Category Archives: silk roads

Bulgarians Mentioned in Egyptian Papyri from Fayoum

What was Ordinary in the Antiquity looks Odd today, due to the Greco-centric Fallacy of the Biased European Colonial ‘Academics’

A while back, I received a brief email from a Bulgarian friend, who urgently asked me to watch a video and comment on the topic. The video offered links to a blog in Bulgarian and to an Austrian site of academic publications. The upsetting affair was the mention of a Bulgarian, or to put it rather correctly of a Bulgarian item or product which was imported in Coptic Egypt. As I understand Bulgarian to some extent, due to my Russian, I read the long presentation of the informative blog, and then replied to my friend. The video was actually a most abridged form of the article posted on the blog of a non-conventional Bulgarian blogger.

Contents

Introduction

I. Fayoum, Al Bahnasa (Oxyrhynchus), and Ancient Egyptian Papyri

II. Karl Wessely and his groundbreaking research and publications

III. Papyrus fragment 1224 of Karl Wessely’s SPP VIII 

IV. Βουλγαρικ- (Vulgarik-)

V. Eastern Roman Emperor Maurice’s Strategicon and the Bulgarian cloaks

VI. Historical context and the Ancient History of Bulgars  

VII. Historical context, the Silk Roads, and Bulgarian exports to Egypt  

VIII. Academic context and the Western falsehood of a Euro-centric World History

i- the conceptualization of World History

ii- the contextualization of every single document newly found here and there

iii- the stages of historical falsification that were undertaken over the past 500 years

iv- the forgers themselves and their antiquity

v- and last but not least, several points of

a) governance of modern states

b) international alliances, and

c) the ensuing captivity of all the targeted nations, each one well-adjusted into the preconceived role that the forgers invented for it

Introduction

What follows is my response on the topic; although it concerns an undeniably very specific affair, it helps greatly in making general readership aware of how deeply interconnected the Ancient World was, of how different it was than it is presented in conventional publications, and of how many layers of fact distortion, source concealment, systematic forgery, academic misinterpretation, and intellectual falsification have been adjusted to what average people worldwide think of as ‘World History’. In brief, the modern Western colonial presentation of World History, which was dictatorially imposed worldwide, is nothing more than a choice-supportive bias and a racist construct. You can also describe it as ‘Hellenism’, Greco-centrism or Euro-centrism.

—————— Response to an inquisitive Bulgarian friend ——————

My dear friend,  

Your question and the associated topic are quite complex. 

The video that you sent me is extremely brief and almost introductory.

Папирусът от Фаюм

However, in the description, it offers two links.

I read the article in the blog; I noticed that it was published before 12-13 years (13.10.2011). Папирусът (който щеше да бъде) с истинското име на българите?

https://d3bep.blog.bg/history/2011/10/13/papirusyt-koito-shteshe-da-byde-s-istinskoto-ime-na-bylgarit.834395

The author seems to have been taken by surprise due to the Fayoum text, but as you will see, there is no reason for that.

The second link included in the video description offers access to Tyche, an academic annual (Fachzeitschrift) published by the Austrian Institut für Alte Geschichte und Altertumskunde, Papyrologie und Epigraphik der Universität Wien. But this is an introductory web page (https://tyche.univie.ac.at/index.php/tyche) that has links to many publications, which you can download in PDF.

You must not be surprised by such findings; they are old and known to the specialists; there are many Bulgarian professors specializing in Ancient Greek. Some of them surely know about the text. But it is in the nature of the Western sciences that scholars do not write for the general public; it is very different from what happened in the Soviet Union and the other countries of the Socialist bloc. Reversely, all the average bloggers, who find every now and then a historical document known but not publicized, think that they discovered something incredible, but in most of the cases, we don’t have anything to do with an extraordinary discovery. Simply, History has been very different from what average people have been left to believe.

I. Fayoum, Al Bahnasa (Oxyrhynchus), and Ancient Egyptian Papyri

Fayoum by the way is an enormous oasis. It has cities, towns and villages. In our times, it was one of the strongholds of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Former president Muhammad Morsi got ca. 90% of the votes locally. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faiyum

The discoveries of papyri in Egypt started mainly in the 19th c.; excavators unearthed tons of valuable documentation, unfortunately in fragmentary situation most of them; indicatively: 

https://archive.org/details/faymtownsandthe00milngoog

https://archive.org/details/faymtownstheir00gren/page/n9/mode/2up

Such is the vastness of the documentation that either Egyptologists or Coptologists or Hellenists, there are many scholars of those disciplines who specialize in papyri only: the Papyrologists. 

Fayoum map with Ancient Greek names

Fayoum Lake (above) – Wadi El Rayan waterfalls (below)

Temple of Soknopaios at Soknopaiou Nesos (Island), Fayoum (viewed from the SE)

Fayoum: a tourist destination

Another major site of papyri discovery is Oxyrhynchus (Ancient Greek name of the Egyptian site Per medjed / Oxyrhynchus is merely the Ancient Greek translation of Per medjed), i.e. the modern city of Al Bahnasa. Indicatively: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri

To get a minimal idea of the vastness of this field of research, go through the following introductory readings:

Cairo Fayum Papyri: http://ipap.csad.ox.ac.uk/Fayum.html

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fayoum_papyri

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_papyri_from_ancient_Egypt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephantine_papyri_and_ostraca

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalen_papyrus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Testament_papyri

II. Karl Wessely and his groundbreaking research and publications

The fragment of papyrus that mentions in Ancient Greek an adjective, which means «Bulgarian» in English, was found in the Fayoum (you can write the word with -u or -ou). It was first published by a great scholar C. (Carl or Karl) Wessely (1860-1931).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Wessely

He was one of the 10 most prominent scholars and philologists of the 2nd half of the 19th and the 1st half of the 20th c. He published a voluminous series of firsthand publications of discoveries, which was named Studien zur Paleographie und Papyruskunde (SPP). As you can guess, this took decades to be progressively materialized. Here you have an online list: 

https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Studien_zur_Palaeographie_und_Papyruskunde

Unfortunately, the volume VIII (Leipzig 1908), which is mentioned in the article of the blog, is missing in the wikisource list!

No problem! You can find the PDF in the Internet Archives site. Here is the link: 

You will find the text’s first publication on page 189 of the book; this is the page 63 of 186 of the PDF. This means that you will find this indication at the bottom of the PDF:  189 (63 / 186).

This volume, as stated on p. 7, contains «Griechische Papyrusurkunden kleineren Formats», i.e. Greek papyri documents of smaller format. If you find it strange that on the first page of the main text (137 (11 / 186) as per the PDF), the first text has the number 702, please remember that this is an enormous documentation published in the series of volumes (SPP) published by Wessely between 1900 and 1920.

III. Papyrus fragment 1224 of Karl Wessely’s SPP VIII  

As you will see, the text slightly differs from what is shown in either the blog article or the video. It is indeed the 1224 papyrus fragment as per the enumeration of the publication. Similarly to many other cases, most of the text is lost; this is quite common. Few things are easy to assess, if you through the entire volume; apparently the background reflects Coptic Egypt, which means that all the texts date between the early 4th and 7th c. CE. This is clearly visible because the dating system is based on indiction, which was a Roman system of periodic taxation and then chronology. About: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiction 

This Latin word was accepted in Greek: ινδικτιών, 

We can also understand that the person, who wrote this specific document, was following (not the Julian calendar but) the Coptic calendar, because on the 8th line the remaining letters αρμουθί (armouthi) help us reconstitute the well-known Coptic month of Pharmouthi (or Parmouti) which corresponds to end March-beginning April (in the Julian calendar) or April and early May in the Gregorian calendar. In Arabic, it is pronounced ‘Bermouda’ (unrelated to the Bermuda islands).

About: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmouti

It has to be noted that the pagan Greek calendar was abolished, and that the use of ‘Greek’ (‘Alexandrine Koine, to be correct) in the Fayum papyri texts and elsewhere does not imply ‘ethnic’ membership but rather religious affiliation (in this case, in contrast to Coptic).

About the Coptic calendar: 

https://st-takla.org/Full-Free-Coptic-Books/Coptic-Synaxarium-or-Synaxarion_English/Eng_Senexar-Senksar-08-Bermoda-Coptic-Month.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coptic_calendar

https://www.copticchurch.net/calendar

In addition, you can see the first letter of the word «indiction» ι (ι) after Pharmouthi. 

Apparently, this papyrus documented a transaction effectuated by a certain Cyril (Cyrillus / Κύριλλος). Only the letters «rill» (ριλλ) are saved, as you can see, but the high frequency of the name among the Copts makes of this word the first choice of any philologist. By the way, the name is still widely used among today’s Copts as «Krulos». 

I fully support Wessely’s reconstitution of the document on lines 7, 10 and 11.

Line 7 (εγράφη out of εγρα-), i.e. «it was written»

Line 10 (απείληφα out of -ειλ-), i.e. «I received from»

Line 11 (και παρών απέλυσα out of -αρω-), i.e. «I set free by paying a ransom or I disengaged or I released». Details:

Now comes a thorny issue, because on line 6, Wessely wrote «λαμιο(υ)» (: lamio reconstituted as lamiu), and went on suggesting a unique term «χαρτα-λαμίου» (charta-lamiou). This is not attested in any other source. Λάμιον (lamium) is a genus of several species of plants, whereas Lamios (Λάμιος) is a personal name. About:

http://encyclopaedia.alpinegardensociety.net/plants/Lamium/garganicum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamium

Also: (ἡμι-λάμιον) https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dh(mila%2Fmion 

But «χαρτα-λαμίου» (in Genitive declension) is a hapax. Still the opinion of the first explorer and publisher is always crucial; but as in many other cases, these people publish such an enormous volume of documentation that they do not have enough time to explain their suggestions and reason about their choices. To them, publishing hitherto unpublished material is undisputedly no 1 priority. 

Other scholars attempted a different approach; they hypothetically added «υιός» (yios), i.e. «son», before λαμίου (Lamiou)

Personally, I find it highly unlikely. First, I most of the times support the first explorer’s / publisher’s approach. 

Second, I believe that those, who add «υιός» (yios), i.e. «son» on line 6, are forced to reconstitute Βουλγαρικ̣[ὸς on line 5. This is most probably wrong.

But Wessely did not attempt something like that, preferring to leave the only saved word on line 5 as it is «Βουλγαρικ̣».

Now, what stands on lines 1 to 4 is really too minimal to allow any specialist to postulate or speculate anything. Perhaps there was something «big» mentioned on line 3 («-μεγ-»/«-meg-»), but this is only an assumption. Also, on line 4, we read that something (or someone) was (or was sent or was bought) from somewhere, because of the words «από της» (apo tis), i.e. «from the» (in this case, «the» being the feminine form of the article in Genitive declension). 

IV. Βουλγαρικ- (Vulgarik-)

Now, and this is the most important statement that can be made as regards this fragment of papyrus, the word that stands on line 5 is undoubtedly an adjective, not a substantive! This is very clear. This means that the word is not an ethnonym. In English, you use the word «Bulgarian», either you mean a Bulgarian man (in this case, it is a noun) or a Bulgarian wine (on this occasion, it is an adjective). Bulgarian is at the same time a proper noun and an adjective in English.

However, in Greek, there is a difference when it comes to names of countries and nations. When it is a proper noun (substantive), you say «Anglos» (Άγγλος), «Sikelos» (Σικελός), «Aigyptios» (Αιγύπτιος), etc. for Englishman, Sicilian man, Egyptian man, etc. But you say «anglikos» (αγγλικός), «sikelikos» (σικελικός), «aigyptiakos» (αιγυπτιακός), etc. for adjectives of masculine gender. 

Discussing the word attested on line 5 of the papyrus fragment 1224 of Karl Wessely’s SPP VIII, I have to point out that in Ancient ‘Greek’ and in Alexandrine Koine, there is a vast difference between Βούλγαρος (Vulgaros) and βουλγαρικός (vulgarikos). 

The first denotes a Bulgarian national, someone belonging to the ethnic group / nation of Bulgars and/or Bulgarians. At this point, I have to also add that these two words in English are a modern academic convention to distinguish Proto-Bulgarians (Bulgars) from the Bulgarians, who settled in the Balkan Peninsula. However, this distinction did not exist in Late Antiquity Greek texts and in Eastern Roman texts. 

The second is merely an adjective: βουλγαρικός (vulgarikos), βουλγαρική (vulgariki), βουλγαρικόν (vulgarikon) are the three gender forms of the adjective: masculine, feminine and neutral. 

So, as the preserved part of the word being «βουλγαρικ-» (vulgarik-), we can be absolutely sure that the papyrus text mentioned a Bulgarian item (a product typical of Bulgars or an imported object manufactured by Bulgars) — not a Bulgarian man.

All the same, it makes sure the following points:

a. in 4th-7th c. CE Egypt, people imported products that were manufactured by Bulgars in their own land (Bulgaria).

b. since the products were known, imported and listed as «Bulgar/Bulgarian», people knew the nation, which manufactured them, and its location.

c. considering the magnitude of the documentation that went lost, we can safely claim that there was nothing extraordinary in the arrival of Bulgar/Bulgarian products in in 4th-7th c. CE Egypt.

d. the papyrus in question presents the transaction in terms of «business as usual». 

This is all that can be said about the papyrus text, but here ends the approach of the philologist and starts the viewpoint of the historian. However, before presenting the historical context of the transaction recorded in the fragmentarily saved papyrus from Fayoum, I have to also discuss another issue, which was mentioned in the blogger’s interesting discussion.

V. Eastern Roman Emperor Maurice’s Strategicon and the Bulgarian cloaks

Of course, as anyone could expect, several historians and philologists would try to find parallels to the mention of Bulgarian imports made in this papyrus fragment.

And they did. In his presentation, the blogger already mentioned several academic efforts. So, the following paragraphs, which are to be found almost in the middle of the article (immediately after the picture), refer to two scholarly efforts to establish parallels:

«Публикуван е за пръв път от SPP VIII 1124, Wessely, C., Leipzig 1908 и по – късно препубликуван от Diethart, в публикация с многозначителното заглавие  „Bulgaren“ und „Hunnen“, S. 11 – 1921. Въпреки това папирусът не стига много бързо до родна публика.

“По пътя” един учен, Моравчик, стига и по – далеч при превода. Той разчита в откъсите и думата “Пояс” и включва в теорията ново сведение(Mauricii Artis mllltaris libri duodecim, Xll (ed. Scheffer), p. 303) , където се казва, че пехотинците трябвало да носят “ζωναρία bм λιτά, xal βουλγαρική cay ία” – т.е. смята, че става дума за носен в Египет от военните “български пояс”(сведенията за публикациите дотук са по Иван Костадинов).

Вдясно виждате лична снимка. Коптска носия от 4-ти век н.е. Пази се в етнографския музей на александрийската библиотека. По необходимост за пустинния климат е от лен. Оттам вече аналогиите оставям изцяло на вас.

Папирусът “идва в България” късно. По спомени казвам ,че мисля, че първият публикувал го е доста уважаваният Иван Дуриданов, който с радост представя на българската публика вече 4 деситилетия предъвкваният от западната лингвистика български папирус. Той публикува радостна статия, с която приветства откритието».

https://d3bep.blog.bg/history/2011/10/13/papirusyt-koito-shteshe-da-byde-s-istinskoto-ime-na-bylgarit.834395

Certainly, Gyula Moravcsik (1892-1972) and Johannes Diethart (born in 1942) proved to be great scholars indeed. About: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyula_Moravcsik

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Diethart

The adjective Vulgarikos, -i, -on («Bulgarian» in three genders) is attested in a famous Eastern Roman text, which is rather known under the title «Maurice’s Strategicon»; this was a handbook of military sciences and a guide to techniques, methods and practices employed by the Eastern Roman army. It was written by Emperor Maurice (Μαυρίκιος- Mauricius /reigned: 582-602) or composed according to his orders. About:  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_(emperor)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategikon_of_Maurice

https://www.academia.edu/35840787/_Maurice_s_Strategicon_and_the_Ancients_the_Late_Antique_Reception_of_Aelian_and_Arrian_in_Philip_RANCE_and_Nicholas_V_SEKUNDA_edd_Greek_Taktika_Ancient_Military_Writing_and_its_Heritage_Gda%C5%84sk_2017_217_255

I did not read Moravcsik’s article, but I read the Strategicon; it does not speak of «Bulgarian belts», but of «Bulgarian cloaks». In this regard, the blogger mentions a very old edition of the text, namely Mauricii Artis mllltaris libri duodecim, Xll (ed. Scheffer), p. 303). This dates back to 1664:

https://search.worldcat.org/title/Arriani-Tactica-and-Mauricii-Artis-militaris-libri-duodecim-:-omnia-nunquam-ante-publicata-Graece-primus-edit/oclc/22059562

At those days, all Western European editions of Ancient Greek texts involved Latin translations. Scheffer’s edition of the Strategicon can be found here:    

https://books.google.ru/books?id=77NODQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=ru&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (page 303)

George T. Dennis’ translation (1984) makes the text accessible to English readers:

https://archive.org/details/maurices-strategikon.-handbook-of-byzantine-military-strategy-by-maurice-dennis-

In the 12th chapter, which is the last of the Strategicon, under the title “Mixed Formations, Infantry, Camps and Hunting”, in part I (Clothing to be Worn by the Infantry), on page 138 (University of Pennsylvania Press), the word σαγίον (sagion) is very correctly translated as “cloak”. The author refers to “βουλγαρικά σαγία” (Latin: sagia Bulgarica) in plural; this is rendered in English “Bulgarian cloaks”, which are thought to be very heavy. Already, the word σαγίον (sagion) is of Latin etymology. About:

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dsagi%2Fon

and https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100436640

Also: https://greek_greek.en-academic.com/151302/σαγίον 

In that period and for more than 1000 years, what people now erroneously call «Medieval Greek» or «Byzantine Greek» (which in reality is «Eastern Roman») was an amalgamation of Alexandrine Koine and Latin. There were an enormous number of Latin words written in Greek characters and in Alexandrine Koine form. Indicatively: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koine_Greek

At this point, I complete my philological commentary on the topic. I read the Strategicon of Emperor Maurice when I was student in Athens in the middle 1970s. 

I did not remember the mention of Bulgarian cloaks, but I know however that the Bulgars, who founded the Old Great Bulgaria, appear in Eastern Roman texts at least 100 years before the purported establishment and growth of that state (632–668). The academic chronology for the First Bulgarian Empire may be correct (681–1018), but the dates given for the Old Great Bulgaria and the Volga Bulgaria (late 7th c.–1240s) are deliberately false. General info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Great_Bulgaria  and  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Bulgarian_Empire 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Bulgaria  and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgars#Etymology_and_origin

VI. Historical context and the Ancient History of Bulgars  

It is now time for me to briefly discuss the historical context within which the aforementioned topics took place. Let’s first ask some questions: 

Is it strange that a Fayoum papyrus of the 3rd-7th c. CE mentions Bulgarian products that arrived in Egypt? 

Is it odd that in Emperor Maurice’s Strategicon we find a mention of Bulgarian cloaks used or not used by the Eastern Roman army?

In both cases, the response is «no»!

From where did these Bulgarian products come?

Where did Bulgars (or Bulgarians) live at the time?

My personal response is somehow vague: they came from some regions of today’s Russia’s European soil, either in the southern confines (the Azov Sea, the northern coast of the Black Sea, and the North Caucasus region) or in the area of today’s Tatarstan and other lands north-northeast of the Caspian Sea. 

It is not easy to designate one specific location in this regard, and this is so for one extra reason: it seems that there were several tribes named with the same name, and they were distinguished among themselves on the basis of earlier tribal affiliations, which may go back to the Rouran Khaganate (330-555 CE). There are actually plenty of names associated with the early Bulgars, notably the Onogurs, the Kutrigurs, etc. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kutrigurs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onogurs

Central Asia ca. 300 CE

Many readers may be taken by surprise because I go back easily from the time of the Old Great Bulgaria (630-668 CE) to that of the Rouran Khaganate and the Huns. All the same, there is no surprise involved in this regard. Western European historians deliberately, systematically and customarily underestimate across the board the value of Oral History and attempt to dissociate Ethnography from History; these approaches are wrong. It is quite possible that, from the very beginning of the establishment of Rouran Khaganate, many tribes, clans or families (which later became nations) started migrating. The very first Bulgars (Bulgarians) may have reached areas north of the Iranian borders in Central Asia or in Northern Caucasus much earlier than it is generally thought among Western scholars. See indicatively:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouran_Khaganate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6kt%C3%BCrks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Turkic_Khaganate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Turkic_Khaganate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Great_Bulgaria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kubrat

Great Old Bulgaria

Now, the reasons for which I intentionally date the first potential interaction of Bulgars/Bulgarians with other tribes (or nations) in earlier periods are not a matter of personal preference or obstinacy. There is an important historical text named «Nominalia of the Bulgarian Khans». It has not been duly comprehended let alone interpreted thus far. About: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalia_of_the_Bulgarian_Khans

https://web.archive.org/web/20120204205748/http://theo.inrne.bas.bg/~dtrif/abv/imenik_e.htm

From the Great Old Bulgaria to the beginnings of Volga Bulgaria

Three Russian copies of the text have been saved (in Church Slavonic); they date back to the 15th and 16th c. They are generally viewed as later copies of a potential Old Bulgarian text of the 9th c. Other specialists also pretend that there may/might have been an even earlier text, in either Eastern Roman («Medieval Greek») or Bulgar, which was eventually a stone inscription. 

In this document, the highly honorific title «Knyaz» (Князь) is given to Asparuh (ca. 640-700) and to his five predecessors. I must add that the said document was always an intriguing historical source for me due to two bizarre particularities to which I don’t think that any scholar or specialist gave due attention, deep investigation, and persuasive interpretation.

First, the antiquity of the document is underscored by the fact that the early Bulgar calendar, which is attested in this text, appears to be an adaptation of the Chinese calendar. This fact means that the primeval Bulgars, when located somewhere in Eastern Siberia or Mongolia, must have had dense contacts with the Chinese scribal and imperial establishment; perhaps this fact displeased other Turanian-Mongolian tribes of the Rouran Khaganate and contributed to the emigration of those «Ur-Bulgaren». The next point is however more impactful on our approach to the very early phase of the Bulgars.

Petrograd manuscript of Nominalia

The Old Bulgarian calendar and the Nominalia of the Bulgarian khans

Second, although for most of the rulers immortalized in the historical document, the duration of their lifetimes or tenures are of entirely historical nature (involving brief or long periods of 5 up to 60 years of reign or lifetime), the two first names of rulers are credited with incredibly long lifetimes. This is not common; actually, it does not look sensible; but it is meaningful.

More specifically, Avitohol is said to have lived 300 years, whereas Irnik is credited with 150 years. But we know who Irnik was! Irnik or Ernak was the 3rd son of Attila and he is said to have been his most beloved offspring. Scholars fix the beginning of his reign in 437 CE, but this is still not the important point. The crucial issue with the partly «mythical» and partly historical nature of the text «Nominalia of the Bulgarian Khans» is the fact that the two early rulers, whom the Bulgarians considered as their original ancestors, are credited with extraordinarily long and physically impossible lives. General reading: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avitohol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernak

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huns

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Huns

This can therefore imply only one thing: at a later period, when the earlier memories were partly lost for various reasons, eventually because of the new environment namely the Balkan Peninsula, in which the then Bulgars were finding themselves, Avitohol and Irnik were retained as the leading figures of ruling families, and not as independent rulers. Consequently, the dates given for their lives were in fact those of their respective dynasties. It was then that the very early period of Bulgar History was mythicized for statecraft purposes, mystified to all, and sanctified in the national consciousness.

Many Western scholars attempted to identify Avitohol with Attila, but in vain; I don’t think that this attempt can be maintained. So, I believe that the Bulgars were one of the noble families of the Huns (evidently involving intermarriage with Attila himself), and that before Attila, the very earliest Bulgars were ruled by another dynasty which had lasted 300 years. But if it is so, we go back to the times of the Roman Emperor Trajan (reign: 98-117 CE), Vologases III of Arsacid Parthia (110–147 CE) and the illustrious Chinese general, explorer and diplomat Ban Chao (32-102 CE) of the Eastern Han dynasty. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vologases_III_of_Parthia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_Chao

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajan

The latter fought for 30 years against the Xiongnu (Hiung-nu/匈奴, i.e. the earliest tribes of the Huns, consolidated the Chinese control throughout the Tarim Basin region (today’s Eastern Turkestan or Xinjiang), and was appointed Protector General of the Western Regions. He is very famous for having dispatched Gan Ying, an envoy, to the West in 97 CE. According to the Book of the Later Han (Hou Hanshu/後漢書), which was compiled in the 5th c. CE by Fan Ye, Gan Ying reached Parthia (Arsacid Iran; in Chinese: Anxi, 安息) and gave the first Chinese account of the Western confines of Asia and of the Roman Empire. About:

https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiung-nu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiongnu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gan_Ying

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_the_Later_Han

It is n this historical environment that we have to place the very early ancestors of the Bulgars.

Noin-Ula carpet, embroidered rug imported from Bactria and representing Yuezhi

VII. Historical context, the Silk Roads, and Bulgarian exports to Egypt  

Consequently, I believe that it is more probable that the Bulgarian products of those days were first appreciated by the Iranians and later sold to Aramaeans, Armenians, Iberians and other nations settled in the western confines of the Arsacid (250 BCE-224 CE) and the Sassanid (224-651 CE) empires, i.e. in Mesopotamia and Syria, and thence they became finally known in Egypt as well.  

The incessant migrations from NE Asia to Central Europe and to Africa, as a major historical event, were not separate from the ‘Silk Roads’; they were part, consequence or side-effect of that, older and wider, phenomenon. Actually, the term ‘Silk Roads’ is at the same time inaccurate and partly; the magnificent phenomenon of commercial, cultural and spiritual inter-exchanges, which took place due to the establishment (by the Achaemenid Shah Darius I the Great) of a comprehensive network of numerous older regional trade routes, is to be properly described as ‘silk-, spice-, and perfume-trade routes across lands, deserts and seas’. About: https://silkroadtexts.wordpress.com/

It has to be said that, after the Achaemenid Iranian invasion, annexation and occupation of Egypt, Sudan and NE Libya (525-404 BCE and 343-332 BCE), Iranian settlers remained in Egypt; they were known to and mentioned by the Macedonian settlers, who manned the Macedonian dynasty of Ptolemies (323-30 BCE). General info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Achaemenid_conquest_of_Egypt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Achaemenid_conquest_of_Egypt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Persian_Egypt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Dynasty_of_Egypt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-first_Dynasty_of_Egypt

Those Iranian settlers were called ‘Persai (ek) tis epigonis’ (Πέρσαι τῆς ἐπιγονῆς), lit. ‘Iranian settlers’ descendants’. About:

Pieter W. Pestman, A proposito dei documenti di Pathyris II Πέρσαι τῆς ἐπιγονῆς

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41215889

Xin Dai, Ethnicity Designation in Ptolemaic Egypt https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329265278_Ethnicity_Designation_in_Ptolemaic_Egypt

https://elephantine.smb.museum/project/work.php?w=H9YQWMB5

See a text from the time of the Roman Emperor Domitian (reign: 81-96) here: https://papyri.info/ddbdp/p.athen;;23

See another text from the time of the Roman Emperor Nerva (reign: 96-98) here:

https://papyri.info/ddbdp/p.ryl;2;173A

There were also in Egypt Jewish Aramaean descendants of the early Iranian settlers: “οἱ τρ(ε)ῖς | Ἰουδαῖοι Πέρσαι τῆς ἐπιγονῆς τῶν [ἀ]πὸ Σύρων κώ- | μης” (lit. Jewish Iranians, who were the descendants of an Aramaean town) – From: Database of Military Inscriptions and Papyri of Early Roman Palestine https://armyofromanpalestine.com/0140-2

Please note in this regard that the title given to the web page and the document is very wrong and extremely biased: “§140 Loan between Jews and Lucius Vettius”; the three persons who received the loan were not ethnic Jews. Their religion was surely Judaism, as it was the case of the renowned Samaritan woman with whom Jesus spoke according to the Gospels. Several other nations accepted Judaism, notably Aramaeans in Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia (they were called ‘Syrians’ by the Macedonians and the Romans). It is well known that there were many clashes and strives between them and the ethnic Jews. The latter were few and lived either in Jerusalem (and its suburbs) or in Egypt (in Alexandria and many other locations) or in the centers of Talmudic academies in Mesopotamia (namely Nehardea, Pumbedita and Mahoze / Ctesiphon). About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehardea

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumbedita

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10292-mahoza

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctesiphon

If I expanded on this topic, it is precisely because the merchants, who were most active across the Silk Roads, were the Aramaeans, and that is why Aramaic became almost an official language in the Achaemenid Empire of Iran, whereas at the same time it turned out to be the lingua franca alongside the trade routes. Furthermore, a great number of writing systems in Central Asia, Iran, India, and Western Asia were developed on the basis of the Aramaic alphabet. Last but not least, Arabic originates from Syriac, which is a late form of Aramaic. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Aramaic#Name_and_classification

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_alphabet#Aramaic-derived_scripts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syriac_language

It is therefore essential to state that the Bulgarian products, which (either from North Caucasus and the northern coastlands of the Black Sea or from the regions around the north-northeastern shores of the Caspian Sea) reached Egypt (via most probably North Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine), were transported on camels owned by Aramaean merchants and due to caravans organized and directed by Aramaeans.

It is also noteworthy that, during the Arsacid times, several buffer-states were formed between the eastern borders of the Roman Empire and the western frontiers of Parthia: Osrhoene, Sophene, Zabdicene, Adiabene, Hatra, Characene, Elymais, Gerrha (the illustrious port of call and major trade center of the Persian Gulf that rivaled with Alexandria in the Mediterranean), the Nabataean kingdom, and the short-lived but most formidable Tadmor (Palmyra). This situation favored the world trade between East and West, as well as North and South. General info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osroene

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophene

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabdicene

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adiabene

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabataean_Kingdom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characene

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elymais

https://www.academia.edu/23214313/Meluhha_Gerrha_and_the_Emirates_by_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmyrene_Empire

The great rivalry and ferocious antagonism between the Romans (and later the Eastern Romans) and the Iranians after the rise of the Sassanid dynasty (224 CE) did not affect in anything the good relations and the trade among Egyptians, Aramaeans, and Iranians; there were numerous Aramaean populations in both empires, so, we feel safe to conclude that any products from lands north of Caucasus mountains and north of Iran were transported by Aramaeans via Palestine or Nabataea to Egypt.

Aramaic inscription from Hatra, NW Iraq

There have been additional reasons for the good feelings of the Egyptians toward the Iranians, and they were of religious nature. The Christological disputes generated enmity and great animosity between

a) the Copts (: Egyptians) and the Aramaeans, who adopted Miaphysitism (also known as Monophysitism), and

b) the Eastern Romans and the Western Romans, who thought they preserved the correct faith (Orthodoxy).

One has to bear always in mind, that in order to define themselves, the so-called Monophysites (also known more recently as ‘Miaphysites’) used exactly the same term (i.e. ‘Orthodox’), which means that they considered the Eastern Romans and the Western Romans as heretics. The patriarchates of Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem were split. Atop of it, other Aramaeans (mostly in Mesopotamia and Iran) accepted the preaching of Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who was also deposed as a heretic (in August 431). For the aforementioned religious reasons, the Eastern Roman armies were most loathed in Syria, Palestine, North Mesopotamia (today’s SE Turkey), and Egypt as oppressors. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monophysitism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestorius

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestorianism

In addition, one has to take into consideration the fact that the Jews, who inhabited the eastern provinces of the Roman (and later the Eastern Roman) Empire, were also pro-Iranian and they expected that the Iranians would liberate them one day from the Roman yoke pretty much like the Achaemenid Iranian Emperor Cyrus delivered their exiled ancestors from the tyranny of Nabonid Babylonia (539 BCE).

The Axumite Abyssinian invasion of Yemen (ca. 530 CE; in coordination with the Roman Emperor Justinian I), the ensued Iranian-Axumite wars, the Iranian invasion of Yemen (570 CE; known as the Year of the Elephant among the Arabs of Hejaz), and the incessant battles and wars between the Eastern Roman and the Sassanid Iranian armies were closely watched by all populations in Egypt. The third Iranian conquest of Egypt (618 CE) was a matter of great jubilation for Copts and Jews; Egypt was annexed to Iran for ten (10 years), before being under Eastern Roman control again for fourteen years (628-642 CE) and then invaded by the Islamic armies. General info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aksumite%E2%80%93Persian_wars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine%E2%80%93Sasanian_War_of_572%E2%80%93591

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine%E2%80%93Sasanian_War_of_602%E2%80%93628

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasanian_conquest_of_Egypt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khuzistan_Chronicle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasanian_Egypt

Iranian Emperor Khosrow (Chosroes) I Anushirvan on Coptic textile fragment

Indicative of the good Egyptian feelings for the Sassanid emperors and Iran is a tapestry weave found by Albert Gayet in his 1908 excavations in Antinoe (also known as Antinoöpolis, i.e. the town of Sheikh Ibada in today’s Egypt); this is a textile fragment of legging that dates back to the late 6th and early 7th c. (Musée des Tissus, in Lyon-France; MT 28928). It features the scene of an unequal battle that has been identified as one of the engagements between the Sassanid and the Axumite armies in Yemen; Iranian horse-archers are depicted at the moment of their triumph over Abyssinian infantry opponents, who appear to be armed with stones. In the very center of the scene, an enthroned figure was often identified with the great Iranian Emperor Khosrow (Chosroes) I Anushirvan (Middle Persian: Anoshag ruwan: ‘with Immortal Soul’), who was for Sassanid Iran as historically important as Justinian I, his early rival and subsequent peace partner, for the Roman Empire. About:

http://warfare.6te.net/6-10/Coptic-Textile-Battle-Tissus.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antino%C3%B6polis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khosrow_I

This was the wider historical context at the time of the arrival of the first Bulgarian exports to the Sassanid Empire of Iran, the Eastern Roman Empire, and Egypt more specifically. And the Bulgarian cloaks, as mentioned in Maurice’s Strategicon, make every researcher rather think of heavy winter cloaks, which were apparently not necessary for the Eastern Roman soldiers, who had to usually fight in less harsh climatological conditions. It is possible that those heavy cloaks were eventually used by the Iranian army when engaged in the Caucasus region, and thence they were noticed by the Eastern Romans.

With these points, I complete my philological and historical comments on the topic. However, the entire issue has to be also contextualized at the academic-educational level, so that you don’t find it bizarre that not one average Bulgarian knew about the topic before the inquisitive blogger wrote his article and the YouTuber uploaded his brief video. 

VIII. Academic context and the Western falsehood of a Euro-centric World History

This part does not concern the Fayoum papyri and the Strategicon of Emperor Maurice; it has to do with what non-specialists, the average public, and various unspecialized explorers do not know at all.

This issue pertains to

i- the conceptualization of World History;

ii- the contextualization of every single document newly found here and there;

iii- the stages of historical falsification that were undertaken over the past 500 years;

iv- the forgers themselves and their antiquity, and last but not least; and

v- several points of

a) governance of modern states,

b) international alliances, and

c) the ensuing captivity of all the targeted nations, each one well-adjusted into the preconceived role that the forgers invented for it.

As you can guess, one can write an encyclopedia on these topics, so I will be very brief. Attention: only at the end, you will understand that all these parameters fully precondition the topic that we already discussed, and any other that we have not yet discussed, because simply it does not exist as a standalone entity but as a fact entirely conditioned by what I herewith describe in short.

What I want to say is this: if tomorrow another Fayoum discovery brings to light a 3rd c. BCE papyrus with the mention of something Bulgarian (Voulgarikon), this will not affect in anything the prevailing conditions of the so-called academic scholarship. In other words, do not imagine that with tiny shreds of truth unveiled here and there, you are going to change anything in the excruciatingly false manner World History was written.

i- the conceptualization of World History

It may come as a nasty surprise to you, but what we know now about History is not the conclusion or the outcome of additional discoveries made one after the other over the past 400-500 years. Contrarily, it was first preconceived, when people had truly minimal knowledge of the past, and after they had forged thousands of documents and manuscripts for at least 500-600 years, long before the early historiographical efforts were undertaken during the Renaissance.

After they destroyed, concealed and rewrote tons of manuscripts of Ancient Greek and Roman historiography from ca. 750 CE until 1500 CE, Western European monks and editors, philosophers and intellectuals, popes, scientists and alchemists started propagating their world view about the assumingly glorious past of their supposedly Greek and Roman ancestors – a nonexistent past that the Renaissance people were deliberately fooled enough to believe that they had lost and they had to rediscover it. In fact, all the discoveries made afterwards, all the decipherments of numerous ancient writings, and all the studies of original material from Mesopotamia, Egypt, North Africa, Caucasus, Central Asia, China and India was duly processed and adjusted in a way not to damage or challenge in anything the preconceived scheme which was named ‘World History’ by the vicious and criminal Western European forgers.

This means that you should never expect ‘new discoveries’ to challenge the officially established dogma of the Western academia; it is not about Bulgars and the past of today’s Bulgarians, Thracians, Macedonians, etc., etc., etc. It is about all. What type of position the Bulgarians, the Russians, the Turks, the Iranians, the Egyptians and all the rest occupy in today’s distorted historiography had been decided upon long before the establishment of the modern states that bear those names. 

ii- the contextualization of every single document newly found here and there

Any finding unearthed by anyone anytime anywhere means nothing in itself; this concerns every historiographer, truthful or dishonest. What truly matters for all is contextualization. It so did for the original forgers. Theirs was an arbitrary attempt; they contextualized the so-called ‘Ancient Greece’ in a way that would have been fully unacceptable, blasphemous and abominable for the outright majority of all the South Balkan populations during the 23 centuries prior to the foundation of Constantinople by Constantine the Great.  

It was peremptory, partial and biased; according to the fallacious narratives of the forgers, centuries were shrunk and shortened in order to fit into few lines; moreover the schemers stretched geographical terms at will; they did not use various terms, which were widely employed in the Antiquity; they passed important persons under silence, while exaggerating the presentation of unimportant ones. This is what contextualization was for the forgers: they applied a Latin recapitulative name (Graeci) to a variety of nations, which never used this Latin term or any other recapitulative term for them; they applied a non-Ionian, non-Achaean, and non-Aeolian term (Hellenes) to them and to others; and after the decipherment of many Oriental languages, they did not rectify their preposterous mistakes, although they learned quite well that the two fake terms about those populations (Graecus and Hellene) did not exist in any other language of highly civilized nations (Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Hittite, Hurrian, Canaanite, Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Old Achaemenid Iranian).

Consequently, every other information, data and documentation pertaining to any elements of the said context was concealed, distorted or misinterpreted in order to be duly adjusted to the biased context that had been elaborated first.

iii- the stages of historical falsification that were undertaken over the past 500 years

Following the aforementioned situation, many dimensions of historical falsification were carried out and can actually be noticed by researchers, explorers, investigators and astute observers. The ‘barbarian invasions’ (or Migration Period) is only one of them; I mention it first because it concerns the Bulgars. Long before distorting the History of Great Old Bulgaria and that of Volga Bulgaria systematically, Western historical forgers portrayed Bulgars and many other highly civilized nations as barbarians. Why?

Because the historical forgers of the Western World hate nomads! This is an irrevocable trait of them; that’s why they fabricated the fake term ‘civilization’ in their absurd manner: originating from the Latin word ‘civitas’, the worthless and racist term ‘civilization’ implies that you cannot be ‘civilized’ unless you are urban. This monstrous and unacceptable fact reveals the rotten roots of the hideous, vulgar, sick and villainous Western world and colonial academia.

In the Orient, there was never a cultural divide between urban populations and nomads; some nomadic tribes were considered as barbarians; that’s true. But also settled populations and urban inhabitants were also considered as barbarians (like the Elamites, who were considered as inhuman by the Assyrians). The rule was that the settled nations were nomads in earlier periods. But the status of a society was irrelevant of the consideration and the esteem (or lack thereof) that others had about a certain nation. This started with the Romans and their interpretation of the South Balkan, Anatolian, and Cretan past. It was then re-utilized and modified by Western Europeans. To some extent, the papal approval was tantamount to acquisition of credentials and to promotion to ‘civilized nation status’. Actually, this is today the nucleus of the whole problem concerning Ukraine.

That is why the so-called Migration Period was so terribly distorted by Western historians. Western historians deliberately preferred to stay blind and not to study the Ancient Mongol chronicles (notably the Secret History of The Mongols) in order to avoid assessing the Mongol-Turanian standards and principles of civilization. Had they proceeded in the opposite way, they would have discovered that, for the nomads, it is the settled people and the urban populations, who are barbarians, decayed and shameful.

The truth about the fallacious term ‘Migration Period’ is simple: there was never a migration period before 1500 CE (and certainly none afterwards), because every century was actually a migration period. Human History is a history of migrations.

The distorted linguistic-ethnographic division of the migrant nations helped forgers to dramatically increase the confusion level; as a matter of fact, there was no proper ethnic division (in the modern sense of the term) among Mongols, Turanians, Slavs and several other migrant nations. The languages change when people migrate and settle, resettle, move again, and end up in faraway places. For Muslim historians, the khan of the Saqaliba (: Slavs) was the strongest of all Turanian rulers. The arbitrary distinction of the migrant nations into two groups, namely Indo-European and Ural-Altaic/Turco-Mongolian nations was done deliberately in order to intentionally transform the face of the world and adjust it to the so-called Table of Nations, a forged text that made its way into the biblical book of Genesis in later periods (6th–4th c. BCE). General reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khordadbeh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Roads_and_Kingdoms_(Ibn_Khordadbeh)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saqaliba

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_from_the_Varangians_to_the_Greeks

The Western academic tyranny is so deeply rooted that, irrespective of your political, ideological or philosophical affiliation (fascist, Nazi, communist, conservative, social-democrat, liberal, atheist, evolutionist, creationist, anarchist, etc.), you always have to adjust your seminars, courses, lectures, contributions, books and publications to the fallacy of Genesis chapter 10. The absurd logic of this system is the following: “since no Bulgars are mentioned in the Table of Nations, they must be a later tribe”. Then, believe it or not, whatever documentation may be found in Aramaic, Middle Persian, Pahlavi, Brahmi, Kharosthi, Avestan, Sogdian, Tocharian, Chinese or other texts about the Bulgars will be deliberately presented as irrelevant to Bulgars. If a new Sogdian document is found in Central Asia (dating back to the middle Arsacid times: 1st c. CE) and there is a certain mention of Bulgars in the text, the criminal gangsters and the systematic fraudsters of the Western universities and museums will write an enormous amount of articles to stupidly discredit the document or attribute the word to anything or anyone else.

iv- the forgers themselves and their antiquity

The above makes it clear that the foundations of today’s Western academic life, historiographical research, sector of Humanities, and all the associated fields of study were laid by the Western European Catholic monks and only after the end of the Eastern Roman imperial control, appointment and approval of the Roman popes (752 CE).

This changes totally the idea that you and the entire world have of the History of Mankind because it means that the Benedictine-Papal-Roman opposition to and clash with the Eastern Roman Empire (and the subsequent schisms of 867 and 1054) were entirely due to the resolute papal attempt to forge the World History, to substitute it with a fake History, and to diffuse all the Anti-Christian schemes that brought the world to today’s chaos. As the Muslims were totally unaware of the confrontation, the Crusades were undertaken against (not the Caliphate but) Constantinople. All the Christian Orthodox monasteries and libraries were controlled by Catholic monks, scribes, copyists and priests who had the time (from 1204 until 1261) to rob whatever manuscripts they had to rob, destroy whatever manuscripts they had to destroy, and leave all the rest as ‘useless’ to their enterprise.  

That is why modern scholars are ordered to jubilate every time a papyrus fragment is found in Egypt with few lines of verses from Homer, Hesiod and the Ancient ‘Greek’ tragedians, historians or philosophers! They publicize these discoveries in order to make every naïve guy believe that the bulk of their forged documentation is genuine. But it is not.

v- and last but not least, several points of

a) governance of modern states

The consolidation of the historical forgery was top concern for the colonial puppets of the Western European powers and for the powers hidden behind the scenes. I still remember the blogger’s comments about the late 19th and early 20th c. Bulgarian statesmen, politicians and academics, who were not so enthusiastic about the Fayoum papyrus! He made me laugh at; of course, he was very correct in writing what he did. Absolutely pertinent! But also very naïve!

He failed to remember that the top Ottoman military officer in Salonica during the First Balkan War, lieutenant general Hasan Tahsin Pasha (also known as Hasan Tahsin Mesarea; 1845-1918), as soon as he learned that the 7th Bulgarian Division was coming from the northeast, decided on his own to surrender the Salonica fortress and 26000 men to the Greek crown prince Constantine, being thus deemed a traitor and sentenced to death by a martial court.  

No Bulgarian (or other) official had ever the authority to go beyond the limits specified as regards either borderlines or historical approaches and conclusions.

b) international alliances, and

The same is valid today; it would be bizarre for Bulgarian professors of universities and academics to teach, diffuse, publish and propagate ideas, concepts and interpretations that contravene the worldwide norm that the Western colonials imposed across the Earth. It is as simple as that: Bulgaria, as EU member state, participates in many academic projects like Erasmus, etc. The professor, who would challenge the lies and the falsehood, which are at the basis of the so-called European values, principles and standards, would automatically become a problem for his rector, who would be receiving most unpleasant if not threatening calls from every corner of the Earth, as well as demands to fire the uncooperative, ‘controversial’ professor.

c) the ensuing captivity of all the targeted nations, each one well-adjusted into the preconceived role that the forgers invented for it

Actually, it is not a matter of Bulgaria and how the true History of Bulgaria is hidden from the Bulgarians; the same is valid in Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Sudan, Israel, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, etc. As I lived in all these countries, I have personal experience and deep knowledge as regards their pedagogical systems and the contents of their manuals. In Egypt, schoolchildren study the History of Ancient Egypt down to Ramses III only (ca. 1200 BCE) and next year, they start with the beginning of Islam (642 CE). Why?

Because during the falsely called Roman times, Egyptian mysticisms, religions, spirituality, cults, sciences, arts, wisdom, cosmogony, cosmology, and eschatology flooded Greece, Rome, the Roman Empire, and even Europe beyond the Roman borders. The Egyptian pupil must not learn that the Greeks, the Romans, and the Europeans were dramatically inferior to his own cultural heritage. That’s why stupid and illiterate sheikhs, ignorant imams, and evil theologians intoxicate the average Egyptians with today’s fake Islam, which is not a religion anymore but a theological-ideological-political system at the antipodes of the true historical Islam. It cuts the average Egyptian from his own cultural heritage, thus making him stupidly care about the wives and the prematurely dead children of prophet Muhammad, as well as other matters of no importance for the spiritual-cultural-intellectual phenomenon of Islam.

Best regards,

Shamsaddin

—————————————–

Download the article (text only) in PDF:

Download the article (with pictures and legends) in PDF:

A Special Military Alliance with China is Egypt’s Only Chance for Survival – V

In the four earlier texts of this series, I described the bilateral needs that Egypt and China have to urgently address, therefore entering in an advantageous, multileveled and grand alliance, which will not only consolidate Egypt’s national security and boost China’s expansion in Africa, but also help drastically transform, pacify and unify the Black Continent’s northeastern corner, notably Sudan and Libya. All previous parts (titles, contents and links to the publications) are to be found at the end of the present article.

In the present, last article of the series, I will focus on the final targets that the Egyptian-Chinese alliance should set in view of Africa’s complete decolonization, de-Westernization, and rehabilitation. These issues are relevant to educational, cultural and political-military affairs; to eliminate the curse that fell on the Black Continent, Africans should

a) remove English and French as foreign languages,

b) interrupt the educational, academic and scientific links that almost all the African countries have been forced (through means of colonial interference) to maintain with England, France, Belgium, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the US,

c) terminate the economic subordination of almost all the major African private companies, corporations and state institutions or organizations to the above mentioned countries and to the international schemes that the Western countries have established (IMF, World Bank), and

d) minimize if not obliterate the presence of Western diplomats, military or tourists on Africa.

And China must help the Black Continent do exactly this. Africa was never part of the Western World, and no African needs to be part of this corrupt and ailing part of the Mankind.

Contents

Introduction

I. Chinese as the First Foreign Language in Egypt

II. Systematic Dissociation and Separation from Western Europe and North America

III. The Egypt – Sudan – Libya Confederation

IV. How the Chinese-Egyptian Alliance will reshape Africa into Five Mega-States

Introduction

For China to achieve an irrevocable breakthrough in Africa, it is essential that the Chinese statesmen, diplomats, administrators, military advisers, academics and businessmen envision their presence and activities on the African soil in a long term perspective.

Any short term perspective vision of China’s presence in Africa will fail exactly as it happened with the USSR. For some time, several African countries became the allies of Soviet Union; later, in different moments and for variant reasons, they broke their relations with the USSR or Russia and started unfortunately being again dependent on their former colonial masters, namely France and England, and/or America, which has ceaselessly tried to substitute itself for the traditional colonial powers. I presented this topic in brief, in an attempt to identify the reasons; my article was first published in 2008 and then republished recently here:

https://www.academia.edu/26278889/Why_Russia_always_failed_in_the_Middle_East_by_Prof_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis

The article was translated into Russian by the Russian News Agency INOSMI, and it was widely read, quoted, discussed, mentioned in the bibliography of Ph.D. dissertations, and republished;

https://inosmi.ru/20080203/239339.html

https://iv-g.livejournal.com/1390092.html

https://yury108.blogspot.com/2015/09/obsrvr.html

https://obsrvr.livejournal.com/1604305.html

https://vahegaro.livejournal.com/7111.html

https://www.dissercat.com/content/otnoshenie-sssrrossii-k-palestino-izrailskomu-konfliktu-v-kontse-1940-kh-nachale-2000-kh-god (note 143)

https://www.academia.edu/23504786/Мухаммед_Шамсаддин_Мегаломатис_Почему_Россия_всегда_терпела_неудачи_на_Ближнем_Востоке

In that article, I explained why other superpowers or great powers will always fail when expanding influence on earlier colonized lands. The reason is simple; Western colonization involved the establishment of an enormous infrastructure at the mental, educational, academic, scientific, intellectual, religious, spiritual, socio-behavioral and cultural levels. As this extensive infrastructure has been dictatorially imposed, intensively propagated, incessantly reasserted, highly documented and greatly deep, it generates a new ‘world’ for the misfortunate, colonized individual, clan, tribe and/or nation. This is apparently an alien, undeserved and execrable ‘world’ -or a prison if you prefer- and consequently it does not / cannot subside with a simple regime change, military coup or superficial economic infiltration. Even more so, since it also appears to be advantageously rewarding with the colonial slave’s promotion, namely the perspective of being a rubbish collector or a sexual tool in the colonial metropolis!

The complete failure of the USSR in Africa: Western rationalism and materialism in Africa help only perpetuate the Anglo-Saxon and French colonialism.

The colonized nations were thus turned to altered beings, automatons or subaltern populations; they were made to think, reflect and act according to patterns invented by the colonial powers as per their own interests. Africa’s colonized nations were not properly westernized; their colonial masters did not want them to be like them. They wanted them to become functional tools of the Western supremacy, and this is what most of the Africans have become without even understanding it and irrespective of religion, ethnic background, and origin. Certainly, several anti-colonial intellectual forces were formed and socio-political reactions expressed in Africa; all the same, they mostly formulated their rejection of the colonial powers in colonial languages and terms. As it can be easily understood, this situation has highly jeopardized their chances to bring forth tangible results.

Consequently, one could safely conclude that only a long term vision of the Chinese-African partnership can be possibly beneficial to both, Chinese and Africans. Egypt’s position, background, identity and colonial experience are extremely helpful in this regard. That’s why Kemet (or Masr) is by definition China’s gateway to Africa.

I. Chinese as the First Foreign Language in Egypt

Inaugurated before 20 years (in 2004), during the early period of the first tenure of President Hu Jintao, the Confucius Institutes are non-profit educational institutions affiliated with the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China; more specifically, they are operated by Hanban (namely the Office of Chinese Language Council International, which became known as Center for Language Education and Cooperation in 2020). They are established jointly in a great number of countries and they always operate in cooperation with local partners. As of 2019, there were more than 500 Confucius Institutes all over the world. The stated aims are the promotion of Chinese language and culture, the support of local Chinese teaching, and the facilitation of bilateral cultural exchanges.

Basically, there are two Confucius Institutes in Egypt; the first is associated with Cairo University and the second with Suez Canal University. More recently, in 2015, an agreement was signed between Pharos University in Alexandria and Confucius Institute – Cairo University, thus creating the first Confucius unit to teach Chinese in Alexandria. As it happens in numerous other cases, professors from the largest Chinese universities teach in the Alexandria-based Confucius unit. Background:

https://ci.cn/

https://ci.cn/en/gywm/pp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute

Quite interestingly, NATO StratCom (Strategic Communication Center of Excellence) considered it necessary to meticulously spy on Confucius Institutes and to publish the following document, thus demonstrating their deep and awful fears that the days of the Western hegemony are numbered. https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/confucius_institutes.pdf

Although the aforementioned beginning was quite successful and well-done, by now it is not anymore sufficient. Focusing on the bright future of the Chinese-Egyptian cooperation, the administration of Confucius Institutes should set up a committee to study the ways needed to intensify the process of Chinese language penetration and to suggest a plan as to how Chinese will replace English as first foreign language in Egypt – in a mid-term perspective.

China has to deploy all the necessary resources in order to systematically, resolutely and comprehensively terminate the 2-century long, colonial period of predominance of French and English languages at all costs. In this great endeavor, Beijing should bring its influential allies into the game; Russia, India, Brazil, Iran and Turkey must also develop their Africa-de-Westernization policies, opening cultural institutes, establishing partnerships, promoting their languages, and founding bilingual universities. Chinese, Hindi/Urdu, Russian, Portuguese, Farsi and Turkish are far more useful for Africans than English and French.

One thing must be made clearly understood to all Africans: the ‘easiness’ of the ‘already known’ (namely English and French) is the curse that plunged Africa into darkness, slavery, corruption and evilness, while also enabling the colonial gangsters to develop plans providing for Africa’s depopulation. It is as simple as that:

– Learn English and French, so that the Western colonial gangsters kill you all and repopulate the Black Continent with White supremacists!

Chinese language penetration in Egypt will then serve as a model and as a success story to implement in other African countries; while developing stronger bilateral relations with every state in the Black Continent, Beijing should dedicate special interest to help increase sound bilateral relationships among all African lands and nations. There are many speaking about ‘peace in Africa’, but there will never be peace in the Black Continent, as long as between an Sudanese and a Somali stands English as a means of communication, while a Malian and an Algerian converse in French.

When Nigerians and Egyptians communicate in English or Algerians and Malagasy speak to one another in French, problems appear always. In my proposals for the establishment of the first Afrocentric University in Africa, I made it clear that the proper end of the colonial period will never take place before 20 major African languages are regularly taught, each in a separate department of university, in at least all the major states of the Black Continent. See (notably Unit 4):

https://www.academia.edu/22843510/AFRICAN_RENAISSANCE_UNIVERSITY_A_VISION

Western languages are parasitic plants in Africa. Mande, Fulani, Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Tuareg, Oromo, Somali, Berber, Malagasy, Zulu, Shona, Sidama, Afar, Arabic and several other languages should become the official languages of a truly non-colonial African Union with duly de-Westernized member states. Consequently, by supporting African languages’ international status upgrade, China will demonstrate Beijing’s good will and readiness to contribute to Africa’s de-Westernization. At any given moment, China should not become and should not look like a colonial or neocolonial power. This will be the ultimate success of Confucius Institutes in Africa.

II. Systematic Dissociation and Separation from Western Europe and North America

China’s role in Africa will never be effective and fruitful without a complete de-Westernization at all levels; the Chinese-African partnership depends on extensive exchange of experience, study of colonial examples common and repugnant to both partners, quest for national heritage, re-affirmation of cultural identity, and defense of moral integrity. In striking opposition to the racist, colonial practices, Chinese and Africans should reciprocally identify the exact correspondence between the moral-behavioral values of their respective cultures and civilizations and examine how every single of their values is differently contextualized in China and in Africa. The ensuing cultural interexchange and mutual understanding of the ‘other’ will then help form the foundations of the Chinese Africology and the African Sinology.  

Chinese and African academics, intellectuals, and scholars should then undertake the common, bilateral rejection and refutation of the Western model and the Eurocentric pseudo-historical dogma at a worldwide stage, also involving their partners in India, Russia, Iran, Turkey and many other Asiatic and Latin American countries. World History should therefore be written in an unbiased, trustful, and honest manner for the first time in the History of Mankind.

This is what anti-Western Chinese and African scholars, academics, intellectuals, scholars and explorers should understand deeply and up to the point of making it the foundation of their common description of the deeds, the thoughts, and the faiths of the humans: to be perfectly anti-Western and to constitute the full refutation of the racist Eurocentric model of historiography, one does not need to be either Sinocentric or Afrocentric; on the contrary, he must be humanocentric.  

Afrocentric approaches and substantive criticism of the colonial academics, although positive and necessary, have not yet helped people grasp even a tiny portion of the Ancient Oriental Spirituality, Science, Moral, Wisdom, Universality, and Divinity. The Assyrian-Babylonian (Mesopotamian) and the Egyptian heritage has only been profaned within the barbaric, ignorant and dark periphery of the so-called Hebrews, Greeks and Romans. The Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Quran have only a reminiscence of the Sacred as revealed in the Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian-Babylonian, Egyptian, and Iranian scriptures.

Not even one king among the Ancient Hebrews, Greeks, Macedonians and Romans managed to attain the sacredness and the spiritual force of Thutmose III.

Within the context of the fallacious Eurocentric model of historiography, which was based on the aberration of ‘Judeo-Christian civilization’ and the absurdity of ‘Greco-Roman civilization’ (that the colonials imposed worldwide), Africa occupies a truly marginal, subordinate position, as if the entire Black Continent depended on the developments that took place in South Balkans and in Rome. This racist construct consists in total distortion of the History of Mankind; it was established as a mere reflection of the 19th c. colonial invaders’ disdain of the African nations that they colonized at the time. They narrated as ‘History’ what they viewed as their own African subjects whom the Europeans never bothered to truly and deeply study as per the local African, standards and measures, thus erroneously, unjustly and undeservedly evaluating them after the worthless, malignant and utterly racist European criteria.

The correct, Chinese view over, and version of, the Silk Road

The false, Eurocentric view of the Silk Road

Within the context of the fallacious Eurocentric model of historiography, which was based on the aberration of ‘Judeo-Christian civilization’ and the absurdity of ‘Greco-Roman civilization’ (that the colonials imposed worldwide), China occupies a really peripheral position ‘at the very end of the world’, somewhere in the East. The History of the Silk Road is not the same for Western and for Chinese academics, scholars and explorers – let alone diplomats, politicians and statesmen. Within the Western bogus-narrative, China has always been depicted as if it has been a faraway country only periodically, slightly and occasionally connected with the Mediterranean World, which was erroneously presented as the supposed center of the world or the axis around which the History of Mankind revolved.

China, Egypt and all the other African countries should work systematically to totally dismantle and obliterate the Eurocentric Western fallacy. There will never be decolonization without complete de-Westernization, and this apparently demands a major effort of full de-Mediterraneanization of the World History, which is a racist, false and poisonous product made in the West. Over the last six millennia, all the humans lived in a great variety of locations and lands, often developing different cultures and civilizations, but contact has always been maintained; so, the criminal conquistadors of the barbarian and pseudo-Christian Pope of Rome never ‘discovered’ anything.

More importantly, the axis of World History revolved always around the arc that links Egypt -through Mesopotamia, Iran and Central Asia- with China, involving also concavities and convexities that end in the African Atlas, in the Horn of Africa, in Yemen, in India, in Anatolia and the Balkans, in the Caucasus region, and in Siberia. On these basic lines took place all the major events of World History.

That is why it is essential that China, India and Egypt launch together a major anti-colonial project named ‘歷史 – इतिहास- تاريخ’ (Lishi Itihaas Tarih/’History’ in Chinese, Hindi and Arabic respectively) and involve in it their numerous Asiatic and African partners in order to genuinely compose -for the first time in World History- a truly unbiased, multilateral and comprehensive History of the Mankind, plainly reveal the importance of the major lands of History (as stated in the previous paragraph), and irrevocably reduce the role of European peoples to their true proportions, secondary dimensions and negative impact. This collective work should then be translated to all the Asiatic, African and Latin American languages and subsequently serve as the fundamental documentation which all the school manuals and the textbooks will reproduce, thus eliminating the hitherto prevailing false, colonial Eurocentric historiography. About the three terms:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/歷史

https://hi.wiktionary.org/wiki/इतिहास

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/تاريخ

Even the notion of ‘Europe’ must be deleted; actually, it does not truly exist. It never did – for the overwhelming majority of the world population. The lands located west of the plains of Russia, of the Black Sea, and of the Anatolian plateau are also parts of Asia. As a matter of fact, what Westerners called ‘Europe’ is the most western and the most troublesome peninsula of Asia. The undeniable fact that Ancient Greek and Latin texts make this distinction does not concern Africans, Caucasians, Turkic nations, Iranians, Arabic-speaking people, Indians, Siberians, Chinese and other Asiatic nations, because those sources are alien, unknown, unimportant, indifferent and useless to them. Europe does not have the status of a continent by any means.

Working together at the academic, scientific, intellectual, and cultural levels, China and Egypt will thus put an end to the colonial links that have been imposed on Asia and Africa over the past 250 years. The campaign motto for China, Egypt, and their partners should be: “No Oriental student in Occidental universities”.

III. The Egypt – Sudan – Libya Confederation

After re-establishing the national unity and sovereignty of Sudan and Libya due to full scale military intervention and political pacification processes, China and Egypt should work hard with local authorities in Khartoum and Tripoli as to how to best interconnect and bind all three nations. In the third article of the series (see below; units IV and V), I offered few examples in this regard, stressing particularly the sector of Transport. High-speed railways will certainly bring closer the three capitals, the three elites, and the three nations. With ca. 175 million people and an area of about 4.6 million km2, the three lands make the 7th state of the world in terms of surface and the 8th largest country by population.

As it can be surmised, the desire for a concerted unification of Egypt, Sudan and Libya does not reflect a delusional target like going higher in the list or just looking bigger; it addresses the common need of all the local societies and governments to acquire greater economic depth and have a faster rhythm of development. With the help of China, mega-projects similar to those I proposed in the fourth article of the series (see below: units I-V) have to be launched also in Sudan and Libya. With interconnected systems of canals and associated irrigation plans that carry water from the Nile, parts of the Butana desert in the eastern part of Sudan can become cultivated lands, thus exponentially increasing the agricultural production of the country. About: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butana

The three countries will always have three seats in the UN General Assembly, also maintaining independent governments and separate parliaments; however, they can launch a one-year long rotating presidency and engage in several unification projects at the political, military, economic and educational levels. With full respect for all the existing ethnic groups, their languages, traditions and cultures, with concertation and synergy among the respective private sectors, with a unitary vision as regards their common vast territory and past, and with the strong support of China, the three countries can engage in the path of reunification on a purely secular basis. This will finally be the beginning of the end of the colonial era in Africa.

As it is well known, borders anywhere in Africa do not reflect ethnic territories and national realities, as they should have, but remind us of aspects of the colonial past. They are all false, and that’s why the criminal colonial gangsters, namely the English, the French and the Americans, want still to preserve the present, impermissible and untenable, borders in Africa. The reason for this vicious, insidious and inhuman policy is simple; practically speaking, there are no proper borders among nations throughout the Black Continent. There are only limits between the graves into which all the African nations have been buried by the guilty White Man.

Because the colonial powers want to preserve these illegal borders, these lines of sin, shame and hatred must be abolished. China should not have any illusion in this regard; the very existence of the colonial borders, the terrible absence of substantive infrastructure, and the imposed historical distortion, which is taught in the schools as an undisputed dogma, constitute the three major hindrances to Africa’s liberation and to Beijing’s perspectives in Africa. Of course, it will not be an easy thing to abolish the colonial borders in the Black Continent.

The effort should start with the formation of regional alliances and small unions of few states in several zones. Thus, the establishment of a confederation among Egypt, Sudan and Libya will mark a critical step in this regard. It is important for Beijing to methodically conceive and gradually carry out this project, because a successful union of three major African states will certainly stimulate many others to undertake similar efforts in other parts of Africa.

For this project, China should dedicate dozens of thousands of specialists, explorers, scholars and advisers; first, Beijing should create them. It is essential for the Chinese leadership to understand that, despite their good will and all the hitherto deployed efforts, China still does not truly know Africa; at least, not up to the level the colonial powers do. That is why China will urgently need 20000 Africanists, departments of African Studies in at least 50 Chinese universities, a plethora of linguists specializing in all the African languages, and researchers in Ethnography. A true Chinese army of explorers must disembark in Africa.

Similarly, in striking opposition to the highly ideologized, extremely biased, and utterly insidious Western academic policy against the Northern African Hamites and the Eastern African Cushites, China should become the worldwide center of Hamitic, Berber, Tuareg, Hausa, Cushitic, Oromo and Somali Studies.

Last but not least, China will certainly need 2000 Egyptologists and Coptologists with parallel background in Phoenician-Carthaginian, Latin and Ancient Greek in order to help present and future Egyptian and African scholars overwhelmingly refute the Eurocentric bogus-historical dogma, which prevails in the propagandist pseudo-universities of Western Europe and North America. They will have to plainly demonstrate to the world academic community the fact that the African Genius of the Hamitic Kemetians (Egyptians), Berbers and Cushites-Meroites and the Asiatic-Semitic Intelligence of the Carthaginians brought civilization to the islands of the Mediterranean Sea and to the southern extremities of the Balkan, the Italian and the Iberian peninsulas.

The topic is certainly interrelated with the urgent need of the Chinese academia to undertake a real overhaul of the Western disciplines of Orientalism, but this topic demands a new series of articles about the development of the Chinese disciplines of Assyriology, Hittitology, Iranology, etc. on entirely anticolonial and anti-racist basis. Establishing parallels between the Chinese Hundred Schools of Thought and Ancient Oriental (Assyrian-Babylonian, Egyptian, Iranian, Aramaean, Phoenician) schools of wisdom, universalism, spirituality and science or the Gnostic systems of Northern Africa or Western Asia would help all the people better perceive and fully assess the enduring interconnectedness of Asiatic and African cultures and civilizations. About: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Schools_of_Thought

IV. How the Chinese-Egyptian Alliance will reshape Africa into Five Mega-States

It may be a long process, but an early vision and a correct approach always matter. In order to totally change Africa, effectively block the presence or the return of the colonial powers, and instinctively trigger pro-Chinese feelings among all Africans, thus permanently consolidating Beijing’s leading role in the Black Continent, China must totally undo everything that the Western colonials did in Africa.

Taking into consideration the ethnic identity, the cultural integrity, the historical heritage of all the African and non-African nations that currently live in Africa, and taking into account the demanded conditions of socioeconomic development and international life, one can come to the conclusion that Africa should be re-organized in five great confederate states:

1- Kemet/Egypt, Cush/Sudan, and Rebu-Libu/Libya

This confederate state will be made out of the three ancient lands of civilization and modern countries, as briefly described in the present article. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cush_(Bible)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemetism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kmt_(magazine)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Km_(hieroglyph)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kush

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cush_(Bible)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napata

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mero%C3%AB

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Libya

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libu

https://www.academia.edu/34407589/Egypt_Ethiopia_Sudan_Abyssinia_the_Freemasonic_Orientalist_Fallacy_of_Ethiopianism_and_Nubia

https://www.academia.edu/34398553/Fake_Sudan_Real_Ethiopia_and_Fake_Ethiopia_Real_Abyssinia_what_is_at_stake

https://www.academia.edu/34406896/Sudan_Real_Ethiopia_Abyssinia_Fake_Ethiopia_Evil_Progeny_of_Pan_Arabism_and_Ethiopianism

https://www.academia.edu/34407589/Egypt_Ethiopia_Sudan_Abyssinia_the_Freemasonic_Orientalist_Fallacy_of_Ethiopianism_and_Nubia

https://www.academia.edu/35045597/The_Secret_Reasons_of_the_Darfur_Genocide_fake_Arabic_imposed_on_Non_Arabs_2006_

https://www.academia.edu/24440061/Arab_Nation_Hoax_Geared_to_Falsify_Islamic_History_Ruin_Varied_Nations_disfiguratively_Named_Arab_by_Prof_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis

https://www.academia.edu/44995994/Contrary_to_Oromos_and_Somalis_the_Masriyin_Christian_or_Muslim_Egyptians_as_subjects_of_the_Mamluks_and_the_French_have_had_no_National_Identity_Part_V

2- Cush/Ethiopia, Punt/Somalia, and Eastern Africa (with a small enclave for Amhara-Tigray Abyssinia)

This confederate state will be established out of lands, which are currently parts of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia (Somaliland being not a state but a local MI6 office), Kenya, and most of the Swahili-speaking Muslim inhabitants of the coast of Tanzania. Apparently, the Cushitic nations of the Oromos and the Somalis will be the largest entities within the confederacy, which will comprise Cushitic, Nilotic and Bantu people.

Taking into consideration the fact that the Semitic Amhara and Tigray tribes (: the Abyssinians) have had a most tumultuous and very negative relationship with the regional Cushitic majority, repeatedly made war upon them, and persistently persecuted them, it will be wise to envision an Abyssinian enclave within the confederacy; this will be formed out of lands belonging to the Eritrean North and to the Tigray and Amhara regions of today’s untenable Ethiopia. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oromo_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amhara_Region

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigray_Region

https://www.academia.edu/45605780/Cush_Meroe_Kemet_Egypt_Punt_Other_Berberia_Azania_and_the_Orientalization_of_the_Roman_Empire_Common_Origin_Migrations_Ancestral_Culture_and_Lands_of_Oromos_Sudanese_and_Other_Cushites

https://www.academia.edu/43443326/Ethiopia_a_Panacea_for_Tyrants_a_Stiletto_in_Colonial_Hands_2007

https://www.academia.edu/48806338/The_West_s_Ethiopian_Aberration_the_kingdom_of_Prester_John_between_Myth_and_Reality

https://www.academia.edu/43445873/40_Centuries_and_20_Years_of_Inexorable_Infinite_Punt_Somalia_East_Africas_Most_Radiant_Nation_Part_I_2011_

https://www.academia.edu/43453731/40_Centuries_and_20_Years_of_Inexorable_Infinite_Punt_Somalia_East_Africa_s_Most_Radiant_Nation_Part_II_2011_

https://www.academia.edu/34472471/Meroitic_Oromo_Ethiopian_Continuity_Call_for_a_Research_Project https://www.academia.edu/50299787/Links_to_my_articles_about_Egypt_Kemet_Sudan_Kush_Ethiopia_Abyssinia_Fake_Ethiopia_and_todays_Nubians

https://www.academia.edu/43645563/Links_to_my_articles_about_Official_Czarist_Russian_Envoy_Alexander_Bulatovichs_books_on_1890s_Abyssinia_and_his_expedition

https://www.academia.edu/106272084/Gadaa_Waaqeffannaa_Occupied_Oromia_Africa_the_Western_World_and_its_Racist_Malignant_Universities

https://www.academia.edu/44797482/Oromo_History_and_African_Christianity_Nobatia_Makuria_and_Alodia_the_Cushitic_Christian_Kingdoms_of_Ethiopia_in_Sudan_Axum_Agaw_and_Pseudo_Solomonic_Abyssinia

https://www.academia.edu/43433032/Sudan_Ethiopia_Abyssinia_Egypt_Somalia_Yemen_and_the_Anti_African_Plans_of_the_Colonial_Orientalists_and_of_their_local_stooges

Somalis

Map of Oromo dialects

Cushitic-Ethiopian Oromo flag

3- Carthage-Tunisia/Algeria, Berber Atlas, and Hamitic Sahara

This confederate state will be formed out of several NW African states that draw on the Carthaginian, Berber, Tuareg, Hausa and Saharan Muslim heritage and tradition of the wider region, i.e. Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and the northern half of Nigeria. An ominous and excessive colonial project of linguistic Arabization and extremist Islamization (based on disastrous, pseudo-Muslim and Anti-Islamic theologies) has been carried out in this region for long in order to totally transform the identity of the indigenous nations, eliminate the originality of their heritage, destroy their cultural integrity, divide the local societies, trigger divisions, split the families, and produce useless bloodshed only for the benefit of the colonial powers of the West.

The paramount target achieved due to the Western (mainly French) colonization concerned the establishment of a fake dilemma that was imposed on all the local societies (since the 19th c.), namely to

– either imitate the French and get intoxicated with Western lies and pseudo-science

– or become an extremist and die for a fake Islam that did not reflect the well-known historical civilization, culture and religion.

It is within this abominable divide that the traditional popular religion, wisdom, and culture have been sidestepped by the fanaticism of the ferociously anti-African and deeply anti-Islamic Hanbali, Ibn Taimiyyah, and Wahhabi theologies and forgeries.

By bringing to surface and reviving old traditions, forgotten identities, and moral integrity, and by interconnecting them with modern Afrocentric trends, China will be able to help permanently uproot extremism and obliterate French, English and American presence from the vast region which can certainly unite in a powerful, wealthy and progressive African confederacy.

Carthage, 218 BCE

For Chinese scholars and diplomats to see the hidden reality of the African Atlas and the wider Sahara region, four major academic fallacies have to be totally disregarded, refuted and dismantled by them first, notably

a- the false construct of ‘Afro-Asiatic languages’ (a fabrication that enables Western scholars to occasionally change their earlier conclusions as per the political needs of their criminal governments);

b- the colonial promotion of Arabic, which was never an identitarian element or a national language in Africa (it was basically a lingua franca for Muslims, and it was promoted by the French in order to deliberately destroy the Berber identity of the vast region);

c- the systematized effort to discredit the ethno-linguistic Hamitic group (by calling it ‘Hamitic hypothesis’), which is due to Western colonial biases against the Hamitic-Cushitic ethnic-linguistic-cultural unity that can help bring together the northern half of Africa (namely parts 1, 2 and 3 of the present unit) in just one state; and

d- the vicious attempt of the racist French colonials to uproot the national Berber identity of all the North African populations that have been deceitfully categorized by the colonial gangsters into Berber speaking people, bilinguals and Arabs. There were never Arabs in North Africa; today’s Arabic-speaking populations from Sudan to Morocco are Cushites and Hamites who have been gradually Arabized because they accepted Islam as religion. However, they remained culturally and ethnically African (Hamitic and Cushitic); consequently, in the Atlas region, there are only Arabic speaking Berbers, bilinguals, and Berbers who do not speak Arabic at all. We have therefore to conclude that Arabic can have only status of religious language throughout Northwestern Africa. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuareg_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausa_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroasiatic_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Africa

https //en.wikipedia org/wiki/File:Map_of_African_language_families.svg

https://www.academia.edu/97110465/Nubianization_of_the_Cushites_Linguistic_Denigration_of_Berbers_Denial_of_Hamitic_Identity_the_Next_Genocide_in_Africa

https://www.academia.edu/46024986/Fake_Nubia_a_Colonial_Forgery_to_deprive_Cushitic_Nations_from_National_Independence_Historical_Identity_and_Cultural_Heritage

https://www.academia.edu/97224639/Distortion_of_Cushitic_and_Hamitic_Berber_History_by_Western_Forgers_Africas_Endless_Enslavement

https://www.academia.edu/23218437/Anc%C3%AAtre_des_guerres_et_de_la_tyrannie_le_mensonge_Pan_Arabe_Par_Prof_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis

https://www.academia.edu/49634034/The_Only_Way_for_China_to_destroy_the_West_is_to_outfox_and_dismantle_the_Fallacious_Colonial_Model_of_History_first

Berber flag – https://www.yaden-africa.com/the-culture/african-tribes/berber

https://www.temehu.com/tuareg-confederacies.htm

Hausa people flag

4- Manding, Atlantic Congo, Volta-Congo and Central Africa

This confederate state will consist of numerous ethnic groups and coastal nations of Western Africa that speak Manding, Atlantic Congo, Volta Congo and Central African languages, notably Wolof, Mende, Bambara, Dogon, Dyula, Yoruba, Igbo, Gbaya, Zande, etc. Including states like Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, the southern half of Nigeria, parts of Cameroon, and the Central African Republic, this confederation will also incorporate the Fula (Peul) people, who live in the southern part of their lands and have not therefore been comprised within the borders of the confederate state no 3 (see above). About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolof_language

https //en.wikipedia org/wiki/Manding_languages#/media/File:Map_of_the_Manding_language_continuum png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manding_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mande_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bambara_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogon_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogon_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoruba_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoruba_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorubaland

https //upload.wikimedia org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Map_of_the_Niger%E2%80%93Congo_languages svg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger%E2%80%93Congo_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fula_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fula_language

West Africa 1875

5- Bantu Central & South Africa

This confederation will constitute the southernmost of Africa’s five mega-states. It will comprise Bantu people from coast to coast, therefore uniting all African lands south of a hypothetical line going from Equatorial Guinea to Uganda and thence to Tanzania and Mozambique. A Khoisan enclave should be instituted in order to gather together these ethnic-linguistic groups. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_peoples

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khoisan_languages

By helping set up five mega-states in Africa, Beijing will not only bring unity, concord and cooperation to the Black Continent, but it will also make it sure that peace is no further endangered due to the interests of the Western White Man, his heinous mentality, and his anti-Black stance. The absence of the divisive and merciless American, English and French colonial gangsters, racist missionaries, and plotting diplomats from Africa will certainly enable African nations to establish major states the size of Brazil or Russia and thus acquire the main prerequisite to socioeconomic development, namely economic depth. Empowered by China, India and Russia, the aforementioned five African mega-states will then be able to throw the barbarians of England, France and America into the dustbin of World History.

This will certainly constitute China’s greatest revenge for the Opium Wars.  

Bantu languages

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Previous articles of the series (titles, contents, and links to the publications):

A Special Military Alliance with China is Egypt’s Only Chance for Survival – I

I. Western Hatred against Egypt and Plans against Mankind

II. The End of Egypt may be very close

III. Egypt and the Pulverization of Sudan and Libya

IV. The Renaissance Dam in the light of the Abyssinian ‘Prophecy’ against Egypt and Sudan

A Special Military Alliance with China is Egypt’s Only Chance for Survival – II

I. The War in Gaza and the Destabilization of the Red Sea Region

II. The Rise of China as a World Super-power

III. The Irrevocable Prerequisites of China’s Worldwide Predominance

A Special Military Alliance with China is Egypt’s Only Chance for Survival – III

I. Grave Threats for Egypt’s Existence and Serious Danger for China’s Expansion

II. Perspectives of the Strategic Alliance between Egypt & China

III. Two Chinese Military Bases in Egypt: One Million Chinese Military on African Soil

IV. Joint Chinese-Egyptian Military Operations in Sudan and the Perspectives of a Chinese-Egyptian-Sudanese Alliance

V. Joint Chinese-Egyptian Military Operations in Libya and the Perspectives of a Chinese-Egyptian-Libyan Alliance

A Special Military Alliance with China is Egypt’s Only Chance for Survival – IV

Introduction

I. Toshka or New Valley Project

II. Water Desalination Plants

III. Relocation of a Sizeable Part of Egypt’s Population

IV. The Rafah-Taba Canal 

V. Twenty (20) Chinese Universities to operate in Egypt

Groups of Bantu languages

Khoisan languages

Islamic schools of Jurisprudence in Africa

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Download the article (with pictures and legends) in PDF:

A Special Military Alliance with China is Egypt’s Only Chance for Survival – II

The rise of China as a world superpower has hitherto been a long path marked with several successes and advances, but also significant drawbacks and failures. The Arab Spring can be seen from many viewpoints and interpreted as per its impact on diverse states, but it was indisputably a severe impediment to China’s attempt to penetrate in Africa and offer the numerous African nations a trustworthy perspective and a valuable support in terms of nation building and sustainable development. It goes without saying that, if the Chinese establishment truly intends to bring forth a groundbreaking change at the worldwide level, Beijing must carefully take the lesson of those circumstances before 13 years and overwhelmingly modify China’s understanding of perplex situations and approach to long standing problems, notably the European colonialism in Africa and elsewhere.

In the first part of this series of articles, I expanded on a) the centuries-old Western hatred of Egypt, b) the existing historical threats against the Valley of the Nile, c) the gradual process of decomposition that the criminal Western gangsters applied to Libya and the Sudan over the past 12 years, and d) the direct relationship between the otherwise worthless Renaissance Dam (also known as GERD), which has been built in the Occupied Benishangul land (currently province) of Abyssinia (Fake Ethiopia), and the Abyssinian ‘Prophecy’ against Egypt and Sudan. This is the link:

In the present article, I will complete the presentation of the Egyptian approach to the need of the Egyptian-Chinese Military Alliance and I will expand on the Chinese perspective towards the topic.

Contents

I. The War in Gaza and the Destabilization of the Red Sea Region

II. The Rise of China as a World Super-power

III. The Irrevocable Prerequisites of China’s Worldwide Predominance

I. The War in Gaza and the Destabilization of the Red Sea Region

The War in Gaza, which started with the attack of the 7th October 2023, has nothing to do with the supposed liberation of Palestine (and even less with the formation of a Palestinian state); even more importantly, it is absolutely unrelated to the Islamic world. Hamas has been acknowledged as a functional outfit of the Israeli, English and American secret services, which envisioned, fabricated, established, promoted and imposed it on all the Palestinians, duly fooling them with associated nationalist and Islamist literature as well as numerous silly lies that only the already besotted populations could possibly take seriously. The fact that the secret services of Israel, England and America had their own stooges in the shameful outfit, tried to pull it closer to the interests of one or another country, and kept struggling for prevalence in and control of Hamas is of secondary importance. What matters is that Hamas was never a truly Palestinian let alone Muslim organization in spite of the public prayers of their leaders. They thought they were genuine, independent and unrestrained but in reality they were always closely manageable and totally maneuverable.

The War in Gaza has the meaning that its true instigators want to give it. This is essential to understand. The conflict is neither local nor regional; it is a worldwide conflict or, if you prefer, a World War. It has local repercussions in the sense that Gazan Palestinians -due to their leaders’ foolishness- lost their homes forever. It does have a regional impact indeed; this concerns mainly Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and to lesser extent other countries (Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran).

Although Lebanon and Syria have repeatedly been the targets of Israeli attacks (as far as Haleb/Aleppo), I mention Egypt first because the potential danger is greater and imminent. If the entire Gazan population is further pushed to the border, the government of Egypt will find themselves in an almost impossible position. With a chaotic situation in Libya, with Sudan plunged in civil war (in which one of the fighting factions depends exclusively on external factors and forces that are inimical to Egypt and friendly to the criminal, dictatorial and racist Amhara regime of Abyssinia/Fake Ethiopia), and with the Renaissance dam (GERD) filled, Egypt faces a havoc in the only part of the country’s national borders that was truly safe: that shared with Israel and Gaza. What is even worse is that there is an enormous distance between the governmental policy of the newly re-elected President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and the popular feelings against Israel. Updates and readings:

https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/514365.aspx

https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/514418.aspx

Maintaining peaceful relations with Israel is necessary for the Egyptian president in order to come up with eventual solutions for the urgent needs of the evicted Gazan populations, to appear as a mediator should a circumstance arise, and to ensure that the Gazans will not be pushed by the Israeli soldiers up to Egyptian borders. All the same, this position is extremely delicate because Egypt cannot possibly accept to accommodate the populations of Gaza that the Israeli government subtly tries to force out once for all; indeed, the quasi-totality of the Egyptian population would not possibly accept such a development, which would automatically turn out to be tenure-terminator for any leader of the country. On the other side, any further deterioration of the poor conditions of life to which two millions of destitute Gazans have been exposed may deeply anger the average Egyptians up to the point of launching protests, which would further weaken the lukewarm support that the Egyptian president has.

As it was clearly understood from the first weeks, Israel’s military intervention in Gaza and the ensuing destructions and systematic killings of civil populations must be assessed as a long-term military operation that may last many months if not years. If at any moment, Gazan populations are pushed toward the Egyptian border, the war may become inevitable. Even worse, if thousands of uncontainable Gazans pour into the Sinai Peninsula, the Egyptian government will be viewed by its citizens as truly impotent. Then, the newly elected president may be challenged by the protests (even more so because the economic outlook is rather gloomy) or removed by a military coup. For more than a decade, it has been clear that serious forces within the Western world (all those who have promoted Turkey’s Islamization over the past two decades) have a deep-seated hatred of Egypt. If France and a part of the US establishment supported the present Egyptian establishment, England and other states created and promoted a steadily anti-Egyptian sentiment.

But it is not only a matter of a turmoil limited in the Sinai Peninsula’s northernmost extremities. With the military activities launched by the Houthi government of Yemen against Israel, the Gazan conflict took another dimension that is seriously dangerous for the national security and safety of Egypt. As the Red Sea is Egypt’s eastern flank, it was always viewed as the safest region of the country; any condition of instability created in those governorates (Red Sea, Suez, and South Sinai) will severely endanger Cairo in many aspects. If maritime companies cancel the Red Sea – Suez Canal passageway, the Egyptian economy will take a disastrous hit. Map:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subdivisions_of_Egypt#Governorates

Under current circumstances, Egypt definitely needs a major ally beyond the well-conceived and auspiciously undertaken adhesion of Cairo to the BRICS+. The 2023 decision to enlarge the intergovernmental organization (from 5 to 10 member states) with the participation of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and UAE is highly important, particularly for Egypt’s economy. About:

https://www.sis.gov.eg/Story/190924?lang=en-us

https://www.sis.gov.eg/Story/190905/Egypt’s-membership-in-BRICS-activated%2C-welcomed-by-Russia?lang=en-us

https://www.africanews.com/2024/01/02/brics-expansion-five-countries-join-ranks/

https://www.newarab.com/news/egypts-brics-membership-officially-activated#:~:text=The%20BRICS%2C%20an%20economic%20platform,group’s%20summit%20in%20South%20Africa.

However, the aforementioned wise decision of the Egyptian government has to be completed and consolidated with the selection of a main strategic partner and ally at the military and technological level. With Russia being focused on Ukraine, the Balkans, the Caucasus region, and other parts of Europe, Africa and Asia, China appears to be Egypt’s long-term close partner and ally of choice.

II. The Rise of China as a World Super-power

As a major imperial state, China has a historical tradition and a cultural heritage that very few other nations can claim today. China survived longer than other ancient empires like Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, (pre-Islamic) Iran and Rome.

Instead of being an empire identified with one religion, like the Christian Eastern Roman Empire and the Islamic Abbasid Caliphate, China managed to compose a unified state dogma where Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism coexisted in peace and, at the same time, to plainly incorporate religions that came from the West, namely Mesopotamia: Manichaeism (either in its Sogdian form or in its Uyghur doctrine, fully blended with Buddhism), Nestorian Christianity, and Islam.

As a fully continental empire, China was one of the world’s five most civilized realms and foremost empires in the middle of the 16th century, along with the Mughal Empire (Hindustan), the Safavid Empire of Iran, the Ottoman Empire, and the then nascent Muscovite-Russian Empire.

The five continental empires represented humanity and civilization, whereas the five maritime colonial empires (Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and England) diffused barbarism, monstrosity and hatred, killing scores of indigenous populations, ruining great, highly civilized empires (Aztecs, Incas), spreading terror, inhumanity, diseases and falsehood, while also imposing tyrannically (and after deliberate genocides) the fake religion of the Western European heretical Christians (Catholics & Protestants).

In the span of 350 years (1570-1920), due to their sheer complex of inferiority, vicious plots, incessant cheating, wicked rancor, malignant lies, and systematized fallacy, the five maritime colonial empires (Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and England), managed to

– fully invade and colonize one of the five continental empires, namely the Mughal Empire (which was far richer than Louis XIV’s France);

– totally dismember another continental empire, namely the Ottoman Empire, on the territory of which absurdly stand nowadays no less than 30 states;   

– significantly reduce, temporarily occupy, and interfere in the local governance of another continental empire, namely the Qajar Empire of Iran (which succeeded the Safavid and the Afshar dynasties, but was subsequently replaced -following English intervention- with an ignorant and idiotic soldier who was later labeled ‘Pahlavi’ by his colonial master-‘adviser’);

– systematically undertake two Opium Wars (1839-1842 and 1856-1860) -in order to heinously corrupt the Chinese people- and then invade, occupy and dismantle the Qing Empire of China, first by attempting to divide the country into zones of foreign occupation and later by pitching the Japanese against the Chinese; and

– methodically turn Russia repeatedly against its natural allies, namely the above mentioned four empires and the equally continental empires of Austria-Hungary and Germany.

We have to consider the years 1945 and 1991 as the peaks of the maritime empires’ prevalence, because the United States substituted for the earlier Western colonial empires. As a matter of fact, in 1945, the very costly victory of a continental state (USSR) over another continental state (Nazi Germany) and the slow recovery of China, which was still plunged in Civil War, allowed the US to appear as the sole world superpower. Later, although the Soviet Union managed to soon become the second superpower, its dissolution in 1991, at a moment the People’s Republic of China had not yet risen to prominence, gave again the impression that the US was the world’s only superpower.  

Now, 33 years after 1991, everything looks impressively different, because of the spectacular economic, military, technological and geostrategic ascent of China; all the same, the overwhelmingly transformed international environment is also due to Russia’s astounding comeback in terms of military modernization, administrative rehabilitation, socioeconomic reorganization, scientific breakthrough, technological advance and worldwide impact. Furthermore, the dramatic change has to also be attributed to India’s striking rise to the level of major economic, military, scientific and technological power, and to the remarkable progress that several middle level powers (Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran, Nigeria, South Africa, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Egypt, etc.) have made in the meantime, thus becoming notable regional powers and centers of gravitation that the Western colonial countries cannot anymore fully impact, influence or intimidate.

III. The Irrevocable Prerequisites of China’s Worldwide Predominance

All this may really augur very well for China, but unfortunately, it is not enough. And the real issue for China is not to outperform its own performance in terms of military and technological breakthrough or economic-commercial penetration. What matters -in the transformation of a traditional continental empire to a worldwide superpower- is the elimination of the existing drawbacks and obstacles. China may nowadays look far stronger and more important than France, a traditional maritime colonial empire, but things are not that simple when we examine both countries’ impact and influence on Africa.

Chairwoman of Russia’s Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko speaking with the President of Algeria Abdelmajid Tebboune (March 2023) said that “France must repent for colonial crimes”.

France controlled major lands of civilization for hundreds of years and imposed its own scientific method, academic system, moral-intellectual values, educational context, and socio-cultural environment. Fully colonizing the Algerian society, Paris

– imposed the study of 18th c. philosophers by Algerian schoolchildren;

– deleted Algeria’s Islamic and pre-Islamic historical and cultural heritage from Modern Algeria’s education, intellectual life, political discourse, academic research, cultural milieu, and artistic explorations;

– prevented a proper nation building process from being undertaken by Algerians;

– turned the average Algerian into either an entirely subaltern French or a fully reactionary Muslim predestined to doom in his vain effort to ‘Islamize’ his country and -even worse- not even to imagine that there is no return to national originality without an exhaustive de-Westernization;

– made of the average Algerian’s religion (Islam) a mere ideological caricature; and

– appended all the concepts and all the notions that an Algerian may develop or devise to French (and therefore Western) standards, measures and criteria, thus irrevocably preventing generations upon generations of Algerians to ever achieve cultural ingenuity, intellectual originality, and national authenticity.

That’s why one can easily observe that, even at the moment of the closest Soviet-Algerian or Russo-Algerian (after 1991) relationship, the ideal place for an Algerian to be was always Paris – and never Moscow!

What is even worse is that the French did the same in each and every of their colonies, whereas the English acted accordingly. And when the Americans arrived to take over, they followed the same pattern, offering scores of scholarships to the youth of the earlier colonized nations so that they get re-colonized after the American fashion (or version). This is how Morocco, to offer an example, was methodically managed and gradually turned against France. The Americans called it decolonization, but in reality the shameless process was a full re-colonization; they did not care about the local nations and the troubles caused to them by the European colonization process that had lasted perhaps 100 or 200 years before the American arrival. However, one has to take into consideration the fact that this was possible for the Americans to achieve because America was already a byproduct of the Western world.  

12th c. manuscript of A’azzu Ma Yuṭlab by Ibn Tumart

But Russia is not part of the Western world and the same is valid for China. So, to be on the safe side, when a Russian or Chinese diplomat or statesman speaks, discusses or negotiates with an Algerian statesman, politician, military officer administrator, businessman, he must always bear in mind that in front of him does not stand a descendant of Ibn Tumart or a proponent of the Almohad doctrine, but a wretched person confused about his identity and choices, ignorant of his national past, and fooled by the -systematically administered to him and his compatriots- colonial Euro-centric fallacy. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Tumart

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%CA%BFazzu_M%C4%81_Yu%E1%B9%ADlab

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almohad_doctrine

As the above example constitutes only one case of troublesome encounter, Chinese must realize that, on the best occasion, they will meet similar cases everywhere. This means that, by imagining that Chinese financial aid, state loans, technology transfer, military advice, political partnership, foreign investment, infrastructure works, and sustainable development plans will suffice to make of an African country a strong and permanent ally of China in the Black Continent, Chinese diplomats, advisers and statesmen only fool themselves and lose their money. And this is not only due to the existent -among African governments- overwhelming corruption.

The Chinese must therefore realize that first, last and above all, they need to set the foundations of their presence in Africa- something that until now they have never done. This must be massive and, luckily, China can certainly afford it. It would perhaps be even better to undertake parallel efforts, namely through the Chinese embassies, consulates and universities and, also, via BRICS-based partnerships.

First, China must study in-depth all the African nations as per their own declarations of identity; if the Chinese authorities are contented with the superficial study of the colonial caricatures that the Modern African states are, it is better for Beijing to forget the dreams of worldwide predominance once forever. The Oromos of Abyssinia (Fake Ethiopia), the Bejas (Blemmyes) of Eastern Sudan, the Copts of Egypt, the Berbers of the African Atlas, the Mehris and the Soqotris of Yemen, the Luo, the Somalis, the Kikuyu, the Bantu Muslims of Kenya, and all the other nations and the ethnic-linguistic-religious groups of Africa must be meticulously studied in China.

The reason for this enormous academic-political endeavor is simple: Western colonial countries have done so for ca. 200 years. And without their enormous study, knowledge and documentation, the Western colonial administrations would have never asserted the firm control that they had and still have over Africa. It would perhaps be quite useful for Chinese scholars to first investigate the extent and the depth of Africanist or African Studies in Western Europe and North America. Russia has developed this academic discipline but not up to the level Italy has. The African colonial past of Rome (in Libya, Eritrea, Somalia and Abyssinia/Fake Ethiopia) did indeed play a certain role in this regard. Actually, the European colonialism was never an exclusively military affair; it was rather a combined enterprise based on universities, libraries, museums, companies, armies, secret services, and governments. It is essential for the Chinese to always keep this in mind. About: https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article-abstract/69/275/163/57603?redirectedFrom=PDF&login=false

At the same time, Chinese scholars must examine the indigenous scholarship-led attempt to establish Afrology or Africology at the antipodes of the Western colonial discipline. Africans involved in the development and implementation of concepts such as Afrocentricity and African Renaissance must be taken seriously by the Chinese, first as a topic of study and then as a potential partner in numerous hitherto undefined pro-African and pro-Chinese, anti-Western projects. It is really a joke for Chinese statesmen to think that, with only few hundreds of billions of dollars and due to governmental cooperation in bilateral trade, infrastructure projects, and political relations, Beijing will establish a deeply-rooted presence in the Black Continent.

In this manner and without a deep study of the entire continent (as I already said), China is going to lose most of the money spent for this scope. Few corrupt partners (ministers, generals, thugs-in chief, etc.) will pocket part of the Chinese money, but later some of their colleagues or subordinates will probably report this development to their French, English or American masters, and then China’s fraudulent trustees may get a bullet in their head or simply removed from power; their monies will be confiscated, and the country will be lost for China – pretty much like Libya was stripped from Beijing in 2011.

Second, China must deeply study African History without taking into consideration the existent borders. The down-to-Earth reality is simple: colonial borders are good only for the colonial powers, but never for the colonized nations. So, China cannot accept them – at least before duly studying how and why all these fake lines were drawn by the French and the English in order to work only to their benefit. By this, I don’t mean that one should break all the existing African countries to pieces. No! In some cases, one can produce one very sizeable, new African country out of two or three states – but the decision must be well-founded and based on the study of the local reality, and of the colonial perverse rule and evildoing. I will now offer an example.

Very old map of north africa with Focus on Egypt, other countries on this map are Libya, Sudan, Nigeria, Algeria. Main countries which were occupied by Britain in the early 20th century.

Egypt, Sudan and Libya could have easily made one enormous state; combined the three countries have a total area of ca. 4.7 million km2 (larger than India and smaller than Australia). This means that, if united, they would make the 6th largest state in the world. However, the following fact highlights the systematic English evildoing that took place and the perverse, calamitous nature of colonialism: despite the fact that the English colonized both lands, controlled the local societies, and built the infrastructure that they needed, including a vast network of railways, the colonial governors took good care never to connect Egypt and Sudan by train. Although the railway network in both lands totaled, back in 1950s, thousands of kilometers and the existing routes from Alexandria to Aswan and from Wadi Halfa to Khartoum covered 1100 km and 900 km respectively, no railway was ever constructed between Aswan with Wadi Halfa (ca. 320 km)!

This fact is critical for the Chinese and for anyone else to know, because it unveils the secret targets of the colonial powers, namely to rule Africa first locally and later remotely – through use of idiotic indigenous stooges-traitors, who were first selected to study in English or French universities and then there formed as to how to rule their lands as per the plans of their colonial masters and not in a way to reflect the true interests of their nations. That is why, after Sudan’s independence (1956), no Sudanese and no Egyptian statesman had ever the idea of linking the two countries by two railways – one crossing the Valley of the Nile (from Alexandria to Khartoum) and another running alongside the Red Sea Coast (from Suez to Suakin).

So, to conclude about this example, I would say that it is very good for the Chinese leaders to intend to launch many infrastructure projects in Africa, but it would be far better for them to also come to know which plans and designs were never proposed (let alone built) by the colonial powers, although they could have been undertaken, and for which reasons; this would reveal to the Chinese authorities who is going to certainly plot against China’s penetration in Africa, where, when and for which reason.

Third, China should deeply study African Antiquity and Oriental Antiquity in order to uncover the fallacious nature of the Western narrative, denounce it at worldwide level, and refute it solemnly, thus liberating world nations from the pro-Western, racist dogma, which generated tyrannies and genocides across the Earth. Chinese universities must lead the world academia in critical disciplines like Egyptology, Assyriology, Hittitology, Iranology, Turkology and many other crucial sectors of Orientalism, which reveal the truth about the History of Mankind that the Western academia wanted to conceal, distort and replace with the absurdity of Greco-Roman civilization, Hellenism, and Eurocentrism.

While being energetically involved in this majestic project, with the participation of dozens of thousands of African and Asiatic students, China should deploy a great effort in interconnecting universities in Africa and Asia. This will help irrevocably disconnect African and Asiatic universities from the vicious centers of falsehood, namely the Western European and North American universities, which plunged the world in distortion, racism, anomaly, darkness and wars.

Fourth, China must prepare a young generation of China-educated, Chinese-speaking African leaders, who will spend 4-7 years in China, before returning home to work in the field of their specialization and thus to demolish the remaining chains of colonialism, misconceptions, misperceptions, biases, and white man’s schemes and deceptions. These young Africans will form their countries’ new middle classes and they will be instrumental in irreversibly cutting the relations of their nations with the criminal colonial states of England, France, US, Holland, Canada, Belgium, New Zealand, and Australia. English and French must be irrevocably deleted from Africa’s collective memory.

This enormous project will also entail the establishment of annexes of dozens of Chinese universities throughout Africa; in every single African state, several Chinese universities, numerous high schools, and various institutes will have to open and operate. The penetration of Chinese as the first foreign language must therefore be considered as key to China’s presence in Africa. For this reason, it has to be fully supported at all levels, notably the Internet, blogging, social media, etc. Chinese press establishments must open Asia in general and China in particular to all Africans, while incessantly slandering the Western world in every dimension.

Fifth, China must develop an enormous program of cultural exchanges, involving visits of African artists to China and vice versa, African schoolchildren holidays in China and vice versa, traveling bilateral exhibitions (a China-Tanzania exhibition in Egypt or an Algeria-China exhibition in Kenya, and so on), ‘Africa and the Silk-, Spice- and Perfume-routes’ Annual Seminar, and a vast program of sister city or a twin town relationship.

Sixth, China must build an unmatched military presence in Africa. It is better to first establish bilateral military relations with several countries of the Black Continent and then launch the next stage of expansion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. In order to better involve its allies, Beijing could introduce the concept of trilateral military alliance and presence; to offer an example in this regard, within the context of an Egyptian-Chinese military alliance, China could involve India and thus set up a Chinese-Indian-Egyptian brigade after the example of the Franco-German Brigade. On other occasions, a Chinese-Russian-Algerian brigade would reduce the chance of war in the African Atlas that the secret services of England and America work hard to instigate, and a Chinese-Russian-Niger and/or a Chinese-Russian-Mali brigade would eliminate the threat of Islamic fundamentalism throughout Sahara, therefore fully canceling the evil Anglo-Saxon plans.

China’s military presence in Africa can function as vector of peace throughout the Black Continent; it must start with a strong bilateral military agreement with Egypt. What the scope of a Chinese-Egyptian military alliance can be and how fruitful it will turn out to be I will present in the next article of the series, which will be the last.

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Download the article in PDF:

Parthian Turan and the Philhellenism of the Arsacids

Pre-publication of chapter XIII 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 XI, XII, and XIII constitute the Part Four (Fallacies about the so-called Hellenistic Period, Alexander the Great, and the Seleucid & the Parthian Arsacid Times) of the book, which is made of 12 parts and 33 chapters. Chapter XI ‘Alexander the Great as Iranian King of Kings, the fallacy of Hellenism, and the nonexistent Hellenistic Period’ and Chapter XII ‘Parthian Turan: an Anti-Persian dynasty’ have already been uploaded as partly pre-publication of the book; they are currently available online here: https://www.academia.edu/105386978/Alexander_the_Great_as_Iranian_King_of_Kings_the_fallacy_of_Hellenism_and_the_nonexistent_Hellenistic_Period

and

https://www.academia.edu/52541355/Parthian_Turan_an_Anti_Persian_dynasty

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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The very long shadow of the Turanian Parthian Arsacids who ruled Iran (250 BCE – 224 CE) longer than the Achaemenids (550-330 BCE) and the Sassanids (224-651 CE); this silver gilt dish was found in Padishkhwargar, an Arsacid province that corresponds to Tabaristan (of Islamic times) or to Mazandaran and Gilan (of Modern times), i.e. the long and narrow region between the Alborz Mountains and the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. The dish dates back to the last decades of Sassanid rule or the very early Islamic period; it apparently follows the Sassanid artistic traditions, but the main person next to whom there is a brief Pahlavi inscription makes with his left hand a particular sign of mystical recognition among initiates. This sign reminds the typical hand gesture of Gray Wolves (a fist with the little finger and index finger raised).

Colonial historiographers and Orientalists expand much about the philhellenism of the Parthian monarchs at least for the first 250 years of the dynasty, down to the very beginning of the 1st c. CE; this is a fact. However, few questioned how functional this Parthian philhellenism was and what important purposes it actually served. It is true that after Alexander the Great’s death (323 BCE) a chaotic situation prevailed across Iran and many battles were fought by his Epigones; the Seleucid Empire, which incorporated the central Iranian satrapies, was constituted only 11 years after Alexander’s death (312 BCE).

At that moment and for a longer period afterwards, the worst hit province of the Achaemenid Empire was still Fars (Persia); Alexander the Great’s invasions did not involve any other destruction of Achaemenid city or site comparable to that of Parsa (Persepolis). Reflecting pre-existing rivalries, several populations of other Iranian – Turanian provinces may have enjoyed both, Alexander’s attitude against Fars and the destruction of Persepolis. Furthermore, the inevitable transfer of the imperial capital to Babylon must have pleased them too; it offered them space to gradually control as long as the Persian Iranians were in disarray.

Parthia was already a province of the short-lived Median Empire

Parthia as an Achaemenid Iranian satrapy

The early period of Arsacid Parthia: 250-200 BCE

The Arsacid Parthian Empire in 94 BCE at its greatest extent, during the reign of Mithridates II (124–91 BCE)

The Arsacid Parthian Empire at the beginning of the first c. CE

Parthia (P-rw-t-i-wꜣ) written in Egyptian hieroglyphic characters: it was one of the 24 subject nations of the Achaemenid Empire (from the Egyptian Statue of Darius I the Great)

Parthian soldier depicted on the façade of Xerxes’ I tomb in Naqsh-e Rustam, ca. 470 BCE

The subsequent transfer of the Seleucid capital to Seleucia in Mesopotamia was a grave mistake of the newly established dynasty, which failed to comprehend the very smart effort of Alexander to favor, befriend and utilize the Babylonians as the principal means to hold his vast empire united. Finally, the Parthians seceded from the Seleucid Empire 60-65 years after its inception. The rise of the Arsacid dynasty meant that, for the first time in History, the central Iranian–Turanian provinces were ruled under a scepter and a throne that were not located in Fars.

It is therefore normal that the Parthians -in their opposition to the Persians (of Fars)- promoted a systematic court philhellenism and contributed to Alexander the Great’s Iranian legitimation and unquestionable incorporation into the imperial identity and history, and to his posterior fame among Iranian–Turanian nations. This stance fully corresponded to their best interests, namely to secure stability across Iran’s central provinces, while facing threats from rivals among the neighboring empires and kingdoms. It is clear that the Turanian attempt was rejected by the Persian Iranians, and of this polarization we attest late echoes that date back to the Islamic times. Accepting Alexander as an Iranian was benediction to the Turanian Parthians and malediction to the Iranian Persians. But the empire (Xšāça) established by Cyrus the Great was indiscriminately Iranian-Turanian. 

Despite the Arsacid–Seleucid wars, one must rather conclude that, with their marked philhellenism, the Turanian rulers of Parthia had good relations with the various Greek and Macedonian colonies, which had been established throughout their territory and in several adjacent lands, notably Bactria.

This fact helps also explain why, despite Alexander the Great’s rather negative portrait in Sassanid and Middle Persian sources of the Islamic times’ Parsis, the conqueror of the Achaemenid Empire enjoyed splendid narratives and majestic descriptions by Ferdowsi, Nizami, and many other Islamic Iranian–Turanian poets, mystics, philosophers and historians.

Although followers of Parsism (the form of Zoroastrianism that survived down to our days) in Iran and India have a very negative perception of Alexander the Great, Iranian and Turanian Muslims very much venerate him. About:    

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthian_Empire#Hellenism_and_the_Iranian_revival

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_formula_of_Parthian_coinage

https://www.academia.edu/40214555/Khusrow_Parwez_and_Alexander_the_Great_An_Episode_of_imitatio_Alexandri_by_a_Sasanian_King

One must have no doubt that the term ‘Hellene’ (Greek) is ‘Ionian’ for the Oriental languages. Throughout all the ancient Oriental sources, i.e. Assyrian-Babylonian, Old Achaemenid Iranian, Aramaic, Phoenician and Hebrew, there is not one mention of ‘Greeks’ or ‘Hellenes’; the only term used is ‘Ionian’. This means that in any ancient Oriental language, for the word ‘Philhellene” the corresponding term is “friendly to Ionians”.

It is essential at this point to define the ethnic and cultural links that the Arsacid Parthians felt that they connected them with the ‘Ionians’ with whom they entered in contact. The Parthians accepted the imperial concept because they were integral part of Achaemenid Iran; around 200 years later, the Macedonians, the Ionians and the Aeolians became acquainted with this spiritual notion thanks to Alexander the Great and the practices of Orientalization that he introduced for his soldiers.

However, prior to the acceptance of the imperial ideal, both the Parthians and the ‘Ionians’ had their apparently common concept of governorship that was above the fundamental level of Kurultai, which corresponds to the ‘Ionian’ Amphictyony for settled tribes. This was a military type of rule with man exercising absolute power upon condition of general approval. The traditional Turanian ruler was named in Ancient Ionian (‘Greek’) ‘tyrannos’, and it was pronounced as ‘tu-ran-nos’ with the accent on the first syllable. The term designated the typically Turanian ruler and it serves as an indication of the Turanian origin of the Ionians and the Aeolians. It was actually first used among the Lydians of the Mermnadae dynasty, whose members had apparently names of Turanian origin, notably the founder of the dynasty Gyges whose name was written in Assyrian Annals as Gu(g)gu. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurultai

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphictyonic_league

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/τύραννος#Etymology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyges_of_Lydia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kings_of_Lydia#Mermnadae

In fact, the Parthian Arsacid philhellenism sheds more light on the inculcation of Turanian populations across Western Anatolia and South Balkans during the first millennium BCE, which is a topic that colonial historians tried systematically to conceal. However, Parthian philhellenism is certainly a form of anti-Persianism, which shows that the Achaemenid times were not a period of peace and concord, as many attempted to depict.

Silver drachma of Arsaces I (247 – 211 BCE) with inscription

Arsaces II (211–191 BCE); coin from the Ray mint

Friyapat/Priapatius (191-176 BCE); coin from the Qumis (Hekatompylos; today’s Saddarvazeh) mint

Coin of Frahat I / Phraates I (176-171 BCE)

Coin of Mehrdat I / Mithridates I (171–138 or 132 BCE), who was the first Arsacid Parthian ruler to be attributed the title ‘King of Kings’, according to Babylonian cuneiform records; the reverse shows Verethragna / Heracles, and the inscription ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΜΕΓΑΛΟΥ ΑΡΣΑΚΟΥ ΦΙΛΕΛΛΗΝΟΣ “Great King Arsaces, friend of Greeks”.

Parthian relief of Mithridates I of Parthia from Xong-e Ashdar (also known as Hung-i Nauruzi), near the city of Izeh, in Khuzestan, Iran; compared to the Achaemenid reliefs, which were the results of an official imperial art, the Parthian reliefs are relevant of provincial artists and craftsmanship; most of the Parthian reliefs are found in the southern range of Zagros Mountains. Parthian reliefs are rather secular and not religious; and not religious; they depict scenes of resting, drinking, and hunting, also including several animal figures.

Mithradat-kert (literally the city of Mithridates I of Parthia) in today’s Nisa (or Nissa or Nusay) in Eastern Turkmenistan; the entrance to the city and the walls, which had to be covered up to prevent further damage from erosion

Mithradat-kert (Ancient Greek: Νῖσος, Νίσα, Νίσαιον; Turkmen: Nusaý or Parthaunisa)

Mithradat-kert

Mithradat-kert

Frahat II / Phraates II (132–127 BCE); coin from the Seleucia mint (in Mesopotamia)

Ardawan I / Artabanus I (127–124 BCE); coin from the Seleucia mint

Coin of Ardawan II / Artabanus II (126–122 BCE)

Coin (drachma) of Mihrdāt II / Mithridates II of Parthia (124–91 BCE); the clothing is Parthian, while the style is Seleucid (sitting on an omphalos). The Greek inscription reads “King Arsaces, the Philhellene”.

Godarz I / Gotarzes I (95-90 BCE); coin from the Ecbatana mint

Coin of Mihrdat III / Mithridates III (87-80 BCE) from the Ray mint

Tetradrachm of the Parthian monarch Urud I / Orodes I (90-80 BCE) from the Seleucia mint

Coin of Sanatruq I / Sinatruces I (77-70 BCE) from the Ray mint

Frahat III / Phraates III (70–57 BCE); coin from the Ecbatana mint

Coin of Mihrdat IV / Mithridates IV (57-54 BCE)

Coin of Urud II / Orodes II (57-38 BCE) from the Mithradat-kert (Nisa) mint

Frahat IV / Phraates IV (38-2 BCE); coin from the Mithradat-kert mint

During the reign of Frahat IV / Phraates IV, there seems to have been a pacification agreement between Parthia and Rome (after the proclamation of Octavian as Emperor in early 27 BCE). According to Roman sources, the Parthians returned to Romans the standards lost in the Battle of Carrhae (53 BCE); this fact was commemorated and presented by Octavian as a victory: this coin (denarius) was struck in 19 BCE. It depicts the Roman goddess Feronia on the obverse, and on the reverse a Parthian soldier who kneels in submission while returning the Roman military standards. It is apparently a matter of utmost symbolism and not the representation of a historical event.

The decentralized administrative and royal power of the Arsacid Parthians allowed for many small, peripheral and vassals kingdoms to surface (Characene, Adiabene, Osrhoene, etc.); there are many possible interpretations of the phenomenon, which was erroneously viewed as result of military weakness in the past. Elymais (in today’s Khuzestan, SW Iran) was one of those vassal states. Coin of Kamnaskires III, king of Elymais, and his wife Queen Anzaze, 1st century BCE

Coin of Tiridat II / Tiridates II (29-27 BCE)

Coin of Frahat V / Phraates V (2 BCE-4 CE)

Vonun I / Vonones I (8-12 CE); coin from the Seleucia mint

Coin of Ardawan II / Artabanus II (10-38 CE) from the Seleucia mint

Vardan I / Vardanes I (40-47 CE); coin from the Seleucia mint

Tetradrachm of Godarz II / Gotarzes II (40-51 CE) minted in 49 CE

Tetradrachm of the Parthian king Vologases I (50-79 CE), struck at Seleucia; on the obverse, there is a portrait of the king who appears to wear a trouser-suit, bear a diadem, and have beard. The reverse depicts an investiture scene, where the king receives the scepter and the divine authority by Ahura Mazda.

The so-called Indo-Parthian Kingdom (19-226 CE) was another small, vassal and peripheral kingdom that was located east of the Parthian Arsacid Empire; it was founded by king Gondophares (Γονδοφαρης/Υνδοφερρης; 19-46 CE) whose name (Windafarm in Parthian and Gundapar in Middle Persian) means ‘May he find glory’ (Vindafarna in Old Achaemenid Iranian). Gondophares originated from the illustrious House of Suren, one of the most prestigious families in Arsacid Iran. He built his own royal city Gundopharron and this name was gradually altered to Kandahar (which is located in today’s Afghanistan). Gondophares’ coin was found in India and bears witness to a clearly Parthian style.

Roman sestertius issued by the Roman Senate in 116 CE to commemorate Trajan’s Parthian campaign

Drawing representing a Parthian archer as depicted on Trajan’s Column in Rome (113 CE)

Relief of the Roman-Parthian wars at the Arch of Septimius Severus in Rome (203 CE)

Parthian (right) wearing a Phrygian cap, depicted as a prisoner of war, in chains, held by a Roman (left); Arch of Septimius Severus, Rome, 203 CE

Parthian king making an offering to god Verethragna; from Masjed Soleyman, SW Iran. 2nd–3rd century CE (today in the Louvre Museum)

Silver drachma of the Parthian king Walagash VI / Vologases VI (208-228 CE), penultimate ruler of the Arsacid dynasty. Obverse: King wearing a tiara decorated with deers and ribboned diadem. Reverse: Arsakes I, founder or the Arsacid Parthian dynasty, seating on a throne and holding a bow. From the Ecbatana mint (today’s Hamadan).

Parthian horseman, currently at the Palazzo Madama, Turin

Parthian cataphract fighting a lion, currently at the British Museum

Stucco relief of an infantry soldier, dating back to the Arsacid times (250 BCE – 224 CE); from the Zahhak castle, in Hashtrud, Eastern Azerbaijan, Iran; currently in the Azerbaijan Museum, Tabriz (Iran)

Another fact that Western Orientalists tried always to obscure is that the religion of the Arsacids was somewhat divergent from that of the Achaemenids. I don’t mean that the Parthians had a diametrically different or a counterfeit religion; not at all! Simply, in terms of Zoroastrian cosmogony, cosmology, universalism, imperial doctrine, and apocalyptic eschatology, the Arsacids sensibly differed from the Achaemenid Zoroastrian orthodoxy. We have to also bear in mind at this point that the scarcity of the historical sources still prevents us from properly assessing the true dimensions of the religious differentiation.

However, the marked differentiation of the Arsacid monarch from his Achaemenid predecessors suggests another type of royalty, sacrality, spirituality, and morality. As an example for the average readership, I point out here that there has not been even one Old Achaemenid or Imperial Aramaic text -saved down to our days-, which explicitly mentions Zoroaster by name. All the earliest mentions of the name of the founder of the Achaemenid imperial religion are in Middle Persian and in Avestan writings – except for external but largely untrustworthy sources (Ancient Greek and Latin).

All the same, the religious differentiation between the Achaemenid and the Arsacid times did not bring about a drastic religious change, but rather another perception of the divine world; the Parthians continued worshipping Ahura Mazda and keeping themselves far from Ahriman’s attraction. But it appears that, during the Arsacid times, Zoroaster’s preaching was rather perceived as a sacred moral world order; subsequently, the metaphysical terms of the then orally preserved Avesta took a moral dimension and connotation. The spiritual interest seems to have shifted from an imperial order of worldwide salvation to a personal order of moral integrity.

Consequently, examining the nature of this historical-religious change, we may be able to discern that the Achaemenid Zoroastrian orthodoxy, once deprived of its overwhelmingly imperial character, looks rather associated to the moral concepts and the spiritual tenets of Tengrism. For this reason, it is proper not to use the term ‘Zoroastrianism’ for all the historical periods after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, because religiosity differed substantially; it would then be preferable to use the term ‘Zendism’ for the Iranian religion of the Arsacid times, which is in reality a later form of Zoroastrianism in which theological exegesis (Zend Avesta meaning interpretation of Avesta) prevailed over the original faith, and the Avestan text took mainly a moral connotation and value within the socio-religious environment of those days.

The Zend commentaries of the Avestan texts, which definitely originate from the spiritual-religious background of the Arsacid Parthian (and not Sassanid) times, do reflect theological concepts and world views closer associated with Tengrism. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zend

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avestan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avestan_alphabet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pazend

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Persian

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Persian_literature

Zendism was definitely opposite to Mithraism, although perhaps not in the very strict form for which the Achaemenid emperors became famous. But it was mainly in Arsacid times that Mithraism expanded enormously both, southeastwards (India) and westwards (Caucasus, Anatolia, Syria, Greece, Europe, Rome and the Roman Empire). This does not mean that there were no Mithraic Magi left in Iran; their existence proved to be the main reason for palatial turmoil, sacerdotal plots, social unrest, and internal strives. Undoubtedly, the Magi were the absolute embodiment of Ahriman (: the evil) for the Arsacid rulers, pretty much like they had been an abomination for the Achaemenid monarchs.

In this regard, it is essential to point out that ‘Mithra’ (or ‘Mehr’) in Zoroastrianism and ‘Mithra’ (or ‘Mehr’) in Mithraism are two absolutely different divinities – pretty much like Jesus in Manichaeism, Mandaean religion, Gnostic Christianity, Roman & Eastern Roman Christianity, Nestorian Christianity, and Islam is not one being but many divergent entities or forms of divinity, each with dissimilar attributes. It goes without saying that for any concept or aspect of Tengrism, which is also a markedly monotheistic system, Mithra is a religious disgrace.

More specifically, I have to point out that within the context of Zoroastrianism, ‘Mithra’ (or ‘Mehr’) is a subordinate form of divinity that constitutes merely an expression of the unfathomable benevolence and omnipotence of Ahura Mazda, and as such it bears solar attributes. Contrarily, within the context of Mithraism, this divinity gets emancipated, becomes independent, and turns out to be the central recipient of cult, while a series of abominable and sacrilegious acts are attributed to him, notably the blasphemy of tauroctony which is part of the Mithraic eschatology. Due to the polytheistic nature of Mithraism, Mithra is intrinsically and extensively mythologized; this is so because there cannot be true polytheism without numerous narratives which attract the adoration of the faithful, and in the process, they prevent believers from focusing on the spiritual exercises, the moral principles, and the basic narratives of Cosmogony, Cosmology and Eschatology. In Mithraism, Ahura Mazda still exists as an inactive divinity of the old time, like the Roman dei otiosi.

At this point, it is essential to make one clarification; the well-known, theophoric name ‘Mithridates’, which was used by several Arsacid Parthian rulers, does not directly imply Mithraic affiliation. Certainly, the name means literally ‘given by Mithra’; it was also attested in Pontus, Commagene, Armenia and elsewhere. But every case of use is different. In some cases, it may involve the Zendist / Zoroastrian concept of Mithra; on other occasions, it may reflect a compromise among the Parthian Arsacid Empire’s imperial and the sacerdotal cliques, which were plunged in an endless conflict against one another.

Last, the use of the aforementioned theophoric name can eventually denote the pro-Mithraic tendency and affiliation of a Parthian monarch; there were indeed few Mithraists among the Arsacid rulers. This was an abomination for the monotheistic Parthian Zendist priests, and it appears that some of the pro-Mithraic Arsacid rulers were overthrown. The analysis of the reason(s) that stood behind the selection of a theophoric name in the Antiquity may be very long and complicated a topic, because usually these names heralded the nature of the imperial rule that was to be expected in terms easy to understand for the contemporaneous people and difficult to decode for modern scholarship. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophoric_name

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_I_of_Parthia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_II_of_Parthia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_III_of_Parthia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_IV_of_Parthia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridates_V_of_Parthia

Hatra, NW Iraq: a major caravan city on the Silk Roads that prospered during the Arsacid Parthian times, being mainly inhabited by the local Aramaeans

A barrel vaulted iwan at the entrance at the ancient site of Hatra, modern-day Iraq, built c. 50 CE

Statue unearthed in Hatra, currently at the Tokyo National Museum: Aramaean amalgamation of Verethragna and an Aramaean deity into a Mithraic divinity similar to Artagnes, who is known to have been worshipped in Nemrut Dagh and Commagene in general

Temple of the Aramaean divinity Gareus, near Uruk, Southern Mesopotamia – near the borders of the vassal kingdom of Characene

Parthian ceramic oil lamp, from the province of Khuzestan, currently in the National Museum of Iran (Tehran)

Baal temple in Palmyra: a frieze relief

Grave towers in Tadmor / Palmyra / Phoinicopolis; known among Syrians as the ‘Valley of the Tombs’ (Wadi al-Qubur). Majestic funerary monuments bear witness to the extraordinary wealth of the great Aramaean caravan city (1st-3rd c. CE).

Statue of a young Palmyrene Aramaean in fine Parthian trousers; from a funerary stele at Palmyra / Tadmor, early 3rd century CE

Mordechai and Esther. From the Aramaean Synagogue of Dura Europos (near Abu Kemal) on the Western bank of Euphrates River in Syria (right before the Syrian-Iraqi border): wall mural with representation of a story from the Book of Esther (early 3rd c. CE); artistic style known as ‘Parthian frontality’

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Iran–Turan and the Western, Orientalist distortions about the successful, early expansion of Islam during the 7th-8th c. CE

Pre-publication of chapter XVII 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 constitute the 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. Until now, 10 chapters have been uploaded as partly pre-publication of the book; the present chapter is therefore the 11th (out of 33).  

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As young merchant, Muhammad ibn Abd Allah is recognized as a prophet by the monk Sergius Bahira (Sargis Bḥira). Miniature from Jami’ al-Tawarikh (Universal History), by Rashid al-Din Hamadani (Tabriz-Iran, 1307)

Similarly with what Iranologists have been doing when distorting the Achaemenid period by using the misnomer ‘Persia’ for ‘Iran’, Orientalists extended the same policy for all periods of the Islamic History of Iran and, furthermore, they introduced new, deceitful concepts, fake terms, and interpretational distortions as regards all things Iranian and Turanian. Even worse, they invented a nonexistent religious – theological divide that they also applied to their systems of disfigurement of the historical reality.

A basic diagram of the early Islamic ages involves the following determinant points, which the colonial Orientalist academics tried always hard to either conceal or distort and undermine:

I. Islam as preached by Prophet Muhammad consists in the cultural, intellectual, educational, spiritual and religious Aramaization of the Arabs (i.e. the inhabitants of the Hejaz, which is the mountainous region of the Arabian Peninsula that stretches between Yemen and Transjordan).

II. Early Islam was not viewed as a new religion by the Oriental Christians, i.e. the Aramaean Nestorians and the Aramaean & Coptic Monophysites / Miaphysites; it was rather considered as a new Christological dispute and heresy, let’s say a form of radical Nestorianism. This initial approach was also expressed by outstanding Orthodox Aramaean theologians like John Damascene (or John of Damascus).

III. Already before Prophet Muhammad’s death, great ancient nations had accepted Islam without the Hejaz Arabs fighting a single battle; the most notable example is that of Yemen, namely a non-Arab, pre-Islamic nation which consisted of several kingdoms that wrote down their deeds, exploits, cults and faiths on numerous, now deciphered, inscriptions and epigraphic monuments. The existing Ancient Yemenite textual documentation covers more than 1200 years of Pre-Islamic History; the Ancient Yemenite writing system was later diffused in Africa (Ge’ez writing in Axumite Abyssinia) and India (Brahmi writing). Ancient Yemenites i.e. Sabaeans, Qatabanis, Himyarites, Awsanis and Hadhramis, were the Indian Ocean’s first and foremost seafarers, navigators and merchants; they totally controlled navigation across the Red Sea Bab al Mandeb straits, at least until the famous Roman maritime expedition, undertaken by Aelius Gallus, was launched in 25 BCE. Highly educated, the Ancient Yemenites colonized East Africa from the Horn region down to today’s Tanzania’s coastlands, and due to their perfect knowledge and use of meteorological and oceanographic conditions, they initiated the straight navigation from the Horn of Africa to the Deccan coast in today’s SW India.

Ancient Yemenites were ethnically-linguistically different from and totally unrelated to the Arabs of Hejaz, and in addition, they greatly outnumbered them. Several bilingual pre-Islamic Sabaean–Arabic inscriptions testify to this historical reality. By accepting Islam two years before Prophet Muhammad’s death (630 CE), Yemenites started using Arabic and taking Arabic names. Abyssinia also accepted early Islam without fighting a single battle.

IV. After Prophet Muhammad’s death, two groups of Muslim Arabs were formed; the first group accepted Ali (Muhammad’s son-in law) as the spiritual guide and the administrative ruler, whereas the second group wanted to elect someone else instead of Ali, in striking contrast to Prophet Muhammad’s instructions. This was not merely a personal disagreement, but a deep spiritual, religious, cultural and behavioral discord. It is essential to specify at this point that those, who sided with Ali, wanted to diffuse Islam peacefully and not by means of military invasions, which constituted also the advice given to his followers by the founder and preacher of Islam.

V. Following the prevalence of the sectarian group of people, who were against Ali, military attacks were undertaken at the same time against the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire of Iran (as early as 633 CE). The people, who wanted to carry out the military invasions, took this decision because of accurate and detailed data already gathered as regards all the adjacent lands, namely Mesopotamia, Syria-Palestine, the Iranian plateau, the Indus River valley, the Caucasus region, and Egypt.

It was normal for those Arab merchants, who used to move ceaselessly across the silk-, spice- and frankincense roads and reach from the mountains of Hejaz as far as the Persian Gulf, the Indus River delta, Fars, Mesopotamia, Syria and the Eastern Mediterranean coast, to know exactly what was happening across those lands and further beyond. They were therefore able to conclude, on the basis of their accurate information, that although militarily insignificant, numerically unimportant, and economically destitute, they had strong chances to prevail – as they finally did.

VI. Around the end of the 3rd decade of the 7th c. CE, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire of Iran were in conditions of total collapse, great impotence and final disintegration. The wars between Rome and Iran were about to complete 700 years of almost incessant conflicts and clashes, but the ferocity of the battles and the devastation of the raids during the previous three decades had gone beyond all limits and precedents. Emperor Heraclius’ victory over the Shahinshah (king of kings) Khusraw II (628 CE) had only symbolic value, because the Eastern Roman Empire was in ramshackle too.  

VII. Even worse for the two multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious empires, the devastating wars ruined, exasperated, and alienated vast populations that belonged to religiously oppressed nations, which were kept out of the imperial elites. Consequently, these nations truly reviled the respective imperial and religious authorities, which were totally unrelated to them ethnically and religiously. More specifically, the outright majority of the populations of the Eastern Roman Empire’s eastern and southern provinces (Southeastern Anatolia, North Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Libya were Aramaeans (in Asia), Copts/Egyptians and Berbers (in Africa). Aramaeans were either Monophysitic/Miaphysitic (like the Copts) or Nestorians. Both branches of Oriental Christianity rejected the Constantinopolitan Orthodox theology and deeply hated the Constantinopolitan armies that tyrannized and persecuted them, when they were not busy with their wars with Iran, which caused unprecedented destruction mainly to their lands. 

Palimpsest-manuscript in Christian Palestinian Aramaic written in Palestine, during the 6th century; it was turned upside down and palimpsested in Syriac Aramaic in the 9th century. It probably belonged to St. Catherine’s Monastery, which was built by Justinian I between 527 and 565.

Similarly, the outright majority of the populations of Sassanid Iran’s western provinces (Atropatene, Eastern Caucasus, Transtigritane, Southeastern Anatolia, Central and Southern Mesopotamia, and the Persian Gulf coastal lands) were Azeri Turanians and Aramaeans. Their regions had suffered enormously because of the wars with the Eastern Roman Empire. Even worse, the Aramaeans of Iran were of Nestorian, Mandaean or Manichaean faith, and they were all severely persecuted for centuries. The Azeri Turanians were the staunchest followers of the official Sassanid version of Zoroastrianism (: Mazdeism) and they were very dissatisfied with both, Khusraw II’s religious tergiversations and the ethnic Persian (from Fars) control of the Sassanid administration.  

All these ethno-religious groups that constituted the bulk of the populations between Cappadocia and the central Iranian plateau would surely welcome a foreign army that would preach a monotheistic doctrine, while also liberating them from the most loathsome capitals, namely Constantinople and Istakhr. This was made known to the Arabs by -mainly- the Damascus Aramaean merchants who were their closest trade partners and business associates; they wanted to have both already destabilized and ailing empires attacked by the soldiers of the new ‘heresy’. And this is actually what happened – in total contravention of Prophet Muhammad’s constant admonitions as regards the peaceful diffusion of the true faith, which he viewed as a unique entity and continuity from the days of the first man.

Continuity in Aramaean Art before and after the arrival of the first Islamic armies is noticeable in many cases, like the Hisham’s Palace, an Umayyad residence near Ariha/ Jericho (mosaic dating back to 724–743)

VIII. What Western Orientalists have systematically hidden is that Turanians did not contribute to the spread of Islam only after the 11th c. (Seljuk invasions), but also at the very critical moment, namely the 7th c. Islamic armies’ attack against Iran. How this happened is easy to grasp: they did not defend the empire to which they belonged. And for a very good reason: they reviled its administration.

In only 18 years (633-651), the Eastern Roman Empire lost almost half of its territory, and the Sassanid Empire of Iran disappeared – in spite of the frequent and at times ferocious revolts undertaken by heirs to the Sassanid throne, who kept fighting even 100 years after their empire had fallen and for this purpose several Iranian Sassanid princes and noblemen sought the help of the Sogdian and the Chinese monarchs.

Contrarily to them, Aramaeans, Turanians, Egyptians and Jews were very happy with the developments, and this reality is reconfirmed by the fact that Aramaean, Egyptian and Turanian sites were not destroyed, whereas Fars (Persia) was turned to dust. Sassanid Iran’s most prestigious sites in terms of spirituality, religion sciences, and knowledge, namely Adhur Gushnasp (Takht-e Suleyman) and Gundeshapur (Bet Lapat), were left intact by the invading Islamic armies; but Istakhr was leveled to the ground.

Chinese illustration depicting the Battle of Talas (751 CE), when an early Abbasid army faced Chinese forces; Western European Orientalists deceitfully portray the battle as a milestone that led Turanians to accept Islam. That’s totally false, because many Turanians lived already in the Sassanid Empire of Iran and encountered Islam as early as the 1st half of the 7th c. CE. The fact that they did not fight in the battles of Qadissiyyah (636), Nahavand (642), and Merv (651) brought down the Sassanid rule.

IX. The myth of the ferocious, bloody Islamic conquests is a colonial, Orientalist fake. It helps however demonstrate the nature of the evil alliance that tried repeatedly to drag our world to extreme bloodshed over the past 40 years; the two groups to whom this myth is vitally necessary are

a) the idiotic Islamists, the Taliban, the various Islamic terrorist groups, the radical extremists, and the naïve, uneducated and ignorant Muslims, who believe that the so-called ‘Islamic conquests’ can possibly be a model, an example, an ideal, and a point of reference (whereas they are not), and

b) the hysterically anti-Muslim, uneducated and paranoid, Zionist and pseudo-Christian Evangelical preachers, militant academics, bogus-intellectuals, Western diplomats and scheming politicians, as well as the Anti-Christian Freemasons of the Apostate Lodge, who need the Orientalist fallacy of the so-called ‘ferocious, bloody Islamic conquests’ as a tool for their strategy to denigrate the Islamic Civilization, distort the historical truth, and in the process, prepare a deeply Anti-Christian and superficially Anti-Islamic army of Evangelical-Taliban and LGBT-terrorists, who will clash with the abovementioned group a.

Papyrus PERF 558 with a bilingual Greek-Arabic text: a tax receipt dating back to 643 CE

X. There are two absolute and undeniable truths as regards the History of the Orient during the 7th c. CE:

First, the early Islamic invasions would be cancelled and the Umayyad Caliphate overthrown, if Aramaeans, Turanians and Egyptians did not truly approve of, and massively support, the new state that expanded across their lands. The approval and the support did not concern the religion but the governance, the imperial rule, and the economic measures.

For anyone who has doubts about this fact, it is enough to read the Coptic Chronicle of the Bishop John of Nikiû (7th c.) or the History of the Patriarchs of the Egyptian Church of Severus ibn al-Muqaffa (تاريخ بطاركة الكنيسة المصرية – Ta’rikh Batarikat al-Kanisah al-Misriyah; 10th c.) in order to discover how clearly the Christian Copts preferred the Abbasid Caliphate and rejected the Constantinopolitan theologians, patriarchs, and imperial guards (let alone the perverse, heretic and schismatic papacy of Rome). About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Niki%C3%BB

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/nikiu2_chronicle.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severus_ibn_al-Muqaffa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Patriarchs_of_Alexandria

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/severus_hermopolis_hist_alex_patr_01_part1.htm

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/severus_hermopolis_hist_alex_patr_02_part2.htm

Second, and with focus on the 7th and the 8th c., without

a) the overwhelming adherence and wholehearted participation of the Aramaeans (be they Christian, Manichaean or already Muslim) in the establishment of the administration, the academic endeavors, the intellectual exploration, the scientific research, the artistic-architectural undertakings, the educational life, the commercial activities (across the Silk Routes), and the economic decision-making of the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates,

b) the overwhelming adherence and wholehearted participation of the Turanians (be they Mazdeist, Nestorian Christian, Manichaean or already Muslim) in the training and the improvement of the Caliphate’s military forces, tactics, and ventures, in the establishment of the administration, in the introduction of imperial manners (mainly during the Abbasid times), in the initiation of diplomatic contacts (across Central Asia, and with China), in the maintenance of economic-commercial activities, and in the transfer of esoteric-spiritual traditions within the new, Islamic world that was under formation, and

c) the gradual acceptance expressed toward the new rule and the outstanding role played within the new context by Iranians, Yemenites, Egyptians and Berbers in all the above mentioned fields, tasks, deeds and exploits, …..

…….. there would have never been an Islamic Civilization.

The fights between the armies of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Islamic caliphates have shed a shadow on the fact that the leaders of the Aramaean populations of the empire had invited the early Muslims in order to get rid of the much loathed Constantinopolitan guards and armies. This happened because in reality the Umayyad Caliphate was substituted for the Sassanid Empire of Iran, and the contrast between the Christian and Islamic faiths appeared as a frontal imperial clash, as it became a state affair.

In fact, even few decades after the early Islamic invasions, the Arabs of Hejaz vanished within an ocean of imperial, cultural, spiritual, intellectual, academic, artistic, religious, military, economic, commercial, technological and educational dynamics that they definitely triggered at their unbeknownst. To say it in simple words: the average person’s life in Medina or Mecca during the period 600-670 CE (which is tantamount to a man’s lifetime) and the average person’s life in Baghdad during the period 800-870 CE were as different from one another as an average person’s life in Constantinople contrasted with another average person’s life in Chang’an (China’s capital) in either chronologies.

There were indeed few common points in Mecca in 630 CE and Baghdad in 830 CE; there were some people who prayed five times a day; one could listen to the adhan; during Ramadhan, they were fasting in daytime. But when the few things in common are fully enumerated, we discover that an incommensurable distance separated the two realms. However, the true, historical Islam is not to be found in Mecca in 630 CE, but in Baghdad in 830 CE.

What was Mecca in 630 CE? It was just a small, marginal village where Prophet Muhammad preached the true faith to God.

What was Baghdad in 830 CE? The undisputed center of the world! Therefore you cannot compare. Historically, Mecca was always insignificant. Spiritually, it was an important location.

The same parallel exists within Christianity too.

Speaking historically, what were Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the various locations of the desert where Jesus used to walk, fast and preach? Nothing! Marginal locations within a vast empire! What was Jerusalem in 33 CE? Historically, it was clearly less important than Antioch, Damascus or Alexandria. Spiritually, it was a key location for the early Christians and the Jews. 

What were Rome and Constantinople in 333 CE? The two capitals of a vast empire! Both cities were historically more significant than Jerusalem.

Late Mamluk-era training with the lance, c.1500; the Mamluks, the Ghulam and all other categories of Turanian soldiers did not ‘discover’ Islam in Central Asia thanks to the early Islamic armies; they encountered the new faith as early as the first battles in the first half of the 7th c., but they did not fight for their empire, Sassanid Iran, which collapsed because of their stance.

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Download the chapter (text only) as PDF:

Download the chapter (text only) as PDF:

The Timurid Era as the Peak of the Islamic Civilization: Shah Rukh, and Ulugh Beg, the Astronomer Emperor  

Pre-publication of chapter XXVI 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 XXIV, XXV and XXVI constitute the Part Ten {Fallacies about the Times of Turanian (Mongolian) Supremacy in terms of Sciences, Arts, Letters, Spirituality and Imperial Universalism} of the book, which is made of 12 parts and 33 chapters. Until now, 9 chapters have been uploaded as partly pre-publication of the book; the present chapter is therefore the 10th (out of 33). A list of the already pre-published chapters (with the related links) is made available at the end of this chapter.

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Imam Reza Mosque, Mashhad – NE Iran

Timur was not a monstrous murderer as the Western historiographers depicted him in their vicious and pernicious, and therefore absolutely worthless and totally untrustworthy, narratives. Historical texts written by Western European authors about Timur reflect only the impotency of the hypocritical, sacrilegious, pseudo-Christian, petty kings of Europe. Like Genghis Khan, Timur shared the traditional Eastern Turanian vision of Tengrist Universalism; sectarian, ethnic, and other divisions or divisive lines were meaningless, barbarian, and inhuman to him. As per his worldview, these divisions represented only the interference of Evil in the human world. Contrarily to most of the then world’s kings and to all of today’s criminal politicians and statesmen, Timur did not engage in battles and wars for his personal, tribal, ethnic or national material benefit, but for the overall, true progress of the faithful Mankind.

Beyond being a grandmaster in chess, Timur was a great mystic, a knowledgeable interlocutor, and an emperor who highly evaluated erudition, literature, philosophy, arts, architecture and sciences. If today people get confused about Timur’s religious views, this is not due to an eventual misinterpretation of historical sources, but to the present confusion between spirituality and religion. It is enough for someone to associate spirituality with religion in order to totally misperceive entire historical eras. Consequently, Western scholars have nowadays difficulty to define whether Timur was a Sunni or a Shia; this is only normal, because there are no Sunni or Shia. This forged division cannot apply in Timur’s life. In fact, like every spiritually alive man, Timur was a secular monarch. Historically, he continued the tradition of Harun al-Rashid’s Abbasid Caliphate, the practices of the Seljuk sultans, and the modus operandi of the Ilkhanate: his empire was an absolutely secular state.

Today, the term ‘secular state’ is confused with the paranoia of the post-WW II world, but in reality the ‘secular state’ has nothing to do with atheism, agnosticism, academic elitism, sacrilegious intellectualism, rationalism, materialism, hedonism, pan-sexism, and all the evil modern bogus-concepts (politics, democracy, multi-partite system, human rights, etc.), which have been associated with the supposedly ‘secular’ societies of today’s decayed and putrefied Western world. In honorable distinction from, and in total contrast with, other modern states, Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey (more specifically, the 1923 Constitution and the period until 1938) had nothing to do with today’s pseudo-secular Western societies, which in reality are strictly religious, yet scrupulously masqueraded, states with Satanism as secretively and tyrannically imposed dogma.

In Timur’s empire, there was sheer distinction between spirituality and religion, and every person was allowed to believe the religious dogma that he chose; religious authorities of all doctrines had the freedom to perform the rites and fulfill the cults of their faith; and there was no interference of the imperial administration in these activities. Many Western scholars attempted to tarnish Timur’s fame by holding him responsible for the gradual decline of Nestorian Christianity, Buddhism and Manichaeism in Central Asia, Siberia and Mongolia; that is totally misplaced.

Neither Genghis Khan nor Timur were ‘personally’ responsible for this fact. Timur did not tolerate any sectarian act of violence and discrimination. The reasons for which these three religions disappeared in the aforementioned regions have nothing to do with imperial decisions of any sort; they are totally unrelated to the Genghisid and Timurid empires. As a matter of fact, Buddhism was already present in the eastern provinces of Achaemenid Iran. Manichaeism and Nestorian Christianity appeared during the Sassanid times.

These three religions had followers among several nations that lived across the Iranian plateau, Central Asia, and the mountainous ranges between China, Indus River valley, and parts of Siberia (Aramaeans, Eastern Iranians, Sogdians, Turanians, Khotanese, etc.). However, the process of their disappearance was complex, gradual and slow, covering ca. 700 years (750-1450); first, the Islamic advance towards Central Asia and the Indus River valley (middle 7th c. to middle 8th c. CE) was detrimental to some nations, notably the Sogdians, who were terribly decimated.

Second, the proliferation of mystical orders, spiritual systems, dissident movements, eschatological-messianic concepts, theological schools, soteriological groups, and literary-poetical reassessments of the historical, pre-Islamic past produced an abundance of attractive alternatives for all the nations of the aforementioned diverse regions (over the period between the 8th c. and the 11th c.).

Third and more important, the overwhelming migrations that took place across Asia between the 11th c. and the 15th c. totally changed the landscape between Central Europe and Eastern Siberia; the newly arrived nomads usually accepted concepts of Islam that suited best their traditions of Tengrism and Shamanism. Then, Nestorians, Buddhists and Manichaeans proceeded to the East (i.e. China), since it was well known that settled communities of their coreligionists existed there too and they lived in peace.

Timur met many leading mystics, scholars, scientists, theologians, architects and poets of his times; his meeting with Hafez (Khwaja Shams-ud-Din Muhammad; 1315-1390), the great Iranian poet from Shiraz, was commemorated for centuries among Islamic rulers and erudite scholars, because their conversation bears witness to Timur’s ostensible ability to appreciate wit, intellect, self-sarcasm, and modesty.

Manuscript miniature depicting the encounter between Timur and Ibn Khaldun

Two pages from a manuscript of Ibn Khaldun’s al Muqaddimah

16th c. copy of Hafez’s Divan with fighting scene

Ceiling decoration of the tomb of Hafez in Shiraz

Hafez’s Mausoleum, Shiraz

Timur met Ahmad ibn Arabshah (1389-1450) during the siege of Damascus; he saved him (along with many other scholars) and then sent him to Samarqand; later, the Damascene author returned to Damascus and proceeded to Edirne / Adrianople, the Ottoman capital at the time; there he composed a voluminous historical description of Timur’s deeds and conquests (Aja’ib al-Maqdur fi Nawa’ib al-Taymur: The Wonders of Destiny of the Ravages of Timur).

One can however instantly understand why Ahmad ibn Arabshah presented a negative image of Timur, who had saved his life: writing while you are at the Ottoman payroll can never be a guarantee for objective description and impartial narrative. Had Ahmad ibn Arabshah written a true and unbiased ‘Tarikh’, the Ottoman sectarian theologians and the rancorous courtiers of Mehmed I and of Murat II would have burned the manuscripts. The Ottoman hatred of Timur and the Timurids lasted until the demise of the Caliphate – only to the detriment of the Ottoman family.

The major and most trustworthy historical biographies and sources for the life, the conquests, and the deeds of Timur are Nizam ad-Din Shami’s Zafar nameh (ظفرنامه‎, Book of Victory), Sharif al-Din Ali Yazdi’s Zafar nameh, and Abu Taleb Husayni’s Malfuzat-e Timuri and the associated appendix Tuzokat (which is basically the Persian translation of an earlier manuscript written in Chagatai Turkic and found in Yemen; Abu Taleb Husayni presented his work to the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in 1637).

The conquest of Baghdad by Timur depicted on the miniature of a manuscript of in Sharif al-Din Ali Yazdi’s Zafar nameh

Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi with Muhammad Amuli; folio from the Majalis al-Ushaq of Kamal al-Din Gazurgahi, which was written and decorated in Shiraz around 1560

The phenomenon that Western scholars describe as Timurid ‘Renaissance’ consists in a serious misperception of the entire historical period; the irrelevant terminology was invented to project Western concepts onto the Islamic world. In general, the term ‘Renaissance’ cannot apply either in the case where there is uninterrupted continuity or in the manifestation of newly invented concepts, ideas, forms, styles or rhythms. Truly, the 2nd half of the 14th century and the entire 15th century were a period of fully-fledged spiritual, academic, scientific, literary, artistic, architectural, cultural, intellectual, and artisan creativity and dynamism across almost all Islamic lands.

However, this phenomenon does not have any trait of revival or rebirth of an earlier experience or condition. Quite contrarily, it consists in the culmination of the Islamic genius as manifested since the days of Abbasid Baghdad, Bayt al-Hikmah, Ferdowsi, Nizam al Mulk, and Nasir el-Din al Tusi. One may eventually express a rhetorical question like the following in order to fully demonstrate the inaccuracy of the Western neologism Timurid ‘Renaissance’:

– What was interrupted, terminated, dispersed, lost or forgotten as Islamic science, art, scholarship and craftsmanship in the days of Nasir al-Din al Tusi (1201-1274), only to restart, resume, and be rediscovered, revived and reborn at the time of Timur?

The answer is very simple: nothing!

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi’s works, explorations, studies, and astronomical tables and catalogues were continued in the works of Jamshid al-Kashi, Qadi Zadeh al Rumi (of Eastern Roman origin), and Ulugh Beg, Timur’s grandson, third successor, and astronomer emperor. There is an undisputed continuity from the Observatory of Maragheh to the Observatory of Samarqand, pretty much like there is an absolute continuity in Islamic science, academic life, and artistic creativity from Abbasid Baghdad to Timurid Samarqand.

Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad

Aerial view of Imam Reza shrine in 1976

The tomb of Imam Reza

And there was novelty! Timurid architecture, as manifested in Samarqand, Herat, Balkh, Turkistan {Kazakhstan; the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi (1093-1166) which was commissioned by Timur himself}, Mashhad (Goharshad Mosque, built in honor of Empress Goharshad, Shah Rukh’s royal consort), and elsewhere, may have several traits that date back to Seljuk times, and may well represent the next stage of evolution from Ilkhanate architecture. However, in reality, Timurid architecture consists in an entirely different and totally new Islamic style of architecture. With their characteristically elevated, fluted domes, with their deep niches, with their impressively raised iwans (vaulted gateways), with their very typical shabestans (underground spaces), with their innovative muqarnas (also known as honeycomb vaulting), and with their inscriptions on mosaic tiles, all the Timurid mosques, madrasas and mausoleums are unique of style and known for their rule of axial symmetry.

Goharshad Mosque, Mashhad

Goharshad tomb, Herat

High place of Timurid architecture is by definition the Registan esplanade at Samarqand, a vast public square with three astoundingly monumental universities; ‘madrasa’ at the time did not mean only ‘theological school’, because theology was only one of the numerous -more than 20- academic topics taught in the madrasas. The first madrasa built in Registan was the Ulugh Beg Madrasah (construction: 1417–1420); two centuries later, the Sher-Dor Madrasah (1619–1636) and the Tilya-Kori Madrasah (1646–1660) were built at the times of the Janid dynasty (established by descendants of the Khanate of Astrakhan) in exactly the same architectural style. Subsequently, Timurid architecture influenced architectural styles in the Mughal, Safavid and Ottoman empires.

Registan Square, Samarqand

Ulugh Beg Madrasah: one of the three masterpieces of Timurid Architecture in Registan

Sher-Dor Madrasah, Registan

Tilya Kori Madrasah, Registan

Many irrelevant European scholars characterized the Turanian Timurid architecture as “Persian style”, but there is nothing ‘Persian’ in it. The enormous iwans may certainly be a reminiscence of the Parthian iwans, but Parthia was not ‘Persia’; quite contrarily, the Arsacid Empire of the Parthians was called ‘Iran’ and the Parthians were not ‘Persians’ but Turanians. Similar cases bear witness to the numerous colonial discriminatory abuses and to the academic, Indo-Europeanist racism. 

Bibi-Khanym Mosque, Samarqand; it was built in 1399 by the Tamerlane’s favorite wife, Bibi-Khanym, in honor of his return from the war in India

Timur and Shah Rukh patronized the arts, improving the traditional Art of the Book, sponsoring scholars, scientists and artists, and demanding exquisite illustrations of manuscripts (miniatures). Manuscript illumination became then a highly revered art and several schools (styles) were distinguished in this regard; elements of Turanian, Central Asiatic, Iranian, and Chinese artistic traditions were then blended into a new style. The Timurids in general were remembered as benefactors of scholars, poets, artists, artisans, and architects. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timurid_Renaissance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez

https://www.academia.edu/17427522/A_Note_on_the_Life_and_Works_of_Ibn_Arabshah

https://www.bidsquare.com/online-auctions/skinner/ahmad-ibn-arabshah-1389-1450-ajaib-al-maqdur-fi-nawaib-al-taymur-the-wonders-of-destiny-of-the-ravages-of-timur-1292-ah-933933

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/historiography-v

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zafarnama_(Shami_biography)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharaf_ad-Din_Ali_Yazdi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zafarnama_(Yazdi_biography)

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/abo-taleb-hosaym-arizi

https://www.academia.edu/2256806/The_Histories_of_Sharaf_al_Din_Ali_Yazdi_A_Formal_Analysis

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/kasi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamsh%C4%ABd_al-K%C4%81sh%C4%AB

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q%C4%81%E1%B8%8D%C4%AB_Z%C4%81da_al-R%C5%ABm%C4%AB

https://www.maa.org/press/periodicals/convergence/mathematical-treasures-qadi-zada-al-rumis-geometry

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/ali-qusji-qusju-ala-al-din-ali-mohammad-theologian-and-scientist-d

https://www.academia.edu/398260/Timurid_Architecture_In_Samarkand

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mausoleum_of_Khoja_Ahmed_Yasawi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goharshad_Mosque

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqarnas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iwan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Persian_domes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gur-e-Amir

Forensic facial reconstruction: Shah Rukh

Gur-i Emir Mausoleum, Samarqand, Shah Rukh’s headstone 3rd from the left

Tanka (silvr coin) of Shahrukh Mirza (Yazd mint)

Shah Rukh’s reign (1409-1447) is considered as the Golden Era of the Timurid Empire. He ruled over the largest part of Timur’s territory and only after his nephew Khalil Sultan (1405-1409) proved to be totally unable to reign. Timur’s western territories were lost because of the chaos caused by the conflicts between the Karakoyunlu and the Akkoyunlu and following the Karakoyunlu victory over Miran Shah and the Timurid army (1408). Shah Rukh preferred to rule in peace with his neighbors and this helped the scholarly, artistic, artisan and architectural activities that burgeoned in his empire. Shah Rukh created a solid base in Herat (today’s NW Afghanistan) where many Genghisid relatives of his royal consort Goharshad lived, as they were the local administrators.  

Goharshad ranked below Shah Rukh’s other Genghisid wife, Malekat Aga. However, due to her family support, to her inclination for letters, arts and public works, and because of her sense of human relations, she became a considerable factor of her imperial husband’s success. As a matter of fact, Goharshad was the daughter of a notable Genghisid prince Giath al-Din Tarkan whose honorary title (Tarkan) was initially bestowed by Genghis Khan himself upon one of his ancestors. It is therefore only normal that, after Shah Rukh invaded Samarqand and was accepted as the final successor to his father by all, he transferred the imperial capital to Herat, leaving his son Ulugh Beg as governor of Samarqand. 

Herat had been destroyed by Genghis Khan (1221) but rebuilt during the Ilkhanate; however, the magnificent edifices and architectural monuments erected there at the time of Shah Rukh and Goharshad made of the city one of the Islamic world’s most splendid capitals. The erection of the Musallah complex of Herat (1417), which involved mausoleums, madrasa, mosque and five minarets, is the most important among the many monuments patronized by Shah Rukh’s royal consort. The famous shrine of Gazur Gah (an 11th c. mystic who lived in Herat and is historically known as Khwaja Abd Allah) was also built (1425) under the imperial patronage of the Timurids. And the same is valid for Goharshad Mausoleum that was built (1438) as the tomb of Shah Rukh’s and Goharshad’s son, prince Baysunghur.

Perhaps the most impressive and most colorful monument commissioned by the imperial couple was the enormous Goharshad Mosque built in Mashhad (today’s NE Iran). With a 43 m high dome, with two 43 m high minarets, and with four iwans, the mosque was always considered as one of the most impressive and most beautiful monuments of Islamic architecture worldwide.

Patron of authors, explorers and erudite scholars, Shah Rukh benefitted from the great talent of Hafez Abru, who had first been one of Timur’s most favorite scholars and authors. Abdallah ben Lutfallah (as is the full name of Hafez Abru) accompanied Timur in several military campaigns and was present in all the imperial court feasts and symposia convened by Timur. After the death of the conqueror, he entered the service of Shah Rukh, who commissioned the elaboration of numerous historical and geographical opuses, notably 

i. Dayl-e Zafar nameh ye-Shami (continuation of Nizam al-Din Shami’s biography of Timur for the period 1404-1405)

ii. Dayl-e Jame’ al-Tawarih (continuation of Rashid al-Din’s Universal History by an anonymous author who covered the period 1304-1335)

iii. Tarih-e Shah Rukh (History of the reign of Timur’s son until 1414; this text was later incorporated in other historical compilations by Hafez Abru)

iv. Tarih-e Hafez Abru, which is a Universal History and Geography commissioned by Shah Rukh in 1414 (originally it was scheduled to be the Farsi translation of selected geographical treatises earlier written in Arabic, but finally it became an original opus of historical geography); it also involved a map (British Library manuscript Ms. 1577) designed after the methods of the historical Balkh School of Cartography.

v. Majmu’a-ye Hafez-e Abru, i.e. a Universal History commissioned by Shah Rukh in 1418 in order to incorporate Bal’ami’s translation of Tabari’s Tarih to Farsi and Rashid al-Din’s Universal History, which was extended by Hafez Abru until 1393.

vi. Majma’ al Tawarih al Soltani, a Universal History until 1426, written for Shah Rukh’s son Baysunghur.

Shah Rukh established good diplomatic relations with Ming China by sending an imperial delegation to Beijing in 1419-1422. Member of the delegation was Ghiyath al-Din Naqqash, who was tasked to compose the official diary, which was not saved independently down to our times, but was largely incorporated in other historical opuses. As an official account, this text was highly evaluated and therefore translated to various Turkic languages in later periods. The Timurid delegation was received with imperial honor, traditional pomp, and great joy at the Ming court. Shah Rukh created an environment of stability and peace across Asia, systematically exchanging embassies and establishing good relations also with the Sultanate of Delhi (notably Khizr Khan), the Bengal Sultanate (and particularly with Shamsuddin Ahmad Shah), the Akkoyunlu, the Ottomans, the Turanian Ormuz kingdom in the Hormuz straits (then under Bahman Shah II), and even the Mamluks of Egypt.

As the Dravidian ruler (Samoothiri) of Calicut (in the presently occupied Deccan, in South ‘India’) encountered several Timurid officials who, while returning from the Sultanate of Bengal, anchored in his harbor, he decided to send an embassy to Herat. A Farsi-speaking Dravidian Muslim led the official delegation and impressed Shah Rukh, who subsequently dispatched a Timurid delegation to Calicut (Kozhikode; 1442-1443) under Abd al-Razzsaq Samarqandi (1413–1482); the scholar-diplomat wrote an extensive report of his mission that he later incorporated in his chronicle Maṭla’-e sa’dayn va maǰma’-e baḥrayn (the rise of the two auspicious constellations and the junction of the two seas). He thus offered insight into first, the small kingdom of Calicut and the local rulers (named Saamoothiri) and second, the Dravidian Vijayanagara kingdom, because the local king Deva Raya II invited Abd al-Razzsaq Samarqandi to his court.

Shah Rukh had however to fight several battles against the Karakoyunlu (in 1420, 1429 and 1434) and the Timurid army was victorious every time. However, since Shah Rukh did not inherit the brutality of his father, his victories did not solve the problem of the constantly rebellious Turkmen and the unstable situation in the western confines of the Iranian plateau, North Mesopotamia, South Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia continued during most of the 15th c. until the Akkoyunlu managed to achieve a decisive victory (1467) over the Karakoyunlu only to be later supplanted by the Safavid Empire (1501).

After Timur crushed the Hurufi rebellion in 1394, the secret Kabbalistic sect launched a subversive campaign of anti-Timurid hatred and evidently conspired against the empire by placing in the Timurid court several secret members who would be later mobilized against the imperial administration. In 1426, Shah Rukh risked his life in an assassination attempt; he survived and then undertook a great effort to uproot the evil secretive sect that promoted black magic practices by attributing numerical values to letters of the alphabet and then evoking spiritual potentates. Several modern scholars, who happen to be Kabbalists and Satanists, tried therefore to tarnish the fair name of Shah Rukh and to distort the truth by accusing him of ‘anti-intellectualism’, a nonexistent term coined by evil and inhuman gangsters in order to denigrate everyone who makes it impossible for them to conduct their perverse and evil operations. This is pathetic and ludicrous; the historical truth is that Shah Rukh was the patron of artists, scholars, erudite authors and architects. And in any case, an ‘intellectual’, who gets initiated in the secrets of a Kabbalist sect, already ceases to be a human.

When Shah Rukh died at the age of 70 (1447), his firstborn son Ulugh Beg (then at the age of 53; 1394-1449) succeeded him; he was also Goharshad’s favorite son and he had acquired a remarkable experience in travels, scholarly explorations, and imperial administration. He had been the governor of Samarqand and the entire Transoxiana (Mawarannahr) since 1409 (when he was just 15). And since the early 1420s, he was an accomplished scholar, mathematician and astronomer with his own madrasa and his own observatory – the best of his time. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shah_Rukh

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/gowhar-sad-aga

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/power-politics-and-religion-in-timurid-iran/formation-of-the-timurid-state-under-shahrukh/C659802886B594A63374F0E1657E91BC

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6504717/

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/hafez-e-abru

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafiz-i_Abru

https://pieterderideaux.jimdofree.com/7-contents-1401-1450/hafiz-i-abru-1420/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musalla_Complex

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musalla_Minarets_of_Herat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrine_of_Khwaja_Abd_Allah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gawhar_Shad_Mausoleum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goharshad_Mosque

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghiy%C4%81th_al-d%C4%ABn_Naqq%C4%81sh

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/abd-al-razzaq-samarqandi-historian-and-scholar-1413-82

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd-al-Razz%C4%81q_Samarqand%C4%AB

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamorin_of_Calicut

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijayanagara_Empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deva_Raya_II

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ormus

Mirza Muhammad Taraghay bin Shahrukh (mainly known as Ulugh Beg, i.e. ‘the great ruler’; 1394-1449) was the unique case of Turanian Muslim Emperor who was also a consummate scholar, a leading mathematician, and the then world’s foremost astronomer. He ruled for only two years and only after having delivered pioneering opuses, notably Zij-i Sultani (زیجِ سلطانی; the astronomical tables of the Sultan, i.e. of himself), which is a collective work of many leading astronomers working under his guidance to produce a list of no less than 1018 stars.

Ulugh Beg was an exceptional man in every sense; he had 13 wives, he spoke ca. 10 languages (Chagatai Turkic, Farsi, Arabic, Syriac Aramaic, Chinese, and several other Western and Eastern Turanian languages), and he seems to have been a prodigious young man, very knowledgeable since his adolescence; and thanks to his numerous travels, he saw great monuments, universities, libraries and centers of learning that impressed him. However, Nasir el-Din Tusi’s observatory in Maragheh seems to have impacted the young imperial traveler more than any other edifice, and this was the reason for which, after he was appointed governor of Samarqand by his father Shah Rukh in 2009, he started to turn the city into the world’s leading academic center.

Ulugh Beg, as depicted by an anonymous painter of the period 1425-50

Ulugh Beg coin; AH 852 (1448-9) Herat mint

Samarqand Observatory, constructed by Ulugh Beg in the 1420s and rediscovered by Russians archaeologists in 1908

Ulugh Beg Observatory; the trench accommodated the lower section of the meridian arc.

Mirzo Ulughbek and Ali Kushchi working in the Samarqand Observatory, as per the imagination of modern local artists

Ulugh Beg created therefore an inviting environment for scholars from various regions and countries, and that’s why many researchers, explorers, scientists and students gathered in Samarqand as early as the 1420s. Ulugh Beg Madrasa was built in the period 1417-1420, and its parts were decorated with tiles of blue, light blue and white colors that all have a great symbolism in Turanian Tengrism. Two years later, the Ulugh Beg Observatory was constructed, as we can deduce from the letters sent by Jamshid al Kashi to his own father; these valuable documents were recently (in the 1990s) found, published and translated. Jamshid al Kashi (1380-1429) was a leading astronomer who worked with Ulugh Beg in Samarqand’s imperial observatory.

Another leading scholar, who contributed to the academic works, scholarly studies, and astronomical tables and catalogues undertaken in the observatory, was Ali Qushji (1403-1474; full name: Ala al-Dīn Ali ibn Muhammad). Ali Qushji was not greatly important only because he participated in the elaboration of the Zij-i Sultani and he made many other contributions to sciences, writing numerous astronomical, mathematical, mechanical, linguistic, philological and theological treatises; he is also credited for having established a real bridge between Samarqand and Istanbul in terms of scientific-academic life, scholarly exploration, and intellectual endeavors.

As a matter of fact, Ali Qushji was one of the very few scholars of his times to have met personally with three powerful emperors, namely the Timurid Ulugh Beg, the Akkoyunlu Uzun Hasan (1423-1478), and the Ottoman Mehmed II (also known as Fatih; 1432-1481). Ali Qushji delivered personally a copy of Zij-i Sultani to Mehmed II, evidently making the Ottoman sultan envy the unequaled superiority of the great Timurid capital Samarqand in terms of science, exploration, scholarship and intellect.

Jamshid al Kashi: opening bifolio of his major opus Miftah al-Hisab

Two pages from a manuscript of Jamshid al Kashi’s Sullam al-sama’

Jamshid al-Kashi’s The Key to Arithmetic; the last page of the manuscript

Pages of a manuscript with treatises elaborated by Ali al Qushji

Other remarkable scholars, who formed Ulugh Beg’s team, were Mu’in al-Din al-Kashi and Qadi Zadeh al-Rumi (1364-1436), a leading mathematician and astronomer of Eastern Roman descent, tutor and mentor of Ulugh Beg; Qadi Zadeh was greatly renowned for his pertinent commentaries on the works of earlier Turanian Islamic astronomers, like al-Jaghmini (full name: Mahmud ibn Muhammad ibn Umar al-Jaghmini; 13th – 14th c.), Shams al-Din al-Samarqandi (ca. 1250 – ca. 1310), and Nasir ad-Din al-Tusi. Students from Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus River valley, the Ganges River valley, China and parts of Siberia were flocking to Samarqand to benefit from this worldwide unique environment.

To these great scholars it took no less than 15 years to compose in Farsi the voluminous Zij-i Sultani (completed in 1437), which was the World History’s most accurate and most complete astronomical table and star catalogue up to its time. Zij is an Islamic astronomical book that presents in tabular form various parameters used for astronomical calculations of the positions of stars therein included; as it can be assumed, it takes a great deal of observation in order to establish this type of documentation.

Around 20 different Zij catalogues have been established during the Islamic times, either saved until our times or not. However, Zij-i Sultani surpasses in terms of scholarship all earlier astronomical tables, including the 2nd c. CE Ancient Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy’s Almagest (Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις – Mathematike Syntaxis; المجسطي – al-Majisti). Ulugh Beg’s outstanding masterpiece was later translated to Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, and several European languages.  

In 1437, ten years before succeeding his father Shah Rukh on the throne of the Timurid Empire, Ulugh Beg specified the sidereal year as being 365d 6h 10m 8s long, which is an error of +58 s as per today’s calculations. Comparatively, Copernicus in 1525 reduced the margin of the error by 28 seconds, but the 9th c. CE Aramaean Sabian astronomer Thabit ibn Qurra (whose works, translated to Latin, were the primary sources of Copernicus) had determined the length of the sidereal year as 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes and 12 seconds (with an error of only 2 seconds as per today’s calculations).

After Shah Rukh’s death, Ulugh Beg had to fight in order to defend his right to succession; he won in the battle at Murghab (بالامرغاب; in today’s Afghanistan/not to be confused with Murgab in Eastern Tajikistan) over his nephew Ala al-Dawla (son of Ulugh Beg’s late brother Baysunghur/ بایسُنغُر) and advanced to Herat; there, in 1448, carried out a terrible massacre of the local population, taking revenge of their support to his nephew and demonstrating his Timurid originality. Ulugh Beg’s reign was brief and unhappy; his son Abd al-Latif Mirza (1420-1450) had an enormous psychological complex of inferiority toward his authoritatively intellectual and exceptionally erudite father, and he rebelled against him. After Abd al-Latif Mirza’s victory in a battle nearby Samarqand, Ulugh Beg had to surrender (1449), but the treacherous and evil son was not pleased with this, and he had his father assassinated, when the deposed Ulugh Beg was proceeding to Hejaz for Hajj. 

The patricidal Abd al-Latif Mirza (in Farsi: padarkush; پدر کش) ruled for less than a year, having the support of evil, ignorant and rancorous theologians, who hated Ulugh Beg’s scholarly integrity, intellectual genius, scientific leadership, and secular rule. However, the outright majority of the population hated the ungrateful son for his two repugnant sacrileges; few days after having his father executed, Abd al-Latif Mirza killed also his brother Abd al-Aziz. So, in 1450 the patricidal and fratricidal ruler was murdered, and then came to power Ulugh Beg’s nephew Abdullah Mirza (son of Ibrahim Sultan, who was son of Shah Rukh and also a renowned artist and calligrapher); he rehabilitated his uncle’s imperial tradition and reputation. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulugh_Beg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulugh_Beg_Observatory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world#Observatories

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulugh_Beg_Madrasa,_Samarkand

lea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zij-i_Sultani

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zij

http://vlib.iue.it/carrie/texts/carrie_books/paksoy-2/cam6.html

https://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/cities/uz/samarkand/obser.html

https://www.academia.edu/39741365/Bibliography_about_Ulugh_Beg_and_Samarkand_Observatory

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234382647_Ulugh_Beg_Astronom_und_Herrscher_in_Samarkand

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253678731_Die_Tabellen_von_Ulugh_Beg_Die_Sternkataloge_des_Ptolemaus_Ulugh_Beg_und_Tycho_Brahe_im_Vergleich

http://www.jphogendijk.nl/arabsci/kashi.html

https://www.orientalarchitecture.com/sid/1347/uzbekistan/samarkand/ulugh-beg-madrasa-of-samarkand

https://archnet.org/sites/2123

https://www.wdl.org/en/item/3864/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Qushji

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/astrology-and-astronomy-in-iran-#pt3

Click to access Journal%20for%20the%20History%20of%20Astronomy%20November.pdf

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кази-заде_ар-Руми

https://islamsci.mcgill.ca/RASI/BEA/Qadizade_al-Rumi_BEA.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C4%81bit_ibn_Qurra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdal-Latif_Mirza

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_Sultan_(Timurid)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_Mirza

After Ulugh Beg’s assassination, the Timurid Empire was in reality dissolved. The trends of imperial disintegration, tribal split, intra-family rivalry, and military localism prevailed at a time when Uzbek and Kazakh migrations were upsetting numerous settled populations in Central Asia. The Timurid Empire underwent a real fragmentation before totally disappearing. Abdullah Mirza was not able to rule for more than a year and only in Transoxiana (Mawarannahr); Timurid princes became independent in parts of Khorasan, Fars, and Iraq-e Ajami (Zagros Mountains).

Abu Sa’id Mirza (1424-1469; son of Muhammad Mirza, who was the son of Miran Shah, third son of Timur) was able to rule (1451-1469) and reunify the central parts of his great-grandfather’s empire. He allied with the Uzbeks (notably Abu’l-Khayr Khan: 1428-1468), but he faced many rebellions from Timurid princes of several provinces that he managed to suppress in terrible tribal massacres. He even executed Shah Rukh’s widow, the legendary dowager-empress Goharshad, accusing her of plotting against him by using her great-grandson. He arranged a temporary peace with the Karakoyunlu, but entered into an ill-fated war with the Akkoyunlu (who were former allies of the Timurids) and their powerful king Uzun Hasan. Finally, in February 1469, in the battle of Qarabagh, Abu Sa’id Mirza was defeated and held captive; Uzun Hasan handed him over to his Timurid allies, who remembering his monstrosity toward Goharshad executed him. Finally, Uzun Hasan sent Abu Sa’id Mirza’s decapitated head to the Mamluk ruler of Egypt Qaitbay, who arranged a proper burial.

Various Timurid princes ruled then in Khorasan, Kabul, Balkh, Fergana, Fars, and Iraq-e Ajami, whereas Transoxiana was first ruled by Sultan Ahmed Mirza from 1469 until 1494 and later divided into Samarqand, Bukhara and Hissar. Most of the northern part of the Timurid Empire was supplanted in 1488 by the Uzbeks, who set up their khanate under Muhammad Shaybani, a Genghisid prince. Soon afterwards, the Kazakh and the Sibir (Siberia) khanates were established, seceding from the Golden Horde. At the same time, Sultan Husayn Bayqara (a great-great grandson of Timur; 1438-1506) ruled (1469-1506) in Herat, continuing the Timurid tradition in terms of patronage of arts and sciences. He thus became a source of admiration for his nephew Babur, who was later the founder of the Mughal Empire of South Asia; but Babur was none else than the grandson of Abu Sa’id Mirza and therefore great-great-great-grandson of Timur.   

Last, the southern parts of the Timurid Empire were most;y incorporated into the nomadic Akkoyunlu Empire that also controlled Eastern Anatolia and Mesopotamia; however, internal strives decomposed that empire too around the end of the 15th c. It was then that the mystical Safavid Order, instead of supporting or infiltrating a state, decided to launch its own empire: the Safavid Empire. They already had their own army ready however: the formidable and renowned Qizilbash. About: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timurid_dynasty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timurid_family_tree

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Mirza

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Sa%27id_Mirza

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/eraq-e-ajami

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu%27l-Khayr_Khan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Qarabagh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzun_Hasan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultan_Ahmed_Mirza

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Shaybani

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaybanids

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbek_Khanate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakh_Khanate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultan_Husayn_Bayqara

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Lines separate chapters that belong to different parts of the book.

CHAPTER XII: Parthian Turan: an Anti-Persian dynasty

https://www.academia.edu/52541355/Parthian_Turan_an_Anti_Persian_dynasty

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CHAPTER XIV: Arsacid & Sassanid Iran, and the wars against the Mithraic – Christian Roman Empire

https://www.academia.edu/105053815/Arsacid_and_Sassanid_Iran_and_the_wars_against_the_Mithraic_Christian_Roman_Empire

CHAPTER XV: Sassanid Iran – Turan, Kartir, Roman Empire, Christianity, Mani and Manichaeism

https://www.academia.edu/105117675/Sassanid_Iran_Turan_Kartir_Roman_Empire_Christianity_Mani_and_Manichaeism

CHAPTER XVI: Iran – Turan, Manichaeism & Islam during the Migration Period and the Early Caliphates

https://www.academia.edu/96142922/Iran_Turan_Manichaeism_and_Islam_during_the_Migration_Period_and_the_Early_Caliphates

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CHAPTER XXI: The fabrication of the fake divide ‘Sunni Islam vs. Shia Islam’

https://www.academia.edu/55139916/The_Fabrication_of_the_Fake_Divide_Sunni_Islam_vs_Shia_Islam_

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CHAPTER XXII: The fake Persianization of the Abbasid Caliphate

https://www.academia.edu/61193026/The_Fake_Persianization_of_the_Abbasid_Caliphate

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CHAPTER XXIII: From Ferdowsi to the Seljuk Turks, Nizam al Mulk, Nizami Ganjavi, Jalal ad-Din Rumi and Haji Bektash

https://www.academia.edu/96519269/From_Ferdowsi_to_the_Seljuk_Turks_Nizam_al_Mulk_Nizami_Ganjavi_Jalal_ad_Din_Rumi_and_Haji_Bektash

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CHAPTER XXIV: From Genghis Khan, Nasir al-Din al Tusi and Hulagu to Timur

https://www.academia.edu/104034939/From_Genghis_Khan_Nasir_al_Din_al_Tusi_and_Hulagu_to_Timur_Tamerlane_

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

https://www.academia.edu/105230290/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

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Download the chapter (text only) in PDF:

Download the chapter (with pictures and legends) in PDF:

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 XXV 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 XXIV, XXV and XXVI constitute the Part Ten {Fallacies about the Times of Turanian (Mongolian) Supremacy in terms of Sciences, Arts, Letters, Spirituality and Imperial Universalism} of the book, which is made of 12 parts and 33 chapters. Until now, 8 chapters have been uploaded as partly pre-publication of the book; the present chapter is therefore the 9th (out 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 green color.  

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Many people believe that Timur (Tamerlane) was a descendent of Genghis Khan, but this is very wrong; however, he belonged to the same Eastern Turanian Mongolian family as his remote relative who died 109 years before Timur was born (1227-1336). There is actually a distance of 5 generations (the grandfather of the great-grandfather of a person) between the greatest conquerors of Eurasia. However, Genghis Khan and Timur seem to have as common progenitor Genghis Khan’s 4th patrilineal ancestor (the grandfather), who was Timur’s 9th patrilineal ancestor, namely Tumanay Khan.

More specifically, Genghis Khan was son of Yesugei Baghatur son of Bartan Baghatur son of Khabul Khan son of Tumanay Khan. And Timur was son of Taraghai Noyan son of Burgul Noyan son of Aylangir son of Ichil son of Qarachar Noyan son of Suqu Sechen son of Erdemchu Barlas son of Qachuli son of Tumanay Khan. The time passed from the death of Genghis Khan until the birth of Timur (109 years) is approximately the equivalent of the period between the deaths and the births of the following monarchs or spiritual leaders respectively: Consul Crassus’ death and Emperor Trajan’s birth (53 BCE-53 CE), Julian the Apostate’s death and Justinian’s birth (363-482), Nestorius’ death and Prophet Muhammad’s birth (451-571) and Napoleon’s death and Elizabeth II’s birth (1821-1926).

Timur (1336-1405) was born in Shahrisabz (Шаҳрисабз / شهر سبز‎; Timur’s tomb was built there, but his burial took place at Samarqand), in the southern part of today’s Uzbekistan, close to the border with Tajikistan; at those days, the city was named Kesh. Timur’s family belonged to the Turanian tribe of Barlas, which had recently accepted Islam and become sedentary in Mawarannahr (Transoxiana); those lands were thought to be the epicenter of the legendary and historical Turan, and at the time of Timur’s birth, they were provinces of the Chagatai Empire. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timur

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barlas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahrisabz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timurid_dynasty

Shahrisabz: ruins of Timur’s summer palace, and modern statue

Today, not one scholar raises doubt about the Turanian ancestry and identity of Timur; quite interestingly, and in full refutation of the fallacious Western Orientalist academia, it is Timur himself who rejects this, and by so doing, he gives a lethal blow to the colonially invented distinction between Iran and Turan, to the forged ethnic-linguistic-cultural disconnection of the ‘Turkic nations’ from the ‘Iranian nations’, and to the evil pseudo-universities, institutes and foreign ministries of the colonial Western countries.

Dead before 618 years, Timur speaks to us today through the words that he said personally to the Berber (and not Arab as Western forgers claim) Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), whom the great conqueror met during the siege that he laid to Damascus in 1400. When the two greatest men of those days came face to face, they were aged (in their 60s) and already world renowned among all Muslims; the fame of Ibn Khaldun had reached the great conqueror and the magnificence of of Timur’s conquests was known to all the people between the Pacific and the Atlantic. For over a month, the great scholar, who was blocked in the besieged city, was lowered by ropes from the walls of Damascus to encounter Timur. Ibn Khaldun gave extensive details about his daily encounters with Timur in his autobiography (Al-taʿrīf) and in his World History (Kitāb al-ʿibar wa-dīwān al-mubtadaʾ wa-l-khabar fī ayyām al-ʿarab wa-l-ʿajam wa-l-barbar wa-man ʿāṣarahum min dhawī al-sulṭān al-akbar). 

Two years before his staggering victory over the Ottomans at Ankara (1402), Timur saved all decent and benign scholars, artists and artisans of Damascus, by evacuating them and dispatching them to Samarqand, and then he sacked the city. There was a significant historical reason for this drastic solution, and Timur duly explained his actions. In fact, he rightfully massacred the entire population in due punishment for the sacrileges earlier perpetrated by the infidel Umayyad caliph Muawiyah, i.e. the murder of Hassan son of Ali (670 CE), and by Yazid I, the son of Muawiyah, namely the monstrous assassination of Husayn son of Ali (680). Ibn Khaldun returned to Cairo to complete his works and wrote exactly what Timur told him about his ancestry.

In total rejection of the Western scholarship’s historical forgery and division between Turan and Iran, the ‘Turanian’ Timur claimed maternal descent from the illustrious ‘Iranian’ (and certainly not ‘Persian’) hero Manuchehr whose legendary deeds were superbly narrated in Farsi poetry by Ferdowsi in his Shahnameh, already 400 years before the encounter of Timur with Ibn Khaldun.

Manuchehr enthroned; from manuscript miniature of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh

Who is Manuchehr, Timur’s remote ancestor?

Supreme legendary (or apocalyptic-eschatological) king of the Pishdadian dynasty whose first king was the first man Keyumars, Manuchehr is the 7th generation descendent of the founder of the Mankind’s sole royal dynasty. There is no doubt that Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh must have been almost holier than the Quran for Timur, and he definitely knew sizeable portions by heart. The Pishdadian dynasty involves eleven kings of kings: Keyumars, Hushang, Tahmuras, Jamshid, Zahhak, Fereydun, Iraj, Manuchehr, Nowzar, Zaav, and Garshasp. As a matter of fact, Fereydun had three sons, namely Iraj (from Shahmaz, Jamshid’s daughter), Salm and Tur (the latter two from Amavaz, Jamshid’s other daughter).

Manuchehr and Afrasiab fighting against one another; from a 16th c. Shahnameh manuscript

Historical interpretations of the legends superbly narrated in poetry by Ferdowsi offer specific identifications concerning the original ancestors of the three nations that shaped World History: Iraj was viewed as the ancestor of all the Iranians (involving also North Indians and several North Europeans); Tur was considered to be the forefather of all Turanians (Chinese included); and Salm was perceived as the progenitor of all the Anatolians and Eastern Romans (and in general the ‘West’). The three half-brothers represent the mythical-historical stage of division of the surface of the Earth among them.

According to Ferdowsi’s apocalyptic legend, Salm was the firstborn, but being trepid, he avoided fighting with the dragon that attacked him and his brethren; however, the dragon was only his father Fereydun transfigured in order to test his eldest son. On the contrary, Tur’s name means ‘brave’, and this functioned as prophecy. And Iraj was given the worldly glory (termed as ‘Farr’ in Shahnameh and as ‘Khvarenah’ in Avestan, i.e. glow or fortune) as a present granted by God. For this reason, Salm and Tur made a plot and killed Iraj.

At a later stage, Iraj’s daughter gets married with Pashang and their child is Manuchehr, who takes revenge for the assassination of his grandfather. Then, Fereydun (Manuchehr’s great grandfather) abdicates in favor of his great grandson. It is evident that all these ‘events’ take place in an atemporal, spiritual universe, representing values of moral order, hierarchical intelligences, prototypal virtues, choices, deeds and consequences.

However, from that ‘moment’ (Manuchehr’s revenge) started a spiritual clash between the entities ‘Iran’ and ‘Turan’; this clash is prophesied in Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh to end during the ‘reign’ of Kay Khusraw, the 3rd king of kings of the Kayanian dynasty, which was instituted after the termination of the Pishdadian dynasty. It is noteworthy that there is a difference of six (6) generations between Manuchehr and Kay Khusraw, namely Nowzar, Zaav, and Garshasp of the Pishdadian dynasty and Kay Qubad, Kay Kavus, and Kay Khusraw of the subsequent Kayanian dynasty; already Manuchehr’s ‘reign’ is symbolized as of twice perfect duration (120 years: 2×60, as per the sexagesimal system).

Before being extensively narrated and greatly praised in Ferdowsi’s poetry, Manuchehr was an illustrious hero of the pre-Islamic oral traditions; that’s why several rulers were named after this legendary figure. Coin of Manuchihr I, who ruled Fars (Persis) as vassal of the Arsacid Parthian shahs in the early 2nd c. CE (above); (below) coin of Manuchihr III of Persis (late 2nd c. CE)

The name Manuchehr, as part of the Iranian culture, went beyond the limits of the Iranian world and was used by numerous neighboring peoples; Manuchehr khan Enikolopian was an Armenian eunuch of the 18th-19th c. Fath Ali Shah Qajar of Iran.

Jabbar Farshbaf, Manuchehr; a millennia long legend that fascinates the imagination of modern Iranian artists

The above is enough to explain what Timur meant, while specifying to Ibn Khaldun that he was a remote descendant (through his mother’s side) of Manuchehr, i.e. Iraj’s grandson. Timur, a ‘Turanian’, claimed that his ancestry stretched indeed back to the grandson of the forefather of all ‘Iranians’ (Iraj) – and not to Tur, who admittedly was viewed (then and now) as the ancestor of all ‘Turanians’. This automatically means that the two terms were not ethnonyms, and they were perceived totally differently, and not through the distortive lenses of modern rationalism and materialism. In fact, with Timur claiming a clearly ‘Iranian’ origin, the vicious Orientalist distortion and fake division between Turanians and Iranians totally collapses and falls to pieces. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pishdadian_dynasty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fereydun

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraj

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tur_(Shahnameh)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salm_(Shahnameh)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuchehr

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayanian_dynasty

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/aql-e-sork-the-crimsoned-archangel-lit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09503110.2016.1198535

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23801883.2019.1593089?journalCode=rgih20

https://www.academia.edu/652075/Ibn_Khaldun_His_Life_and_Works

Timur’s military formation, early experience, and rise to power were very different from those of Genghis Khan; the latter spent 20 years in wars against other Eastern Turanian Mongolian tribesmen until he achieved the unification of a certain number of tribes and only after his mid-40s, he went out of the borders of the already unified confederation of Eastern Turanian Mongolian tribes. The former was initially a small band leader, who was engaged in several battles as a mercenary, before allying with different kings (khans) against their opponents.

Originating from the Chagatai Empire, Timur fought along with his khan against the Turanian state of Volga Bulgaria, invaded Khorasan and Khwarazm, increased his basic military force, and then sided with Tughlugh Timur (1329-1363), the khan of Moghulistan (Eastern Chagatai Empire) only to be rewarded with the control of the entire Transoxiana (Mawarannahr). However, very soon, he had to defend that territory against Tughlugh Timur’ son, and his victory helped him consolidate his power. When Timur’s father died, he became a tribal leader, which enabled him to combine military experience and tribal status.

Gur-i Amir (Farsi: گورِ امیر; Uzbek: Amir Temur maqbarasi; ‘the emperor’s tomb’), Timur’s Mausoleum in Samarqand; the historical monument, except for being the burial place of Tamerlane, is one the most prominent architectural masterpieces worldwide as it determined Central Asiatic, Iranian and Indian architecture for many centuries.

Having well studied the History of the Abbasid Caliphate and the stories of the impotent caliphs of the last 350-400 years of Abbasid rule (ca. 850-1258), Timur ruled in the name of the various Chagatai khans, while reducing them to total impotency. Until 1370, Timur managed to establish a strong basis of popular support at Balkh (Bactra, in today’s Afghanistan) and then eliminate his contenders. He then spent considerable time to consolidate his empire. Only after 1380 (and at the age of 45), Timur started becoming a mighty opponent to reckon with beyond the limits of Central Asia. It was then that Timur started his own conquest of the world, thus creating a smaller but surely much more homogeneous empire than that of Genghis Khan.

He first had to defend Khwarazm and Azerbaijan against the powerful Tokhtamysh (1342-1406; Tuqtamış/ Тухтамыш), the khan of the reunified Golden (Blue and White) Horde, Kipchak and Sibir or Siberia (1376-1406). Tokhtamysh had oppressed the uprising of the Turanian Christians of Muscovy (Moscow) in 1382 (there were no Russians at time; they were invented later to set up the Romanov imperial narrative), and squelching the rebellion, he burned the Turanian city of Moscow to the ground. The hostilities between Timur and Tokhtamysh started in the 1380s and the wars culminated in the 1390s.

Timur’s main achievement in the 1380s was the elimination of all the petty dynasties that had surfaced after the decomposition of the Ilkhanate and covered the lands between Euphrates and Syr Darya (Iaxartes). Obliterating divisive statelets, Timur did in the aforementioned vast region what exactly the Ottomans were doing in Western and Central Anatolia and in the South Balkans. These were converging trajectories and one day, sooner or later, the clash between Timur and the Ottomans would come. Timur proved to be merciless in the oppression of rebellions, but his attitude was deliberate. He only wanted to prevent further resistance or opposition. However, he defended and supported the spiritual, academic, educational, artistic and artisan elites, while eliminating indoctrinated religious leaders, stupid sheikhs, tribal contenders, military opponents, and their supporters to the last. 

Timur throws a feast in the gardens of Samarqand

By invading Soltaniyeh (in NW Iran) in 1384, Mazandaran (Caspian Sea’s southern coast land), Maragheh and Tabriz (in Iranian Azerbaijan) in 1386, and Isfahan and Shiraz in 1387, Timur controlled the Iranian plateau. Timur’s soldiers executed the quasi-totality of the population of Isfahan (ca. 100000-120000 people). Then, Timur spent several years, asserting his rule throughout the mountains of Zagros, the Caucasus region, and Mesopotamia, and capturing Baghdad in 1393. It was then that Timur rushed to the center of the Iranian plateau to disperse the last Isma’ili remnants that had gathered there again to foment resistance.

During the same period, Timur had to rush to the North; there he reached Western Siberia and Tataria (the western territories of the Golden Horde that constitute today the central part of Russia), defeated Tokhtamysh in the battle of Kondurcha River (1391), burned Ryazan, and invaded all lands around Muscovy (Moscow). This campaign was one of the most remarkable military operations ever undertaken by Islamic imperial armies; Timur’s fast offensive to the North and further on to the West involved an operation of ca. 140000 soldiers, who crossed a distance of over 2700 km, progressing rapidly and for many long hours every day in the formation of a 20 km wide front. So, his soldiers complained that, due to the brief duration of Siberia’s and Tataria’s summer nights, they could not sleep enough between the evening prayer (Isha’a / صلاة العشاء‎; ca. one hour after the sunset) and the morning prayer (Fajr / صلاة الفجر‎; ca. one hour before the dawn).

In 1395, Timur returned to the North, after crossing the Caucasus region, and in the famous Battle of Terek River, he won a final victory over Tokhtamysh, destroying Sarai, the Golden Horde capital (near today’s Samara), and Astrakhan. Known as ‘Timur’s stone’, the bilingual {8 lines in Chagatai written in the old Uyghur alphabet (which was directly based on the Aramaic alphabet) and 3 lines in Arabic} inscription found at the Karsakpay mines (Western Kazakhstan) bears witness to the event, and to the commemoration of Timur’s victory, which was also mentioned in historical texts of the period, notably the Zafarnameh (‘book of the victory’) of Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi.

In 1398, Timur turned to the southeast against the Islamic Sultanate of Delhi, which controlled already most of the territory of the modern states of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh; the then ruling Turanian Tughlaq dynasty (1320–1413) had replaced the also Turanian Khalji dynasty (1290–1320), which expanded greatly the territories controlled by the earlier Turanian Mamluk dynasty (1206-1290) that was substituted to the Turanian Ghurid Sultanate (879–1215) and to the Turanian Ghaznavid Empire (977–1186). When Timur arrived in the Delhi region (1398) and the northern parts of what today is confusingly called ‘India’ (instead of Bharat or Hindustan), the majority of the local population was already Turanian of origin, due to successive nomadic migrations, military invasions, extensive clashes, and subsequent amalgamation; and so the local population has been ever since and during the modern times, despite the colonially fabricated masquerade of the fake ‘Indo-European’ India, which is not the name of a real state, but the appellation of a colonial machination based on English perfidy, economic exploitation, political tyranny, historical distortion, and utter academic evilness. 

The destruction of many cities in the Indus River valley by Timur’s armies heralded the fall of Delhi, which was one the then world’s richest cities: Tulamba, Multan, and Bhatner were turned to ruins, and no less than 100000 war prisoners were massacred, before the Sultan Nasir al-Din Mahmud Shah Tughluq (1394 – 1413) of the Delhi Sultanate experienced a crushing defeat in December 1398. The sultan of Delhi and his generals counted on the psychological effect that their armored elephants would have on Timur’s soldiers, but their calculations proved to be wrong.

The great conqueror was above all an inventive and resourceful warrior, who knew that even camels can prevail over elephants, if duly and timely utilized by an ingenious strategist; having loaded a great number of camels with straw well tied on them and having supervised the digging of a trench to protect his soldiers, Timur set fire to the camel-borne volumes of straw, when the enemy’s army and elephants attacked. His soldiers pushed the camels forward through use of iron sticks and the flaming camels ran crazily on the elephants, yowling in extreme pain and despair. Thus, Timur’s camels caused unprecedented chaos, hellish fire, and utmost panic to the mammals that smashed under their feet the powerless soldiers of the unfortunate sultan of Delhi.

This was the victory of the camel over the elephant or, if you prefer, the triumph of a conqueror’s intellect over a greedy caretaker’s sloth. Delhi was properly plundered to best finance Timur’s next campaigns, and the entire Bengal, the Ganges River valley, and the Indus River valley became provinces of Timur’s empire or tributary states. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tughlugh_Timur

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokhtamysh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokhtamysh%E2%80%93Timur_war

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karsakpay_inscription

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharaf_ad-Din_Ali_Yazdi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zafarnama_(Yazdi_biography)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tughlaq_dynasty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasir-ud-Din_Mahmud_Shah_Tughluq

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalji_dynasty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamluk_dynasty_(Delhi)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi_Sultanate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_Sultanate

In 1399, Timur turned westwards; after eliminating Haleb (Aleppo) and Damascus, invading the Caucasus region, and demanding submission from the Anatolian Turkmen beys (rulers) in 1399 and 1400, Timur invaded Baghdad in June 1401. The menacing alliance of the Ottomans with the Mamluks of Egypt that had the support of Venice, Genoa and the Knights Hospitaller (who controlled Izmir/Smyrna) created an alarming situation west of Timur’s empire. However, other affairs were top of the priority list for the great conqueror, namely the incessant movements of Turkmen nomads from Central Asia though the Iranian plateau, the Caucasus region, and Anatolia. Timur sided with the Akkoyunlu (آق‌ قویونلو‎ /Aq Qoyunlu / White Sheep confederation – initially centered around Bayburt and known for their frequent intermarriages with Eastern Roman princesses; 1378-1501) and against the Karakoyunlu (قره قویونلو / Qara Qoyunlu /Black Sheep confederation – initially they were Turkmen vassals of the Jalayrid Sultanate in Baghdad and Tabriz; 1374-1468); this was only normal: by connecting themselves with the Ottomans and the Mamluks, the Karakoyunlu caused the ire of Timur.  

Within the context of 14th c. Anatolia’s fragmentation, the Ottoman Sultanate appeared to be the strongest state around 1400. But Timur’s viewpoint over the Anatolian affairs was different: he considered the Seljuks as the legitimate sultanate in the entire region, and he wanted to put an order to the Turkmen chaos caused by the numerous progressive migrations. This situation was not only critical for the developments that took then place, but also determinant for what followed, and for the imperial polarization around Anatolia and the Iranian plateau during the 15th – 20th c.

——– Incomparably brilliant & exorbitantly ingenious conquests ——-

Timur enthroned at Balkh

Timur commanding the siege of Balkh

Timur besieges the historic city of Urgench (in Khawarizm/ Chorasmia, today’s Uzbekistan)

Timur about to launch a war against Tokhtamysh

Timur against Tokhtamysh; from a miniature of the ‘Facial Chronicle’ (also known as ‘the illustrated Chronicle of Ivan the Terrible’; Лицевой летописный свод) volume 11, page 251

Timur in the conquest of Baghdad (1393) from a miniature in the Zafarnameh

Timur orders a campaign against Georgia

Timur’s army attacks the remaining survivors in Nerges, Georgia (1396)

Timur’s invasion of India, 1397-1399

The defeat of Nasir Al-Din Mahmum Tughluq at the battle of Delhi 1398

Timur defeats the Mamluk Sultan Nasir-ad-Din Faraj of Egypt

Sultan Bayezid prisoned by Timur, by Stanisław Chlebowski (Станислав Хлебовский; 19th c. Orientalist Russian painter of Polish origin)

Letter dispatched by Timur to Charles VI of France in 1402

————————————————————————————————————

Many people today believe that from the Seljuks to the Ottomans there has been a historical, cultural, spiritual, religious, literary and academic continuity in Anatolia. This is an enormous lie, and Timur’s perfect choice and drastic action help us fully understand how false this impression is. As a matter of fact, between the Seljuks and the Ottomans there was a disruption. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatolian_beyliks

Timur defeated the Karakoyunlu in 1400; this brought the Akkoyunlu closer to him, and two years later, Timur conceded Diyarbakir to them. This development, in relation with the Ottoman defeat at Ankara in 1402, brought the Ottomans closer to Karakoyunlu and produced an atmosphere of enmity between the Ottomans and the Akkoyunlu. After Timur’s death, the Karakoyunlu managed to oppose successfully the Akkoyunlu for some time, but later the latter prevailed and the former were reduced to a small state in the Caucasus region.

This generated a ferocious rivalry between the then expanding Ottomans and the Akkoyunlu; the latter supported the Central Anatolian Karamanids and effectively stroke an alliance with the Ottoman Empire’s worst enemy, i.e. Venice. The escalation led to several battles between the Ottomans and the Akkoyunlu during the 15th c., and later, with the dissolution of the Akkoyunlu and the absorption of its structures within the rising Safavid Empire (established under the auspices of the homonymous mystical order), the rivalry was transformed into an Ottoman – Safavid quarrel that lasted centuries. But the conflict had basically the traits of an internal Turanian strife that metamorphosed from century to century; the Iranians represented the authentic Turanians, and the Ottomans were the corrupt renegades and the worst enemies of all Turanians. This situation was rectified only in the period 1919-1923, when Kemal Ataturk terminated the Ottoman shame, abolished the ridiculous ‘caliphate’, and reinstated Seljuk-Turanian valor and bravery across Anatolia.

Much discussion has taken place among scholars about the religious motives of all these successive conflicts which were misrepresented as supposed clashes between ‘Sunni’ and ‘Shia’, but this is a lie and there was no religious motivation. In reality, Timur and his successors, the Karakoyunlu, the Akkoyunlu, the Ottomans, and the Mystical Safavid Order were all Muslims, and no ‘Sunni’ – ‘Shia’ distinction applied to them, because simply there is no such distinction; it is a modern colonial academic invention that is not supported by the historical sources.

Even the scholars, who tried ceaselessly to create divisive religious lines where there is none, failed to ‘prove’ that the Karakoyunlu were ‘Shia’, and even if this absurdity could eventually be proven, it would be truly meaningless, because the Karakoyunlu sided with the Ottomans, who are portrayed today as ‘Sunni’ against the Akkoyunlu, who are also depicted as ‘Sunni’ by the fallacious Western academia.

What happened in reality behind all these successive developments was the fact that the internal Turanian strife (between Eastern Turanians and Western Turanians) and the exchange of terrible, written insults between Timur (66 years old at the Battle of Ankara) and Bayezid I (1360-1402; so 42 years old when fighting Timur, which means that there was one generation difference between the two rulers) cast an everlasting shadow on the Ottoman court’s foreign policy making. Then, even worse, Bayezid’s calamitous defeat and humiliating captivity pulled the Ottomans apart from the Turanian world and turned them to the West. Consequently, Ottoman reactions generated further deterioration and conflicts with their main Turanian neighbor, i.e. the Safavid Empire of Iran – which was an entirely Turkic state with almost no Persian population left there anymore. In the Turanian Safavid Empire, Farsi was almost exactly what Medieval Latin was in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation: the language of culture and the administration.  

It appears odd, but the Timurid Mughal Empire of South Asia (fallaciously described by colonial historiographers as ‘Sunni’) had clearly better relations with Safavid Iran than with the Ottomans as late as 1700, i.e. 300 years after the Battle of Ankara; this delivers a blow to the historical forgery about a ‘Sunni-Shia divide’ which was first invented by colonial academics, then projected onto colonized Muslims worldwide by the colonial administrations, and later repeated pathetically by the postcolonial ignorant, uneducated and idiotic sheikhs, imams, cadis, and muftis.

Every spiritual order and mystical school that was treated well by Timur was viewed suspiciously within the Ottoman territory, and this was not a matter of religious divergence, but of internal Turanian divisions and of imperial rancor. The case of the Safavid Order is quite telling. This mystical order was established before the birth of Osman I (ca. 1255-1323), the ancestor of all Ottomans who belonged to the Kayı tribe of Oghuz Turks. In fact, the Safavid Order was the main emanation of the Zahediyah Mystical Order, which was founded by the Turanian ascetic and mystic Zahed Gilani (1216–1301), a leading spiritual master who was born in the Iranian province of Gilan (southern coast of the Caspian Sea) but originated from Sanjan in Khorasan, a region entirely populated by Turanians at the time. Zahed Gilani was highly revered among the imperial elites of the Ilkhanate. The mystical orders of the Jelveti and the Bayrami are emanations of the Zahediyah Order. Zahed Gilani’s most distinguished disciple was Safi-ad-din Ardabili (1252-1334), an Azeri Turanian who initiated the Safavid Order {named after himself: ‘Safavid’ (صفویه) being an adjective formed out of the name ‘Safi’ (صفی)} as a distinct order although the doctrine was exactly the same as that of the Zahediyah Order.

The holy land of the Safavid Order was Azerbaijan (i.e. the Ancient Iranian holy land of Atropatene), and from there numerous mystics and ascetics traveled across great distances to diffuse the rites of the order throughout the Iranian plateau, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Central Asia and other Muslim territories. The position of the grand master was hereditary, and after Safi-ad-din Ardabili’s death, his son Sadr al-Dīn Musa (1305-1391) and his grandson Khvajeh Ali Safavi (ca. 1365-1429) oversaw the operations of the order. Timur met Khvajeh Ali Safavi and, although quite older, he was impressed by the spiritual art of the extraordinary mystic; that’s why he treated him well and offered him abundant lands to further finance the expansion of the mystical order. Following this development and the subsequent penetration of the order across the territories of the Timurids and the Akkoyunlu, the Ottomans took an inimical stance toward the Safavid Order and all its spiritual and social ramifications.

Safi ad-din Ardabili in a 16th c, manuscript of the hagiographical text Safvat as-Safa

From the moment Khvajeh Ali Safavi encountered Timur only four generations succeeded one another until Ismail I managed to supplant the Akkoyunlu and establish the Empire of the Safavid Order, which became known as Safavid Empire. These four generations are represented by the Safavid Order’s grandmasters, namely Shaykh Ibrahim (ca. 1400-1447; son of Khvajeh Ali Safavi), Shaykh Junayd (ca. 1410-1460; son of Shaykh Ibrahim), Shaykh Haydar (1459-1488; son of Shaykh Junayd), and Ali Mirza Safavi (also known as Soltan-Ali Safavi; ca. 1475-1494; son of Shaykh Haydar and elder brother of Ismail I, founder of the Safavid Empire). In today’s Azerbaijan and all the peripheral lands (Eastern Anatolia, Iran, and parts of Central Asia), these formidable mystics are highly revered, deemed saints, and constantly venerated, whereas many people bear their names (example: Heydar Aliyev, former president of Azerbaijan).

Tomb of Sheikh Junayd in Khazra, in the northern confines of Azerbaijan

Tomb of Sheykh Heydar in Meshginshahr, Iran

The emblem of the Safavid Order

The Safavid Order grandmasters were Turanian mystics, who reviled the rationalistic and materialistic approaches of the theological circles that held the Ottoman family captive for centuries, therefore generating the ceaseless Turanian fratricide wars only to the benefit of the Pope of Rome and of the Christian Empires of Western Europe. The Safavid Order grandmasters were connected by successive intermarriages with the Timurids, the Akkoyunlu, and the Eastern Romans; for instance, Ali Mirza Safavi was the son of Shaykh Haydar and Alam-Shah Begum (born Martha), who was the daughter of the Akkoyunlu Empire’s most powerful shah, Uzun Hasan, and Despina Khatun (Theodora Megale Komnene).

As they appear to have commanded enormous spiritual powers and performed miraculous deeds, their followers expressed total devotion to them; however, we cannot be absolutely sure about what several contemporaneous historiographers wrote about them at the time, namely that the members of the Safavid Order considered Shaykh Junayd as God Incarnate (‘ilah’) and called his son Shaykh Haydar as ‘Son of God’ (‘ibn Allah’). There were many antagonistic spiritual orders and theological schools at the time, and the clash between esoteric spirituality and rationalistic theology was overwhelming. The rationalistic theologians, who realized their impotency vis-à-vis the spiritual masters of the different Islamic orders, instead of concluding about how far from the essence of the true religion their worthless jurisprudential and rationalistic rhetoric had gone, used inflammatory verbalism, immoral attitude, and malicious defamatory tactics against the grandmasters of the spiritual orders. This practice turned Muslims from living faithful to putrefied carrion.

Of course, the concept of ‘God Incarnate’ is intolerable in Islam, but there are no original sources written by members of the 15th c. Safavid Order about themselves, their noble rites, and their grandmasters; consequently, the then rising rationalistic and materialistic trends among several Muslim theologians may have resulted in total misunderstanding of the Safavid Order’s spiritual terminology, which cannot be comprehended by defective, rationalistic minds. In addition, the jealousy and the envy that several ignorant theologians felt against various renowned spiritual grandmasters make of their literature an untrustworthy libel; an example is offered by Fadl-Allah ben Ruzbehan Qonyi, the legalist and rationalist theologian of the Akkoyunlu court, in his Tāriḵ-e ‘Ālāmārā-ye amini.

About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zahed_Gilani

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zahediyeh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelveti

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayramiye

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safi-ad-din_Ardabili

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safavid_order

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadr_al-D%C4%ABn_M%C5%ABs%C4%81

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khvajeh_Ali_Safavi

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/ali-kaja-also-known-as-sayyed-ali-ajami-b

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-middle-east-studies/article/safavids-before-empire-two-15thcentury-armenian-perspectives/E33FE6069D55E57E7CA18081C15BD8B9

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/jonayd

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaykh_Junayd

https://www.academia.edu/4255709/Oghuz_Khan_Narratives

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/haydar-safavi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaykh_Haydar

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/ali-mirza-d

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Mirza_Safavi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismail_I

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/esmail-i-safawi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzun_Hasan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despina_Khatun

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara_Koyunlu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aq_Qoyunlu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osman_I

The point is that this whole issue goes indeed back to the times of Timur, and the Ottoman enmity toward the Safavid Order first and the Safavid Empire later was only due to the devastating defeat of Bayezid I at Ankara (1402) and to the excellent relationship established between Timur and the Safavid Order’s grandmaster Khvajeh Ali Safavi. The Ottoman – Safavid hostility, which lasted for more than two centuries (and was subsequently inherited by the also Turkmen Afshar and the Qajar dynasties of Iran for almost another two centuries), was of no ethnic and no national character. Both empires were indeed ruled by Turanians, had populations that were Turanian in their majority, and claimed the same ancestry and traditions. Not even one drop of Persian blood could be found in the reins of the Turkmen Ismail I (1487-1524; reign: 1501-1524). In both empires, Turanian (or Turkic) languages were used in the army and the administration, Farsi in poetry, literature, history and culture, and Arabic in sciences (astronomy, mathematics, medicine, natural sciences, geography, etc.). But the Ottomans reacted instinctively to all things Safavid, because even the name of the order reminded them of the humiliating defeat at Ankara in 1402.   

The exchange of insults between Timur and Bayezid I involved ethnic denigration; but of course it was an entirely internal Turanian affair. As an Eastern Turanian, Timur rejected the lowly character, mentality and attitude of the settled Western Turanians; and he made his viewpoint bluntly known, fully rejecting assertions and pretensions earlier expressed in arrogant style by the pathetic Bayezid I. In fact, the Ottomans had to stop the blockade of Constantinople and turn the bulk of their forces to the east, because Timur invaded Sivas (Sebasteia) in 1401; arriving at Ankara, the Ottomans were supported by Albanian and Serbian soldiers, who fought along Bayezid’s army, as their states were vassals to the Ottomans.

Timur’s forces slightly outnumbered those of the Ottoman sultan, but this was not the determinant factor for the outstanding victory. Timur was smart enough to allow the Ottomans to advance to the east (reaching Çubuk) and to take an offensive, while part of his army ran fast southwestwards and then turned to the east, thus encircling the Ottomans. Timur counted also on his horse archers, who hit the Ottoman army terribly, and always thinking out-of-the-box, he made sure that his adversaries fail to secure water supply. To do this, some of his auxiliary forces diverted the Çubuk inlet to a reservoir, thus preventing the Ottoman soldiers from access to water; under the Anatolian plateau’s scorching summer sun, this trick had a catastrophic impact on the Ottoman army. To add misfortune to misery, Bayezid I faced desertions of soldiers and officers from his army, notably the Qarai Turks (originating from the Keraite Eastern Turanians) and the Sipahi cavalrymen of the former Anatolian beyliks; these forces joined Timur’s army.

That is why the 20th of July was always a ‘dies nefastus’ (an ominous day) for the Ottomans; actually, it was not only a defeat. It was the only time in the 600-year long Ottoman History when a sultan was held captive and died in captivity. It was also the beginning of the Ottoman interregnum, the civil war among Bayezid I’s sons, which lasted for 11 years (1402-1413). About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayezid_I

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ankara

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Interregnum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qarai_Turks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keraites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sipahi

After his victory, Timur proceeded to the western confines of Anatolia and invaded Izmir (Smyrna), kicking the Knights Hospitaller out of there. The entire family of Timur fought with him in the West; his sons and his grandsons were engaged in the battle of Ankara. To support the Ottomans and confuse Timur, the Karakoyunlu ruler Qara Yusuf attacked Baghdad, but after the Battle of Ankara, Timur sent forces that recaptured Baghdad under the command of Abu Bakr, son of Miran Shah, Timur’s third son, who was then the older among his two surviving sons. Timur returned to Azerbaijan, Khorasan and Samarqand where he spent some time, planning his next conquests. Since the Yuan dynasty was overthrown in China (1368) and the first emperors of the Ming dynasty expressed an interest to be involved in Central Asia, Timur set up an alliance with Eastern Turanian Mongolian forces in order to attack China. However, marching toward the east, he died in February 1405 at Otrar (also known as Farab; Kangju in Chinese) in today’s Kazakhstan’s southern provinces.

Timur’s succession was not an easy affair, because all the contenders did not agree on the matter. As a matter of fact, two of his four sons had died before him: Umar Shaikh Mirza I (1356-1394) and Jahangir Mirza (1356-1376). Few years before dying, Timur expressed his favor for Jahangir Mirza’s elder son Muhammad Sultan Mirza (1375-1403), but he also died in young age and before his grandfather. Little time before dying, Timur appointed another son of Jahangir Mirza as his successor: Pir Muhammad Mirza (1374-1407); but the heir apparent failed to garner significant support or to control the capital city of the empire, Samarqand.

There were reasons for which Timur did not want any of his two surviving sons to rise to his throne. Miran Shah (1366-1408) had an accident in the late 1380s after having fallen from his horse; this generated a traumatic brain injury and subsequent mental difficulties that were known to many people. Exploiting this situation, the Hurufi mystics (the Hurufiyyah mystical order developed an Islamic system of Kabbalah, crediting letters of the Arabic alphabet with hidden, spiritual value, after the esoteric teachings of Fazlallah Astarabadi; 1340-1394) denounced Miran Shah as the Antichrist (Dajjal), absurdly altering his name to Maran Shah (King of the Serpents). However, Timur’s third son was successful in combating them. The Hurufiyyah were duly dispersed, although some of their erroneous teachings survived among other spiritual orders. The end result is that due to the extensive defamation, Miran Shah’s chances to rule became nil. However, he contributed to the turmoil, because he supported his son Khalil Sultan (1384-1411) as successor to Timur.

Timur’s youngest son, Shah Rukh (1377-1447), was considered as too soft to be an emperor; this was Timur’s publicly expressed opinion. The reality is that Shah Rukh was a man of letters, arts, sciences, trade, diplomacy and negotiations, and that he resorted to war only when no other solution was ostensible. As a matter of fact, Shah Rukh, who was the ruler of Herat and the eastern provinces, claimed the right to his father’s throne, but in modesty and wisdom; he was not urged for a showdown with Khalil Sultan. Having accurately evaluated his nephew’s capabilities, he preferred to let him rule incompetently (as he expected him to do), so that all the people finally turn against him. This process lasted four years (1405-1409); Khalil Sultan ruled indeed as successor of Timur, but he was so incompetent that, when Shah Rukh marched against Samarqand, no one opposed him. As he was not a bloodthirsty conqueror but a wise moralist, he appointed Khalil Sultan as governor of Ray. Shah Rukh ruled for 38 years (1409-1447), contributing to what is now called ‘Timurid Renaissance’ more than his father.

The internal turmoil of the Timurid Empire caused several defeats to Timur’s successors; in 1406 and in 1408, Qara Yusuf of the Karakoyunlu marked two victories over the Timurid forces in Azerbaijan, in the Battle of Nakhchivan and in the Battle of Sardrud; in the latter, Miran Shah was killed and then his body impaled. When Shah Rukh rose to his father’s throne, the western part of the Timurid Empire was lost the Karakoyunlu, the Akkoyunlu and the Ottomans. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Shaikh_Mirza_I

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jahangir_Mirza_(Timurid_prince)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Sultan_Mirza

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miran_Shah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shah_Rukh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pir_Muhammad_(son_of_Jahangir)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miran_Shah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shah_Rukh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurufism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalil_Sultan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahrokh_(mythical_bird)

—————————————  

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 XIII: Parthian Turan and the Philhellenism of the Arsacids

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 TEN. FALLACIES ABOUT THE TIMES OF TURANIAN (MONGOLIAN) SUPREMACY IN TERMS OF SCIENCES, ARTS, LETTERS, SPIRITUALITY AND IMPERIAL UNIVERSALISM

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?

————————————————————————————–

Download the chapter (text only) in PDF:

<object class="wp-block-file__embed" data="https://megalommatiscomments.files.wordpress.com/2023/08/timur-tamerlane-as-a-turanian-muslim.pdf&quot; type="application/pdf" style="width:100%;height:600px" aria-label="<strong>Timur (Tamerlane), as a Turanian Muslim descendant of the Great Hero Manuchehr, his exploits and triumphs, and the slow rise of the Turanian Safavid OrderTimur (Tamerlane), as a Turanian Muslim descendant of the Great Hero Manuchehr, his exploits and triumphs, and the slow rise of the Turanian Safavid OrderDownload

Download the chapter (with pictures and legends) in PDF:

<object class="wp-block-file__embed" data="https://megalommatiscomments.files.wordpress.com/2023/08/timur-tamerlane-pictures-legends.pdf&quot; type="application/pdf" style="width:100%;height:600px" aria-label="<strong>Timur (Tamerlane), as a Turanian Muslim descendant of the Great Hero Manuchehr (pictures and legends)Timur (Tamerlane), as a Turanian Muslim descendant of the Great Hero Manuchehr (pictures and legends)Download

Russia, Ukraine and the World-VIII: The Russian Need for De-Westernization means Rejection of the ‘Classics’ and of the Western Model of Colonial Historiography  

Россия, Украина и мир-VIII: Российская потребность в девестернизации означает отказ от «классики» и от западной модели колониальной историографии

Contents

Introduction

I. Trojan War: an early Episode of the ‘Invasions of the Sea Peoples’

II. Hittite-Achaean Ethos and Values as praised by Homer vs. the Pelasgian-Trojan barbarism of ‘Classical Greece’

III. The forgers of ‘Ancient Greece’ & their Eastern Roman Orthodox rivals

IV. New Rome-Constantinople and the fake, Anti-Roman Rome

V. Crusaders and Ottomans against the only Rome: Constantinople

VI. Who the true Russians can be

VII. The forgers of ‘Ancient Greece’, the Western World, and today’s Russia

VIII. De-Westernization: Russian universities’ need to launch a parallel ‘special operation’ 

IX. How Russian academics and intellectuals can participate in the special military operation

X. What if UK, US and EU implode and disintegrate, but Russia, China, India, and Iran do not carry out a vast project of worldwide De-Westernization?

World History started in Mesopotamia and Egypt, not in Greece and Rome. Only with Egyptian and Assyrian-Babylonian measures and standards, we can evaluate the cultures of the Mediterranean Basin and not vice-versa.

Содержание

Введение

I. Троянская война: ранний эпизод «Нашествия народов моря»

II. Хетто-ахейский этос и ценности, воспетые Гомером, против пеласго-троянского варварства «классической Греции»

III. Фальсификаторы «Древней Греции» и их восточно-римские православные соперники

IV. Новый Рим-Константинополь и фальшивый, антиримский Рим

V. Крестоносцы и османы против единственного Рима: Константинополя

VI. Кем могут быть настоящие русские

VII. Фальсификаторы «Древней Греции», Западный мир и сегодняшняя Россия

VIII. Девестернизация: российским вузам нужно запустить параллельную «спецоперацию»

IX. Как российские ученые и интеллектуалы могут участвовать в спецоперации

X. Что, если Великобритания, США и ЕС взорвутся и распадутся, а Россия, Китай, Индия и Иран не реализуют масштабный проект всемирной девестернизации?

I have had recently many discussions about the ongoing series of articles that I published about ‘Russia, Ukraine and the World’; all previous parts (titles, subtitles, titles of units, and links) and available at the end of the present article in English and in Russian translation.

The present article summarizes parts of discussions that I have had with various readers originating from Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. It also briefly highlights the dangers that the entire world will face, if the Western countries collapse and get disintegrated, but Russia, India, China, and Iran do not undertake a vast, deep and comprehensive effort of academic de-Westernization and do not replace the existing, false and racist, model of colonial historiography with a truthful and comprehensive narrative of World History, setting as world criteria and values those of the sole cradle of civilization: Ancient Orient.

Introduction

My review article has the title: Sea Peoples’ Invasions, Egypt, the Hittite Empire, its Achaean allies, Lukka/Peleset, the Trojan War, Homer’s Intentional Falsehood, and the Modern European Forgery ‘Ancient Greece’

One can find it online here:

https://www.academia.edu/102359622/Sea_Peoples_Invasions_Egypt_the_Hittite_Empire_its_Achaean_allies_Lukka_Peleset_the_Trojan_War_Homers_Intentional_Falsehood_and_the_Modern_European_Forgery_Ancient_Greece_with_pictures_and_legends_

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_9213%2Fall

I firmly believe that it is certainly an achievement that two Russian authors penned a book to duly and thoroughly question one of the most important foundations of ‘Hellenism’; however, this fact -in and by itself- reveals the numerous, troublesome inconsistencies of the present Russian educational system, academic and scientific environment, intellectual life, and cultural milieu.

I. Trojan War: an early Episode of the ‘Invasions of the Sea Peoples’

As you will see, in my lengthy review article, I greatly supported the approach undertaken, the method applied, and the conclusions drawn by the authors, only pinpointing omissions, few missing parts of correct contextualization, and several issues of conceptualization. As a matter of fact, their main missing element revolves around what is nowadays general called ‘the invasions of the Sea Peoples’.   

It is crucially important to understand that what the Ancient Egyptian priest from Onuphis truly told Dio Chrysostom is in reality nothing more than the details of the underlying story of which majestic Pharaonic descriptions detailing Ramses III’s victories over the Sea Peoples have been found (as both, inscriptions and bas-reliefs) on the walls of the Medinet Habu mortuary temple of Ramses III (Luxor-West, Upper Egypt) and on several papyri.

These texts were studied, published, commented and interpreted by generations of Egyptologists; but deliberately and due to the prevailing malignancy of the racist, colonial Anglo-Saxon and French academics, these historical Egyptian texts have not been used to interpret the Homeric Epics and to correct the false narratives that were propagated by those Ionians. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic texts pertaining to the marginal zone of Western Anatolia, South Balkans, and the islands in-between are the missing part of the otherwise pertinently collected and presented documentation that the authors made available in their book.

The Annals of Ramses III are a determinant part of the World Heritage and an indispensable part of the education of all people in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. The lies contained in Homer’s Epics do not concern anyone; even more so, since they failed to generate an Achaean revival in Western Anatolia and South Balkans.

As you noticed, in my 13500 words review article, I did not speak at all about the consequences that this book should have had on the Russian educational system, academic and scientific environment, intellectual life, and cultural milieu. So, now, I will briefly expand on this topic herewith responding to you, because you have to know that there are several uncompleted ‘tasks’ in this regard; and they have to be completed by the entire class of Russian academics, Orientalists and Classicists, who cannot anymore repeat the same inaccuracies, the same lies, and the same forgeries that 17th-18th c. Western European academics put in the mind of their Russian counterparts in order to fool and deceive them, tying therefore the entire Russian educational-academic system to their racist fallacy, which is the foundation their colonial expansion and prevalence.

Today’s Russian academics cannot repeat the lies that made the Western European and North American colonial states worldwide predominant.

But let me start from the original point; yes, you are right! You understood correctly! The Achaeans (not ‘Greeks’) won a secondary battle and lost the war.

II. Hittite-Achaean Ethos and Values as praised by Homer vs. the Pelasgian-Trojan barbarism of ‘Classical Greece’

Despite his deliberate omissions and lies, Homer totally failed to revive the Achaean values among the Ionians of his days. This is a crucial issue that must be focused on. As per the Western European racist scheme of classicist misinterpretation, Homer is today uselessly valued for his art only; but he is not admired for the past values that he praised at his time, because all the post-Renaissance intellectual rascals of France, Italy, England, Holland and America hate those Achaean values.

The Achaeans had indeed a preponderantly Hittite ethos; the Hittites were their brethren, their powerful allies, and the source of their cultural example and moral values; this is highly reflected in Hesiod’s Theogony. But, like Homer, Hesiod did not impact the lives of people in ‘Classical Greece’. The Achaean-Pelasgian (Peleset-Philistine) divide represented and reproduced, within the context of 1st millennium BCE South Balkans, the spiritual, imperial and cultural contrast and clash that we attest in 2nd millennium BCE Anatolia between the civilized Hittites and the disorderly Lukka, i.e. the alliance of peoples to which Taruisha/Troy belonged.

Yazilikaya, the major Hittite shrine

Achaean funerary stele with relief chariot scene 16th c. BCE

It is greatly obvious but scrupulously concealed that Homer did not have an impact on what has been deceitfully called ‘Ancient Greece’ or ‘Classical civilization’. Thebes, Corinth, Sparta or Athens didn’t resemble anything exalted in Homer’s epics. If we evaluate texts and facts at face value, their admiration for Homer was either enduring and useless or occasional and pointless.

The absurdity, barbarism and evilness of the Dionysus cult has nothing to do with the Achaean values that Homer wanted to reinstate. The so-called ‘Ancient Greek civilization’ is in reality Pelasgian-Peleset-Philistine perversion.

The Pelasgians-Trojans put indeed a tombstone on the Achaeans, the Achaean unity, and their cultural heritage; and later, an evil force in Rome projected onto them the disreputable name of Greek (Hellene), a name that was almost never used by Homer. This false name served as mask for the Pelasgian ethos that prevailed in the South Balkans against Homer’s admonitions.

That’s why the Anti-Christian and Anti-Constantinopolitan (Benedictine-Jesuit) side of Rome needed the Trojan myth; they (: their predecessors in pre-Christian times) had used it to fool the Ionians and the Aeolians.  

III. The forgers of ‘Ancient Greece’ & their Eastern Roman Orthodox rivals

There was never a country, a confederation or a cultural space named Ancient Greece; the term was of uniquely geographical connotation, as it denoted the lands south of Macedonia and Illyria.

Only if you study well the true side of Ancient Rome, which was preserved exclusively in New Rome (Constantinople), you will realize that Ancient Greece never existed: all the paramount pseudo-narratives about ‘Ancient Greece’ were nothing to men like John Chrysostom, Justinian I, Heraclius, John of Damascus, Justinian II, Leo III, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Anna Comnena or Michael Psellos.

The Macedonian Attalids, Seleucids and Ptolemies, and later the Eastern Romans did not give a damn of such despicable stories as ‘Thermopylae’, ‘Marathon’, ‘Salamis’ and their likes, because they knew that their sole value was tantamount to the ashes that the Carian renegade Herodotus’ manuscripts would produce if thrown, as they should have, to the fireplace.

The Trojan War is a lie; the Persian Wars are a lie; and the Peloponnesian War (a perfect Pelasgian-Philistine nightmare after the disorderly Lukka-Trojan example) is the perfect model for a disoriented, deceived and targeted Mankind to be endlessly plunged into discord, rancor, and hostilities. Thucydides brings forth odium and utmost negativity, endless wars, and cynical Nazi genocides; it is inevitable. Admit it, after all! The Germans during WW II only imitated the Ancient Athenian barbarian murderers of the Milos Island Dorians.

Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Plato and Aristotle were not important for the illustrious Roman Emperor Justinian I, who set the foundations of Christian Law that all Christians must follow; consequently all this clutter cannot be possibly considered as part of World Heritage. On the contrary, Justinian I and his outstandingly brilliant reign are part of the past of more than a billion people in Asia, Africa and Europe.

There was never any value and any civilization in the Balkans south of Thrace, Macedonia and Illyria. The pedophile rascals and the homosexual scoundrels of Athens constitute the best Lukka-Pelasgian-Philistine example to avoid; and the blasphemous orgies of the local brothels (which only euphemistically can be called ‘temples’), as apparent self-destruction of the perpetrators, represent the material needed for Jesuits and Freemasons to become the cornerstone of today’s Western World. Nothing more! Ancient Athens is the bottom of the Hell on the surface of the Earth.

If you examine the dates of the manuscripts of several Ancient Greek texts, you will have the chance to understand when and by whom these texts have been tempered with!

IV. New Rome-Constantinople and the fake, Anti-Roman Rome

That’s why Justinian I, the great and righteous Christian Emperor who introduced the only permissible Christian legislation and judiciary system, imposed the imperial Constantinopolitan selection, appointment and approval of the popes of Rome in an effort to first contain and then uproot the malignant part of the Roman establishment which existed there already before Christianization. For this reason today’s Western gangsters hate that period and contemptuously call it ‘Byzantine Papacy’; those popes were indeed the only true Christian Popes of Rome (537-752).

That’s why the schism between Constantinople-New Rome and the Anti-Christian Rome became inevitable, after the Quinisext Council (Трулльский собор или Пято-шестой собор; 691-692). Following the Anti-Constantinopolitan rebellion of the Benedictines, who murdered the Pope Stephen I, successor to Pope Zachary (tenure: 741-752) and trusted member of the Constantinopolitan basileus, an illegal election took place in order to appoint the Anti-Constantinopolitan Stephen II (752-757), as a first act of disobedience against Roman-Constantinopolitan Christianity.  

The Quinisext Council was held under the auspices of Emperor Justinian II, who is commemorated as Saint of the Christian Orthodox Church on 2nd of August; the young Justinian II is depicted first from left, on the mosaic of his father, Emperor Constantine IV Pogonatus, in the basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna.

That’s why the Anti-Christian (and Anti-Roman) ‘Rome’ started then re-introducing the term ‘Greeks’ (‘Hellenes’) with reference to the only Romans, namely the Eastern Romans, slightly before the then forthcoming schism (863-7; Фотиева схизма).

That’s why, many centuries later, Hieronymus Wolf, a German Protestant but in fact real puppet of the Anti-Christian Catholic Jesuits, invented the ridiculous term ‘Byzantine’.

All this and much more was not only known to the Constantinopolitan basileus but also shared with/among the Kievan Rus monarchs.

V. Crusaders and Ottomans against the only Rome: Constantinople

The Crusades were not undertaken against the Islamic Caliphate, because in reality it already did not exist at the time; after the middle of the 9th c., the Abbasid caliph’s rule was only nominal. The theory of the anti-Islamic scope of the Crusades was invented and propagated only for the need of a smokescreen. Quite contrarily, the Crusades took place in order to prevent an Eastern Roman Reconquista of the Orient, which was then only a matter of time, if we take into consideration the successes of John I Tzimiskes, who in 975 annexed Homs, Damascus, Nazareth, Byblos, Beirut and Caesarea Maritima.

And the Ottomans, who were culturally Iranian, ethnically half Turanian and half Eastern Roman, but spiritually ‘Roman’ (i.e. Anti-Christian), due to their mystical attachment to, and cooperation with, the Hospitaller Order (in Smyrna/Izmir), caused a tremendous and calamitous prejudice to Islam by introducing (as per the directives given to them by their Catholic allies) the absolutely non-Islamic (concept and) institution of the ‘sheikhulislam’ – in order only to contribute to the Anti-Constantinopolitan policies and ‘global’ aspirations of the heretic Catholic ‘Rome’.

It was for this reason that, rightfully destroying the Ottoman forces at the Battle of Ankara (1402), Timur (Tamerlane) proceeded to Smyrna and terminated the ominous local rule of the Hospitaller Order.  

Timur (Tamerlane) depicted as granting audience; from the miniature of manuscript (1467 edition) of Sharaf al Din Ali Yazdi’s Zafarnama (1424–1428), which is the major historical source for the outstanding life and the brilliant deeds of the greatest Muslim Emperor of all times.

VI. Who the true Russians can be

Any Russian can say whatever he wants and do whatever pleases him, but no one can possibly be a Russian, unless he strictly follows the path taken and observes the practices implemented in 1472 by the Metropolitan Philip I of Muscovy and by Ivan III, who did not allow the papal legate Anthony to enter Moscow for the occasion of the wedding ceremony of Zoe-Sofia Palaiologina.

Sofia Palaiologina enters Moscow; according to a miniature of the Front Chronicle (Лицевой летописный свод; 1568-1576)

Back at those days, not one man in Ivan III’s Muscovy had an idea about the Trojan War, the Persian Wars, the racism of Aeschylus, the profanity of Aristophanes, the unprecedented scientific and intellectual theft perpetrated by the so-called ‘Greek philosophers’, and the governmental absurdity of disreputable idiots and crooks like Pericles, Alcibiades and all the rest. Actually, back in the 15th and 16th c., Muscovites and Russians were exactly like their Constantinopolitan Eastern Roman ancestors 1000 years earlier: free of the villainous fabrication of ‘Ancient Greece’ that the Benedictines had prepared for long, before launching the Renaissance and the associated conquistadores.

And this makes the aforementioned book so important for Russians; it demolishes a serious part of the Jesuit-Anti-Christian delusion ‘Ancient Greece’.

VII. The forgers of ‘Ancient Greece’, the Western World, and today’s Russia

In striking contrast to the educational practices of 16th c. Muscovy, today’s Russian educational system, academic and scientific environment, intellectual life, and cultural milieu do not reflect any more the values cherished by the those Russians, who were free of the Ancient Greek fallacy, void of the delusion of Hellenism, and unaffected by the moral degradation and the socio-political contamination that this Anti-Christian, Anti-Roman, Benedictine-Jesuit forgery entails.

The book under review in my earlier article, although not written (as the authors state explicitly) in a strictly academic manner, is able to (and actually has to) give an unprecedented hit to the bureaucratic Russian instructors, pedagogues, teachers, professors, researchers, explorers, scientists, intellectuals, thinkers and mystics, who have long been indulging themselves -in spite of their undeniable qualifications and accumulated knowledge- in catastrophic lethargy and destructive apathy opposite this very delusion, which stands at the very origin of all the serious threats that Russia has historically faced, and of all the real dangers that Russia has still to oppose and outmaneuver today.

It is actually bizarre, to say the least, that, in spite of 500 days of hostilities in Ukraine, the Russian academic-educational establishment did not participate in a manner fully reflecting the approach and the successive statements made in public by Pres. Putin, former Pres. Medvedev, and many other leading Russian statesmen. Yet, these dignitaries stated truthfully and clearly that a real war has been engaged in Ukraine between Russia and the West, pointing it out that this confrontation is not merely military, economic, and political, but it underscores serious discord, divide and polarization over key moral, intellectual and cultural values.

Today’s Russians have to come to terms with this fact: there is no discontinuity in the Western World ever since it was incepted with the Renaissance and the colonial conquests. In its true quintessence, colonialism is not a matter of military occupation, economic exploitation and political dictatorship, but it mainly consists in tyrannical imposition of the pre-fabricated (during Renaissance) and methodically exported (during the colonial conquests) Western model of fake culture and civilization; they wanted to (and they did) monstrously impose worldwide incessant, innumerable and interminable lies like the Trojan War, in order to totally and irreversibly control the mankind, by plunging all -first their own deceived and misled nations and later all the colonized nations- into a compact fake reality.

The inhumanity of the impermissible ‘unipolar world order’ has nothing to do with the rather unimportant fact of eight (8) billion people being run by one country; it has mainly to do with the entire mankind being entrapped in the evil delusion and the overwhelming forgery that the vicious intellectuals and the criminal academics of few dictatorial, uncivilized, corrupt and barbarian realms absurdly machinated and cruelly imposed. 

Homer’s texts were highly cherished and extensively utilized in the post-Renaissance anti-Christian, barbarian Western Europe, in striking contrast to what occurred in the Eastern Roman Empire where these obsolete and forgotten epics never became part of the Christian education and the militaristic culture of the average people. But the lofty values of the Eastern Roman Epic of Digenes Akritas and the cycle of the Acritic songs, which prevailed between Euphrates and Danube for many centuries, were highly embarrassing for the Satanic Papo-Caesarism of the Anti-Christian Rome and for the degenerate post-WW II Western Europe and North America. 

Akritai soldiers improve the combativeness and enhance the impulsiveness of the manly and gallant socio-imperial model (Caesaropapism), whereas the delusions propagated by the standard-bearers of the corrupt and perverse Papo-Caesarist concept end up in rotten societies, incest, pedophilia and other mental diseases.

One has to add that it is not only Homer’s epics that served as foundation for this Western European deception and delusion; the execrable and appalling Western European academic fraud comprised also several other ancient authors whose fallacious compositions helped the Benedictine monks fabricate the fake concepts of ‘Hellenism’, ‘Greco-Roman civilization’, ‘Judeo-Christian ethics’, ‘Mediterranean World’, ‘European Union’, ‘West vs. East’, ‘Humanism’, ‘Human Rights’, ‘Politics’, ‘Republic’, ‘Democracy’, etc. However, none of these concepts existed in the Eastern Roman Empire; none of them could possibly be accepted in Kievan Rus or Ivan Grozny’s Muscovy.  

VIII. De-Westernization: Russian universities’ need to launch a parallel ‘special operation’ 

The slow infiltration of these topics in the Russian society occurred mostly during the period of the ‘Westernization’ (i.e. intellectual-educational-cultural-political colonization) of the Romanov Empire (18th c.); as you know very well, this historical fact generated a genuine Russian indigenous reaction, which -very unfortunately- failed to block the Western perfidy and anti-Russian bias out of the country. Then, during the 19th and the early 20th c., the Russian imperial academic life had already become a mere replica of the French and English academic-educational institutions, which was tantamount to total De-Russification.

Under these circumstances, Nicholas II’s reign did not end in 1917 but, to speak truly, in 1895, when it just started. Who could be a real Russian emperor (like the first Romanov had been), if he reigned over French professors and English academics?

Laurits Regner Tuxen: the marriage of Nicholas II, Czar of Russia, with Alexandra Feodorovna Princess Alix of Hesse (26th November 1894) in the Imperial Chapel of the Winter Palace. Saint Nicholas II should have known that, with professors of ‘Classics’ and with intellectuals indoctrinated into Western European academic falsehood, his days were indeed numbered. In fact, the Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Shamanist and other populations of the Russian Empire were forced to pay the salaries of idiotic polymaths who were thoughtlessly diffusing anti-Russian, anti-religious, and anti-human concepts of the West and corrupting the entire population.

The book that I extensively reviewed in my aforementioned articles duly epitomizes Russia’s need for De-Westernization and re-Russification. This is exactly what Russia needs now. Russians cannot win without being Russian and without knowing that Russia’s territory hinges on the epicenter of World History, namely the arc that starts in Egypt and Syria-Mesopotamia, crosses Iran, Central Asia, and Siberia, and ends in Mongolia and China.

Contrarily to this fact, the viciously forged Western model of historiography, which starts with the fallacy of the Trojan War, makes of Russia a marginal wasteland needed only for barbarians to cross every now and then. Still, this deeply anti-Russian and utterly de-Russifying model of historiography is being respected, taught and propagated in Russian universities today; even Eurasian theorists in Russia fail to conceptualize the land of the Russian Federation as the epicenter of World History.  

Russia can never win when having an academic, educational, intellectual Trojan horse within the country’s borders; no one can. Worse, even if Russia finally wins in Ukraine, other countries will certainly benefit more, as long as Russia remains a Westernized/colonized realm whereby the utterly racist and discriminatory Western model of colonial historiography (with its Greco-centric, Anti-Trojan, Anti-Persian, and Anti-Oriental traits) is still accepted.

To avert this eventuality, following the heroic example of the brave Russian soldiers, officers, and state army leaders, the Russian academics and professors, intellectuals and educators, thinkers and scholars must wholeheartedly enter into another special operation, a parallel enterprise if you want, and carry out the urgently needed De-Westernization (decolonization) of the Russian educational system, academic and scientific environment, intellectual life, and cultural milieu.

Even more importantly, Russian professors and academics, following the path of their own government, must give new dimensions to the Russian-Chinese-Indian-Iranian alliance: academic, educational, intellectual and cultural.

It is only then that a Russian victory at the battlefield will have a historically deep meaning and a permanent, irrevocable impact.

IX. How Russian academics and intellectuals can participate in the special military operation

Launching their own, academic, educational, intellectual and cultural, ‘special operation’, Russian scholars have to undertake an enormous effort in order to bring about the total demolition of the academic-educational foundations of every discriminatory and racist concept, theory and political ideology worldwide.

This effort must be coordinated with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, because it must not only shape the new foundations of Russian education and academic life, but it has also to be systematically exported to Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Central-Eastern Europe. It has to help world scholars form a new historiographical model void of the racist concepts of ‘Hellenism’, ‘Greco-Roman civilization’, ‘Judeo-Christian ethics’, ‘Mediterranean World’, ‘European Union’, ‘West vs. East’, ‘Civilized West’, ‘Humanism’, ‘Human Rights’, ‘Politics’, ‘Republic’, ‘Democracy’ that were malignantly invented in colonial universities as tools for the worldwide dominance of England, France, Holland and later America.

The systematic effort must devalue, discredit and disparage the Western factories of falsehood named Cambridge, Oxford, Sorbonne, Harvard, Columbia, etc. and duly highlight their criminal role in the formation of today’s world, in the exploitation of smaller nations by the criminals of the Western colonial centers, in the bloodshed caused due to Western interventions, and in the prevailing ignorance among nations.

Russian scholars have therefore to contribute to

– the denunciation of the Western colonial academic falsehood,

– the rejection of all Western educational-academic attempts to diffuse racist versions or models (and then schools) of modern historiography,

– the refutation of Western Euro-centric academic-intellectual life,

– the rebuttal of the projection of the contemporary Western world’s fake values onto the past of other nations and ancient civilizations,

– the diffusion of continental (Asiatic, African, indigenous American, Central-Eastern European), regional and local systems of values,

– the promotion of the Afro-Eurasiatic cultural, moral, educational and academic interconnectedness,

– the consolidation of the Silk Road model of historiography, and

– the stimulation of Afro-Eurasiatic cultural consciousness, reciprocal awareness, and multilateral education.

Despite the fact that the Western world appears weakened, unstable and ailing in its entirety for the first time in 500 years, I am absolutely convinced that, even if various forms of socio-economic implosion come to happen in some of the leading Western countries, still a major danger will be lurking for all the countries that today seem to be forming an alliance around the BRICS and the SCO.

X. What if UK, US and EU implode and disintegrate, but Russia, China, India, and Iran do not carry out a vast project of worldwide De-Westernization?

This is due to the fact of the highly underestimated (if ever assessed) process of Westernization that the entire world underwent one way or another for many centuries; only the tip of the Westernization iceberg is easily discerned by many people worldwide. Unfortunately, the part that is clearly seen is the least important, as it concerns the military, economic and socio-political dimensions of the Westernization phenomenon.

All the same, a far deeper and most malignant form of Westernization occurred at the educational, academic, scientific, intellectual, mental, socio-behavioral, religious, spiritual and cultural levels, totally transforming almost all the other nations into Westernized, rather museological, forms of their own historical heritage.

Even worse, fake nations were fabricated in several locations, and at times, a colonially forged identity was effectively projected onto them; this was indeed the quintessence of colonialism. This fact means that it was not only Mughal India that was colonized by the Western colonial powers, but also Qajar Iran, which was subtly and gradually turned from a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-religious Iranian imperial ‘order’ into a nationalist Persian monarchy (‘Pahlavi’) known for the chaos among its many ‘minorities’.

The desire for a new multipolar world order may be overwhelming among many establishments worldwide; but as long as these governments, elites, societies, and nations do not envision, identify and undertake wide and deep De-Westernization practices, they will inevitably ‘function’ -not as paragons of cultural-national identity but- as Westernized replicas of their dead past.

In other words, they will experience exactly what happened to the genuinely Russian song Полюшко поле (Polyushko-polye) in the hands of Paul Mauriat, James Last or André Rieu. This concerns Iran, India, Turkey, Pakistan, China, Russia and many other countries; De-Westernization is not a political issue only.

Otherwise, even in case several major Western countries disintegrate within the next few years, today’s anti-Western allies (the BRICS and SCO member states), if they do not undergo a conscious De-Westernization process, will later pop up as nightmarish copies of pre-WW I France, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, Ottoman Empire, England, Japan, Iran and Italy – all duly and properly positioned on a differently arranged chessboard and ready to fight against one another again.

To prevent this from happening, a conscious De-Westernization effort must first be explored, then decided upon, and finally implemented within a wider context of systematic concertation among all the concerned nations. Russian scholars are better placed than all the rest to start the effort and wholeheartedly contribute to it.

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Russia, Ukraine and the World

An ongoing series of articles (around 62000 words)

Titles, Dates, Contents & Links  

Earlier Publications

From the Pandemic to the Special Operations in Russian Ukraine (3 April 2022)

1- A Critical Confrontation between Jesuits and Freemasons

2- The Pandemic and the Jesuit Eschatological Agenda (and how it has advanced throughout the last millennium)

3- The Multiple Dimensions of the Conflict between Russia and Ukraine

4- The Historical Facts

My position about Ukraine, Russia, and the Russian Special Operations in Russian Ukraine – in brief (15 April 2022)

1. Many people did not expect it, but I did

2. The plan to split Russia to 5-10 pieces

3. There is no Ukrainian language or nation

4. The negative impact of History

5. If Ukrainians are a nation, then Egypt’s Sa’idis are a nation too!

https://megalommatis.livejournal.com/25045.html

https://megalommatis.blogspot.com/2022/04/my-position-about-ukraine-russia-and.html

https://ok.ru/megalommatis/statuses/154562853352280

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_6737%2Fall

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The ongoing series of articles

Russia, Ukraine and the World-I: ‘Moscou, les Plaines d’Ukraine, et les Champs-Élysées’ (14 March 2023)

Russian Special Operation in Ukraine: One Year after – 24 February 2023

I- The Historical Background

II- Western Colonialism against Russia: Projection of Fake Concepts and Historical Falsehood onto Russian Elites

III- Western Bias: Russia’s Europeanization as De-Russification

IV- Where does the Fallacy of European Russia End?

V- False Identity for Russians means Defeat in the Great Game

VI- The Fall of the Romanov: due to the False Concept of ‘Russia as a European Empire’

https://www.academia.edu/98495216/Russia_Ukraine_and_the_World_I_Moscou_les_Plaines_dUkraine_et_les_Champs_%C3%89lys%C3%A9es

Russia, Ukraine and the World-II: 5000 Years of Russian Asiatic Identity vs. 500 Years of Anglo-French Racism & Colonialism (21 March 2023)

I. The Western Anti-Russian Bias

II. Skillful Western European Falsification of Russian History

A. Erroneous contextualization of Archaeology of Northern Asia

B. Deliberate use of overlapping terms: Northern Asia, Siberia, and Scythia

C. Prehistory and Ancient History of Northern Asia are subject to modern borders and to the meaningless attempts for ‘national archaeology’

D. Failure to discern Northern Asia in its entirety and true dimensions

E. Deliberate, multifaceted distortion of the Asiatic Turanian Migrations

F. Minimization of the cataclysmic presence and prevalence of the Turanian nations throughout Eastern Europe

G. European academia-backed biases: malignant disregard of the spiritual value of Kievan Rus, and absurd focus on ethnic, racial and linguistic considerations   

H. Erroneous focus on Kievan Rus and disastrous neglect for Volga Bulgaria

I. Concealment of the historical reality of the Turanian (‘Tatar-Mongol’) period

https://www.academia.edu/98873247/Russia_Ukraine_and_the_World_II_5000_Years_of_Russian_Asiatic_Identity_vs_500_Years_of_Anglo_French_Racism_and_Colonialism

Russia, Ukraine and the World-III: the need for a New UN or how UK, US, France and NATO must be defenestrated from the world (28 March 2023)

I. Ukraine or Ireland and Switzerland?

II. England, France, and the fake state ‘US’

III. Ukraine or Mexico?

IV. UK, France, US and NATO: the Enemies of the Mankind

V. The Fallacy of all Geopolitical Analyses

https://www.academia.edu/99242411/Russia_Ukraine_and_the_World_III_the_need_for_a_New_UN_or_how_UK_US_France_and_NATO_must_be_defenestrated_from_the_world

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_8657%2Fall

Russia, Ukraine & the World-IV: Continental Empires & Sea Powers – Russians’ Fake Friends & Only Enemy (4 April 2023)

Or how the Romanov collapsed only to the benefit of Serbs’ and Greeks’ Evil Elites

I. Prof. Huntington’s entirely misunderstood Book

II. The Serbian Delusion of Russians

III. The Clash of Civilization? A Mirage come True

IV. Spirituality & Universalism: Divine Earth vs. Unholy Sea

V. Civilized Continental Empires vs. Barbarian Sea Powers

VI. Continental Empires, Sea Powers, and Divisive Traps

VII. The ‘Greek Orthodox’ Delusion of Russians

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_8683%2Fall

https://www.academia.edu/99805121/Russia_Ukraine_and_the_World_IV_Continental_Empires_and_Sea_Powers_Russians_Fake_Friends_and_Only_Enemy

https://megalommatis.blogspot.com/2023/04/russia-ukraine-world-iv-continental.html

Russia, Ukraine and the World-V: the Educational Dimension of the Conflict as the Major Oversight of the Russians (11 April 2023)

I. The Political Sodomism of the Western World

II. The Educational Dimension of the Conflict as the Major Oversight of the Russians

https://www.academia.edu/100097324/Russia_Ukraine_and_the_World_V_the_Educational_Dimension_of_the_Conflict_as_the_Major_Oversight_of_the_Russians

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_8728%2Fall

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Thematically associated article:

The World needs Another United Nations (18 April 2023)

or how China, India, Russia, Muslim countries, Africa & Latin America can bring Peace, eliminating the West

I. UN: the origin of the problem

II. Multipolar world order, UN, and various delusions

III. A new UN: three different General Assemblies and proportional votes for the member states 

A. First General Assembly: proportional representation for states above 1 million people

B. Second General Assembly: one vote for all states under 1 million people

C. Third General Assembly: one vote per delegate of indigenous nations, oppressed peoples, and unrepresented ethno-religious groups

IV. A new UN: three levels of Security Council 

A. Security Council-I: Political-Military Affairs (10 most populated states)

B. Security Council-II: Economic-Environmental Affairs (15 most populated states)

C. Security Council-III: Cultural-Scientific-Intellectual Affairs (20 most populated states)

V. Headquarters and Official languages of the New UN

https://www.academia.edu/100488770/The_World_needs_Another_United_Nations

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_8870%2Fall

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Russia, Ukraine and the World-VI:  Aspects of the Imperative De-Westernization of the Russian Education (25 April 2023)

Discussion with an astute Russian reader

I. Introduction

II. How Western Europeans westernized Russians for 300 years

III. Unreliable Wikipedia

IV. Reading texts & reading in-between the lines of texts

V. Rejection of the fallacy of Hellenism: starting point of every effort of De-Westernization

VI. Why Shakespeare and the Western European Theater must be removed from the Russian, Chinese, Indian, African, Muslim and Latin American Education

VII. Shakespeare’s black magic trickery against the concept of Messiah, and his vicious hatred of Eschatology and Revelation

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_8960%2Fall

https://www.academia.edu/100895758/Russia_Ukraine_and_the_World_VI_Aspects_of_the_Imperative_De_Westernization_of_the_Russian_Education

Russia, Ukraine and the World-VII: From Stepan Razin to Yevgeny Prigozhin (27 June 2023)

From a Legendary Cossack Hero to an Intemperate Jewish Rascal

Greatest Strengths and Frailest Weaknesses of Russians: the Contrasting Elements of the Russian Soul

I. Inexorability of the Russian character

II. Russians are one, but Russias are many …

III. Patriotism laced with a latent notion of ‘border’

IV. When Universality becomes a problem

V. The perfection and the defect: the ‘Continental Man’ vs. the ‘Man of the Sea’

VI. The collapse of the USSR and the Yeltsin years

VII. The rise of the Putin team and the Russian ‘oligarchs’

VIII. Prigozhin, his rise and his farcical mutiny

IX. Sergei Shoigu, Liz Truss, Stepan Razin, and Voronezh    

X. Russianness, Brezhnev, Leonid Kharitonov, and Utyos

https://www.academia.edu/103925903/Russia_Ukraine_and_the_World_VII_From_Stepan_Razin_to_Yevgeny_Prigozhin

https://osf.io/aphtf

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_9569%2Fall

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Россия, Украина и мир продолжающийся цикл статей (около 62000 слов)

Названия, даты, содержание и ссылки

Предыдущие публикации

От пандемии к спецоперациям в российской Украине (3 апреля 2022 г.)

1. Критическая конфронтация между иезуитами и масонами

2. Пандемия и эсхатологическая повестка дня иезуитов (и как она развивалась на протяжении последнего тысячелетия)

3- Многогранность конфликта между Россией и Украиной

4- Исторические факты

Моя позиция об Украине, России и российских спецоперациях в российской Украине — кратко (15 апреля 2022 г.)

1. Многие не ожидали, а я дождался

2. План раскола России на 5-10 частей

3. Нет украинского языка или нации

4. Негативное влияние истории

5. Если украинцы – нация, то и египетские саиды – тоже нация!

https://megalommatis.livejournal.com/25045.html

https://megalommatis.blogspot.com/2022/04/my-position-about-ukraine-russia-and.html

https://ok.ru/megalommatis/statuses/154562853352280

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_6737%2Fall

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Продолжающийся цикл статей

Россия, Украина и мир-I: «Москва, равнины Украины и Елисейские поля» (14 марта 2023 г.)

Российская спецоперация в Украине: год спустя – 24 февраля 2023 г.

I- Историческая справка

II- Западный колониализм против России: проекция фальшивых концепций и исторической лжи на российские элиты

III- Западный уклон: европеизация России как дерусификация

IV- Где заканчивается заблуждение «европейской » России?

V- Ложная идентичность для россиян означает поражение в большой игре (в Войне теней)

VI- Падение Романовых: из-за ложной концепции «России как европейской империи»

https://www.academia.edu/98495216/Russia_Ukraine_and_the_World_I_Moscou_les_Plaines_dUkraine_et_les_Champs_%C3%89lys%C3%A9es

Россия, Украина и мир-II: 5000 лет русской азиатской идентичности против 500 лет англо-французского расизма и колониализма (21 марта 2023 г.)

I. Западный антироссийский уклон

II. Умелая западноевропейская фальсификация российской истории

А. Ошибочная контекстуализация археологии Северной Азии

B. Умышленное использование совпадающих терминов: Северная Азия, Сибирь и Скифия.

C. Предыстория и древняя история Северной Азии подчинены современным границам и бессмысленным попыткам «национальной археологии»

D. Неспособность различить Северную Азию во всей ее полноте и истинных размерах

E. Умышленное, многогранное искажение азиатско-туранских миграций.

F. Минимизация катастрофического присутствия и распространенности туранских народов по всей Восточной Европе.

G. Предубеждения, поддерживаемые европейскими академическими кругами: пагубное пренебрежение духовной ценностью Киевской Руси и абсурдная сосредоточенность на этнических, расовых и языковых соображениях.

H. Ошибочное внимание к Киевской Руси и пагубное пренебрежение к Волжской Булгарии

I. Сокрытие исторической реальности туранского («татаро-монгольского») периода

https://www.academia.edu/98873247/Russia_Ukraine_and_the_World_II_5000_Years_of_Russian_Asiatic_Identity_vs_500_Years_of_Anglo_French_Racism_and_Colonialism

Россия, Украина и мир-III: необходимость новой ООН или как Великобритания, США, Франция и НАТО должны быть дефенестрированы от мира (28 марта 2023 г.)

I. Украина или Ирландия и Швейцария?

II. Англия, Франция и фальшивое государство «США»

III. Украина или Мексика?

IV. Великобритания, Франция, США и НАТО: враги человечества

V. Ошибочность всех геополитических анализов

https://www.academia.edu/99242411/Russia_Ukraine_and_the_World_III_the_need_for_a_New_UN_or_how_UK_US_France_and_NATO_must_be_defenestrated_from_the_world

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_8657%2Fall

Россия, Украина и мир-IV: Континентальные империи и морские державы – фальшивые друзья и единственный враг россиян (4 апреля 2023 г.)

Или как Романовы рухнули только в пользу злых элит сербов и греков

I. Совершенно неправильно понятая книга профессора Хантингтона

II. Сербское заблуждение русских

III. Столкновение цивилизаций? Сбывшийся мираж

IV. Духовность и универсализм: Божественная Земля против Нечестивого Моря

V. Цивилизованные континентальные империи против варварских морских держав

VI. Континентальные империи, морские державы и разделительные ловушки

VII. ‘Греческое православное’ заблуждение русских

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_8683%2Fall

https://www.academia.edu/99805121/Russia_Ukraine_and_the_World_IV_Continental_Empires_and_Sea_Powers_Russians_Fake_Friends_and_Only_Enemy

https://megalommatis.blogspot.com/2023/04/russia-ukraine-world-iv-continental.html

Россия, Украина и мир-V: образовательное измерение конфликта как главный недосмотр россиян (11 апреля 2023 г.)

I. Политический содомизм западного мира

II. Образовательная составляющая конфликта как главный недосмотр россиян

https://www.academia.edu/100097324/Russia_Ukraine_and_the_World_V_the_Educational_Dimension_of_the_Conflict_as_the_Major_Oversight_of_the_Russians

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_8728%2Fall

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Тематически связанная статья:

Миру нужна еще одна Организация Объединенных Наций (18 апреля 2023 г.)

или как Китай, Индия, Россия, мусульманские страны, Африка и Латинская Америка могут принести мир, устранив Запад

I. ООН: происхождение проблемы

II. Многополярный миропорядок, ООН и разные заблуждения

III. Новая ООН: три разных Генеральных ассамблеи и пропорциональные голоса для государств-членов

A. Первая Генеральная Ассамблея: пропорциональное представительство для штатов с населением более 1 миллиона человек.

B. Вторая Генеральная Ассамблея: один голос для всех штатов с населением менее 1 миллиона человек.

C. Третья Генеральная ассамблея: один голос на делегата от коренных народов, угнетенных народов и непредставленных этнорелигиозных групп.

IV. Новая ООН: три уровня Совета Безопасности

A. Совет Безопасности-I: Военно-политические вопросы (10 наиболее густонаселенных штатов)

B. Совет Безопасности-II: Экономические и экологические вопросы (15 наиболее густонаселенных штатов)

C. Совет Безопасности-III: культурно-научно-интеллектуальные вопросы (20 наиболее густонаселенных штатов)

V. Штаб-квартира и официальные языки новой ООН

https://www.academia.edu/100488770/The_World_needs_Another_United_Nations

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_8870%2Fall

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Россия, Украина и мир-VI: аспекты императивной девестернизации российского образования (25 апреля 2023 г.)

Обсуждение с проницательным русским читателем

I. Введение

II. Как западноевропейцы вестернизировали русских за 300 лет

III. Ненадежная Википедия

IV. Чтение текстов и чтение между строк текста

V. Опровержение заблуждения эллинизма: отправная точка всех усилий по девестернизации

VI. Почему Шекспира и западноевропейский театр надо убрать из русского, китайского, индийского, африканского, мусульманского и латиноамериканского образования

VII. Шекспир и его черная магия против концепции Мессии и его яростная ненависть к эсхатологии и Откровению

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_8960%2Fall

https://www.academia.edu/100895758/Russia_Ukraine_and_the_World_VI_Aspects_of_the_Imperative_De_Westernization_of_the_Russian_Education

Россия, Украина и мир-VII: от Степана Разина до Евгения Пригожина (27 июня 2023 г.)

От легендарного казака-богатыря до распутного еврейского пройдохи Величайшие сильные и слабые стороны россиян: контрастные элементы русской

I. Непреклонность русского характера

II. Все русские – один человек, но всероссийских земель много

III. Патриотизм, пропитанный скрытым понятием «граница»

IV. Когда универсальность становится проблемой

V. Совершенство и недостаток: «континентальный человек» против «человека моря»

VI. Распад СССР и годы Ельцина

VII. Подъем путинской команды и российские олигархи

VIII. Пригожин, его возвышение и его фарсовый мятеж

IX. Сергей Шойгу, Лиз Трасс, Степан Разин и Воронеж

X. Русскость, Брежнев, Леонид Харитонов и Утёс

https://www.academia.edu/103925903/Russia_Ukraine_and_the_World_VII_From_Stepan_Razin_to_Yevgeny_Prigozhin

https://osf.io/aphtf

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_9569%2Fall

———— Elements of Multipolar and Multicultural Historiography ————-

In this gallery, I offer 24 selected samples of common historical heritage that must become part of the multipolar and multilateral historical educational model worldwide in replacement of the Eurocentric colonial and racist falsehood that people across the Earth have been forced to learn as ‘History of Mankind’.

Mogao Cave 285, China

Mausoleum of Genghis Khan, Ordos–Inner Mongolia, China

Taxila, Punjab-Pakistan: Ancient Buddhist carvings at the Jaulian Monastery

Ajanta Caves, India

Sogdian murals in Afrasiab – Samarqand, Uzbekistan

From Balami’s Tarikhnama: the Sassanid general Wahraz kills the Abyssinian king Masruq of Axum. Early 14th c. copy of an earlier manuscript of the Samanid-period

Gur-i Emir (Timur’s Mausoleum), Samarqand

Bishapur Cave and the colossal statue of Shapur I

Rabban Hormizd Monastery, Alqosh – Mosul, North Iraq

Rabban Hormizd Monastery, Alqosh – Mosul, North Iraq

The birth of Alexander the Great; manuscript miniature from Nizami Ganjavi’s Sekander nameh

Manuscript miniature from Shota Rustaveli’s Vepkhistkaosani (the Knight in the panther’s skin)

From a 14th c. Armenian manuscript: Movses Khorenatsi and the naharar (nobleman) and military commander Sahak Bagratuni

Wall painting from the Aramaean Synagogue of Dura Europos (near Abu Kemal, Syria); representation of the Hebrews crossing the Red Sea

Pre-Islamic times’ Christian (probably Nestorian) king of Himyar, Yemen

The Serapeum of Saqqara, Egypt

Representation of the warrior Queen Amanitore vanquishing enemies on the pylon of a temple at Naqa, near Meroe (: Ancient Ethiopia), Sudan

Wall painting from Dongola Agouza (Old Dunqulah), capital of the Christian Cushitic kingdom of Makuria in North Sudan

Medracen mausoleum of the Numidian kings near Batna, Algeria

Cathedral of St. Basil, Moscow

Mayan relief

Toltec relief depicting an eagle

Imperial art of the Incas

Ahriman attempting to seduce Eva while Adam in arriving: manuscript miniature from Al Biruni’s Chronology

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Download the article (text only) in PDF:

Download the article (with pictures and legends) in PDF:

Sassanid Iran – Turan, Kartir, Roman Empire, Christianity, Mani and Manichaeism

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/&nbsp; and

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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:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mani_(prophet)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaean_alphabet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Seals_(Manichaeism)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabuhragan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapur_I

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arzhang

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mani

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elcesaites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Mada%27in

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormizd_I

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahram_I

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahram_II

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletianic_Persecution#Manichean_persecution

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/kartir

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kartir

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kartir%27s_inscription_at_Naqsh-e_Rajab

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naqsh-e_Rajab

https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gundeshapur

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Thomas_Christians

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Arda_Viraf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isra_and_Mi%27raj

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf#In_culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergenekon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_Wolves_(organization)#Name_and_symbolism

——————————- Sassanid Iranian Art —————————

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

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Download  the entire chapter (text only) in PDF:

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Iran–Turan, Manichaeism & Islam during the Migration Period and the Early Caliphates

By Prof. Muhammet Şemsettin Gözübüyükoğlu (Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis)

Pre-publication of chapter XVI 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 XIV, XV and XVI belong 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. 

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Hsiung-nu soldier from Saksanokhur, Tajikistan

However, soon afterwards, Europe faced two major threats that lasted many centuries: the Islamic armies and the Manichaean subversion. Despite their ferocity and their conquests, at a certain point the Islamic armies were stopped either in Western or in Eastern Europe. But the Manichaean tidal wave that hit Europe back was disproportional and beyond any expectation. Starting from the Eastern Roman Empire and the entire Caucasus region and as early as the 7th c. CE, the Paulicians triggered an enormous religious, social and imperial destabilization across vast lands. The famous Eastern Roman Akritai, i.e. the imperial Eastern Roman guards and frontal forces against the Islamic Caliphate, were – all – Paulicians, having rejected the Christian Orthodox Constantinopolitan theology. Digenes Akritas, the Eastern Roman Empire’s greatest hero and Modern Greeks’ most revered and foremost legendary figure was a Paulician, not an Orthodox.

Constantinopolitan patriarchs, emperors and theologians persistently described the Paulicians as Manichaeans; they used the same term also for the Iconoclasts. This does not mean that these religious, spiritual and esoteric systems of faith were ‘Manichaean’ stricto sensu, but they were definitely formed under determinant Manichaean impact. The same concerns the Bogomiles across the Balkans, Central and Western Europe, starting in the 10th c., the Cathars across Western Europe from the 12th c. onwards, and also many other religious, spiritual and esoteric systems that derived from the aforementioned.

The Muslim friends, partners and associates of the Paulicians were also groups formed under strong Manichaean impact and historically viewed as such; known as Babakiyah or Khurramites or Khorram-dinan, the 8th c. religious group setup by Sunpadh and led in the 9th c. by Babak Khurramdin made an alliance with the Eastern Roman Emperor Theophilos (829-842), an outstanding Iconoclast, and not only repeatedly revolted against the Abbasid Caliphate but also fought along with the Eastern Roman army in 837 in the Anti-Taurus Mountains to recapture Melitene (Malatya), and on many other occasions. The Khurramite commander Nasir and 14000 Iranian Khurramite rebels had no problem in being baptized Iconoclast Christians and taking Greek names (Nasir became then known as Theophobos), which shows the Manichaean origins and affinities of the Iconoclasts and the Khurramites. 

The state of the Paulicians

The massacre of the Paulicians

Kale-ye Babak, the impregnable castle of the Babakiyah (or Khurramites) near Kaleybar – East Azerbaijan, Iran

Afshin brings Babak as captive in Samarra. from a manuscript miniature of the Safavid times

Babak Khorramdin statue from Babek city in Nakhchivan province of Azerbaijan

Within the context of early Islamic caliphates, the Manicheans prospered, definitely marked by their superiority in terms of spirituality, letters, sciences, philosophy and cosmology. It was relatively easy for them to reinterpret the Quran as a Manichaean scripture; it was totally impossible for the uneducated and naïve early Muslims to oppose Manicheans in open debate or to outfox Manichaean interpretative schemes. Among the leading Muslim erudite polymaths, mystics, poets and translators of the early period of Islamic Civilization (7th – 8th c.), many defended all major pillars of the Manichaean doctrine and even the dualist dogma; Ibn al Muqaffa is an example. The illustrious translator of the Middle Persian literary masterpiece Kalila wa Dimna into Arabic was a crypto-Manichaean Muslim, and surely he was not the only. Ibn al Muqaffa was executed as per the order of Caliph al-Mansur (754-775), but the first persecution of the Manicheans started only under the Caliph al-Mahdi (775-785); however, this was the time many groups and movements or Manichean origin started openly challenging Islam and the Caliphate in every sense. However, it is noteworthy that the greatest Caliph of all times, Harun al Rashid (786-809), had a very tolerant and friendly stance toward Manicheans of all types.

Abu’l Abbas al-Saffah proclaimed as the first Abbasid Caliph: the Abbasid dynasty opened the door for a cataclysmic Iranian cultural, intellectual, academic, scientific and spiritual impact on the Muslim world.

However, it is only as late as the time of Caliph al-Muqtadir (908-932) that the Manicheans, persecuted in the Caliphate, left Mesopotamia in big numbers, making of Afrasiab (Samarqand) and Central Asia the center of their faith, life and activities. This was not a coincidence; many Turanians had already been long date enthusiastic Manichean converts and adepts, whereas several Manichaean monuments unearthed in Central Asia date back to the 4th c. At the time of al-Mansur, the Uyghur Khaqan (: Emperor) Boku Tekin accepted Manichaeism as official state religion in 763; the Uyghur Khaqanate stretched from the Tian Shan mountains and the Lake Balkhash (today’s Kazakhstan) to the Pacific. For more than one century, Manichaeism was the state religion across the entire Northeastern Asia.

During the same time, Manichaeism was diffused in Tibet and China. Similarly with what occurred in the Islamic Caliphate, Manicheans in Tibet and China had it easy to reinterpret Buddhism in Manichaean terms. As a matter of fact, Chinese Buddhism is full of Manichaean impregnations. For this reason, several anti-Buddhist Chinese emperors (like Wuzong of Tang in the period 843-845) confused the Manicheans with the Buddhists and persecuted them too. However, Manichaeism was for many centuries a fundamental component and a critical parameter of all social, spiritual, intellectual and religious developments in China. And this was due to the incessant interaction of Turanians and Iranians across Asia. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulicianism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Iconoclasm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akritai

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digenes_Akritas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khurramites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunpadh

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/korramis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babak_Khorramdin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophilos_(emperor)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophobos

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogomilism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Muqaffa%27

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_Khaganate

During the Sassanid and early Islamic periods, the central provinces of Iran had to embrace many Turanian newcomers. This was one of the numerous Turanian waves that the Iranian plateau and its periphery had to welcome across the millennia. A vast and critical topic of the World History that was excessively distorted and systematically misrepresented across various disciplines of the Humanities is the chapter of the major Eurasiatic Migrations. Various distorting lenses have been used in this regard. It is surely beyond the scope of the present chapter to outline this subject, but I must at least mention it with respect to the persistent Orientalist efforts to divide and dissociate Iranian from Turanian nations across several millennia.

If one accepts naively the ‘official’ dogma of Western colonial historiography, one imagines that all the world’s major civilizations (Sumerians, Elamites, Akkadians-Assyrians/Babylonians, Egyptians, Cushites-Sudanese, Hittites, Hurrians, Urartu, Phoenicians, Iranians, Greeks, Romans, Dravidians, Chinese, etc.) were automatically popped up and instantly formed by settled populations. Modern historians, who compose this sort of nonsensical narratives, are monstrous gangsters intending to desecrate human civilization and to extinguish human spirituality. All civilizations were started by nomads, and there was always a time when all indigenous nations (each of them in its own turn) were migrants.

But modern Western historians intentionally and criminally misrepresent the major Eurasiatic Migrations in a most systematic and most sophisticated manner, by only introducing – partly and partially – aspects of this overwhelming and continual phenomenon, like spices on gourmet dishes. I do not imply that the Eurasiatic Migrations were the only to have happened or to have mattered; there were also important migrations in Africa, the Pacific, and the continent of the Aztecs, the Mayas and the Incas. However, I limit the topic to the migrations that are relevant to the History of Iran and Turan. So, those who study Ancient Roman History are customarily told that, ‘although everything was fine and civilized Romans prospered in peace’, suddenly some iniquitous barbarians arrived to invade Roman lands and to embarrass the civilized settled populations altogether; this type of bogus-historical presentations is a Crime against the Mankind, because it distorts the foremost reality of human history, namely that we have all been migrants.

There is no worst bigotry worldwide than that of settled populations.

Yet, every manual of history would be easily rectified, if few extra chapters were added, at the beginning and during the course of the narration, to offer an outline of parallel developments occurred in the wider and irrevocbly indivisible Eurasia.

The discriminatory, truly racist, manner by which the civilized migrants are presented in various manuals of (Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Cushitic, Anatolian, Roman, Greek, European, Russian, Iranian, Dravidian, and Chinese) History helps only reinstate the vicious and immoral axiom that ‘History is written by the victors’. Every historian, who does not consciously write in an objective manner to reveal the truth and to reject the paranoia of the aforementioned adage, is an enemy of the Mankind.   

Beyond the aforementioned points, many historians today will try to find an excuse, saying that, by writing about let’s say the so-called ‘barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire’, they intentionally reflect the Roman viewpoint, because they rely on Roman historical sources. This could eventually be accepted, if stated in 1820, when the modern science of history had not advanced much, and only few archaeological excavations had taken place. But if this is seriously expressed as an apology today, it constitutes an outrage. The least one can say to these forgers is that they must first obtain an interdisciplinary degree, before publishing their nonsensical manual, or – alternatively – study several paperbacks on the History of the Migrant Nations (in this case: Huns, Vandals, Goths, etc.).  

An even greater mistake that modern historians make is that they present the continual phenomenon of Eurasiatic migrations in a most fragmentary manner; this creates, by means of Nazi propaganda, the wrong idea and the distorted impression that all of a sudden, every now and then, new migrants appear in the horizon, coming out of the vast Asiatic ‘nowhere’. This is an aberration and a fallacy. The absurd factoid, which is deceitfully called “Invasions of the Roman Empire” and is peremptorily dated between 100 CE and 500 CE, is merely an academic fabrication. Why?

First, there were incessant migrations before and after the said period.

Second, the aforementioned factoid is a fallacy due to the fact that, during the same period, other migrations took also place, but the specialists in Roman History do not mention (or even do not know) them; however, these migrations (that they fail to even name) constitute intertwined phenomena with those that they present in their manuals, and consequently their presentation is a conscious and plain distortion.

Third, the events are always portrayed as a menace of barbarism, as breach of Roman legitimacy, and as violation of a hypothetical right of the Roman Empire to exist. This is an outrage; the Roman Empire was not a sacrosanct institution. In many aspects, its lawless formation, barbaric expansion, and bloody wars constitute some of the World History’s bleakest pages. But criminal colonial historians never discussed ‘unpleasant’ topics with the correct terminology; they did not write for instance about the barbarian Roman demolition of Carthage, the monstrous Roman sack of Corinth, the savage Roman invasion of Seleucid Syria or the lawless Roman annexation of Egypt.

This is the disgusting bias of the Western colonial historiographers: when a negative development takes place against Rome, it is ‘bad’; and quite contrarily, when an undesirable occurrence happens to others, it is ‘good’. And in order to represent this vicious bias as ‘historical truth’, they mobilize a great intellectual effort, involving many methods. In this regard, the Eurasiatic migrations are absurdly fractured into many parts, and many of these parts are deliberately concealed, when focus is made on only one of them. The pseudo-academic methods involved to disguise and conceal the topic are numerous.

First, some migrations are not presented as such, but named after the migrant nations; examples: Scythians, Sarmatians, Celts. And yet, these nations are basically known due to their migrations across vast lands.

Second, other migrations are not mentioned as such, but called after the name of the location where excavations brought to light the material remains of a migrant nation’s civilization; example: Andronovo culture, Afanasievo culture, etc.

Third, several migrant nations of different origin are regrouped after the geography where they spread; this is totally paranoid, because no one can possibly ‘regroup’ the Vandals, who crossed Central and Western Europe, reached North Africa, settled in Hippo Regius and Carthage, and then attacked Greece, Sicily, Rome, Sardinia, Corsica and the Iberian coastlands, with the Huns, who crossed Siberia, Russia, and Ukraine, settled in Eastern Europe and attacked the Balkans, Italy and Gaul.

Fourth, several migrant nations are dissociated from one another migrant nation of the same ethnic origin (example: Huns and Turkic nations), whereas in cases of severe distortion, different names of the same nation, attested in diverse historical sources, are tentatively presented as names of two different nations (example: Huns and Hsiung nu whose name is erroneously spelled Xiongnu).

Fifth, several parts of migrant nations are arbitrarily dissociated from their ethnic counterparts and presented separately as settled nations (example: White Huns or Hephthalites).

Sixth, the ethnic origin of several migrant nations is confusingly presented (example: the Bulgars, who were a Turkic nation, are often included in Europe’s ‘Migration Period’ and categorized along with Slavs, whereas they should have been mentioned in the ‘Turkic migrations’!).

To the aforementioned inaccuracies, distortions and prejudices, a plethora of false maps is added to comfortably reduce the size of kingdoms, empires and nations whose existence did not happen to please the discriminatory minds of the perverse Anglo-French and American colonial historians. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andronovo_culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afanasievo_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarmatians

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythians

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_migration

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hephthalites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6kt%C3%BCrks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Turkic_Khaganate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumania

The end result of this systematization of Western colonial falsehood is that great and highly civilized conquerors and emperors like Attila, Genghis Khan, Hulagu Khan, Kublai Khan, Timur Lenk and others appear as mysterious meteorites, who came from “nowhere”, as barbarian invaders, and a “scourges of God”, whereas in reality they all (and many others) were far more educated, more cultured, more competent and more heroic than any Greek, Macedonian, Roman or European king or general. To the aforementioned historical reality additional, deceitful tactics and insidious procedures have been added by the criminal, racist, Western European and North American ‘historians’: they definitely proved to be able to write 100000 words to deplore the destructions supposedly caused to the Human Civilization by Attila, Genghis Khan, Hulagu Khan, and others, but when they happen to write about the fact that Alexander the Great burned Persepolis, they remain malignantly and partially silent, abstaining from any due criticism. 

King Attila with the Turul bird in his shield (Chronicon Pictum, 1358)

It would be far easier for all to tell the truth: ‘Asia is Turan’ for most of its territory. And the moral lesson must be drawn: the existence of a ‘state’ is not a reason for anyone not to invade its lands. States are not sacrosanct; and in any case, the territory occupied by the nation that setup the local state, in all cases of historical states, was also invaded by the ancestors of that nation in the first place.

The biased Western colonial historians carry out all these distortions as tasks in order to promote the lawless interests of their own disreputable states; for this reason they always concealed the following unwavering reality: throughout World History, various fundamental concepts like ‘land’, ‘state’, ‘nation’, ‘sacred place’, etc. have had different connotations among nations of nomadic migrants and nations of settled populations.

Furthermore, several fundamental concepts, which are valid among settled nations, have no validity at all among nomads and migrant nations, and vice versa. In addition, some basic concepts that exist among nomads and migrant nations start being altered and becoming different if and when these nations happen to settle somewhere ‘permanently’. The concept of ‘universe’ and the deriving imperative of ‘universalism’ are fundamental notions of nomads and migrant nations; notably, the Akkadians (early Assyrians – Babylonians), who first produced significant literary narratives to detail the concept, were also a migrant nation that had settled only few centuries before writing down in cuneiform texts their world views.

The History of Eurasiatic Migrations, in and by itself, highlights the extensive presence of Turanians in Iran since times immemorial. Thanks to the Turanians of the Achaemenid Empire, the Turkic nations of Central Asia, China and Siberia came to get detailed descriptions of faraway regions and lands, such as Mesopotamia, Syria-Palestine, the Caucasus Mountains, the Anatolian plateau, the plains of Ukraine and Central Europe, the Balkan Peninsula, and Egypt. Consequently, further the interaction between Iran and Rome progressed, more details about the western confines of Europe reached the Turanian nomads who were moving around Lake Balkhash (Kazakhstan), Yenisey River and Baikal Lake (Siberia), Orkhon River (Mongolia), the Tarim Basin (China), the Oymyakon River (Yakutia, Eastern Siberia) and other circumferences. The incessant waves of migrations to the West and to the South were not blind and desperate movements of uninformed barbarians, who ran like crazy on their horses; only the distorted publications of Western colonial historians contain similar, nonsensical conclusions.

The pattern of the Turanian military horsemen and skillful soldiers is absolutely prominent and protruding in the History of the Early Caliphates; but it is merely the continuation of a millennia long tradition. This consists in a very embarrassing fact for all the Western Orientalists specializing in Early Islamic History, and more particularly with focus on the 8th c. CE, the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate, and the rise of Abbasid Baghdad. They therefore constantly come up with incredible assumptions, farfetched arguments, nonsensical explanations, and sly innuendos to explain how and why so many Turanian soldiers and military heads appear in the Islamic Caliphate. In fact, without Turanian military skills, the Umayyad dynasty of Damascus may have not been overthrown.

It is well known that the early Islamic armies advanced up to Merv in today’s Turkmenistan (651) and they stopped there. For the next hundred years, the only Islamic advance in Asia was effectuated only in today’s Baluchistan province of Pakistan; only at the end of the 7th c. and the beginning of the 8th c., the Islamic armies reached the Indus Delta and Gujarat. But how the Islamic Caliphate started being flooded with Turanian soldiers as early as the last decades of the Umayyad rule, if there had not already been massive Turanian populations in the Sassanid Empire of Iran? If the Turanian nations were confined ‘somewhere in Eastern Siberia and Mongolia’ (as per the distortions of colonial Orientalists), why did they appear to be so deeply involved in battles and developments that took place in Mesopotamia and Syria during the first half of the 8th c.? The answer to this question is very simple: there were always massive Turanian populations in the Pre-Islamic Iranian empires.

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