the great celestial timekeepers of the ancient Egyptians. In the middle are various constellations and deities and, on the bottom row, a calendar of months and month gods.
Scientific inventions like the Karnak clepsydra demonstrate the enormous gap that separated the Ancient Orient, which was the then center of the world with the most advanced civilizations (Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Hittite Anatolia, Canaanite Ugarit, and Elam), and the evidently backward, underdeveloped, and rudimentary life in the periphery (the Lukka of Western Anatolia, the Achaeans, the Peleset-Pelasgians-Philistines, and the Caphtor of South Balkans, the Anatolian Sea, and Crete, and their likes).
All these divisions were reflected outside Egypt, wherever Egyptians arrived, settled, traded with local populations, and diffused their cults and crafts among the natives. If Atenism was a rationalization of the Iwnw Heliopolitan dogma (also known as the Ennead), the polytheistic Trinity of Amun of Thebes (first established in the early 16th c. BCE) was an imperial religious dogma traced on the ancient, Memphitic polytheistic religion of Ptah. About:
Representation of the Iwnw-Heliopolitan Pesedjet (Ennead)
The Iwnw-Heliopolitan Ennead was the main spiritual-religious-theological system in Ancient Egypt; it was headquartered at Iwnw (: ‘the Pillars, meaning the obelisks), i.e. in today’s Ayn Shams, a northern district of Cairo, where the main temple of Atum was located. As it was the center of the Egyptian monotheistic cult, which symbolized God with the Sun, it was called Heliopolis (city of the Sun) by the Ancient Greeks. As religion, it epitomized the Divine Unity, fully encompassing Cosmogony, Cosmology, and Eschatology-Soteriology (all expressed in vast field of sign semiotics and symbols), while also combining Spiritual Ontology with World Order, Discipline and Moral. The stolen obelisks of Heliopolis served as means of Divine Epiphany and initially all the faithful took active part in the divine acts that encapsulated and praised the Creation. Extra: https://www.archaeology.org/slideshow/7396-heliopolis-egypt-obelisks
Aspects of the Divine Order: Ennead
The Khemenu-Hermupolitan Ogdoad was an equally old, sophisticated and important spiritual-religious-theological system in Ancient Egypt; headquartered in Khemenu (modern Ashmunein, near Mallawi, El Minya Governorate in Upper Egypt, ca. 320 km south Cairo), it was elaborated by the priesthood of Djhawty (ḏḥwtj/Thoth), aspect of Wisdom of God (symbolized by the bird ibis), whose main temple was located there. As religion, it projected the male-female division, which is attested in the material universe, onto the spiritual universe and onto the divine order of the Creation in an effort to reconstruct and fathom the modalities of the emanation of forms and the Being-Becoming process.
Ptah, the main god of Memphis, was the focal person of a counterfeit religious system at the antipodes of the Heliopolitan (Ennead) and Hermupolitan (Ogdoad) religions. Depicted in a statue now in the Turin Museum (above) and on a wall-painting from the tomb of Nefertari, main royal wife of Ramses II (below); as a polytheistic system, it also involved the concept of lameness, triggered religious fanaticism and darkness, while fully pre-modeling the Greek Hephaestus and the Roman Vulcanus. To cancel the cataclysmic impact that the Heliopolitan and Hermupolitan religions had on Egypt, the priests of Ptah, who represented a rather marginal religion until then, initiated -in the beginning of the 16th c. BCE, after the liberation of Egypt from the Hyksos- an imperial religious system entirely fashioned after their polytheistic prerequisites: this was the Theban Amun polytheism that most of the pharaohs of the 18th dynasty fought hard to utterly destroy and totally demolish. More: https://www.academia.edu/34439637/In_Ancient_Egypt_at_any_given_moment_there_was_never_one_Egyptian_Religion
Tomb of Nefertari, eastern annexe west wall (north): Nefertari is shown making an offering of linen to Ptah. He was the creator god of weaving and crafts. The linen which she offers is in the shape of the hieroglyph for clothing, “Menkhet” more of them stand on a table in front of her. The text above the table states: “Giving cloth to the Lord of Truth (= Ptah) on the sacred land”. Ptah stands on a dais in the shape of a Ma’at sign, inside a golden shrine with a curved roof, supported by two poles. The rear one is plain, but the front one is topped with a djed pillar; a large djed pillar also stands behind the shrine. He is portrayed in human form, but with green skin and wrapped as a mummy. His hands protrude from the front of the bandages holding a staff which combines a was-sceptre, another djed pillar and a shen-sign. His shaven head is covered with a tight fitting skull cap and he wears a large artificial beard. Behind the top of the combined sceptre is an open green wooden door.
Consequently, it is absolutely pointless, if not foolish, to perceive the Egyptian ascendancy, influence and impact on the various peripheral lands and regions as unitary or unidimensional; every Egyptian priesthood promoted at home and abroad their own spirituality, worldview, dogma, theology and cult. This situation clearly transported internal Egyptian spiritual divisions abroad; it was therefore only normal that numerous local conflicts, wars and destructions took place in those peripheral circumferences.
Thus, we can understand that, if in case of turmoil, a destitute Achaean king, like the later mythologized Menelaus, ran away to save himself in Egypt under the auspices of the Heliopolitan priesthood (which remained always powerful down to the time of Christianization of Egypt), he would certainly be offered support and protection; then, this development would be enough to turn against Egypt that king’s enemies and opponents, who would organize a maritime campaign to attack the country, which -they would think- treacherously supported or protected their archenemy.
VI. Why Dio Chrysostom’s historical sources are trustworthy and Homer’s pretenses are proven red herring
Third Point: the authors’ innovative approach to, and interpretation of, the mythological event existed since the Late Antiquity
This has certainly to be considered as one of the strengths of the research made and the book published by the authors; in fact, what they conclude, namely that the Achaeans did not truly win but they actually lost the Trojan War (which lets us conclude that Homer was a deliberate liar), was already said by ancient authors. Then, this means that, in support of merely a different narrative and alternative interpretation, which existed already since the Roman times, the two authors (Belyakov and Matveyshev) managed to elaborate an entire book. This is certainly a remarkable achievement that goes against the colonial tradition of Western European historiography, as per which the texts of Dio Chrysostom and of anyone else who ‘would challenge Homer’s authenticity’ have to be considered as untrustworthy.
In the first four chapters {ch. 1, Mega-mall to megaron: Pilgrimage to the land of Homer: p. 7; ch. 2, The Adventurer who tripped over Troy: p. 27; ch. 3, The War for Troy, 20th century: p. 57; ch. 4, And they came back in disgrace: p. 87}, Anatoly V. Belyakov and Oleg A. Matveyshev comprehensively educate their readers. Then, in the fifth chapter of their book (ch. 5, The Poet who composed Greece: p. 121), they expand on the topic, referring to Dio Chrysostom and many other ancient authors. The postface (‘In lieu of an afterword’: p. 169) offers both authors the chance to contextualize their approach and to widen the discussion about the topic, while also questioning the veracity, the honesty, and the usefulness of the modern colonial historiography and deploring the conventional schemes that Western universities (or simply ‘Schools of Falsehood’) have propagated worldwide.
The two authors convey very accurately to their readers Dio Chrysostom’s narrative (p. 147: “Dio was told about this by a priest from Egyptian Anufis, who in his turn, had learned this from an inscription on the stele based on a story told by Menelaus, who had visited this place”). The ancient Anatolian orator, thinker, historian and erudite scholar (originating from Prusa/Bursa) Dio Chrysostom (literally ‘Dio the golden-mouthed’; Δίων Χρυσόστομος; Дион Хрисостом или «Златоуст»; 40-115 CE) was an influential public figure in the Roman Empire, known for his strong convictions, meticulous researches, and enthusiastic supporters or enemies. Indefatigable traveler, Dio crisscrossed the Mediterranean basin and spoke with authoritative priests and mystics, being brazen in his criticism of Domitian; he was a close personal friend of both, Nerva and Trajan.
It is surely worthwhile to refer to his texts and concepts, interpretations and suggestions, contemplations and postulations, but today, one scholar must also take into account and, in addition, highlight and elucidate the very significant position that Dio Chrysostom held in Roman Anatolia. This makes an enormous contrast with the epic poets, Hesiod, Homer, and others, who were merely popular bards in small cities known to be ruled by a petty local authority and therefore deprived of any significant literary, valuable archives, academic/educational and scientific resources or an outstanding historical documentation. I intentionally underscore this point because Dio Chrysostom must be considered as a far more trustworthy source of information about Homer than Homer about the Trojan War. About:
In his 11th discourse (or ‘Trojan Discourse’), Dio Chrysostom discusses extensively about the Trojan War; the title of the discourse reads: “Maintaining that Troy was not captured” (ΤΡΩΙΚΟΣ ΥΠΕΡ ΤΟΥ ΙΛΙΟΝ ΜΗ ΑΛΩΝΑΙ.) A modern English translation totals around 17500 words.
The Ancient Greek text and an English translation can be found here:
In paragraph 37 (out of 154) of his 11th discourse, Dio Chrysostom, interrupts his narrative to state the origin of his knowledge. His discourse follows the pattern ‘in medias res’, because he starts his narrative straight away, well before giving details about the source of his information and the way he acquired full consciousness of Homer’s forgery and historical distortion.
More specifically, Dio Chrysostom states: ” I, therefore, shall give the account as I learned it from a certain very aged priest in Onuphis, who often made merry over the Greeks as a people, claiming that they really knew nothing about most things, and using as his chief illustration of this, the fact that they believed that Troy was taken by Agamemnon and that Helen fell in love with Paris while she was living with Menelaus; and they were so thoroughly convinced of this, he said, being completely deceived by one man, that everybody actually swore to its truth. My informant told me that all the history of earlier times was recorded in Egypt, in part in the temples, in part upon certain columns, and that some things were remembered by a few only as the columns had been destroyed, while much that had been inscribed on the columns was disbelieved on account of the ignorance and indifference of later generations. He added that these stories about Troy were included in their more recent records, since Menelaus had come to visit them and described everything just as it had occurred. When I asked him to give this account, he hesitated at first, remarking that the Greeks are vainglorious, and that in spite of their dense ignorance they think they know everything. He maintained that no affliction more serious could befall either individual or community than when an ignoramus held himself to be most wise, since such men could never be freed from their ignorance”.
Onouphis (Ὄνουφις; Onuphis; Онуфис) is merely the Ancient Greek rendering of ‘Aa Nefer’ (: the very good), a usual designation of the bull who manifested as Osiris Incarnate. As a locality, Onouphis belonged to the fourth (‘twenty first’) ‘nome’ (: district) of Egypt, being currently located ca. 10 km from Tanta in the Western part of Delta (Mehallet Menouf). About:
Austin, Norman. “5. Herodotus and Helen in Egypt”. Helen of Troy and Her Shameless Phantom, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008, pp. 118-136. https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501720703-009
VII. The absolute denigration of the Late Antiquity Greeks by the Ancient Egyptian high priest as the destination of Human History
It is not my intention at this point to analyze the devastating denigration of the Ancient Greeks, as it was made by the Ancient Egyptian sacerdotal interlocutor of Dio Chrysostom, but I have to state that it consists in one of the many solid proofs about the absolute inferiority of the so-called Ancient Greek civilization as regards Egypt, Cush (Ancient Sudan), Canaan, Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Iran. This topic is at the epicenter of today’s worldwide polarizations with respect to Spirituality, Cult, Mysticism, Genius, Wisdom, Intellect, Knowledge, Moral, Art, Science, Governance, and Culture. Every effort and concertation in view of a multipolar world hinges on this very issue.
Either the numerous different countries, traditions and cultures will eliminate and utterly delete the fallacy and forgery of Ancient Greece, as stipulated by the racist, colonial intellectuals of Western European Renaissance (1400-1600) and repeated by all the posterior, colonial, academics down to our days, …
… or the entire Mankind will disappear in the forthcoming nuclear annihilation that the corrupt values, the absurd mentality, the pathetic ignorance, the villainous attitude, the lowly behavior, the profane character, and the sacrilegious mindset of the modern Western nations (as impacted by the fallacious Greco-centric and Euro-centric education, academic life, and intellectual endeavors of their blind, paranoid and dictatorial elites) will inevitably cause.
Christianity irreversibly deleted the pernicious, evil, barbarian, nonsensical and uncouth ‘culture’ of the so-called Ancient Greeks; it took some time for several Christian Roman Emperors to physically exterminate those among the Ancient Greek speaking populations who did not accept Christianity, but around the time of Justinian I (527-565), the disreputable and blasphemous profanity named ‘Greece’ was already extinct – thank God!
But, starting with the Renaissance, all the Anti-Christian forces of Western Europe started deploying a colossal effort to revive the dead culture of the world’s most infamous past. This is the reason for which the Western European conquistadors and other colonial officers and armies perpetrated so many physical and spiritual genocides throughout the world. In fact, the Western European effort to revive the defunct pseudo-civilization of the Ancient Greeks is tantamount to and absurd and intentional worldwide Zombification, which will end up with the revelation of their eschatological agenda that provides for the presentation of the Antichrist as the true Christ or Messiah or Mahdi or Savior.
Although they presented their topic in a pertinent and persuasive manner, Anatoly V. Belyakov and Oleg A. Matveyshev failed to realize that the Ancient Egyptian priest’s words (as preserved in Dio Chrysostom’s text) “… are vainglorious, and that in spite of their dense ignorance they think they know everything. He maintained that no affliction more serious could befall either individual or community than when an ignoramus held himself to be most wise, since such men could never be freed from their ignorance” are at the very origin of every racism, barbarism, Nazism, odium and inhumanity. But, I must admit that this was not the real focus of their research.
VIII. Dio Chrysostom’s Egyptian sacerdotal interlocutor had read Ramses III’s Annals
Now, when it comes to the contents of the lesson that the Ancient Egyptian priest gave to Dio Chrysostom, we can conclude about what it may approximately have been. The Anatolian Roman orator mentions a specific point, which proves the veracity of the encounter that he describes; the Ancient Egyptian priest states that “the history of earlier times was recorded in Egypt, in part in the temples, in part upon certain columns”; this is absolutely true. Major historical acts, Pharaonic campaigns, significant battles, remarkable expeditions, what modern Egyptologists call the ‘Annals’ of the Pharaohs, and the indispensable libations to gods that took place at the end of each great event, all were narrated, inscribed and depicted on spiritually selected parts of the walls and on some of the columns of the Ancient Egyptian temples.
Every Ancient Egyptian temple was considered as a minimal representation of the Universe; the architectural parts of the temples corresponded to the sections of the macrocosm. In fact, every single temple was (and had to be) an interpretation of the Creation or, if you prefer, an adaptation of the parts of cosmos into the theoretical background that the sacerdotal architects of the temple envisioned, taught and propagated. This consists in one more reason for which I constantly refer to the unmatched superiority of the Ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Hittite Anatolian, Canaanite and Iranian civilizations and to the unfathomable inferiority of the so-called Ancient Greek civilization {where the temples had only to be ‘beautiful’ brothels for fallen, pathetic priests, prostitutes (‘priestesses’), and ignorant, idiotic laymen to perform orgies in veneration of their fake gods}.
So, and this is quite significant, the historical deeds of the pharaohs, however critical they may have been, along with the final libation that consecrated their successes, were written on the external walls and on some architectural members of the outer courtyard and the columned hall of mortuary temples. In very few cases, such deeds were narrated on the walls of cult temples. And in extremely rare cases, the annals of a pharaoh were inscribed on the internal walls of the chamber housing the Holy of Holies where supreme spiritual acts were performed. This depended exclusively on the relationship that the pharaoh in question had with the specific temple’s high priest and hierophant (the two most influential sacerdotal figures during the mystical performance of cult). An example of Pharaonic Annals written in internal parts of cult temples is offered in the case of Thutmose III (in the temple of Amun at Karnak, Luxor/Thebes of Egypt). About:
An example of Pharaonic Annals inscribed on walls and colonnades of mortuary temples is given in the case of Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el Bahri (Thebes West). The Expedition to Punt (near Ras Hafun in today’s Somalia) was narrated on the walls and the columns of the second colonnade (southern or left side). About:
What Dio Chrysostom’s sacerdotal interlocutor may have had in mind when speaking about texts inscribed on walls and columns that related to historical facts associated to what his suppliant called ‘Trojan War’ we can easily assess by studying and comprehending the Ancient Egyptian narratives of the three battles that Ramses III fought in order to save Egypt and the world civilization from the barbarian and unholy Sea Peoples. The texts and the bas-reliefs of his mortuary temple at Medinet Habu (Thebes West) offer the proper contextualization of the conversation that took place in Onouphis (more than 1300 years after the battles were fought), according to what we read in paragraph 37 of Dio Chrysostom’s 11th discourse.
The Ancient Egyptian texts and bas-reliefs were first written on papyri and then engraved on walls and columns; the final text corresponded to spiritual, sacerdotal and Pharaonic norms, but it was elaborated on the basis of various reports, earlier records, and several drafts that offered abundant if not nauseating details that were not necessary (or even permissible) in the final narrative. Apparently what was later mythologized by Homer and others as the ‘Trojan War’ was an unimportant event, a skirmish or a foolish attempt, which caused the thunderous reaction of the majority of the populations of Western Anatolia, Anatolian Sea, Crete, and South Balkans, thus terminating not only the weak authority of the tiny Achaean kingdoms but also the formidable preponderance of the Hittite Empire.
Homeric ‘Greece’: a multi-divided world
In fact, the expedition (poetically overmagnified and viciously exaggerated to fully unacceptable levels) may have involved the capture of a fortress, but the Achaeans paid dearly for their loyalty to the Hittites, and this was the reason for which what modern archaeologists call ‘Mycenaean world’ vanished from the surface of the Earth. Even Egypt was exposed for the protection offered to escapees like Menelaus, and after the destruction of Hattusha and Ugarit, the Sea Peoples attacked with vehement odium the weakened empire of Ramses III, which was only a shadow of Thutmose III’s Kemet.
IX. The fake term ‘Ancient Greece’ prevents us from assessing Homer’s devastating failure
Fourth Point: the authors’ overall evaluation of the impact the Homeric epics had on Ancient Greece is correct, but inaccurate.
When it comes to Homer and all the Ionian poets of epics and rhapsodies, their intentional distortion of historical facts had one main target: the erase the memory of the Sea Peoples’ invasions and of the subsequent collapse of the Achaean kingdoms.
At this point, we have also to take into consideration what would have happened if the Sea Peoples were not dispersed by Ramses III, but won the battles fought against Egypt and returned home. A totally different culture, diametrically opposed to that of the militarily strong Hittites and Achaeans, would have prevailed. The notion of empire would have been replaced by the petty confederations of the Lukka, the Peleset, and their likes. And there would have never been any Homer and any poet willing to commemorate the brazen Achaean attempt that finally failed. The Sea Peoples’ invasions, as a major historical event that plunged the wider region of Western Anatolia, Anatolian Sea, Crete and South Balkans to darkness, ended up in total failure after the dispersed components of the attackers settled in different locations throughout the Mediterranean (Sardinia, Sicily, Palestine, Phoenicia) and lived there in -comparatively with earlier strata- primitive conditions.
It would be perhaps correct to say that Homer created ‘Ancient Greece’, but unfortunately, neither Homer nor Ancient Greece ever existed; Homer, as one specific poet, was the creation of the imagination (and the result of lack of necessary documentation) of several South Balkan historians, whereas Ancient Greece, as a hypothetical past entity, was fabricated intentionally by Renaissance intellectuals.
In several points throughout their book, the two authors examine the topic and ponder whether Homer lived as an independent historical individual or he is merely the product of a legend concerning the author or the authors of the epics, which were finally attributed to one person. Anatoly Belyakov and Oleg Matveyshev however claim that the epics were used in different cities-states as the foundation of their local culture, education and national identity. This is true, but still it does not fully reveal the real intentions of the early Ionian epic poets. In addition, the role played by the epics in the formation of what the two authors call ‘Ancient Greece’ is questionable to significant extent.
What Homer and the other epic poets tried apparently to revive was the feeling of the Achaean unity, commonwealth, and values; but we must not forget even for a moment that their audiences were mainly the Ionians and the Aeolians of Western Anatolia, the Anatolian Sea and the South Balkans. Not all the predominantly Pelasgian and Dorian populations of the wider region! In their outright majority, they would vehemently reject these epics. And this is quite well known!
Homer did not use the filthy and unholy name of Selloi (i.e. the Pelasgian/Peleset class of polytheistic priests of the non-Achaean shrine at Dodona: Iliad, 16: 233–235) as an ethnonym for the forces that attacked Troy. It is only several centuries later, and due to continuous strives, clashes, conflicts and wars, that the term Selloi or Hellenes (‘Greeks’) was imposed by the Dorians onto all the other tribes and settled populations as a recapitulative name to describe the diverse South Balkan clans of significantly different ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds. Contrarily to Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle and others, Homer called the participants of the anti-Trojan expedition either Achaeans or Danaans. This certainly makes an enormous difference. The extremely scarce use of the term ‘Hellenes’ in the epics is a notable problem per se; no one can really understand in depth the essence of the narrative, before fully comprehending the fact that for Homer this name was an abomination.
How can we assess the Trojan War epics’ impact on the different tribes of the wider region? An early approach will certainly flood us with fabulous references, splendid mentions, and hyperbolic praises of the mythical author(s); it is certain that many intellectuals and authors in Ionia, Argos, Thebes, Sparta, Attica, and Magna Graecia (Southern Italy and Sicily) expressed an unequaled respect and an unprecedented admiration for the author(s) of the epics. This situation continued among certain Greek-speaking and Roman authors of the Late Antiquity. However, flattering words consist only in a fraudulent representation of the historical reality. And we have good reason to believe that Homer did not truly trust these ‘words’: ‘hepea pteroenta’ (winged words). About:
The only straightforward and substantial question that we have to make in order to evaluate the approximate impact that Homer and the epics attributed to him had on the various tribes, which inhabited parts of Western Anatolia, the Anatolian Sea, South Balkans and Crete during the period 700-300 BCE, is the following:
– Did Homer or did he not achieve to pass onto the Ionians and the Aeolians (and eventually onto other tribes and populations) of the 7th c. BCE the fundamental spiritual, moral, royal, military, religious, socio-behavioral, cultural, literary, and artistic values and principles of the 2nd millennium BCE Achaeans?
The only possible response to such a question is a flat ‘no’.
The Achaean world, as attested on excavated palaces, temples, fortresses and tombs and as documented on deciphered texts (Linear B), could not be resurrected from the dead, and actually it never did.
Many modern scholars, and in the case of the present book both authors, have correctly concluded that Homer could not and actually did not have access to a genuine representation of the Achaean world. It goes without saying that what you fail to first represent to yourself in an authoritative and truthful manner, you cannot possibly communicate to others in a trustworthy way. Homer could not read any Linear B inscription, if he happened to ever find one, and the Achaean scribes, who used to write these texts, were all killed mercilessly by the thunderous rebellion of the Sea Peoples (Lukka, Peleset/Pelasgians, Tjekker/Teucroi, etc.) before their Hittite counterparts and allies underwent the same fatal experience.
Only a vague reminiscence of the Achaean world was left among poets, priests and elder mystics, when the author(s) of the epics were born. So, the conclusion is that we cannot possibly evaluate Homer’s impact onto the Ionians and the Aeolians, before first identifying his true intentions. Most of the scholars, who address this issue, commit a catastrophic error; they project their wrong viewpoint on 5th and 4th c. BCE ‘Greece’ onto the situation that prevailed throughout Western Anatolia, the Anatolian Sea, Crete, and South Balkans at the end of the 8th and the 7th c. BCE, when the epic poets of the Ionians composed their rhapsodies.
The biased colonial scholars have already perceived 5th and 4th c. BCE ‘Greece’ as an ethnic, linguistic, spiritual and cultural entity whereas it was not; even what they consider as the boundaries of their fictional ‘Ancient Greek world’ never existed in reality. I have to be specific now with respect to 5th and 4th c. BCE ‘Greece’.
Caria was not ‘Greece’.
Lycia was not ‘Greece’.
Ionia was not ‘Greece’.
Aeolia was not ‘Greece’.
Lydia was not ‘Greece’.
Phrygia was not ‘Greece’.
Thrace was not ‘Greece’.
Macedonia was not ‘Greece’.
Illyria was not ‘Greece’.
Crete was not ‘Greece’.
The Anatolian Sea was not ‘Greece’.
And, more importantly, the purely geographical entity ‘Greece’ did not constitute an ethnic, linguistic, spiritual and cultural entity; when it comes to governance, the numerous tiny kingdoms and petty republics were multi-divided, reviled one another, and, even worse, they were ceaselessly waging wars one upon another, committing execrable atrocities almost in every spot of the wretched land. You cannot possibly call those shabby statelets ‘Greece’ for a very good reason: they did not call themselves that way.
Most of the so-called Ancient Greek cities-states were against the sacrilegious rulers of Sparta and Athens who idiotically and pathetically wanted to reject the imperial Iranian rule.
The aforementioned reality was attested in the fallaciously taught, academically distorted, and educationally mythologized ‘Greek-Persian Wars’ that the Carian traitor and bogus-historian Herodotus wrote and titled ‘Median Wars’ due to his malignancy, confusion, and ignorance. In those events, the majority of the Ancient Greek states rejected to participate and did not side with the barbarian rascals of Athens and Sparta, who opposed the annexation of the South Balkan extremities to the Achaemenid Iranian Empire.
The historical truth: the undeniable superiority of the Iranian Civilization over the disorderly and chaotic Ancient ‘Greek’ world – Above: Persepolis, a majestic capital that the barbarian Greeks could never have.
And the Jesuit falsehood that generated Modern Nazism: Raphael’s delusional falsehood of the nonexistent Athens – Below: the Satanic painting that fabricated Modern Europe and Nazism
Even more meaningfully, during and after the end of those wars, one after the other, most of all these trivial tyrants, leaders, pretenders and oligarchs moved to Parsa (Persepolis), the great imperial capital of Iran, and in a most docile, shameless and disreputable manner, implored the support and the favors of the Iranian Emperor against their rivals, relatives, former friends, neighbors, competitors, associates and assistants. So disgustingly treacherous and felonious they were that they turned the wider region into a wasp nest. Soon afterwards, they started quarreling, ruining and devastating one another in the so-called Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE). Further wars among them continued for more than 60 years also involving three ‘holy wars’ (355-346 BCE), until a foreign king, Philip II of Macedonia, defeated the alliance of Thebans and Athenians in the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BCE). And as it is known, Alexander the Great failed to annex to Macedonia all these petty statelets, because Sparta and its allies opposed and rejected the Macedonian rule. About:
In the light of these facts, one can effectively identify the epic poets’ and Homer’s intentions; as it is well known and as Anatoly Belyakov and Oleg Matveyshev state repeatedly in their informative and resourceful book, after the Trojan War, all the Achaean kingdoms were destroyed and the wider region of Western Anatolia, the Anatolian Sea, Crete, and South Balkans was plunged into decay, barbarism, multi-divisions, chaos and endless wars. Those centuries were called, not without reason, by modern scholars ‘the Dark Ages’. This was due to the destructions caused due to the Sea Peoples’ rebellions (‘in their land of origin’ as per the Ancient Egyptian texts), their invasions, and the final annihilation of the invaders at the gates of Egypt (in three land and sea battles). However, although extensively recorded in the Ancient Egyptian Annals, this major event cannot be attested in any Ancient Greek source.
Linear B tablets from Pylos: the nature and the contents of the texts of the Achaean (or Mycenaean) world testify to the inferiority of the local civilization opposite the Ancient Oriental civilizations: the Ugarit Canaanites, the Anatolian Hittites, the Hurrians, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians and the Elamites. There were no codes of laws, no epics, no cosmogonies, no myths, no oracles, and no imperial annals written in Linear B.
This, in and by itself, explains very well what the epic poets’ intentions were. The Achaeans had almost entirely disappeared. The Ionians and the Aeolians were a minority among the indigenous Pelasgians. Then, the so-called ‘descent of the Dorians’ added new rivals to the diverse inhabitants of the wider region. Certainly, the Pelasgians had their own epics and narratives detailing their own achievements: they had rebelled and burned the Achaean fortresses and palaces; they had attacked the Hittite Empire and destroyed its sizeable and famous capital, Hattusa; they had also proceeded further to Syria and Canaan, further spreading terror and fire. And at the end, they had also attacked Egypt, brazenly pursuing there the last remnants of the Achaean world who had managed to escape. This is the narrative that Homer’s folk tales managed to eclipse.
In fact, most of the endless wars that took place in the wider region of Western Anatolia, the Anatolian Sea, Crete, and South Balkans were due to the continuation of the two irreconcilable traditions and opposite alliances of the 2nd millennium BCE: the Achaeans with the Hittites vs. the Peleset/Pelasgians with the Lukka and the Taruisha/Trojans. Finally, a minor operation, namely the capture of a fortress, i.e. a historical detail, obscured the historical reality, i.e. the fact that the conquerors of Troy were destroyed in a most irreversible manner, after their useless victory. As the Hittite Empire had collapsed and the Hittites had relocated from Cappadocia to NW Mesopotamia and Northern Syria, there was apparently no reason for an Ionian epic poet to praise the Hittite-Achaean alliance; that’s why another specific reason about the Achaean military campaign had to be invented. But the concealment of the Sea Peoples’ invasions was absolute among the Ionians, the Aeolians, and the Dorians of the 1st millennium BCE.
There is however a major reason due to which Homer’s effort marked finally a certain success. The Sea Peoples in their totality had not developed a sophisticated civilization; it seems that few among them had scribes and priests able to write and keep records. Some of the non-deciphered writings of the region may eventually belong to them, but their disastrous defeat in Egypt and dispersion around the Mediterranean put an end to those colleges of learned men. The fact that these populations did not have an outstanding writing system to keep their records written prevented them from saving their narratives and traditions and from opposing Homer’s clearly false narratives.
Quite contrarily, with the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet among Ionians, the conditions were made available for the supporters of Homer’s rhapsodies to diffuse their narrative. As their opponents failed to properly react, the Ionians managed to form the basis of an Epic History, positioning themselves as the successors to the Achaeans. That’s why they were also able to erase the Pelasgian / Lukka / Trojan narrative, which constituted the historical truth and was ultimately saved in Egypt.
But the Achaean legend was not reconstituted, and the Ionians, Aeolians and Dorians were not united. Fallacious when it comes to the historical past, Homer’s epics proved to be purely futile for posterior generations. Being proud about a tradition that they could not follow or reproduce, the Ionians were contented with literary forms, being however totally deprived of imperial substance. That is why they were lower than the Ancient Oriental empires and the great civilizations of those centuries (Sargonid Assyria, Nabonid Babylonia, Achaemenid Iran), pretty much like the Achaeans were lower than their Hittite allies; this is confirmed by the undeniable fact that no imperial annals, no cosmogonies, no cosmological myths, no eschatological revelations, and no spiritual wisdom texts have been found in Linear B – in striking contrast with the Hittite cuneiform and hieroglyphic documentation.
X. Conclusion
At the end of this very lengthy book review and discussion of the topics presented in the passionately elaborated book ‘The Trojan Horse of Western History’ by Anatoly V. Belyakov and Oleg A. Matveyshev, I have to add few points, although they are not directly related to the matter. If I do so, this is due to the fact that both authors wanted also to highly contextualize their approach to and research about the Trojan War, and the hidden realities behind it (notably in their postface: ‘In lieu of an afterword’, p. 169).
The two authors are correct in their suggestion that, by saying lies about the Trojan War, Homer created Ancient Greece and that by saying lies about Ancient Greece, Modern Europeans created European History. This issue is definitely crucial because the vicious and racist historical distortion, which was undertaken by the colonial historiographers and intellectuals during the Western European Renaissance, hinges on the Trojan War forgery, since it has been the first to fully epitomize the divisive falsehood ‘East vs. West’ (Orient vs. Occident).
Shapur’s victory over Valerian in Urfa (Urhoy/Edessa), 260 CE (above); Heraclius’ victory over Khosrow (Chosroes) II in Nineveh, 627 CE (below): the Iranian-Roman wars lasted almost 700 years, but they were viewed by either opponent as a “Clash between the East and the West”. This undeniable historical fact puts a tombstone on the racist and divisive discourses of Herodotus, Aeschylus, and their modern Nazi admirers.
Without this entirely Manichaean invention, the criminal murderers and inhuman conquistadors of Western Europe would have never caused the unprecedented bloodshed for which they must be exemplarily punished. As a matter of fact, there was never a division ‘East vs. West’ in the History of Mankind. The evil Western European revisionists produced it in order to vilify the Orient and thus present the shame of Western barbarism as a potential ‘civilization’. The execrable forgery of Herodotus also contributed to this malignantly intentional divide, but it all started with the inclusion of the Trojan War in the mythical ‘history’ of the post-Renaissance Western revisionists. In fact, Nazism starts with the lies about the Trojan War.
Anatoly V. Belyakov and Oleg A. Matveyshev, throughout their fascinating book, seem not to fully realize that the only possible criteria and measures that we can apply in our evaluation of the so-called Ancient Greek civilization are those of the earlier civilizations of Anatolia, Canaan, Egypt and Mesopotamia. Never ever does the posterior define or predetermine the anterior; the Achaeans are therefore to be viewed, evaluated and rated as per Hittite criteria. The ethnically, linguistically and culturally different populations of 2nd millennium BCE Crete are to be assessed and judged as per Egyptian terms and measures.
And the 1st millennium BCE Western Anatolia, Anatolian Sea, South Balkan, and Crete constituted a multi-divided environment of tiny states without an imperial concept, worldview and order; when compared with Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia, all these quarreling states of the so-called ‘Greek world’ look marginal, peripheral, underdeveloped, destitute and ignorant, as they were deprived of a millennia-long tradition of spirituality, world conceptualization, unsurpassed wisdom, advanced science, and imperial worldview and order.
In fact, what was considered as the top human achievement in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia and Iran, i.e. the analytically described and highly revered concept of Empire, was impossible to be understood (let alone reproduced) by the clueless, backward, uncultured and inconsistent Ancient ‘Greeks’. These are the criteria according to which the ‘Ancient Greeks’ are to be evaluated and rated; furthermore, all hitherto considered Ancient Greek criteria are to be obliterated as erroneously selected and absurdly used by mindless scholars, who failed to understand that the posterior is defined as per the terms of the anterior.
The Gate of Ishtar, Nabonid Babylonia: in the Berlin Museum and in situ (replica); Everything starts and everything ends with Babylon, the Ancient Sumerian sacred city KA DINGIR RA (KA₂.DIG̃IR.RAKI), i.e. the Gate of God; no other city worldwide became a matter of attraction, passion, praise, majesty and controversy like Babylon.
Yet, Alexander the Great realized very well that the only measures, terms, and criteria that mattered to him were those of the Babylonians, the Egyptians and the Iranians. That is why he selected Babylon as capital, he wanted his wife to be Iranian, and he considered the blessing of the Egyptian high priests as important to him – not that of the unimportant, ignorant and worthless Athenian priests.
The two authors evidently understood that ‘Ancient Greece’ constitutes merely a false element of the Modern European version of History, which is entirely forged. Refuting this fallacious version across the board would necessitate a long series of volumes elaborated by an entire team of scholars; from this standpoint, the valuable contribution of Anatoly Belyakov and Oleg Matveyshev marks a remarkable first step in the Russian historiography.
We can therefore safely claim that their approach, research and conclusion have to show the way to all Russian academics and intellectuals, scholars, historians and explorers; this book is also an alarming warning. It urgently imposes on all Russian scientists specializing in Humanities, Orientalism and Classics a major educational, academic, intellectual and ideological reconsideration and an overwhelming de-Westernization; only then, the rightful and heroic fight of the Russian soldiers in Ukraine will be fully justified, actively endorsed, and consciously consecrated.
Western Orientalist historiography; early sources of Iranian History; Prehistory in the Iranian plateau and Mesopotamia
6- Western Orientalist historiography
The modern Western European specialists on Iran were first based on the Ancient Hebrew, Ancient Greek and Latin sources and on travelers’ records and descriptions. On his way to China, the Italian Franciscan monk Odoric of Pordenone was the first European to probably visit (in 1320) the ruins of Parsa (Persepolis) that he called ‘Comerum’. The site was then known as Chehel Minar (چهل منار /i.e. forty minarets) and later as Takht-e Jamshid (تخت جمشید/i.e. the throne of Jamshid, a great hero of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh and of the Iranian legendary historiography about which we discussed). The Venetian Giosafat Barbaro visited the same location in 1474 and, being the victim of the delusions about which I spoke already, he attributed the erection of the majestic monuments to the Jews!
After the rise of the Safavid dynasty and the formation of the two alliances (the French with the Ottomans and the English with the Iranians), an English merchant visited Persepolis in 1568 and wrote a description that was included in Richard Hakluyt’s ‘Voyages’ (1582). Old Achaemenid cuneiform inscriptions were first noticed and reported by the Portuguese António de Gouveia, who visited the site in 1602 and wrote about it in 1611. It is only in 1618 that the Spanish ambassador (to the court of the Safavid Shah of Iran Abbas I/1571-1629; reigned after 1588) García de Silva Figueroa associated the location with the great Achaemenid capital that was known as Persepolis in the Ancient Greek and Latin sources.
The Italian Pietro Della Valle spent five years (1616-1621) in Mesopotamia and Iran, visited Persepolis (1621), made copies of several inscriptions that he noticed there and took them back to Europe, along with clay tablets and bricks that he found in Babylon and Ur. This was the first cuneiform documentation brought to Europe. With respect to Persepolis he wrote that only 25 of the 72 original columns were still standing.
Good indication of the lunacy that Western Europeans experienced at those days due to their erroneous reading of the untrustworthy Ancient Greek historical sources about Achaemenid Iran is the following fact: after traveling in Asia and Africa, Sir Thomas Herbert wrote in his book (1638) that in Persepolis he saw several lines of strange signs curved in the walls. These were, of course, Old Achaemenid cuneiform inscriptions, but at the time, the modern term ‘cuneiform’ had not been invented; however, excessively enthused with Greek literature about Ancient Iran, he ‘concluded’ that these characters ‘resembled Greek’! He mistook cuneiform for Greek! So biased his approach was!
The term ‘cuneiform’ (‘Keilschrift’ in German) was coined (1700) by the German scholar and explorer Engelbert Kaempfer, who spent ten years (1683-1693) in many parts of Asia. The monumental site of the Achaemenid capital was also visited by the famous Dutch artist Cornelis de Bruijn (1704) and the famous jeweler Sir Jean Chardin, who also worked as agent of Shah Abbas II for the purchase of jewels. He was the first to publish (1711) pertinent copies of several cuneiform inscriptions.
The German surveyor Carsten Niebuhr took the research to the next stage when he copied and published (1764) the famous rock reliefs and inscriptions of Darius the Great; in fact, he brought complete and accurate copies of the inscriptions at Persepolis to Europe. He realized that he had to do with three writing systems and that the simpler (which he named ‘Class I’) comprised 42 characters, being apparently an alphabetic script. Niebuhr’s publication was used by many other scholars and explorers, notably the Germans Oluf Gerhard Tychsen, who published the most advanced research on the topic in 1798, and Friedrich Münter, who confirmed the alphabetic nature of the script (in 1802).
The reconstitution of the Iranian past proved to be far more difficult a task than that of the Ancient Egyptian heritage. This is so because, if we consider the Old Achaemenid Iranian cuneiform and the Egyptian hieroglyphics as the earliest stages of the two respective languages and scripts, Coptic (the latest stage of the Egyptian language) was always known in Europe throughout the Christian and Modern times, whereas Pahlavi and Middle Persian (the corresponding stages of the Iranian languages) were totally unknown. For this reason, Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron, the first French Iranologist and Indologist, played a key role in the decipherment of the cuneiform writing, although he did not spend time exploring it. But having learned Pahlavi and Farsi among the Parsis of India, he managed to study Avestan and he translated the Avesta as the sacred text of the Zoroastrians was preserved among the Parsi community. Pretty much like Coptic was essential to Champollion for the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphic, the pioneering work of Anquetil-Duperron and the knowledge of Avestan, Pahlavi, Middle Persian and Farsi helped the French Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy and the German Georg Friedrich Grotefend make critical breakthroughs and advance the decipherment of the Old Achaemenid.
Grotefend’s Memoir was presented to the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 1802, but it was rejected; in fact, he had deciphered only eight (8) letters until that moment, but most of his assumptions were correct. He had however to wait for an incredible confirmation; after Champollion completed his first step toward the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics in 1822, he read the Egyptian text of a quadrilingual inscription on the famous Caylus vase (named after a 18th c. French collector). Then, Champollion’s associate, the Orientalist Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin, announced that Grotefend’s reading of the imperial Achaemenid name ‘Xerxes’ did indeed correspond to what the Egyptian hieroglyphic text testified to. This situation generated an impetus among Orientalist scholars and explorers; until the late 1830s and the early 1840s, Grotefend, the French Eugène Burnouf, the Norwegian-German Christian Lassen, and Sir Henry Rawlinson completed the task.
Shush (Susa), an Elamite and later an Achaemenid capital, was explored in 1851, 1885-1886, 1894-1899, and then systematically excavated by the French Jacques de Morgan (1897-1911), whereas Pasargad (the early Achaemenid capital) was first explored by the German Ernst Herzfeld in 1905. Persepolis was excavated quite later, only in the 1930s by Ernst Herzfeld and Erich Schmidt of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
Not far from Hamadan (the ancient capital Hegmataneh/Ekbatana of the Medes), the splendid site of Mount Behistun (Bisotun) had become world-famous even before it was excavated (initially in 1904) by Leonard William King and Reginald Campbell Thompson (sponsored by the British Museum). This was due to the fact that the famous trilingual Behistun inscription and the associated reliefs were carved at about 100 m above ground level on a cliff, and explorers had to scale the cliff. Several fascinating descriptions of the extraordinary location were written by travelers and visitors, before academic work was carried out there. Putting his life in risk, Rawlinson copied the Old Achaemenid text in 1835, and this helped him advance considerably the decipherment of the script.
Without the decipherment of the Old Achaemenid, it would be impossible for Rawlinson to decipher the Assyrian-Babylonian cuneiform, and later for others to read the Hittite script which enabled us to have access to the most important and the most original Anatolian literature of pre-Christian times.
Behistun (Farsi: Bisotun / Old Iranian: Bagastana, i.e. ‘the place of God’) was mentioned by Ctesias, who totally misunderstood the inscription, attributing it to the ‘Babylonian’ Queen Semiramis and describing it as a dedication to Zeus! In reality, the text is part of the Annals of Emperor Darius I the Great, duly detailing his victory over a rebellion; the Iranian monarch dedicated his triumph to Ahura Mazda. Now, Semiramis seems to be an entirely misplaced Ancient Greek legend about the historical Queen of Assyria (not Babylonia!) Shammuramat. The Assyrian queen was consort of Shamshi Adad V and co-regent with her son Adad-nirari III (during his reign’s early phase). But the Assyrian Queen had nothing to do with Mount Behistun and the Achaemenid Iranian inscription.
In the early 17th c., Pietro della Valle was the first Western European to come to Behistun and sketch the remains. As a matter of fact, many European travelers and explorers visited Behistun, saw the impressive inscription, and disastrously misinterpreted it, due to their preconceived ideas, mistaken readings, and unrealistic assumptions.
A foolish English diplomat and adventurer, Robert Sherley, visited the location in 1598, and he considered the astounding reliefs and the inscriptions as ‘Christian’! Napoleon’s subordinate, General Claude-Matthieu, Comte de Gardane, visited the place in 1807 only to see in the monuments the representation of ‘Christ and his twelve apostles’! In 1817, Sir Robert Ker Porter thought that the impressive relief and inscriptions detailed the deeds of Emperor Shalmaneser V of Assyria and the transportation of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel to the NE confines of Assyria. Last, quite interestingly, the German spiritual-scientific society Ahnenerbe, which used Hitler for their non-Nazi, highly secretive projects, explored Behistun in 1938.
7- Early sources of Iranian History: Assyrian-Babylonian Cuneiform
The early sources of Iranian History are Assyrian-Babylonian historical documents pertaining to the military, commercial and/or administrative activities of the Neo-Assyrian kings in the Zagros mountains and the Iranian plateau; these sources shed light on the earliest stages of Median, Persian and Iranian History, when the ancestors of the Achaemenids were just one of the many tribes that settled somewhere east of the borders of the Assyrian Empire.
Since the 3rd millennium BCE, Sumerian and Akkadian historical sources referred to nomads, settlers, villages, cities, strongholds and at times kingdoms situated in the area of today’s Iran. Mainly these tribes and/or realms were barbarians who either partly damaged or totally destroyed the Mesopotamian civilization and order. That’s why they were always described with markedly negative terms. On the other hand, we know through archaeological evidence that several important sites were located in the Iranian plateau, constituting either small kingdoms or outstanding entrepôts and commercial centers linking Mesopotamia with either India or Central Asia and China.
For instance, settled somewhere in the Middle Zagros, the Guti of the 3rd millennium BCE constituted a barbaric periphery that finally destroyed Agade (Akkad), the world’s first empire ever; and in the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE, the Kassites descended from Middle Zagros to Babylon, after the Old Babylonian kingdom was destroyed (in 1596) by the Hittite Mursilis I, and they set up a profane kingdom (Kassite dynasty of Babylonia) that the Assyrians never accepted as a heir of the old Sumerian-Akkadian civilization.
As both ethnic groups learned Akkadian / Assyrian-Babylonian, their rulers wrote down their names, and thus we know that neither the Guti nor the Kassites were a properly speaking Iranian nation; the present documentation is still scarce in this regard, but there are indications that some of these people bore Turanian (or Turkic) names.
For thousands of years, South Zagros and the southwestern confines of today’s Iran belonged to Elam, the main rival of Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, and Assyria. Viewed as the true negation of the genius of Mesopotamian civilization, Elam was ruled by the ‘kings of Shushan and Anshan’; the two regions corresponded to Susa (and the entire province of Khuzestan in today’s Iran) and South Zagros respectively. The name that modern scholarship uses to denote this nation and kingdom is merely the Sumerian-Akkadian appellation of that country. In Elamite, the eastern neighbors of the Sumerians called their land ‘Haltamti’. Their language was neither Indo-European (like Old Achaemenid and Modern Farsi) nor Semitic (like Assyrian-Babylonian); it was also unrelated to Sumerian, Hurrian and Hattic, the languages of the indigenous populations in Mesopotamia and Anatolia. Recent linguistic research offers tentative approaches to the relationship between Elamite and the Dravidian languages, thus making of it the ancestral language of more than 250 million people.
Elamite linear and cuneiform writings bear witness to the life, the society, the economy, the faith and the culture of the Elamites, as well as to their relations with the Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Assyrians and the Babylonians. But they cannot help us reconstitute the History of the Iranian plateau, because the Elamites never went beyond the limits of South Zagros.
With the rise, expansion and prevalence of Assyria (from the 14th to the 7th c. BCE), we have for the first time a Mesopotamian Empire that showed great importance for the Zagros Mountains and the Iranian plateau; consequently, this means that, for the said period, we have more texts about these regions, which earlier constituted the periphery of the Mesopotamian world, but were gradually incorporated into the ever expanding Assyrian Empire. Thanks to Assyrian cuneiform texts, we know names of tribal chieftains and petty kings, cities, fortresses, ethnic groups, etc., and we can assess the various degrees of Assyrianization of each of them; but it is only at the time of Shalmaneser III (859-824 BCE) that we first find a mention of the Medes and the Persians. The former are named ‘Amadaya’ and later ‘Madaya’, whereas the latter are called ‘Parsua’ (or Parsamaš or Parsumaš).
Assyrian cuneiform texts about the Medes and the Persians more specifically are abundant during the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (745-727 BCE) and at the time of the Sargonids (722-609 BCE). It is noteworthy that the Parsua were first located in the region of today’s Sanandaj in Western Iran and later they relocated to the ancient Elamite region of Anshan (today’s Iranian province of Fars), which was devastated and emptied from its population by Assurbanipal (640 BCE). After the great Assyrian victory, which also involved the destruction of Susa, Assyrian texts mention the grandfather of Cyrus the Great, Cyrus I, as Kuraš, king of Parsumaš. He sent gifts to Nineveh and he also dispatched his eldest son (‘Arukku’ in Assyrian from a hypothetical ‘Aryauka’ in Ancient Iranian) there – nominally as a hostage, but essentially as a student of Assyrian culture, sacerdotal organization, and imperial administration and procedures.
The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III
Tiglathpileser III
Sarrukin (Sargon of Assyria) with his son and successor Sennacherib (right)
8- Pre-History in the Iranian plateau, and Mesopotamia
During the 4th, the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BCE, the major hitherto excavated Iranian archaeological sites are the following:
Tepe Sialk
Located near the modern city of Kashan, in the center of the Iranian plateau, and excavated in the 1930s by the Russian-French Roman Ghirshman, the site was first occupied in the period 6000-5500 BCE. The remains of the zikkurat (dating back to around 3000 BCE) show that it was the largest Mesopotamian style zikkurat. Tepe Sialk IV level (2nd half of the 4th millennium BCE) testifies to evident links with Sumer (Jemdet Nasr, Uruk) and Elam (Susa III). The site was abandoned and reoccupied in the 2nd half of the 1st millennium BCE (Tepe Sialk V and VI). Its location and the archaeological findings let us understand that the site was a key commercial center that linked Mesopotamia with Central Asia and China.
Tureng Tepe
Located close to Gorgan in Turkmen Sahra (NE Iran) and excavated by the American Frederick Roelker Wulsin in the 1930s and by the French Jean Deshayes in the 1950s, the site was inhabited in the Neolithic and then continually from 3100 to 1900 BCE, when it appears to have been the major among many other regional settlements and in evident contact with both, Mesopotamia and Central Asia. There was a disruption, and the site was occupied again only in the 7th c. BCE (Tureng Tepe IV A) by newcomers.
Tepe Yahya
Located at ca. 250 km north of Bandar Abbas and 220 km south of Kerman, the site was of crucial importance for the contacts between Mesopotamia and the Indus River Valley; it was also in contact with Central Asia. Excavated by the Czech-American Clifford Charles Lamberg-Karlovsky, the site was inhabited from ca. 5000 to 2200 BCE and then again after 1000 BCE. The genuine ‘Yahya Culture’ covered the first half of the 4th millennium BCE. The Proto-Elamite phase started around 3400 BCE (Tepe Yahya IV C); few proto-Elamite tablets have been unearthed from that stratum. This period corresponds to the strata Susa Cb and Tepe Sialk IV. During the 3rd millennium BCE, the site appears to have been the center of production of hard stone carving artifacts; dark stone vessels produced here were found / excavated in Mesopotamia. Similar vessels and fragments of vessels have been found in Sumerian temples in Mesopotamia, in Elam, in the Indus River Valley, and in Central Asia.
Not far from Tepe Yahya are situated several important sites that testify to the strong ties that the entire region had with Sumer and Elam in the West, the Indus River Valley in the East and Central Asia in the North; Jiroft gave the name to the ‘Jiroft culture’ which is better documented in the nearby site of Konar Sandal and covers the 3rd millennium BCE. Further in the east and close to the triangle border point (Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan), Shahr-e Sukhteh was an enormous site which thrived between 3200 BCE and the end of the 3rd millennium BCE. It was associated with both, the ‘Jiroft culture’ and the Helmand culture, which was attested in several sites in South Afghanistan. Elamite texts were also found in that site, which already offered many surprises, involving the first known artificial eyeball and the earliest tables game with dice.
Several important prehistoric Mesopotamian sites demonstrate parallels and contacts with the aforementioned sites, notably
– Tell Halaf (near Ras al Ayn in NE Syria; the Neolithic phase lasted from 6100 to 5400 BCE, and the Bronze Age covers the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BCE),
– Tell al Ubaid (near Ur in Dhi Qar governorate; 6500-3700 BCE),
– Tell Arpachiyah (near Nineveh; the site was occupied in the Neolithic period, like Tell Halaf and Ubaid),
– Tepe Gawra (close to Nineveh; the site was occupied from 5000 to 1500 BCE),
– Tell Jemdet Nasr (near Kish in Central Iraq; 3100-2300 BCE), and
– Uruk {near Samawah in South Iraq; type site for the Uruk period (4000-3100 BCE), it was a major Sumerian kingdom and it was the world’s most populated city in the middle of the 4th millennium BCE with ca. 40000 inhabitants and another 90000 residents in the suburbs}.
In the next course, I will present a brief diagram of the History of the Mesopotamian kingdoms and Empires down to Sargon of Assyria – with focus on the relations with Zagros Mountains and the Iranian plateau.
Tepe Sialk
Tureng tepe
Tepe Yahya
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To watch the video (with more than 110 pictures and maps), click the links below:
HISTORY OF ACHAEMENID IRAN – Achaemenid beginnings 1Α
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