Selim I, Ismail I, and Babur

Pre-publication of chapter XIX of my forthcoming book “Turkey is Iran and Iran is Turkey – 2500 Years of indivisible Turanian – Iranian Civilization distorted and estranged by Anglo-French Orientalists”; chapters XXVII to XXXII form Part Eleven (How and why the Ottomans, the Safavids and the Mughals failed) of the book, which is made of 12 parts and 33 chapters. Chapters XXVII and XXVIII have already been pre-published.

Until now, 21 chapters have been uploaded as partly pre-publication of the present book; this chapter is therefore the 22nd (out of 33) to be uploaded. At the end of the text, the entire Table of Contents is made available. Pre-published chapters are marked in blue color, and the present chapter is highlighted in gray color. 

In addition, a list of all the already pre-published chapters (with the related links) is made available at the very end, after the Table of Contents.

The book is written for the general readership with the intention to briefly highlight numerous distortions made by the racist, colonial academics of Western Europe and North America only with the help of absurd conceptualization and preposterous contextualization.

References made to entries of the Wikipedia offer average readers a starting point for their research; they do not signify acceptance and approval of their contents.

———————–  

Certainly, the Safavid Empire was not the first Islamic state established by a mystical order; but earlier states launched by mystical orders were either set up in small and remote territories as form of local resistance against the Islamic Caliphate like the Babakiyah (Khurramites) or organized as a secret subversive movement coordinated from mysterious, faraway, unreachable and impregnable headquarters, like those of the Hashashin Isma’ilis (known as Assassins in Western literature). In this regard, at the level of governance, the main difference between the Safavids and the Isma’ilis was the fact that the latter did not try or even plan to proclaim an empire, whereas the former, even before solemnly announcing their empire, felt that they had the task to entirely reshape the Islamic world.

Selim I

Ismail I Safavi

Babur

The Safavid Order had the apocalyptic, eschatological and messianic feeling that their task would be the only way to save the Islamic world; they felt that they had the divinely bestowed obligation to institute a secular empire across the Islamic world, which would be based on spiritual values, moral virtues, cultural traditions, and epic revival. The name of the empire was no lees imperial than the following expression: “the Realm of the Outspread Universe of Iran” (ملک وسیع‌الفضای ایران /Molk-e vasi-ye fezaye Eran); one understands automatically the importance of Ferdowsi’s epic narrative and the cosmological dimension that Safavid spirituality gave to the state that the venerable members of the Order launched. The term ‘Iran’ does not denote either the territory of a nation/ethnic group or the land controlled by a state; all these divisive, nonsensical, modern notions were nonexistent at the time. In the very beginning of the Safavid times, the term ‘Iran’ was not even used.

Prof. Ali Anooshahr, speaking at the symposium “The Idea of Iran: The Safavid Era” (https://www.soas.ac.uk/lmei-cis/events/idea-of-iran/27oct2018-the-idea-of-iran-the-safavid-era.html; Center for Iranian Studies, SOAS; 27 October 2018) about the topic “Historiographical perceptions of the transmission from Timurid to Safavid Iran”, explained how historians of the early 16th c. dealt with the transition from the Timurid to the Safavid period. His speech is available here (from 8:10 until 46:19): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkvUfU2ruKM

The most important historians of the early Safavid times were Ghiyath ad-Din Muhammad Khwandamir (Habib al-Siyar; Khulasatu-l Akhbar; Dasturu-l Wuzra), Abdallah Hatefi (Khamsa), Amini Haravi (Futuhat-e shahi), Fazli Khuzani Esfahani (Afzal al-tawarih), and Fazl-Allah Khonji Esfahani (Tarih-e alamara-ye amini).

It is interesting to herewith include selected excerpts from Prof. Anooshahr’s well-founded speech, notably (11:30 onwards/no editing involved):

“There was no idea of something called Iran in this transition period”.

“The word ‘Iran’ only shows in Amini’s book twice; once is paired with Turan; and then immediately afterward, when the Rumi (: Roman) envoy shows up on behalf of the Ottoman Emperors”.

“As far as the people of the time were concerned, the actual participants in these events, they had no idea of Iran, and this was not because they were alien or unpatriotic, in fact they were non-patriotic, because there is no patriotism; this was because they had a radically different idea of territory than we do today. So, in our modern conception, people are defined as a nation, they own the land that they live on, and this land has a particular characteristic that is shared between it and all the people”.

“When Amini writes about territory, he sublimates it by using the Quran and comparing it to heaven; he does not connect it to any kind of territorial identity at all”.

“The establishment of Twelver Shi’ism, based on this text, does not seem to be that important. And then the establishment of a kind of Ancient Persian Empire is actually not on their agenda”.

As a matter of fact, Safavid Iran was the entire universe for the members of the Safavid Order, and as such it had no ethnic/national dimension or character and no religious identity. Spirituality was all that mattered. Even more importantly, it was not proclaimed only to encompass the territories that the Safavid emperors finally controlled, as Western Iranologists perniciously suggest, perversely viewing the Safavid empire’s territory as simply a larger ‘version’ of the modern pseudo-state of Iran. For the members of the Safavid Order, “Molk-e vasi-ye fezaye Eran” had the divinely entrusted task to contain the entire circumference of the Islamic world.   

Four major monarchs between Rome and China

Between Rome and China, four persons, who played a determinant role in the final formation of major empires and in the final delineation of their borders, were born between 1450 and 1487.  In chronological order they are as per below:

i. Muhammad Shaybani (Muhammad Shaybani Khan or Abul-Fath Shaybani Khan; 1451-1510), grandson of Abu’l-Khayr Khan, and Genghisid founder of the Khanate of Bukhara (1500), one of the empires that were formed after the split of the Golden Horde and demise of the precarious Uzbek Khanate; he evidently did not make any distinction between a) Turanians and Iranians (which shows the extent of the completed ethnic Turanization of Iran) and b) those who are fallaciously called today ‘Shia’ and ‘Sunni’ by colonial Orientalists, diplomats or statesmen and Islamic terrorists and extremists alike.

Muhammad Shaybani; 16th c. portrait painted by the famous Iranian artist Kemaleddin Behzad

The fight between Shah Ismail I and Muhammad Shaybani (1510); from the manuscript Tarikh-i alam-aray-i Shah Ismail (the world adorning History of Shah Ismail)

Bukhara; Chor-Bakr burial place constructed under Muhammad Shaybani (1505-1510)

The state of Muhammad Shaybani

ii. Selim I (سليم اول / Yavuz Sultan Selim; 1470-1520), grandson of Mehmed II and son of Bayezid II; he ruled the Eastern Roman Empire only for eight years (1512-1520), but he was by far the most important sultan of the 600-year long dynasty for having expanded the Ottoman territories more than any other. Then, there was no ‘Ottoman Empire’; not one man used that term at the time. The term ‘State of the Ottoman family’ (دولت عليه عثمانیه‎ / Devlet-i ‘Alīye-i Osmaniyeh) was introduced centuries later. Selim I was the Padishah (پادشاه‎), i.e. the ‘Great King’, thus bearing an Iranian title that goes back to the early Achaemenids who antedated him by two millennia. Selim I was also (βασιλεύς Ρωμαίων / Imperator Romanorum / قیصر روم‎ / Qaysar-i Rum, lit. “Caesar of the Romans”) like his father and grandfather after 1453, because Mehmed II claimed the title after conquering Constantinople, George of Trebizond endorsed the claim, considering Mehmed II as emperor of the world, and Gennadius Scholarius, Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, fully recognized the title.

The state of Selim I was also viewed by others as the Roman Empire (in the sense of the Eastern Roman Empire, because the Western Roman Empire ceased to exist in 476 CE). From the aforementioned speech of Prof. Ali Anooshahr, I quote another excerpt here (exactly after 12:07 in the above mentioned video and link):

“I am referring to what we call ‘the Ottoman Empire’; but if the topic today is to look at how people perceived their own territoriality, then we shouldn’t call it ‘the Ottoman Empire’, because they didn’t call it that way; they called it ‘the Roman Empire’ (ruled by the Ottoman family)”.

Selim I was not styled “Commander of the Faithful” (أَمِير ٱلْمُؤْمِنِين‎ / ‘Amir al-Mu’minin) for most of his reign, and when he could claim the title, the majority of his subjects rejected it for him. The same concerns the later and minor title “Servant of The Two Holy Cities” (خَادِمُ الْحَرَمَيْن‎ / Hadimü’l-Haremeyn), which is somewhat a historical novelty introduced only as late as the 12th – 13th c. Last, it is only after 1517 that Selim I was accepted as ‘Caliph’ throughout his realm and dependencies.

Selim I (Yavuz Sultan Selim); portrait painted by the Ottoman artist Nakkaş Osman (16th c.)

The territorial expansion of the Ottoman Sultanate (focus on Anatolia and the Balkans)

Portrait (end of 18th-beginning of 19th c.) painted by the Christian Orthodox Eastern Roman artist Konstantin Kapıdağlı (Κωνσταντῖνος Κυζικηνός; Konstantinos Kyzikinos)

Ottoman Empire around 1520

Miniature from the 16th c. manuscript Hüner-nāme; I, Library of the Topkapi Palace Museum

The Ottoman Empire in 1875

Sultan Selim I and the Grand Vizier Piri Mehmed Paşa

Selim I portrait painted by Aşık Çelebi

Painting showing Selim I during the Egypt campaign, Army Museum, Istanbul

Portrait of Selim I painted by Paolo Veronese (Paolo Caliari); Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen – Staatsgalerie in der Residenz Würzburg

From the personal belongings of Shah Ismail that were captured by Selim during and after the Battle of Chaldiran. Topkapi Museum, Istanbul

iii. Babur (ظَهير اَلَدّين مُحَمَّد – Zahīr ud-Dīn Muhammad; 1483-1530) was the eldest son of Umar Sheikh Mirza, the Timurid governor of Ferghana who was the son of Abu Sa’id Mirza; consequently, Babur was the great grandson of Abu Sa’id Mirza’s father, Sultan Muhammad Mirza, governor of Samarqand for some time, whom due to an unknown reason Babur did not even mention in historical boon Babur-nameh. This implies that Babur was the great-great grandson of the father of Sultan Muhammad Mirza, Miran Shah, who was the third of Timur’s four sons. So, Babur was the great-great-great-grandson of Timur.

If he is basically known through his nickname (‘tiger’), this happens because he truly deserved it. Babur became the ruler of Ferghana at the age of 11 (in 1494), and he was an outstanding and exceptional adolescent in every sense. In his rather brief but most eventful life that had unprecedented ups and downs, Babur had to incessantly fight hard for long and in a most adventurous and often thunderous manner, undertaking campaigns, laying sieges, and winning battles, but also losing his capitals. He was defeated by Muhammad Shaybani, and he spent years in humiliation and poverty without a real shelter.

However, he managed to capture Kabul (1504) and to control parts of today’s Afghanistan; he then benefited from Ismail I’s victory over Muhammad Shaybani (1510), recaptured Samarqand, and prepared his army for the major campaign and the greatest success of his life, namely the invasion of the Indus River and the Ganges River valleys, the demolition of the Delhi Sultanate, and the foundation (1524-1526) of the Mughal Empire (1526-1858). So, triumph came at last to this intellectual soldier and philosopher-conqueror. By all means, Babur would have made -in a terrible historical irony- the perfect son to Timur himself!

iv. Ismail I Safavi (1487-1524) was none other than the son of Shaykh Haydar, the Grandmaster of the Safavid Order and the founder of the Qizilbash military order. It is noteworthy that his maternal grandmother was none other than Despina Hatun, i.e. Theodora Megale Komnene, of John IV of Trebizond, who became Muslim to get married (1458) with Uzun Hassan, the Aq Qoyunlu sultan, whose daughter Martha (mainly known as Alamshah Halime Begum) -in very young age- got married (1471) with Shaykh Haydar.

However, tribally and imperially, Ismail I’s lineage was not as important as the ancestry of Muhammad Shaybani, Selim I, and Babur, but his spiritual-mystical backing was incommensurately stronger; people of different origin, occupation and location could instantly rush to his support and give their lives personally for him. And his great military advantage was his unpredictability, which was due exactly to his spiritual-mystical backing. His opponents would never know from where his fighters would surface to protect him and defend his cause. 

Contrarily to Muhammad Shaybani who had the youth of a regular soldier, and to Selim I who spent years in palatial intrigues as he was his father’s third son, Ismail I was an exceptional youngster like Babur; but his father’s spiritual potency made an enormous difference. This is difficult to assess properly today, but in the circle of the Anatolian-Caucasus-Iranian-Central Asiatic members of the Safavid Order and the Qizilbash fighters, Shaykh Haydar was believed to be God Incarnate (elah) – in the spiritual (not theological) connotation of the word. This meant nothing less than an absolute faith as per which the infant Ismail, long before establishing the Empire of the Safavid Order, was believed to be ‘ebn Allah’ (Son of God).

Western colonial historians and Orientalist forgers, in their incessant effort to distort the historical reality of the Safavid times, select deliberately anti-Safavid authors of those days, like Fazl-Allah Khonji Esfahani, take their premeditated narratives at face value, attach to them several fake, pseudo-Islamic theological concepts, such as the ‘ghulat’, and portray the Safavids as ‘Shia extremists’ or ‘antinomians’ (another fake term), which is absolutely absurd. As said in the previous chapter, there cannot be religious evaluation of spiritual matters; this means that every attempt of theological interpretation of a spiritual term or expression is a failure already before it is stated. In fact, there are no ‘ghulat’ at all.

This term is a neologism, which is attributed by modern scholars to various mystics and spiritual masters (of different Islamic periods), who were misunderstood in their times by their theological critics. The perverse colonial interest in promoting the ‘ghulat’ bogus-literature and in using the fake term for people, who were not called ‘ghulat’ in their times, is due first, to the Western academics’ distortive effort to generate the nonexistent ‘Sunni vs. Shia’ divide, and second, to the Western intellectuals’ vicious attempt to portray several Muslim mystics and spiritual grandmasters as ‘heretics’, whereas the difference between Islam and Christianity hinges exactly on this point, namely that there cannot be ‘heresy’ within Islam.

Ismail I was undoubtedly an extraordinary youngster who lived in strict mystical seclusion for five years (from 7 to 12), before appearing as almost the Islamic Messiah (Mahdi). It is necessary to straightforwardly clarify at this point that this term has a totally different meaning in spirituality and in religion (or theology). Meanwhile, the bright and exceptional apprentice was communicating with several members of the Safavid Order and the Qizilbash army though a sophisticated network of agents that was too difficult for others to identify, let alone put under control.

For Ismail I Safavi’s early stage of life (during those five years), there were certainly several parallels between his concealed existence and that of Muhammad ibn al-Askari, the Twelfth Imam (who was born in 869 and finally disappeared in his Major Occultation in 941). However, only theological misinterpretation of spiritual activities and narratives could lead to the wrong assumption about an eventual identification of Ismail I with Muhammad ibn al-Askari. Not one member of the Safavid Order was confused in this regard.  

After having lived his childhood in the forests of Gilan, he appeared to his brethren and followers at 12 (in 1499), he achieved an unexpected, great victory over the Shirvanshah ruler Farrukh Yassar two years later (1501), and he was crowned king at 14. Thus, he was catapulted to power in the most exulting terms, whereas his merry, exuberant and legendary entry to Tabriz was followed by endless feasts, imperial banquets, endless consumption of wine, and fabulous erotic delights.

He who says that wine (or alcoholic drinks in general) is prohibited in Islam is either a conniving Westerner (diplomat, statesman, agent or academic) strongly motivated by his vicious hatred of the true, historical Islam or an idiotic puppet of the Western powers, i.e. an ignorant and idiotic, fanatic and extremist, Islamist sheikh, who – as per the Satanic orders of his Western masters – believes that “Islam is the Quran and the Hadith”. Quite contrarily to this fallacy, the extensively misinterpreted and calamitously misunderstood sacred texts of Islam do not represent even 0.001% of the existing voluminous literature (in classical Islamic languages, namely Arabic, Farsi, various Turkic languages, and Urdu), which has to be first studied, then correctly perceived and plainly comprehended before one attempts to read the Quran and the Hadith. No holy text exists without exact conceptualization and comprehensive contextualization. 

The sacred texts of Islam (similarly with those of every other religion) cannot be accurately and succinctly understood per se except in the light of literary, spiritual, historical, theoretical and scientific texts of the Golden Era of Islam. The same occurs in Christianity; without the Patristic Literature (Patristics or Patrology, i.e. the texts written by the Fathers of the Christian Church) no one can possibly understand correctly the New Testament, the Old Testament, and the true, historical Christianity. The fallacy, as per which anyone today can understand the Gospels and the other sacred texts of Christianity without the Patristic Literature, is a deviate, Protestant – Evangelical distortion.

The aforementioned four Muslim emperors were all authors, poets and highly educated and cultured monarchs. Muhammad Shaybani composed his Bahr ul Huda, a theological, moral treatise, being widely known as a consummate polymath and an erudite scholar who highly valued books, manuscripts, epics and arts. Selim I wrote poetry in Farsi and Turkish under the penname Mahlas Selimi. Babur excelled in prose; he elaborated his own biography in Chagatai Turkic; the legendary Babur nameh (Book of Babur) is a major historical source for the History of Asia during the 15th and 16th c.

Ismail I Safavi composed spiritual poetry in Turkish and Farsi under the penname Khatai, i.e. ‘the one who makes mistakes’; in and by itself, this fact constitutes the complete confirmation of the aforementioned statement, namely that there cannot be religious evaluation of spiritual matters. Confessing one’s own mistakes -by selecting a name that makes this reality so explicitly known- is full indication of humanity; a perfect human accepts that he/she makes mistakes. By using this penname, Ismail I fully demonstrated that the term ‘ebn Allah’ (Son of God) attributed to him was not meant in a rationalistic theological way but in terms of spiritual symbolism, which is absolutely unfathomable to juristic, rationalistic and materialistic theologians.

In the existing manuscripts (preserved in Tashkent and Paris) of Ismail I Safavi’s poetry, there are ca. 260 qasidas and ghazals, quatrains, morabbas, mosaddas, and three mathnawis (different types of Islamic poetry); two of his mathnawis are quite lengthy, namely the Dah nameh and the Nasihat nameh. Bektashis in Anatolia and the Balkans, as well as the Shabaks in Mesopotamia, extensively recite Ismail I Safavi’s poetry in their spiritual sessions down to our days.

The interaction of those four great emperors was not trouble-free, peaceful and bloodless; at times, it even took a dimension of extreme monstrosity. During the period 1497-1504, Babur and Muhammad Shaybani were repeatedly engaged in battles against one another, particularly for the control of Samarqand. Muhammad Shaybani proved to be Babur’s real nemesis, but both of them captured, lost and recaptured Samarqand several times. As Babur had a small basis of support in Central Asia, he undertook a most adventurous campaign in 1504, and with few men he captured Kabul, making of the area his new base. He made an alliance with a distant relative, namely the ruler of Herat Sultan Husayn Mirza Bayqarah; but Muhammad Shaybani chased him from there too.     

As Muhammad Shaybani was an ally of the Ottoman family and of Bayezid II, the father of Selim I, he concentrated his efforts in the East and Southeast, against the Hazara Turanian nomads in Khorasan (currently located in central Afghanistan) and the Kazakhs. In fact, his campaign against the Hazaras was a disaster, because first his cavalry had many casualties and second the war against the Hazaras produced a major reaction among the Qizilbash, because many members of the military order were of Hazara origin. Then, Ismail I Safavi, who had spent many years, invading and dismantling the Akkoyunlu state and its last remaining forces in Iran, Caucasus, Eastern Anatolia, and Mesopotamia, turned against Muhammad Shaybani. Then, in the Battle of Merv, the Qizilbash army, after devising a trick (i.e. a feigned retreat), ambushed and slaughtered an almost double Uzbek force.

The excesses after the Qizilbash victory were exorbitant; Muhammad Shaybani’s corpse was cut to pieces and parts were sent to be in public display in many cities; his skull ended up as a gold-plated cup for Ismail I. The cup was later sent to Babur himself, and the same occurred to one of Muhammad Shaybani’s wives, namely Khanzada Begum, who was Babur’s elder sister. These gestures started an era of cooperation between Ismail I, who had just risen to prominence, and Babur whose army and the Qizilbash fought side by side against the Uzbeks at the Battle of Ghazdewan (1512); however they were defeated there, and this event marked the end of Babur’s dream of recovering his father’s kingdom at Ferghana. For some time, Babur accepted Ismail I as his own emperor, while he was struggling to impose his rule in the mountains between Central Asia and the Indus River valley.

Opposing Ottoman allies at the Battle of Ghazdewan, Babur (today portrayed as a ‘Sunni’ by colonial Orientalists) became an ally of Ismail I Safavi (currently labeled as a ‘Shia’ by European and American historical forgers) and therefore an enemy of Selim I (nowadays described as a ‘Sunni’ by Western academics). The reality is totally different: Ismail I was a spiritual mystic, who became the ruler of a secular empire controlled by the army (Qizilbash) of his mystical order (Safavid), whereas Selim I was a palatial intrigue man controlled by evil theological circles and people who caused divisions, civil wars, internal strives and terrible bloodshed in the Eastern Roman Empire (of the Ottoman family). Then, in striking opposition with both, Babur was an intrepid, intelligent and opportunist, yet formidable, soldier entirely motivated by the dream to create an empire greater than his father’s and Timur’s.

The spread of Qizilbash force, movement, worldview, mentality, and lifestyle among Anatolian pastoralists was overwhelming in the 1500s. It triggered its own dynamics, which was not controlled anymore by the Safavid Order and the newly established Safavid Empire. The mystical order of Şahkulu was the perfect continuation of many long centuries of Anatolian Islamic spirituality and mysticism; it was energized by the introduction of the Qizilbash concept (an army for a mystical order that would establish a secular universal empire).

Ismail I Safavi in an incident from his campaign against Shirvan; he is charging down a mountain in pursuit of the King of Shirvan; miniature from the manuscript Shahnama-i-Ismail (Tabriz style), ca. 1540 (MS Add. 7784, f.46v. British Museum, London); his distinctive turban has twelve folds representing the twelve Imams of whom Ali ibn Abi Taleb was the first.

The Aq Qoyunlu tribal khanate (1378-1503) around 1475, i.e. 25-30 years before it was defeated and incorporated with the Safavid Empire

Miniature from a 17th c. manuscript with mystical representation of Sheikh Safi ad-din Ardabili (1252-1334) blessing the young Shah Ismail I; gouache heightened with gold on paper. The historic mystic is depicted at the top of a minbar in the mosque holding a Qur’an and blessing Shah Isma’il (identified in small brown script) who stands on a lower step of the same minbar, surrounded by courtiers and elders.

Ismail I Safavi offers an audience to the Qizilbash, after they have defeated his opponent Shirvanshah Farrukh in 1500; miniature from Bijan’s Tarikh-i Jahangusha-yi Khaqan Sahibqiran (A History of Shah Ismail I), which was written in Isfahan in the late 1680s. The painting was created by Muin Musawwir, a famous artist who also illustrated six editions of the Shahnameh.

Ismail I Safavi and his soldiers cross Kura River in the Caucasus region

Ismail I Safavi defeats Sultan Murad, the last ruler of the Aq Qoyunlu, near Hamadan in 1503.

Miniature from a manuscript of Bijan’s Tarikh-i Jahangusha-yi Khaqan Sahibqiran (A History of Shah Ismail I), which was written in Isfahan in the late 1680s. It was painted by or in the style of Mu’in Musavvir; gouache heightened with gold on paper. Ismail and his courtiers are depicted on horseback while hunting.

The fight of Ismail I Safavi against the Dulkadiroğulları in Southeastern Anatolia

Ismail I Safavi watches his soldiers defeat the Musha’sha (المشعشعية) messianic leader Sultan Fayyad in Khuzestan; from the miniature of a manuscript of the late 1680s.

Representation of the Battle of Merv between Shah Ismail and Shaybani Khan; fresco in the Chehel Sotun Palace in Isfahan

Ismail I Safavi’s envoy Ganbar Agha appears before the last Aq Qoyunlu ruler Sultan Murad; miniature from a manuscript of the 1670s

Representation of the Battle of Chaldiran (1514); fresco in the Chehel Sotun Palace in Isfahan

The helmet of Ismail I Safavi

The Şahkulu Spiritual Movement

However, the Anatolian mystical order was not stricto sensu created by the Safavid Qizilbash. Many Western Orientalists totally misinterpret the role, the scope, the targets and the motivations of the founder and grandmaster of the eponymous order; Şahkulu (also known as Shah Qoli Baba or Shah Kulu or Shah Quli or Karabıyıkoğlu, i.e. the son of the man with black moustache) was certainly not a Safavid puppet who attempted to subvert or infiltrate the Ottoman state; this misinterpretation is absurd. Şahkulu was an Anatolian original.

In this regard, colonial academics totally distort everything, even the real meaning of Şahkulu’s name! It is true that in Turkish, this word means ‘the servant of the Shah’; however, this is not meant in a theological and rationalist manner, but with a purely spiritual connotation. Şahkulu was indeed the ‘servant’ of the ‘Shah’, but according to the terminology of an Islamic mystical order, ‘Shah’ is God. In fact, even worse lies and incredible distortions are published by Western colonial historians as regards the bloodshed, the persecution and the oppression of the Anatolian Qizilbash by the usurper of the Ottoman throne Selim I. The reason for these lies is evident: on the misrepresentation of the historical events that took place in Anatolia during the dramatic period 1510-1512 hinge both, the entire falsification of the Ottoman History and the fallacious theory that “the Ottomans were Sunni and the Safavid Iranians were Shia”. In addition, Western historians tried systematically to obscure the fact that the Ottoman ruling class followed Maturidi theology, whereas the uncontrolled but intentionally tolerated majority of the madrasas and the imams were impacted by Ash’ari concepts.

As a matter of fact, the so-called Şahkulu İsyanı (rebellion), which was not an uprising but a messianic fervor, and the subsequent events, namely the battle of Chaldiran (1514) between Selim I and Ismail I, bear witness to the gradual rise of a pseudo-Islamic theological school at Istanbul (under the Hanafi madhhab coverage). Those indoctrinated and ignorant sheikhs progressively destroyed the Ottoman Empire with their absurd inhumanity and obdurate idiocy, which invariably took the form of nonsensical argumentation, strict anachronism, theological rigidity, verbal rationalism, worldly materialism, and nonsensical involvement in the governance of the expanding empire. Their worst and most catastrophic trait however was their explicit revilement and utmost hatred of Islamic spirituality (Batin/ باطن; Batiniyya/ باطنية; these terms literally means ‘inner’ and ‘esotericism’, but they have nothing to do with Western esotericism/mysticism).

These Istanbulite theological circles were not powerful at the time, but gradually, during the 16th c., they managed to prevail within the Ottoman court; their achievement was the destruction of Taqi ad-Din Muhammad ibn Ma’ruf’s Islamic Observatory of Istanbul in 1580 – an event that marks the irrevocable death of the Islamic Civilization. In 1510-1512, the same theological circles plunged Anatolia in terrible bloodshed; this was due to their determination to oppose the prevalence of Şahkulu Qizilbash spirituality. That’s why these pseudo-Muslim theological circles always represented the ‘enfant gâté’ of Western academics: they constituted indeed the perfect guarantee for the destruction and the disappearance of Islam, because they could be (and they were) easily induced by Western colonial agents to trigger interminable divisions and fratricidal wars among the Muslims.

Selim I was not predestined to become a sultan, as he was the fourth among the eight sons of Bayezid II. Şehzade Abdullah was the first among Bayezid II’s eight sons, but he died young in 1483; Şehzade Şehinşah was the Ottoman sultan’s fifth son and he was very well educated and militarily strong, but he never gained the support of the Ottoman bureaucracy, administration and theological nomenklatura. Although governor of big cities and loved by the people of Karaman, he died in 1511 for unknown reasons, possibly poisoned by some vicious Ottoman theologians. Born in 1465, Ahmet (known as Şehzade Ahmet; 1465-1513) was the second son of Bayezid II; born in 1467, Korkut (known as Şehzade Korkut; 1467-1513) was the third son of Bayezid II. Şehzade Mahmud (1475-1507), the younger brother of Şehzade Ahmet, died in 1507 for undefined reasons. Seventh son of Bayezid II was Şehzade Alemşah (1477-1502) who also died in 1502 or 1503 for unspecified reasons.

Compared to Şehzade Ahmet and to Şehzade Korkut, Selim I (born in 1470) was a far cry and an unimportant prince, even more so since Bayezid II’s favorite candidate to his succession was Ahmet. However, the Ottoman court had always been a matter of Istanbulite palatial intrigues, intra-family fights, and endless fratricides, pretty much like those occurred during the Eastern Roman times in God-damned Constantinople. Bayezid II (1447-1512; his reign started in 1481) had to fight to secure his succession, because Cem Sultan (1459-1495), his younger brother, laid claim to the throne. Selim I was an insubordinate, rebellious, idiotic and absolutely unworthy son, who was manipulated by the evil Istanbulite theologians as to how to plot, cheat and connive against his own father. This is what the pseudo-Islamic madhhab (jurisprudential schools) and theological schools were reduced to at those days – and ever since down to our days.

Selim I rebelled against his father not for any other reason, but because the vicious theological circles of Istanbul, which are nowadays mistakenly called ‘Sunni’, wanted to use him against the spread and the rise of the Şahkulu Anatolian spirituality. The succession to the throne of Bayezid II was only the pretext. In fact, Ahmet (Şehzade Ahmet) did not only have the right of primogeniture, but also his father’s consent and favor; that’s why the disloyal son and puppet of Istanbul’s evil theologians Selim I had to ceaselessly plot against his father.

In addition, there was a confusing and disastrous tradition in the Ottoman family, as per which among the dying sultan’s sons, whoever reached the dead monarch’s bed first would (or could eventually) become his father’s successor. A clear sign of the chaotic situation that prevailed in the Istanbulite palace of the disorderly, lawless and faithless family was the disastrous fact that, in order to make sure that the eventually insubordinate crown princes and the other princes would not fuel a rebellion against the sultan, the Ottoman rulers used to send their sons to faraway provinces in order to serve there as local governors – which in turn reduced their chances to successfully plot. This meant that distance mattered greatly at those days!

Ahmet was the governor of Amasya in Northern Cappadocia (675 km from Istanbul), Korkut was the governor of Antalya (then called Teke, in Pamphylia) in the southern coast (640 km from the capital), and Selim was the governor of Trabzon (1060 km from his father’s palace). In that ridiculous situation, everyone was preparing for the forthcoming confrontation; it was therefore normal that Ahmet rejected his father’s appointment of Suleyman (son of Selim I, who became later known as Suleyman the Magnificent) as governor of Bolu, because of the small distance that separated the tiny and insignificant city from the Ottoman capital (only 260 km). Suleyman was then sent to the Ottoman Crimea (Kefe or Kaffa or Caffa; today’s Feodosia).

Incessantly plotting, Selim asked his father to appoint him as governor in a sanjak in Rumeli (: Balkans). Bayezid II rejected this bizarre demand because the Ottoman sanjaks in the European territory of the empire were smaller, more recently acquired, and unfit for princes. This fact shows that Anatolia was always the central and most important part of the Ottoman state, as it was of the Eastern Roman Empire in earlier periods.

Involving foreigners in acts against his father’s decisions and affairs, Selim asked the help of the Tatar Khan of Crimea and he was finally appointed as governor of the pashalik of Belgrade (then named in Turkish as ‘Semendire Sancağı’, i.e. Sanjak of Smederevo), which is located at a distance of 900 km from Istanbul. However, instead of staying at the headquarters of his administrative province, the disloyal, immoral and faithless Selim approached Istanbul, and then Bayezid II had to fight against him and defeat him in August 1511. Selim escaped to his Tatar friends in Crimea, but at the same time, the Şahkulu spiritual movement and the ensuing messianic fervor took disproportionate eschatological dimensions in Anatolia, and the sultan tasked Ahmed to impose order and discipline through the Ottoman Empire’s eastern provinces.

As a matter of fact, there was never a Şahkulu rebellion, contrarily to what most of the historians claim nowadays. There was instead a passionate messianic fervor and the Ottoman attempt to suppress the spiritual movement was met with resistance. This situation cannot be termed as ‘rebellion’, because there was no intention for rebellion among the members and the followers of the Şahkulu mystical order. They did not want to overthrow any authority or to impose themselves as the rulers. As every spiritual movement brings forth liberation and salvation, a large number of people across Anatolia viewed in the Şahkulu movement and in their Qizilbash army the promise and the perspective of a better life free from the Ottoman family’s incompetence and incessant butchery and bloodletting; but this was not tantamount to public disobedience or disorder.

As spirituality enables the faithful to understand the real purpose of this life and of the Hereafter, the Şahkulu members, followers and army knew quite well that the Ottoman princes had absolutely no legitimacy to possess the wealth they garnered and to hold the positions they had. In terms of spirituality, states do not exist or are not needed; these evil social structures have absolutely no value and no authority for any spiritual mystic and any spiritually-awakened person.

Şahkulu Qizilbash army raids on cities, on Ottoman treasures, on imperial caravans, and on regional administration centers started therefore becoming very frequent around 1510. It is essential for both, experienced historians and erudite readership, not to evaluate those developments with today’s average Western mentality and approach; there was nothing illegal in those acts. They were absolutely just, moral and lawful; even more importantly, they were viewed as such by the outright majority of the Anatolian populations. In any case, ‘lawful’ is only the ‘just’ and the ‘moral’, in striking contrast to the modern Western societies and their lawless laws, criminal nature, and evil states that are all doomed to perish.

The historical reality was as simple as that: the Qizilbash soldiers were not thieves; quite contrarily, the Ottoman princes, administrators and theologians were crooks. Şehzade Korkut’s caravan was attacked once, whereas the beylerbey of Anatolia (Anadolu) was defeated, when he tried to engage the Şahkulu forces in battle. Then, Bayezid II realized that his empire was about to crumble in Anatolia; he therefore sent Şehzade Ahmet (1511) and the Grand Vizier Hadım (: eunuch) Ali Pasha in order to protect his, his family’s, and his gang’s lawless interests. I severely criticize the Ottoman sultan because he was ruling his realm as a disgrace; when a ruler is not just, moral and lawful, it is the plain right and duty of every person to take justice in his hands.

The dispatch of Şehzade Ahmet happened at the same time, when Bayezid II was fighting against his lawless, faithless and rebel son Selim; this was a development Şehzade Ahmet had to keep a close eye on. During the battle against the Şahkulu forces (near Kütahya), Şehzade Ahmet tried therefore to close a personal deal and an alliance with Şahkulu Karabıyıkoğlu himself; in other words, he attempted to gain his support, as well as that of his movement and of the Qizilbash army for the succession to the Ottoman throne. This would be an excellent solution for all, namely the local populations, the Anatolian Qizilbash, the messianic mystic, and the heir of the Ottoman throne. 

Şehzade Ahmet’s attempt to ascend to power with the support of the Şahkulu movement, if it brought forth great results, would make of the Ottoman Sultanate {then still called ‘(Eastern) Roman Empire’} a perfect copy of the Safavid Empire: a Turanian Empire ruled by a spiritual order. This would trigger exceptionally positive and truly propitious changes across the Islamic world, entirely revivifying Islamic spirituality and terminating the catastrophic theological indoctrination, which finally prevailed and gradually destroyed the Islamic World totally.

Of course, Şehzade Ahmet was not a mystic and he acted only out of his personal interest. Şahkulu Karabıyıkoğlu tried then to gain him to his own cause; however, the affair was very risky, and unfortunately the news leaked. Then, Şehzade Ahmet had to persuade Hadım Ali Pasha that the scope of the negotiations was other, ask him to continue the battle against the Qizilbash army, and run to major Anatolian cities to gain wider regional support for his ascension to the Ottoman throne. The correct place for this was Konya, the leading center of Anatolian spirituality.

The forces of Hadım Ali Pasha pursued the Şahkulu Qizilbash army and after several minor engagements, in the battle of Çubukova (Eastern Cappadocia), both Şahkulu Karabıyıkoğlu and Hadım Ali Pasha were killed (July 1511). However, the Qizilbash force was not dispersed and remained actively powerful. Having prevailed over his rebellious son Selim in August 1511, the embattled Bayezid II had to deal with the chaotic situation of his empire in Anatolia. As Şehzade Ahmet controlled Konya and disobeyed his father’s order to return to his position, Bayezid II believed that the true reason for the spread of the Şahkulu movement was Ismail I; this was a very wrong conclusion, because the Anatolian Qizilbash force was totally independent from the Safavid state. Actually, in the ensuing exchange of royal correspondence, Ismail I totally rejected any involvement in the Şahkulu events in Anatolia; he even went on to explicitly condemn the Anatolian Qizilbash attitude and practices.

Meanwhile, Şehzade Ahmet attempted to advance to Istanbul and dethrone his father, while Selim was in Crimea; however, he failed to advance, as he was blocked by the imperial guard before Bursa. At the same time, Selim gathered a Tatar force and, relying on the Istanbulite theologians’ and bureaucrats’ timely messages and direct support, returned to Istanbul in April 1512 and dethroned his father; no less than a month later (26 May 1512) Bayezid II died dishonored in shameful exile (in Dimetoka, today’s Didymoteicho/Διδυμότειχο on the Turkish-Greek border).

The confrontation between Şehzade Ahmet, who had gathered Qizilbash support in the meantime, and Selim I took place in April 1513 near Bursa, and after an initially indecisive clash, Şehzade Ahmet was defeated and killed. Although Şehzade Korkut had accepted his younger brother’s reign in 1512, Selim I had him killed too, in 1513. An extraordinary purgatory took then place against all the remaining nephews of Selim I, so that the bloody reign of the Ottoman butcher may not be endangered in any way; this would also concern particularly Şehzade Murad, the son of Şehzade Ahmet, who was viewed by the outright majority of the Anatolian population as the rightful heir to the Ottoman throne. However, Şehzade Murad was clever enough to escape to Eastern Anatolia, which was totally out of Ottoman control, communicate with Ismail I, get his support, and coordinate with other Turkmen and Qizilbash forces in order to oppose and eventually overthrow Selim I.

The terrain of the Şahkulu movement

Full of hatred, rancor and hysteria, Selim I carried out an unprecedented ‘white terror campaign’, killing dozens of thousands of civilians under the fake pretext of supporting the Qizilbash army; numbers vary in several historical sources, but an estimate of 50000 people would not be far from truth. This extraordinary bloodshed took place in only one third of today’s Turkey’s territory, namely Western Anatolia. Subsequently, a great number of captives were sent to Rumeli (European provinces of the Ottoman state) and finally settled in Mora Eyalet (ایالت موره; Eyalet-i Mora, today’s Peloponnese in southern Greece).

After the previous description, it becomes clear why, in today’s absurd, disastrous, anti-Turkish and pseudo-Islamic regime of Turkey, one can find journalists who still remember the illustrious Şahkulu movement, having however shaped a disastrously mistaken opinion about it. The so-called ‘political islam’ was indeed fabricated by the French, English and American Orientalists in order to entirely replace the traditional knowledge of the Muslims about the true historical Islam; for this project, an entirely fake History of the Islamic World was scrupulously written, taught and propagated by thousands of Western Orientalist forgers over the last 200 years.

The Islamic forgery of the Western academics did indeed match the ideological forgery that is known as ‘political islam’: they proved to be the two sides of the same coin. The scope of Western Islamology (or ‘Islamic Studies’) was exactly to come up with narratives, which would offer venues to all the Islamists and to the stupid Muslim followers of ‘political islam’ to misperceive the Şahkulu movement (and generally, the entire History of the Islamic World) and to thus shape a totally distorted idea about this topic (and about thousands of other topics). This was done in order to engulf all the Muslims in a totally false perception of the History of the Islamic World, and in an absolutely compact ignorance of their past and heritage.

The fallacious contextualization of the history of the Şahkulu movement had therefore started long before the English secret services selected the ignorant street seller Erdogan for the position to which they raised him, duly fooling the Turkish military, academics, politicians, and businessmen. As he functioned as the prefab puppet of the worst enemies of the Muslims, a false reading of the History of Islam spread throughout Turkey (as it had already been the case in all the other Muslim countries which, contrarily to Turkey, were colonized). As a matter of fact, nowadays all the worthless theologians and disreputable sheikhs of Diyanet (Turkey’s so-called ‘Directorate of Religious Affairs’) are the equivalent of the uneducated, idiotic and evil theologians of the times of Selim I.

A typical example of historical distortion concerning the Şahkulu movement in today’s Turkey is offered by the shameless villain and crook Murat Çolak who published a ridiculous article in the local newspaper of Kahramanmaraş (formerly Germanikeia) ‘Maraş Gündem’ on the 16th July 2018 under the nonsensical title “FETÖ’nun Tarihsel Kökleri Şahkulu İsyanı ve 15 Temmuz” (The historical roots of FETO organization, the Şahkulu Rebellion, and July 15), which is an allusion to the failed coup of the 15th July 2016. Useless to add that there is no connection at all between the Şahkulu movement (not rebellion) and Fethullah Gülen, the notorious leader of the said organization; https://www.marasgundem.com.tr/makale/fetonun-tarihsel-kokleri-sahkulu-isyani-ve-15-temmuz-16277

The war between the Ottoman state and the Safavid Empire had become inevitable, because the unprecedented killings and the Istanbulite anti-Anatolian malignancy caused an even greater reaction among all the populations of Anatolia, Turanian or not. Selim I and Ismail I exchanged several insulting letters prior to the historic Battle of Chaldiran (August 1514) and some of them have been preserved down to our times. They only bear witness to their reciprocal rejection, without however using the colonially-imposed (starting with the 19th c.) false terms ‘Sunni’ and ‘Shia’. About: 

Rıza Yıldırım, Turkomans between two empires: the origins of the Qızılbash identity in Anatolia (1447-1514).

Click to access 52925088.pdf

Yasin Arslantaş, Depicting the other: Qizilbash image in the 16th century Ottoman historiography

Click to access 0006379.pdf

Yusuf Küçükdağ, Measures Taken by the Ottoman State against Shah İsmail’s Attempts to Convert Anatolia to Shia

University of Gaziantep Journal of Social Sciences 7(1):1-17 (2008)

https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/223506

https://www fas nus edu sg/hist/eia/documents_archive/selim.php

Click to access 02selimismail.pdf

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/ottoman-persian-relations-i-under-sultan-selim-i-and-shah-esmail-i

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/calderan-battle

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/esmail-i-safawi

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/abul-khayrids-dynasty

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/babor-zahir-al-din

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

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Таварих-и_гузида-йи_нусрат-наме

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

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

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

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

https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._Selim

https://www.academia.edu/79310004/Masters_of_the_Pen_The_Divans_of_Selimi_and_Muhibbi

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

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

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

https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babür

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

https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/بابر

https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/ظهير_الدين_بابر

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

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

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughal-Mongol_genealogy

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

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

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

https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._İsmail

https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/شاه_اسماعیل_یکم

Darius the Great’s Suez Inscriptions: Birth Certificate of the Silk Roads

https://silkroadtexts.wordpress.com/

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

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

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

Click to access anatm_1297-8094_1997_num_7_1_946.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Eahkulu_rebellion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Eahkulu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schools_of_Islamic_theology#Sh%C4%AB%CA%BFa_schools_of_theology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batin_(Islam)

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

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

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

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

https://ottoman.ahya.net/node/100

https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/II._Bayezid

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

https://www.konyapedia.com/makale/3308/sehzade-abdullah-abdullah-bin-bayezit-ii

https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Eehzade_%C5%9Eehin%C5%9Fah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Eehzade_Ahmet

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Eehzade_Korkut

https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Eehzade_Korkut

https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Eehzade_Mahmud_(II._Bayezid%27in_o%C4%9Flu)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople_Observatory_of_Taqi_ad-Din

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Eehzade_Murad

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_(title)#Ottoman_Empire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmed_the_Conqueror#Conquest_of_Constantinople

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sultans_of_the_Ottoman_Empire#Names

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amir_al-Mu%27minin

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

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqi_ad-Din_Muhammad_ibn_Ma%27ruf

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habib_al-Siyar

https://www.sid.ir/en/Journal/ViewPaper.aspx?ID=709213

Click to access jaas072001.pdf

https://journals.openedition.org/asiecentrale/2866

https://journals.openedition.org/asiecentrale/499?lang=en

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

https://iranicaonline.org/articles/golat

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

Comparative evaluation

An objective assessment of the four Turanian rulers whose Iranian education and culture was evident may lead us to devastating conclusions. Finding themselves in different environments, they failed to go beyond the limits of their ‘worlds’. Still, this was imperative for the survival of their respective realms, taking into account what was happening in the Western confines of Asia, namely the pseudo-continent of Europe, which is Asia’s most worthless, most troublesome, and most barbarian peninsula. Consequently, we have to consider them as the initial reason for the collapse of their states, despite the fact that these empires lasted long and fell after 350-400 years. The sole exception is certainly Babur; but he also failed to effectively convey to his offspring and successors the mindset, the predisposition, the attitude, and the ensuing behavior which undeniably helped him transform his Central Asiatic failure into an Indian triumph.

The really embarrassing part of the conclusion is the ascertainment that all four rulers were very civilized, highly cultured, and impressively educated; it goes without saying that I use these terms with the connotation they had at the time, and not the meaning that they have in our fallen, corrupt and putrefied world. They all failed to assess the serious problems that existed in the Islamic World during their lifetime and they proved to be unable to detect the lethal threats that were mounted against their empires and more generally the entire Muslim World. Again, the only exception is Babur, because the time between his conquest of the Sultanate of Delhi and his death is truly brief.

With the exception of Ismail I Safavi (1501-1524), all the rest experienced a rather brief period of reign. Muhammad Shaybani ruled for 10 years (1500-1510); Selim I reigned for only 8 years (1512-1520). And Babur was the sovereign of an empire only for 4.5 years (April 1526-1530). One can truly be astounded with their narrow horizons, naïve approaches to governance, profane understanding of reign, and simplicity in worldview.

Muhammad Shaybani was the living intersection of all things Iranian and Turanian; from his paternal side, he belonged to the lineage of Shayban (also written as Shiban) who was the fifth son of Jochi, the eldest son of Genghis Khan; Jochi was the ancestor of all rulers of the Golden Horde. This means that Muhammad Shaybani was indeed associated and concerned, one way or another, with all the states that came out of the split of the Ulus Jochi (as the Great Empire of the Golden Horde was named at the time), namely the Kazan khanate, the Crimean Khanate, the Qassim Khanate, the Astrakhan khanate and the Nogais.

Muhammad Shaybani was almost 30 years old at the time of the renowned Ugra standoff (1480), when the emperor of the ailing Great Horde failed to impose his dictates on the formerly tributary statelet of Muscovy; Akhmat Khan of the Great Horde and Ivan III of Muscovy, facing one another from the opposite banks of Ugra River, hesitated to cross the river and start fighting, This rather bizarre event is generally considered as the beginning of Muscovy’s independence from the Golden Horde.  

From his maternal side, Muhammad Shaybani was the cousin of Janibek’s son Kasym Khan (reign: 1511-1521), the great Kazakh ruler, who expanded his khanate at the detriment of the Bukhara Khanate. Furthermore, according to the historical treatise “Tavarikh-i guzida-yi nusrat-namah” (Chagatai: تواریخ گزیده نصرت‌نامه ; Таварих-и гузида-йи нусрат-наме), which was elaborated by Alla Murad Annaboyoglu in the early 16th c. (ed. V. P. Yudin/В. П. Юдин, Alma Ata 1969), Munk Timur, i.e. Muhammad Shaybani’s great-great-great-great grandfather, was married to the daughter of a Turanian descendant of Ismail Samani (849-907; reigned after 892), the founder and first ruler of the Samanid dynasty of Eastern Iran, one of the states that seceded from the Abbasid Caliphate while also recognizing the caliph as the head of all Muslims.   

In spite of the aforementioned, briefly presented, background, Muhammad Shaybani remained always a sectarian and tribal ruler. Despite the fact that he was unbiased in his approach to people, although he did not discriminate among Iranians and Turanians (therefore viewing them as one nation), and in spite of the fact that he was truly tolerant in his stance towards Muslim mystics, theologians, members of various tariqas, and followers of different madhhab, he clearly proved to be a treacherous subordinate (to Sultan Ahmed Mirza, a Timurid), a cruel oppressor of the Kazakhs, a disastrous ally to khanate of Moghulistan, a distant and useless friend to Bayezid II, and a consummate plunderer. His poor judgment relied on tribal lineage, family affairs, and petty calculations; this resulted in vindictive deeds, sheer opportunism, and day-to-day governance. He would not be a match for any strong strategist who intended to create an empire. Hating all the Timurids, he defeated Babur several times, but he did not prevent him from establishing one of the world’s greatest empires of all times.

Muhammad Shaybani’s silly head had a well-deserved end; the skull served as a lovely drinking goblet in the hands of Ismail I Safavi. One can even assume that, although it was graciously bejeweled, the goblet was thrown to the ground many times, during those fabulous feasts and banquets of Tabriz – just for fun!

Among these four monarchs, Ismail I Safavi was certainly the best prepared to reign; but he was still acting as a semi-nomad pleased with what was available in nature around him. During his early years in the throne of Tabriz, he used to spend time, camping in the mountains and hunting for several months; there was no urgency to conquer lands and territories. The expansion of his empire was slow and it took the form of a joyful endeavor instead of a serious state affair, scrupulous programming or a major expansion stratagem. There were certainly many wars, notably against the Shirvan kingdom (in part of today’s Azerbaijan), the Kartli and Kakheti kingdoms of Georgia that became vassal states, and the Aq-Qoyunlu nomadic sultanate that was entirely eclipsed, but there was no methodical undertaking in this regard. Not a care in the world!

Within few years, the empire of Ismail I Safavi replaced the Aq-Qoyunlu tribal confederacy, but there were no second thoughts, no back thoughts, and no serious observations, let alone monitoring, of developments, state affairs, and relations among neighboring states. To offer an example, not one Iranian magistrate in the court of Ismail I Safavi took note that two Kakheti Georgian embassies had been dispatched by Alexander I to Ivan III of Muscovy (in 1483 and 1491) as soon as the tiny statelet stopped paying tribute to the Golden Horde.

Ismail I Safavi and his spiritual brethren, namely the members of the most ancient and most venerable Safavid Order and the combatants of the Qizilbash contingent, acted out of free will and spiritual illumination. They did not need to even name their empire; at the beginning; the structures of state were rudimentary, and there was no bureaucracy at all. Ismail I Safavid was indeed closer to Cyrus the Great than Shapur I was. Living the epic moments superbly narrated by Ferdowsi, Nezami Ganjavi and others, performing the spiritual exercises of Saif ad-Din Ardabili, and staying in cities only during the cold winter months of the Iranian plateau, they gave the impression that wars consisted merely in short break times of a peaceful eternity that they enjoyed. Fearless to die in battle, knowledgeable about the Hereafter, and devoted in their vow, they were less envious, possessive and worldly than most of the soldiers of their time. There was no need for a rational plan for war, because this is genuinely evil; there was impulse for war instead – which is genuinely human.

This situation may perhaps appear as confusing and unpromising to many people, but it is not. Of course, it is normal for a mystical fighter to believe that due to the synergy between his soul and body, he is indomitable and invincible; this conviction is basically correct and true. However, it takes a very high degree of moral discipline and of self-restraint for the spiritual potency and the inherent impulse of the fighter to be exacted and exerted. Quite unfortunately, Ismail I Safavi’s spiritual master and mentor, Hossein Beg Laleh Shamlu, tolerated a great degree of self-gratification, self-complacency, and even exuberance; he was lenient with the rising emperor, his brethren, and his guards. This did not bode well for the ruler, his army, and his empire. Compromised moral is tantamount to weakened spirituality and emollient attitude conditions human integrity.

This explains perfectly well why, after his defeat in Chaldiran (1514), Ismail I Safavi collapsed and lived the rest of his life ashamed, in sadness, despair, lamentation and uncontrollable alcoholism; in reality, there was nothing to be sad for. During the battle, the Iranians were about to mark a thunderous victory, being provenly better trained to fight; the Ottomans won only because they started using gunpowder artillery that the Iranians did not have. Even worse, the Ottoman army was about to be cut to two pieces, because the Janissaries did not accept to fight against and kill their Muslim brethren. Actually, the Ottoman soldiers who used the cannons that they had transported with greatly difficulty also murdered Ottoman Janissaries. However, a mystical fighter with compromised moral and self-indulgent attitude certainly collapses after a defeat; quite contrarily, a mystic strongly experienced in ascetic self-denial never feels sorrow, frustration and depression – ever after an extreme adversity.   

Having to fight against monstrous criminals, rancorous establishments, bloodthirsty rulers, rancorous enemies, inhumanely cruel soldiers, professional serial killers, and greedy armies that sailed off to intentionally perpetrate genocide in Mexico and to circumvent Africa by sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, the Safavid elite was rather living in a dream that turned out to become a nightmare for Iran and for the almost the entire world. Iran had always been a major empire with long maritime tradition; Achaemenid Iran is credited with the merge of several earlier regional trade routes that had existed for millennia; this was due to the unmatched, royal administrative genius of Darius I the Great (522-486 BCE).

Darius the Great’s contribution to the emergence of the east-west trade network was twofold: a) the establishment of the Royal Iranian Road and b) the circumnavigation of the Arabian Peninsula and the direct maritime connection of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea with the Persian Gulf. Oman was always an Iranian satrapy; and during the Sassanid times, Iran invaded also Yemen, which was a focal land for the world trade between East and West. However, this background was entirely lost and the Safavid elite did not care at all about the maritime presence and strength of their empire despite the fact that in the beginning of the 16th c., Iranians still controlled an important part of the commerce between East and West, having always been an important constituent of the Islamic times’ navigation and trade. But for all the people around Ismail I Safavi, treasures were to be mainly collected from lands conquered and cities pillaged.

For the case of Ismail I Safavi, one is however tempted to think that the historical heritage itself rather than the various individuals and the ruling elite resurrected the Iranian Empire under the Safavid dynasty. The spiritual exercises of the Safavid Order, their ruminations, their cordial illuminations, and their angelic invocations seem to have electrified the Soul of Iran as incantated by Ferdowsi; but their impious self-indulgence confused the serenity of their souls and made it sure that their pledge was predestined to doom.  

Selim I shared the same ideas as Ismail I Safavi and Muhammad Shaybani about a state’s chances to acquire wealth; this was not due to cultural tradition (as in Iran) or to geomorphological impact (as in Central Asia). The state that Selim I -through plots, family disloyalty, treason, and shameful banditry- managed to put under control stretched from Central Anatolia to Belgrade; this had been the usual, typical domain of the Constantinopolitan βασιλείς (basileis; emperors) from the 7th to the 12th c. The official name of the state was invariably ‘Eastern Roman Empire’, and this was the will of all the successors of Mehmet II. But quite unfortunately, the ill-fated Ottoman Sultanate was controlled by a criminal, pseudo-Muslim family, which was manipulated by idiotic theologians, sectarian sheikhs, and a bogus-Islamic authority, the sheikh-ul-Islam (also written as Shaykh al-Islam). The sultans wanted, quite absurdly, to represent the Eastern Roman imperial tradition, while remaining the petty warriors (غازى; ghazi), who relied on worthless and unnecessary razzias (غزية), i.e. military expeditions of greedy barbarians; this meant that they were a 14th c. state in a 16th c. world; this situation could not possibly have a successful exit.

The immediate descendants of Mehmet II continued ruling their realm in a most ineffective manner that included very contradictory elements, practices, concepts and procedures, which produced endless tensions. On one side, the devshirme (دوشیرمه; devshirme; lit. ‘collecting’), i.e. child levy, and the janissary infantry elite (یڭیچری; yeniçeri) gave the Ottoman sultan (and, after 1453, emperor) the real tools to create a formidable empire similar to that of Justinian I. But on the other side, the obscure, nefarious and ominous presence of a body of execrable theologians and their increasing, onerous and catastrophic impact on the sultan gradually turned the Ottoman sultanate to a sort of Papo-Caesarist realm, whereas for the Eastern Roman Empire (of which the Ottomans wanted to make their state the living continuity) the Caesaropapist model of rule had to be the sole, paramount and permanent concept of imperial order.

The existing anachronistic elements, the tensions ensued from the contradictory dynamics, the ruinous hatred unleashed by the blind, dogmatic and cruel sheikhs and sheikh-ul-islams, and the vindictive stance of many sultans (as well as of other members of the Ottoman family) triggered unprecedented reactions. In their outright majority, the populations, either Christian or Muslim, reviled the cursed state of the Ottoman family (دولت عليه عثمانیه; Devlet-i Aliye-i Osmaniye), whereas the wretched family in a vicious and most anti-Islamic manner disrespected the humans that God had entrusted to them. This situation led to real worsening of the living conditions, sheer deterioration of the state structures, and grave decrease of government effectiveness.

The Ottoman Sultanate never managed to acquire a well-structured administration; that’s why it was never a strong empire that could methodically elaborate a program of expansion or Reconquista. Islamic spirituality was besmirched, attacked and later prohibited; the worthless Ottoman bureaucracy was a burden; the wars declared against neighboring empires were due to sectarian or arbitrary motives; and the only sound element in the empire was the janissary elite.

A mere comparison of the Roman and the Ottoman possessions in Africa helps everyone realize how absurd, precarious and inconsequential the rule of the Ottoman sultans was. On the Black Continent, the Ottomans controlled an area more sizeable than the largest Roman dominions there. The Romans never managed to advance successfully south of Egypt and to conquer the Cushitic (i.e. Ancient Ethiopian) Kingdom of Meroe in today’s Sudan; but they controlled the African North up to the coasts of today’s Morocco.

The Ottomans invaded Egypt (1516-1517) to disband the Mamluk state, and then they progressively extended their rule over the entire coast of North Africa, thus including Algiers (1518), Benghazi (1521), Tripoli (1551) and Tunis (1574) in their domain; the Ottomans were invited and acclaimed by the indigenous populations that were mostly Muslim (only according to Western colonial propaganda, the Ottomans ‘colonized’ North Africa), and until the time these lands were incorporated into the Caliphate, the Ottoman Emperor was acknowledged as the caliph – which already made of these lands real dependencies of the Constantinopolitan Muslim ruler. Under Suleiman the Magnificent (1554) and Murat III (1576), two Ottoman military expeditions were undertaken in Morocco, ending with the capture of Fez.

In Eastern Africa, the Ottomans sent detachments and corsairs to defend the Somalis against the Portuguese (in the 1520s-1540s), having excellent relations with all the Somali sultanates, notably Adal and the Ajuuraan Empire. In fact, by recognizing the caliph at Constantinople and by mentioning his name first in the Friday prayer, all Muslim African sultanates and emirates recognized the Ottoman Caliphate, thus becoming effectively mere dependencies of the Caliphate. That’s why there was no real need for an Ottoman invasion of the Western Africa, Sahara (the Songhai, Mali, Hausa-Zaria, Kanem-Bornu, Wadai, Funj, Darfur, and other realms), and Eastern Africa. Located south of the Mısır eyaleti (as the province of Egypt was named in Ottoman Turkish), the Habeş eyaleti (i.e. the province of Abyssinia) comprised the coastal lands of today’s Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, and parts of today’s Somalia and Ethiopia). The Adal Somali sultanate shared therefore borders with the Ottoman Empire.

But exactly because of the highly de-centralized condition of the Muslim African world, it was totally impossible for them to establish a major, functional force ready to repel colonial attacks. Even worse, the Ottoman dominions in North Africa never became a serious matter of governmental concern and there was never a real effort to organize, systematize and standardize the integration of the African vilayets into the Ottoman state. Certainly, the Ottoman Empire controlled vast territories in Africa; but because of the aforementioned problems, these lands were a burden rather than an advantage and an asset. In this regard, Selim I’s attack against the Mamluk state and his subsequent invasion of Syria, Palestine, Arabia and Egypt, after the victory he marked over Ismail I Safavi in Chaldiran, proved to be a complete waste of the Ottoman military resources.

Bayezid II’s disloyal son was not prepared to become an emperor and that’s why he was a miserable opportunist without a clue of strategy; he could not understand what truly makes an empire strong, wealthy and sustainable. With respect to the expansion of a state, he did not know which lands are necessary and which are not; even worse, he did not observe -let alone study- patterns and models of expansion from the History of the Islamic Caliphates and Empires.

Selim I was a blind, indoctrinated idiot, who -after his victory in Chaldiran- lost the unique opportunity to promptly invade Iran, merge the two Turanian and Iranian empires, and then attack the Sultanate of Delhi. I have however to admit that he did not have the correct education, the shrewd mindset, and the accurate perception of the reality to possibly think strategically and act accordingly. The Iranian plateau and the valleys of Hindustan (India) and Bengal were far more important than the sands of Arabia and the waters of the Nile.

Had he attempted to establish one empire from Danube to Ganges, he would have followed the example of Timur (Tamerlane); at the same time, he would have created a uniquely wealthy empire able to possess the inexorable resources and the technical infrastructure needed to oppose and defeat the Western colonial kingdoms.

Babur makes Humayun his successor (1530); miniature from a manuscript of the Akbarnameh (created ca. 1602-3)

Babur treated by doctors during a serious illness, in 1498; while recuperating, Babur had a relapse and his condition became critical; for four days he could only take water dribbled into his mouth from a piece of cotton, and for several days he could barely speak.

In his Baburnama (Book of Babur), the founder of the Mughal Empire describes his struggle first to assert and defend his claim to the throne of Samarkand and the region of the Fergana Valley. After being driven out of Samarkand in 1501, he sought to create his headquarters in Kabul and then in northern India in Delhi. In this miniature from a manuscript of the Baburnama, Babur meets Sultan Ali Mirza near Samarqand.

Scene from Babur’s wars; from a miniature of the Farsi edition of Baburnama (translation by the Mughal courtier Abdul Rahīm in AH 998, i.e. 1589-90)

Babur from the miniature of manuscript of Baburnama currently in the Museum of Oriental Art (Государственный музей Востока), Moscow

Vasily III, ruler of Muscovy (1479-1533; reigned after 1505), son of Ivan III and Sophia Palaiologina, receives the ambassador from Babur; miniature from the 19th volume of the Illustrated Chronicle of Ivan the Terrible (Лицевой летописный свод Ивана Грозного)

The Mausoleum of Babur (Bagh-e Babur, i.e. Babur Gardens) in Kabul

Khusrau shah swearing loyalty to Babur; miniature from the Baburnama copy in Moscow

Babur receiving Baqi Beg Chaghaniyani, a Turkistani Qipchaq, in his encampment on the banks of the Amu Darya (Oxus); Baqi was a loyal supporter of Babur contrarily to his brother Khusraw shah, whom Baqi brought to pledge allegiance; however, at a later moment, Khusraw shah proved to be a traitor once more. Miniature from a manuscript now in the British Library (Or. 3714, f. 35v); it was painted by the Mughal artist Bhem Gujarati.

Miniature from a Baburnama manuscript now in the National Museum, New Delhi; squirrels, a peacock and peahen, demoiselle cranes and fishes

Babur was exempt of sectarian ideas, tribal mentality, and worthless theological prescriptions; of the Western colonial powers he had minimal knowledge, if any. Deep in his heart and mind he had apparently the wish and the dream to prove himself worthy of his glorious past; for this reason, he needed to establish himself somewhere, i.e. to set up the headquarters of his forthcoming empire. Samarqand was an ideal location; but there he failed repeatedly. Babur’s life was not that of a great emperor, because prior to the invasion of the Delhi Sultanate, his realm was always small and constantly under attack.

Continuously moving from place to place with his few but loyal and devout soldiers, Babur was however an indomitable adventurer, an indefatigable soldier, an excellent tactician, and a great strategist. The greatness of the Mughal Empire, which was far wealthier than the Ottoman Empire, Iran, Russia, Holland, England and even Louis XIV’s France, was basically due to its founder Babur. As it is known, he died rather young (at 47). If he had lived as long as his great ancestor Tamerlane (69), the History of Asia would have certainly been markedly different.

Great rulers are those who prepare well their successors; to do so, they have to endlessly convey to their heirs their way of thinking, their approach to facts, their reaction to developments, their world perception and worldview, and -last but not the least- their method of governance. This is often a long enduring process; it is not always sure that the elder son of a ruler is fit to it. For this reason, we often observe a ruler’s predilection for his second or third son. For Babur this dilemma did not exist; Humayun (همایون/lit. ‘auspicious’ in Farsi; born as Mirza Nasir-ud-Din Muhammad; 1508-1556) was his firstborn (being also son to Babur’s favorite wife Maham Begum), and he proved to be a loyal, shrewd and very knowledgeable heir.

Babur apparently imparted his first son with many of his crucial personal traits and great abilities, notably his mobility, agility, flexibility and adaptability. That’s why Humayun managed to survive, although he was inexperienced at the beginning of his reign, when he faced many challenges, particularly from his half-brother Kamran Mirza and from Sher Shah Suri, a villainous and heinous scoundrel who set up a divisive but temporary rule. All the same, Humayun recaptured his empire with the help of Ismail I Safavi’s son Shah Tahmasp I (طهماسب; 1514-1576), and later consolidated and even expanded his realm. About:

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

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

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

However, Babur did not achieve to pass onto his son and successor a superb quality that was the top trait of Timur’s and Genghis Khan’s idiosyncrasy; this consists in a rare moral expertise and spiritual dexterity to invariably disdain and undervalue material achievements of one’s own and to thus infallibly maintain the original impulse toward a great vision permanently alive. Genghis Khan and Timur were indelibly motivated by their vision to unite the world; Babur was stimulated by his first target to re-establish the great empire of his ancestors, but he did not stay long on the throne of Agra (1526-1530).

With him died the vision of a universal empire. Humayun had to fight all his life long to eliminate threats and challenges and, when everything was put under control, he did not enjoy his throne more than few months before dying at 48, due to an accident. When Akbar I (أكبر; born Abu’l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad; 1542-1605; reigned after 1556) was crowned, very little was left from the original vision of his grandfather, Babur. Akbar I expanded greatly his realm and, after a certain moment, he shifted his interest to the North with the intention to extend his borders up to the ancestral lands in Central Asia; but by the end of the 16th c., it had become very clear to Akbar I that it was impossible to incorporate Samarqand and the Ferghana Valley to his empire.

To the early instability of the Mughal Empire and to Akbar I’s effort to expand in Central Asia testify the incessant changes of the Mughal capital: Agra 1526-1540, Agra 1555-1571, Fatehpur Sikri 1571-1585, Lahore 1586-1598 (reflecting Akbar I’s move to the North), Agra 1598-1648 and Delhi 1648-1857. In fact, Akbar’s death marks the end of every Central Asiatic venture of the Mughal rulers.  

The Mughal Empire expanded greatly across the Asiatic South, notably the Deccan; it impacted considerably the formation of Muslim sultanates in Southeastern Asia and the islands of today’s Indonesia. All the same, the Gurkanian (گورکانیان; lit. ‘the sons-in law’), as the Iranians called the Mughal emperors due to an old Turanian tradition, only corroborated the unchangeable verdict of History, namely that from Central Asia, Iran, Mesopotamia and Anatolia great military expeditions to faraway lands have often been and can actually be undertaken successfully; but no ruler has ever launched a campaign and a conquest of major parts of Asia, starting from the Valley of Indus and the Valley of Ganges. (The same is also valid for the Yellow River and the Yangtze River valleys.)

Having a truly complex mindset, a very wealthy, composite and perplex culture, and a spiritual impact on their reasoning, the Mughals, the Safavids and the Ottomans could never understand how simple, low, and profane the intentions, attitudes, and mindsets of the colonial bandits, soldiers, merchants, academics and agents were. Had they perceived accurately the level of the colonial purposes and objectives, they would have early reacted against the Western barbarism, cruelty and monstrosity; but they were not able to lower their intellect in order to deal with petty things. They mistook the Western inhumanity for foolishness; their mistake allowed the Western colonials to achieve their targets. How could it have been otherwise? Occam’s razor, if described to a Mughal, Safavid or Ottoman erudite scholar, would have been considered as totally nonsensical, puerile, absurd, and typical for savages. That’s why English, French, Dutch, and American savagery plunged all these civilized lands to poverty, wars, genocides, and interminable destructions down to our days. About:

The simplicity principle in perception and cognition

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5125387/

Blue Mosque, Istanbul: the most representative Ottoman architectural masterpiece

Masjid-e Shah / The Mosque of Shah, Isfahan: the most representative Safavid Iranian architectural masterpiece

Taj Mahal, Agra: the most representative Mughal architectural masterpiece

——————————————————–  

FORTHCOMING

Turkey is Iran and Iran is Turkey

2500 Years of indivisible Turanian – Iranian Civilization distorted and estranged by Anglo-French Orientalists

By Prof. Muhammet Şemsettin Gözübüyükoğlu

(Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

CONTENTS

PART ONE. INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I: A World held Captive by the Colonial Gangsters: France, England, the US, and the Delusional History Taught in their Deceitful Universities

A. Examples of fake national names

a) Mongolia (or Mughal) and Deccan – Not India!

b) Tataria – Not Russia!

c) Romania (with the accent on the penultimate syllable) – Not Greece!

d) Kemet or Masr – Not Egypt!

e) Khazaria – not Israel!

f) Abyssinia – not Ethiopia!

B. Earlier Exchange of Messages in Turkish

C. The Preamble to My Response

CHAPTER II: Geopolitics does not exist.

CHAPTER III: Politics does not exist.

CHAPTER IV: Turkey and Iran beyond politics and geopolitics: Orientalism, conceptualization, contextualization, concealment

A. Orientalism

B. Conceptualization

C. Contextualization

D. Concealment

PART TWO. EXAMPLE OF ACADEMICALLY CONCEALED, KEY HISTORICAL TEXT

CHAPTER V: Plutarch and the diffusion of Ancient Egyptian and Iranian Religions and Cultures in Ancient Greece

PART THREE. TURKEY AND IRAN BEYOND POLITICS AND GEOPOLITICS: REJECTION OF THE ORIENTALIST, TURKOLOGIST AND IRANOLOGIST FALLACIES ABOUT ACHAEMENID HISTORY

CHAPTER VI:  The fallacy that Turkic nations were not present in the wider Mesopotamia – Anatolia region in pre-Islamic times

CHAPTER VII: The fallacious representation of Achaemenid Iran by Western Orientalists

CHAPTER VIII: The premeditated disconnection of Atropatene / Adhurbadagan from the History of Azerbaijan

CHAPTER IX: Iranian and Turanian nations in Achaemenid Iran

CHAPTER X: Iranian and Turanian Religions in Pre-Islamic Iran 

PART FOUR. FALLACIES ABOUT THE SO-CALLED HELLENISTIC PERIOD, ALEXANDER THE GREAT, AND THE SELEUCID & THE PARTHIAN ARSACID TIMES

CHAPTER XI: Alexander the Great as Iranian King of Kings, the fallacy of Hellenism, and the nonexistent Hellenistic Period

CHAPTER XII: Parthian Turan: an Anti-Persian dynasty

CHAPTER XIII: Parthian Turan and the Philhellenism of the Arsacids

PART FIVE. FALLACIES ABOUT SASSANID HISTORY, HISTORY OF RELIGIONS, AND THE HISTORY OF MIGRATIONS

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

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

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

PART SIX. FALLACIES ABOUT THE EARLY EXPANSION OF ISLAM: THE FAKE ARABIZATION OF ISLAM

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

CHAPTER XVIII: Western Orientalist falsifications of Islamic History: Identification of Islam with only Hejaz at the times of the Prophet

CHAPTER XIX: The fake, Orientalist Arabization of Islam

CHAPTER XX: The systematic dissociation of Islam from the Ancient Oriental History

PART SEVEN. THE FICTIONAL DIVISION OF ISLAM INTO ‘SUNNI’ AND ‘SHIA’

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

PART EIGHT. THE DISTORTED TERM ‘PERSIANATE’

CHAPTER XXII: The fake Persianization of the Abbasid Caliphate

PART NINE. FALLACIES ABOUT THE GOLDEN ERA OF THE ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION

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

PART TEN. FALLACIES ABOUT THE TIMES OF TURANIAN (MONGOLIAN) SUPREMACY IN TERMS OF SCIENCES, ARTS, LETTERS, SPIRITUALITY AND IMPERIAL UNIVERSALISM

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

CHAPTER XXV: Timur (Tamerlane) as a Turanian Muslim descendant of the Great Hero Manuchehr, his exploits and triumphs, and the slow rise of the Turanian Safavid Order

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

PART ELEVEN. HOW AND WHY THE OTTOMANS, THE SAFAVIDS AND THE MUGHALS FAILED  

CHAPTER XXVII: Ethnically Turanian Safavids & Culturally Iranian Ottomans: two identical empires that mirrored one another

CHAPTER XXVIII: Spirituality, Religion & Theology: the fallacy of the Safavid conversion of Iran to ‘Shia Islam’

CHAPTER XXIX: Selim I, Ismail I, and Babur

CHAPTER XXX: The Battle of Chaldiran (1514), and how it predestined the Fall of the Islamic World

CHAPTER XXXI: Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals: victims of their sectarianism, tribalism, theology, and wrong evaluation of the colonial West

CHAPTER XXXII: Ottomans, Iranians and Mughals from Nader Shah to Kemal Ataturk

PART TWELVE. CONCLUSION

CHAPTER XXXIII: Turkey and Iran beyond politics and geopolitics: whereto?

—————————————————  

List of the already pre-published chapters of the book

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

CHAPTER VII: The Fallacious Representation of Achaemenid Iran by Western Orientalists

https://www.academia.edu/106013407/The_Fallacious_Representation_of_Achaemenid_Iran_by_Western_Orientalists

CHAPTER VIII: The premeditated disconnection of Atropatene / Adhurbadagan from the History of Azerbaijan

https://www.academia.edu/105841665/The_premeditated_disconnection_of_Atropatene_Adhurbadagan_from_the_History_of_Azerbaijan

CHAPTER IX: Iranian and Turanian nations in Achaemenid Iran

https://www.academia.edu/105880180/Iranian_and_Turanian_nations_in_Achaemenid_Iran

CHAPTER X: Iranian and Turanian Religions in Pre-Islamic Iran 

https://www.academia.edu/105664696/Iranian_and_Turanian_Religions_in_Pre_Islamic_Iran

—————————- 

CHAPTER XI: Alexander the Great as Iranian King of Kings, the fallacy of Hellenism, and the nonexistent Hellenistic Period

https://www.academia.edu/105386978/Alexander_the_Great_as_Iranian_King_of_Kings_the_fallacy_of_Hellenism_and_the_nonexistent_Hellenistic_Period

CHAPTER XII: Parthian Turan: an Anti-Persian dynasty

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

CHAPTER XIII: Parthian Turan and the Philhellenism of the Arsacids

https://www.academia.edu/105539884/Parthian_Turan_and_the_Philhellenism_of_the_Arsacids

———————————   

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

———————————-

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

https://www.academia.edu/105292787/Iran_Turan_and_the_Western_Orientalist_distortions_about_the_successful_early_expansion_of_Islam_during_the_7th_8th_c_CE

CHAPTER XIX: The fake, Orientalist Arabization of Islam

https://www.academia.edu/105713891/The_fake_Orientalist_Arabization_of_Islam

CHAPTER XX: The systematic dissociation of Islam from the Ancient Oriental History

https://www.academia.edu/105565861/The_systematic_dissociation_of_Islam_from_the_Ancient_Oriental_History

—————————————   

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_

——————————————  

CHAPTER XXII: The fake Persianization of the Abbasid Caliphate

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

——————————————– 

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

————————————————  

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

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

https://www.academia.edu/105267173/The_Timurid_Era_as_the_Peak_of_the_Islamic_Civilization_Shah_Rukh_and_Ulugh_Beg_the_Astronomer_Emperor

—————————————– 

CHAPTER XXVII: Ethnically Turanian Safavids & Culturally Iranian Ottomans: two identical empires that mirrored one another

https://www.academia.edu/105744200/Ethnically_Turanian_Safavids_and_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’

https://www.academia.edu/105770339/Spirituality_Religion_and_Theology_the_fallacy_of_the_Safavid_conversion_of_Iran_to_Shia_Islam

————————————————–

Download the chapter (text only) in PDF:

selim-i-ismail-i-and-baburDownload

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

selim-i-ismail-i-and-babur-pict-legDownload

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.

———————————   

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

Click to access 2015.77320.Life-Of-Timur-The-Great-Amir.pdf

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/

If Taimur is Unacceptable, then Why Shah Rukh is so Lauded

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

Click to access indiainfifteenth00majo.pdf

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

Click to access Fazlioglu.pdf

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

Click to access 82060301.pdf

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/

Timurid architecture – Ulugh Beg Madrasa, The Bibi Khanum Mosque, Aq Saray Palace, Amir Burunduq a mausoleum, from Eraz

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

—————————————– 

List of the already pre-published chapters of the book

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

———————————   

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

—————————————   

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_

——————————————  

CHAPTER XXII: The fake Persianization of the Abbasid Caliphate

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

——————————————– 

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

————————————————  

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

———————————————————————–

Download the chapter (text only) in PDF:

the-timurid-era-as-the-peak-of-the-islamic-civilizationDownload

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

the-timurid-era-as-the-peak-of-the-islamic-civilization-pictures-legendsDownload

From the Great Game to the Final Game: Iran Full Member State of the SCO, as the Greatest Event of the 21st Century

The Earth is one and undividable; the historical presence of several major empires over the past 45 centuries does not consist in a division but rather in a union around the same human, universalist-ecumenist ideals. From Sargon of Akkad (薩爾貢/سارگون) to the Qing, the Romanovs, the Ottomans and the Qajar, various empires incarnated these very old, common to all, and permanently cherished ideals in their respective locations. And by entering in endless commercial, cultural and spiritual exchanges, the great realms of Afro-Asia gave new dynamics to the magnificent soar made by the original civilizations that started in the beginning of the 4th millennium BCE in Mesopotamia (美索不达米亚/ بین النهرین) and Egypt. And the Silk-, Spice- and Frankincense Routes across Lands, Deserts and Seas, which are commonly called ‘the Silk Roads’, demonstrated very well the supreme human value, i.e. the Unity of Earth Life, removing in reality all the frontiers across the main landmass where the Mankind dwells. About:

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/萨尔贡大帝

https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/سارگن_بزرگ

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/美索不达米亚

https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/بین_النهرین

Starting with the late 15th and early 16th c., mankind was hit with an unprecedented plague that originated from a minor and insignificant peninsula, which had never been viewed as the center of a civilization or the location of a meritable kingdom by any civilized nation: Europe. I mainly refer to the current territories of Portugal, Spain, France, Holland, Belgium and England. These lands alone represent nowadays the historical meaning of what people define as “Europe” today.

I. Europe is not a Continent

There is a troublesome hiatus in this regard, and it is necessary to make things clear. When people across the world think today of ‘Europe’ as a so-called continent (‘from the Atlantic to the Urals’), they only demonstrate to what great extent they have been deceived by the propaganda that emanated from the aforementioned modern states. This delusion of a ‘Europe – Continent’ does not exist in History; it’s a fake. The inhuman means of its propagation do not concern the scope of the present article, but surely involve the education, the publications, the mass media, the psychological operations (psy-ops), the so-called ‘political life’ (a low level farcical act), and the pseudo-culture that these states imposed at home and abroad.

Throughout the ages, Europe was never viewed as a ‘continent’ (in the sense we mean now); it did not actually consist in a continent, and -even worse- it was not the land of a civilization that impacted World History. Europe did not represent a unity of culture, tradition, faith, ancestry or language in any sense. In reality, all the useless elements of Asia and Africa ended up in Europe one way or another. And more tragi-comically for the well-propagated Fake History of Europe, the few civilized elements of Asia and Africa, which generated a rudimentary civilization on what is now called ‘European soil’ (Cyprus, Crete, Rome, Macedonia), did so by merely reproducing Asiatic and African values, arts, traditions, concepts and techniques and by bringing with them forms of spirituality, faith, moral, piety and virtue that were typically African or Asiatic in their original form.

What puts European colonials’ pseudo-historical propaganda beyond all intents and purposes is the fact that the very few civilized kingdoms, which were formed on what is now called ‘Europe’ did not identify themselves as ‘European’, did not view ‘Europe’ as a cultural unity or imperial entity, and did not care for the largest part of what we now call Europe, because simply it was worthless to them.

Alexander the Great of Macedonia, the absolute embodiment of Anti-Greek or Anti-Hellenic ruler, deployed enormous effort to succeed to the Achaemenid rulers of Iran. He was not the invader of many lands, as the modern European pseudo-historical propaganda projects him to be; he only conquered the entire Achaemenid Iran because he wanted to be an Asiatic king of kings. That’s why he deliberately made of Babylon his capital and of the Sogdian princess Roxanne his wife. But the central and northern part of the Balkan Peninsula, which would be easy to conquer, fully disinterested him. And the same is also valid for Southern Italy and Sicily where Ionians and Dorians had established colonies, let alone the useless plains of Gaul and the plateau of the Iberian Peninsula.

Achaemenid Iran

And the Roman Emperors repeatedly and convincingly proved that to them Egypt was more important than Gaul, Anatolia was more worthwhile than Iberia, and Syria was more significant than Britain. Romans undertook a naval expedition against Arabia Felix (today’s Aden), but not around the otherwise useless coasts of Sweden, Norway and Finland. Optimus princeps Trajan (98-117; 圖拉真/ تراژان), the greatest Roman emperor of all times, carried out military expeditions down to Characene (today’s southern Iraq and Kuwait) and up to Caucasus Albania (today’s Azerbaijan), but he did not have the slightest concern about the shores of today’s Poland and Estonia or the Azov Sea and the plains of Ukraine. Even more exemplarily, not one Roman Emperor bothered to invade Hibernia, today’s Ireland. About:

The Roman Empire was not a European empire.

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/圖拉真

https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/تراژان

Through conquests and treaties, the Romans controlled in Africa a definitely larger territory than in Europe, but today’s forged maps are systematically produced in a way to scrupulously conceal this historical reality. Even worse, scholarly Orientalist bibliography is kept far from the hands of the average public (and therefore not duly popularized in education manuals, publishing houses, and the mass media) in order not to reveal the overwhelming and cataclysmic diffusion of Oriental cults, concepts, virtues, values, lifestyles, faiths, esoteric rites, mythologies, worldviews, religions, arts, symbolisms, cosmogonies, cosmologies, systems of eschatology and messianic soteriology, rites, ceremonials, forms of spirituality, wisdom and erudition across all European territories of the Roman Empire, and also in other lands in Europe. Quite contrarily to the pseudo-historical dogma that the European colonial intellectuals produced by fallaciously naming an entire period ‘Hellenistic and Roman Times’, this same period is indeed ‘Orientalist and Orientalizing Times’, due to the above mentioned prevalence of Oriental cultures and civilizations throughout Europe.

II. Colonial Gangsters, Division of the World, and the East-West Divide

A fake concept for Europe and a bogus-historical dogma were not the only calamities with which the European kingdoms affected the rest of the world; in fact, they were only two and among the last. The six colonial kingdoms used their military edge to inflict great empires and primitive structures with all sorts of disaster, destruction, ruin, death, and unadulterated inhumanity. Settler colonialism and intellectual-spiritual-cultural-intellectual-educational-academic-religious colonialism started with the evil treaty of Tordesillas (1494; پیمان تردسییاس /托德西利亚斯条约) and they soon attained unprecedented levels of monstrosity with the evil deeds of the Spanish and the Portuguese conquistadors. The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519-1521; فتح امپراتوری آزتک توسط اسپانیا /西班牙征服阿兹特克帝国) before exactly 500 years and the destruction of the highly civilized Aztec capital Tenochtitlan (特诺奇蒂特兰/ تنوختیتلان) only heralded what would follow. About:

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/托德西利亚斯条约

https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/پیمان_تردسییاس

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/西班牙征服阿兹特克帝国

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/悲痛之夜

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/特諾奇提特蘭

https://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/فتح_امپراتوری_آزتک_توسط_اسپانیا

The division of the seas as per the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)

In the beginning of the 16th c., when such terribly inhuman crimes started being perpetrated by the first colonial empires, namely Spain and Portugal, there were still several human empires on Earth: in 1520, the Ottoman Empire covered a sizable territory in Western Asia, Northeastern Africa, and what is now called Southeastern Europe. In Western Africa, the Mali Empire (Manden Kurufaba) was still powerful, although superseded by the Songhai Empire.

In Iran, the Safavids were in power, controlling vast lands from Central Iraq to Herat to Baluchistan. The formidable Turanian-Mongolian Empire of the Golden Horde had split, but from today’s NE Balkans and Poland to the Pacific Ocean, a number of Muslim, Buddhist and Tengrist Turanian-Mongolian khanates controlled a really enormous territory. You needed only to speak Chagatay Turkic to cross (from west to east) the vast lands of the Qasim Khanate, the Crimean Khanate, the Nogai Horde, the Khanate of Kazan, the Astrakhan Khanate, the Uzbek Khanate, the Kazakh Khanate, the Khanate of Sibir (Siberia), the Turpan Khanate, the Yarkand Khanate, and the Four Oirat confederacy. In China, the Ming dynasty was still powerful, and in 1526, Timur’s (Tamerlane’s) great-great grandson Babur took power in Delhi, eliminating the earlier sultanates and founding the formidable Gurkanian Empire of South Asia, which is better known as the Mughal Empire.

The Golden Horde (Turanian-Mongolian Empire)

The divided Turanian-Mongolian Empire around 1500

The Ottomans around 1520

The Safavid Empire of Iran around 1520 which according to Western colonial propaganda was called ‘Persia’, although it was a Turanian Empire.

The Mughal Empire of South Asia

The Songhai Empire in the 15-16th c.

However, none of these empires’ human elites had an idea about the monstrous plans and the atrocious deeds of the then otherwise insignificant colonial barbarians, who aspired to conquer and disfigure the entire world through evil conspiracy, deceitful schemes, pernicious practices, and utterly inhuman deeds. The naivety of the Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal, and Ming emperors hinges on the fact that they did not studiously monitor the deeds of the colonial powers; furthermore, they mistook the European colonials for humans, and they did not make proper plans as to how to oppose them. The worst mistake of the great Asiatic and African empires was that they did not perceive the forthcoming encounter and clash in terms of long-term perspective, eschatological agenda, and human race extinction. Still, all these empires cherished traditions and beliefs that described the ‘evil’ extensively; but the Asiatic imperial elites failed to timely identify the European colonials as the evil par excellence.

Hitherto unconceivable concepts were then introduced, and the fallacious version of History, peremptorily produced by the European colonial elites, was instrumental in projecting onto the entire world the aberration of a division between East and West (or Orient and Occident). This forgery had a double headed axe’s use:

a) it made the colonial elites, academics, diplomats, administrators, army officers, soldiers, societies and average people in general utterly believe in their ‘proven’ superiority (whereas they are indeed multiply inferior, degenerate and inhuman), and

b) it convinced the targeted nations’ elites, academics, diplomats, administrators, army officers, soldiers, societies and average people in general that they were irrevocably inferior (whereas they are indeed superior, law-abiding and human in every sense).

III. Colonial Weaponization of Knowledge and Deceitful Schemes against the Entire Mankind (1494-1925)

None of the 16th c. great imperial establishments of Asia and Africa realized the extent of the colonial perversion, subversion and systematic falsification of the World History. Study, research, exploration, knowledge, erudition and wisdom were traits, activities, qualities and virtues invariably attested throughout millennia in Asia and Africa; however, the entire scope and the final target were always the same, namely the discovery of the truth and the improvement of understanding. There was never a claim of superiority and such an attitude or claim would appear as absurd; there was competition and quite often synergy.

All the intellectuals of Ionia, Attica, Aeolia and Macedonia willingly acknowledged that they went to Mesopotamia, Egypt and Iran to be educated in the vast temples- universities of the Oriental capitals, because there was only darkness in the multi-divided and backward, petty states of South Balkans. Scholars from all backgrounds and lands used to flock to Nineveh, to Babylon, to Iwnw (Heliopolis), and to Persepolis, and later to Alexandria, to Antioch, to Nisibis, to Ctesiphon, to Istakhr, to Gundishapur, and during Islamic times to Baghdad, to Cordoba, to Cairo, and to Samarqand without idiotic prejudices of ethnic or national, ancestral or racial superiority.

However, the weaponization of knowledge, as attested in magnificent colonial grand opuses like the famous Dutch “Hortus Malabaricus” (1669-1676) and the illustrious French “La Description de l’Égypte” (1809-1829), showed that the insidious European colonial adventure was not a simple military expedition, an economic exploitation, and a national enslavement, but it consisted in the total deprivation of the colonized nations from their natural and national resources, their urban and architectural environment, their traditional knowledge and cultural heritage, and their own identity.

La Description de l’Égypte – the cover page of the monumental voluminous publication

Even worse, the European colonial plague constituted a systematic and permanent projection of the false identity of subaltern and subservient humanoid onto all the civilized Asiatic and African humans; they had been civilized, but they were forced into abandoning their culture and civilization, into being barbarized and enslaved, and into being transformed into humanoid automatons to serve their barbarian masters, i.e. the inhuman monsters of Portugal, Spain, England, France, Holland and Belgium. European colonialism was therefore the complete, irreversible and ultimate dehumanization of the ‘Other’. In the History of Mankind, we can describe European colonialism as the Crime of Crimes.

Simply, in the case of Luso-Spanish, Dutch, and Anglo-French colonialism, the ‘Other’ was the entire world, and the vicious gangsters and forgers were the most worthless barbarians of Asia’s westernmost and most uncivilized peninsula. The result of the detrimental shock was evident: the Mughal Empire could not last more than 180 years after the publication of the “Hortus Malabaricus”, and the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist less than 100 years after the publication of the “Description de l’Égypte”. The morale of the story is easy to figure out: when the foreigners know ‘your’ possessions better than you do, you better ask the astrologers how much time is left before your state disappears.

The French colonial empire

The English colonial empire

This is so because, if foreigners know ‘your’ possessions better than you do, this means that your state is already useless and dysfunctional. It also means that your religion is apparently worthless and your sacred texts evidently valueless; and this is true, not in the sense that the religion and the sacred texts in question are meritless, but because you lost their true meaning and therefore your understanding of them is nil.

IV. Naivety and Subsequent Fall of the Oriental Imperial Elites: Mughal Empire, Qing China, Czarist Russia, the Ottomans & Qajar Iran  

It is interesting that the Opium Wars started only few years before the Mughal Empire disappeared. In 1839, the power of Bahadur Shah II was not greater than that of a puppet king in the Balkans or a tribal leader in Sub-Saharan Africa. Cornered among the Ottomans, the Russians, the English in ‘India’, and the English puppets in the pseudo-state of Afghanistan, the Iranian Qajar shahs could do nothing either to help the Chinese Qing or to organize their own defense with the much demanded final dissolution of Afghanistan and with an attack against British India.

It was too late for them; or perhaps one could say that for Imperial Iran, it was already too late in 1501, when the young shah Ismail Safavi, almost adored as the Messiah/Mahdi Incarnate in his early years, was spending his nights in fabulous banquets and sexual orgies, while the Luso-Spanish armadas were sailing across all oceans, which were literally prohibited to all Muslims, Chinese and the rest by virtue of the Treaty of Tordesillas of which no Iranian intelligence ever heard anything before the 20th c.

Ismail Safavi

Under such circumstances, no one has a doubt why Fat′h-Ali Shah Qajar (reign: 1797-1834) did nothing else except losing one more war to the Russians and spending his long days and his even longer nights with his 1000+ concubines, thus laboriously producing no less than 100 children and ca. 600 grandchildren (although several trustworthy historical sources include even higher numbers of heirs). The same is valid for the pious but stupid Ottomans whose best way of correcting a mistake was to commit another.

Fat′h-Ali Shah Qajar

And what is the difference between the last Mughal (Bahadur Shah II) and the last Ottoman (Vahdettin)? Having got a kick in the ass, the former died (1862) in Rangoon (Myanmar) where he was exiled; having experienced the same miserable fate, the latter died in exile (1926), in Sanremo (Italy); either in the East or in the West, an exile is an exile. It is therefore a permanent shame and an irrevocable disgrace. No one can raise a claim to Neo-Safavism, Neo-Mughalism or Neo-Ottomanism without being similarly destroyed and eradicated from the surface of the Earth. And quite instructively, today’s China does not play into the Neo-Qing game; neither does Republican Russia develop Neo-Czarist delusions.

Bahadur Shah II, the powerless Mughal emperor when he was still on his throne

The exiled Bahadur Shah II in his small cabin

Vahdettin, the most execrable and the most miserable of all Ottomans leaves his palace to sail on an English ship to Italy where he lived in exile for the last years of his shameful life

The Opium Wars did not signal only the beginning of the European-American-Japanese colonization of China; they also heralded the beginning of the end for the Romanov. Yet, it was a period of stability for Russia – or so it seemed. From 1825 until 1881, when Alexander II was assassinated at the age of 63, Russia was ruled by only two czars, namely Nicholas I and his son. But there was no foresight, no real study of the European colonials, and no identity clarity.

The Zionist assassination of the Freemason czar Alexander II

Russia’s most shameful spot: the room where Nicholas II and his family were assassinated, thus paying for the mistake to associate Holy Russia to the unholy and devilish colonial states of France and England. Russia’s and the Romanov dynasty’s destiny would be different, if Nicholas II became the ally of Germany and Austria-Hungary and liberated India from the English colonial contamination.

Few people understand that only identity clarity can offer success in the governance of a realm and in the status it rejoices at the international level; on the contrary, identity confusion leads mathematically to defeat and destruction. Imperial Russia was in fact a Western European colonial fabrication – not by means of military invasion but by virtue of colonial stratagems. Colonial investors, agents and diplomats bribed, corrupted and utilized Russian noblemen and royals, and through subtle machinations convinced the Romanovs that they were a ‘European’ power. Thus, the Anglo-French colonials pulled the Russians into their historical forgery, persuaded them that the ‘Russians’ were ‘Indo-Europeans’, dragged them into the fallacious scheme ‘Christianity vs. Islam’ (whereas the English, the Dutch and the French elites were virulently anti-Christian), and engaged them in the same colonial competition (not anymore “Scramble for Africa” but for the entire world). However, all these developments were calamitous for Russia, and finally they led only to the demise of the entire dynasty.  

The Russians were subtly made to believe that the ‘common’ enemy that they had with the English and the French was the Islamic World; this was a success of the Anglo-French colonial diplomacy. In fact, the Russians had much in common with the Muslims, whereas they had nothing in common with the Anglo-French colonial contamination.

The Opium Wars: one of the worst shames of the History of Mankind

Pu Yi, the last of the Qing emperors

As a virtually Turanian, Asiatic and Oriental superpower (like the Golden Horde), Russia had to support China in the Opium Wars, by making an alliance with Iran and by attacking Afghanistan and invading British India. But when you are an Asiatic and you think you are a European, you cannot possibly opt for the correct decision. That’s why identity clarity matters above all, when it comes to national survival. Identity recognition is a very serious and at times painful process; usually, you are neither what you think (are taught that) you are, nor what you would like to be. Only a very neutral and objective/objectivist standpoint toward past atrocities and a strict detachment from national/nationalist/nationalistic narratives, present dreams, and wishful thinking can offer you the key to your identity.

Similarly, during WW I, Russia had to be the ally of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, Japan and Iran against France and England. In such a case, having no apparent reason to keep significant military forces in their western borders, the Russians could support the Ottomans against the English in Mesopotamia, Palestine and Hejaz, while three (3) million Russian soldiers with their Iranian allies could eliminate the fake state of Afghanistan and march on Delhi, invading the English colony and controlling the southern parts of Asia.

States function like human beings; the same rules apply to an individual and to a group of individuals. When someone does not do the correct thing, a mishappening takes always place. Wrong choices are constantly met with disastrous results; It was very unfortunate that the Russians participated with France and England in the vicious dismemberment of Qing China and that, in 1858-1860, through several ‘unequal treaties’ (the expression is an acknowledged historical term), they detached Outer Manchuria (外滿洲 / Приамурье). That’s why less than 60 years after Alexander II did this injustice to China, his grandson Nicholas II was deposed and assassinated. Alexander II was assassinated too (1881); but after his tragic death, Holy Russia still continued to exist. However, after his grandson’s assassination (1918), Holy Russia was no more. The ‘holy’ had been progressively but completely desecrated through the alliance with England and France.

V. Intellectual Colonialism and Orientalism

While the intellectual elites of the European colonial powers composed their false historical dogma on the basis of the intellectual-academic-cultural movements that we now call ‘Renaissance’, ‘Classicism’, and ‘Enlightenment’, arbitrarily distorting the past of their own lands, they also misinterpreted the History of Ancient Rome and the Roman Empire that they –also deliberately and erroneously- associated with them; it was a real usurpation of another nation’s past and cultural heritage. Then, peremptorily selecting earlier rejected philosophers of Ionia, worthless and forgotten politicians of Attica, long dismissed Aeolian poets, self-styled historians of Carian origin, authors of obscure past and unknown ancestry, repudiated tragedians and duly banished comedians, as well as forms of decayed lifestyle involving pedophilia and homosexuality, ritualistic orgies, and other absolutely pathetic and barbarian practices and traditions of various South Balkan tribes, they fabricated -out of thin air- what we now call ‘Ancient Greece’.

Ancient Greece never existed as a historical entity in the sense Ancient Phoenicia did. The royal divisions of the Ancient Phoenicians did not impact their culture and values that are now recognized for their coherence, consistency and uniformity. Quite contrarily, the disparate cultural elements that appear in the historical sources, the divergent religious beliefs and faithless lifestyles that are documented by means of archaeological evidence, and the incessant conflicts that pitched one ‘Ancient Greek’ city against another bear witness to the undeniable reality that ‘Ancient Greece’ never existed. In case, during the Antiquity and the Christian Times, the name had only a geographical connotation. In Islamic Times, it was duly forgotten.  It is one more colonial fabrication (just like the European ‘Continent’!) geared to be an element of destructive propaganda and a double headed axe. This is what we now call ‘Hellenism’, i.e. a racist ghost.

Hitherto unconceivable concepts were then introduced, and the fallacious version of History, peremptorily produced by the European colonial elites, was instrumental in projecting onto the entire world the aberration of a division between East and West as per which

a) all the positive values, virtues, elements, contributions and exploits were delivered by the Ancient Greeks and Romans (the so-called ‘West’),

whereas

b) all the negative values, sins, disorders, embarrassments, and shames were caused by all the Ancient Oriental nations, the Eastern Christians of all denominations (Orthodox, Miaphysitic/Monophysitic, and Nestorian), and all the Muslims (the so-called ‘East’).

It goes without saying that the latter (b) were (or rather ‘had to be’) ‘lower’ than the former (a)!!

To add insult to injury, the colonial academic elites turned their intellectual and scientific robbery of the colonized nations’ natural and national resources, urban and architectural environment, traditional knowledge, cultural heritage, and diachronic identity into an unprecedentedly enormous academic fallacy. Colonial explorers, epigraphists, linguists, archaeologists, philologists and historians deciphered dozens of ancient scripts, surveyed and excavated dozens of thousands of archaeological sites, penned millions of speeches, articles, manuals and books, and filled thousands of libraries and museums with an enormous documentation which consists basically in a calamitous, venomous and discriminatory misrepresentation of the historical past of Asia and Africa. This enormous falsehood is now called Orientalism. All the discoveries, analyses, syntheses, conclusions and interpretations of the colonial Orientalist scholars were published and popularized only in a way to preserve the earlier constituted pseudo-historical dogma intact; this means automatically that vast part of the said documentation was concealed far from the average public.

There are many deliberately erroneous aspects of Orientalism; it goes beyond the scope of the present article to refute the atrocities of the Western colonial Orientalists. However, I must herewith mention a persistent and critical dimension of historical falsification that concerns the use of the forged World History that the Western colonials make.

When you initially write and teach a ‘World History’, based on historical sources that cover the period 500 BCE – 1500 CE and then, at a later stage, you discover numerous anterior sources, which reveal to you (with respect to the outright majority of the world’s historical nations) diverse aspects of spiritual exploration, intellectual endeavor, scientific research, cultural life, artistic genius, economic activity, state governance, public administration, military expedition, imperial conceptualization, and interstate relations that cover 2-3 millennia of History (which antedate the period you initially knew about), then you have to amend all your earlier criteria, preconceived ideas, measures of evaluation, moral standards, virtues, world views, concepts, and standpoints, values, theories, ideas, assumptions and conclusions, because they are -most probably- entirely wrong. 

When you discover millions of texts in several languages and you get a clear idea of how life was 2000 or 3000 years before the moment you -arbitrarily and due to lack of sources- had taken as the ‘beginning of History’, then everything that you ‘knew’ (before the astounding discovery and the subsequent enrichment of knowledge) is wiped out, obliterated, and considered as obsolete once forever.

If we eventually suppose that the peremptory aberrations and the arbitrary conceptualizations of the Renaissance European colonial intellectuals were not malignant schemes providing only for the enslavement of the entire Mankind but mere errors and erroneous assumptions, then we can safely conclude that all these earlier aberrations and conceptualizations had to be immediately, completely and adequately amended in the light of the enormous amount of evidence unearthed, deciphered, studied, analyzed and interpreted.

Enuma Elish, the ancient Assyrian-Babylonian holy text that consists in the first human narrative of the Creation. After the discovery, decipherment, publication and study of the world’s earliest myths, epics and holy texts, everything changes, and we cannot afford to use posterior criteria to evaluate earlier masterpieces of spirituality and literature. On the contrary, all earlier, Assyrian-Babylonian and Egyptian, cultural and spiritual criteria apply to the evaluation of posterior epics and holy texts, notably those of the Hebrews, the ‘Greeks’ and the Romans.

The Hawara papyrus with text of Homer’s Iliad. After the decipherment, study and publication of Ancient Assyrian-Babylonian, Egyptian and Hittite holy texts, myths and epics, the only value that Homer’s epics can possibly have is the one that the Ancient Assyrian-Babylonian, Egyptian and Hittite criteria allow us to assess.

The fact that this development did not happen at all and the evident practice that today’s West European and North American colonial academics and intellectuals continue diffusing the same, preconceived and widely imposed falsehood are enough to convince all persons of good intentions that the European pseudo-historical dogma has always been deliberately and inanely false from A to Z.

VI. The Fake Science of Geopolitics

Since the misrepresentation of the ‘Other’ reached such extent, it was normal for the colonial elites to develop additional nonsensical theories, which were laboriously portrayed as ‘scientific disciplines’. In fact, they were merely wishful thinking defense mechanisms that lacked historicity, objectivity, authenticity, veracity and congruity; in brief, they were tools of propaganda and means to fool the eye. One of these arbitrary schemes is what people now call ‘geopolitics’. There is no geopolitics in any sense, and there can’t be any; the term is totally meaningless and self-contradictory.  

Coined by the Swedish political scientist and politician Rudolf Kjellén (1864-1922), the term ‘Geopolitics’ (initially Geopolitik in Swedish and German) contains two linguistic elements in striking contradiction to one another. Being composed of two Ancient Greek words (γη+πολιτική/ge+politiki) that mean ‘earth’ (or ‘land’) and ‘politics’, the term was geared to purportedly describe “the study of the effects of Earth’s geography (human and physical) on politics and international relations”.

This assumption raises many points; first, ‘earth’ (γη) is not ‘geography’; second, ‘geography’ (lit. description of the earth) was already an ancient science that the Ancient Greeks and Romans learned from the Babylonians, the Phoenicians, the Egyptians and other ancient and highly civilized nations. Modern geography is a scientific discipline dedicated “to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of the Earth and planets”, but Modern Geography and Ancient Geography are two completely different disciplines, methods, concepts and endeavors. This is still preliminary.

The main problem of the term ‘Geopolitics’ (‘earth’ and ‘politics’) is precisely that the Earth (or land) is unrelated to politics, and actually no politics can possibly apply to the Earth or most of the surface of the Earth. ‘Politics’ constitutes a very specific and historically marginal system of governance that can concern only a city-state (polis). There is no ‘politics’ in an empire, a kingdom, a nomad confederation, and a sizable realm of any racial, ethnic, linguistic, cultural and spiritual background. There was no ‘politics’ in Ancient Egypt, Akkad, Assyria, Babylonia, Hittite Anatolia, Cush (Ancient Sudan), Carthage, Iran, Yemen, Turan, and China. There was no ‘politics’ in any Balkan or Anatolian kingdom; and there was no ‘politics’ in Seleucid Syria, Attalid Pergamum, Bactria, Sogdia or Kushan.  

Jean-Baptiste Regnault, Alcibiades taken by Socrates. Politics can exist in a small city-state with no hereditary rule. However, a major state, let alone an empire, cannot be ruled by means of politics. As it is only the result of negotiations, material compromises, desecrated social life, corruption and impiety, politics is an improper, immoral and calamitous system even for the unfortunate cities-states that happen to be organized in this manner. But Western Europeans could not possibly understand this reality, because they had disastrously idealized the misery of Ancient Athens, one of the world’s most disreputable states.

Ancient Rome offers a good example in this regard; there was no politics in the Kingdom of Rome (Regnum Romanum; 753–509 BCE); there was politics in the Roman Republic (Senatus Populusque Romanus; 509-27 BCE); and there was no more politics in the Roman Empire (Imperium Romanum; 27 BCE-476 CE).

Subsequently, there was no ‘politics’ in the Eastern Roman Empire, in the Sassanid Empire of Iran, in the Gupta Empire, in Han, Tang, Yuan or Ming China, in the Islamic caliphates, sultanates, emirates, and khanates, in the Christian kingdoms of Western Europe or in any other nomadic confederation, realm or dominion. No system of governance can possibly be called ‘politics’ except for the republican administration of a city-state with democratic participation in the rule.

Certainly, the currently prevailing confusion makes everyone imagine that politics means governance and vice versa, but this represents only one more aspect of the multifaceted colonial propaganda that was diffused worldwide during the 19th and the 20th c. Useless to add, for any sizable realm larger than a modest self-governed city, there is no ‘politics’ today; the system is a tyranny disguised as ‘republic’ or ‘democracy’ and there cannot be any comparison between today’s fake politics and Ancient Roman or Athenian politics, except in terms of corruption, evil character, pernicious attitude, and social disorder.

So, to return to the initial point, “the effects of Earth’s geography (human and physical) on politics and international relations” (as per another definition of the fake term) should be rather called “geo-imperium”, “geo-tyranny”, “geo-dictatum” or “geo-control”; perhaps the best term would be “geo-sovereignty”. This is also proven by the deplorable contents that all the Western colonial academics, intelligence and military experts, diplomats and intellectuals invariably gave to the fake term ‘geo-politics’. Suffice it that one studies these ‘contents’ to realize that ‘geo-politics’ is an ahistorical mixture of criminal colonial targets with incessant distortions of the historical past. It has nothing to do with the ‘governance of one city with non-hereditary rule.  

Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840–1914) came up with a debased theory, as per which the Ottoman Empire, Qajar Iran, Qing China, Japan, and the colonial pseudo-state of Afghanistan were facing existential threats from the so-called ‘two monsters’, namely England and Russia. This nonsense can only be the invention of a cruel American pro-French/pro-Republican colonial, who felt that -despite France’s disproportionate control of African lands- Paris did not play an important role in the so-called ‘Big Game’ between Russia and England. Had the Vietnamese Nguyen dynasty survived the French colonial onslaught, Mahan would surely have invented a much larger ‘zone of threatened realms’ (probably between the 10th and the 40th parallels north, not only between the 30th and the 40th parallels north)! He presented himself as a Christian, but he was a Biblical racist and therefore a pseudo-Christian.

Until today, Halford Mackinder (1861-1947) is viewed as the principal heresiarch of the geo-political fallacy. All that he did was to draw fake lines, which did not represent historical realities in any sense. His long celebrated ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’ (1904) reflected the harsh antagonism of German, Russian and English scholars and explorers in parts of today’s Central Asia and Western China. Many people read this book, but do not know that it was written immediately after the first expedition (1900-1901) of Sir Marc Aurel Stein (1862-1943) in Central Asia, during which the Hungarian Jewish-English explorer and British Intelligence officer carried out surface surveys, extensive reconnaissance, and excavations at Dandan Oilik, an oasis of the Taklamakan Desert. Mackinder’s book was published only months after Aurel Stein’s ‘Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan Personal Narrative of a Journey of Archaeological & Geographical Exploration in Chinese Turkestan’ (1903). 

Mackinder’s texts reflect colonial concepts, diplomatic efforts, and Orientalist terms and explorations; at the time, Aurel Stein was still using currently obsolete terms like ‘Serindia’ (China, Indochina and India viewed as an entity) and ‘Innermost Asia’ (Central Asia, Western China, Mongolia, Central and Eastern Siberia) because his time was a period of pioneering research in those territories that had not been visited by Western European colonials until then. At those days, colonial Orientalists had already gathered enough evidence to fully document the History of Turan and to understand how internal Turanian (Turkic and Mongolian) conflicts generated endless historical waves of immigrants either to the South (in today’s China) or to the West (in today’s Central Siberia, Central Asia, Iran, Western Siberia, Eastern and Central Europe). This reality is hidden behind Mackinder’s concept of ‘pivot’ that he defined as the central point in his otherwise nonexistent ‘World-island’. However, his pivot area was not historically pivotal. Worse, it never existed as a geo-historical entity!

Even if we take the Afanasievo culture (3300=2500 BCE; in the Altai Mountains) and the Andronovo culture (2000-900 BCE; north of the Aral Lake) as signs of early and successive migratory waves, we cannot afford to define today’s NE Siberia, Central Siberia, Central Asia, and Iran’s northern and central parts as the real geographical ‘pivot’ of History. Quite contrarily, pivotal for the World History was the so-called ‘Fertile Crescent’ – another pseudo-historical term that denotes Mesopotamia, Syro-Palestine and Egypt. It is from there that civilization spread to the rest of the world. But in 1904, these regions were controlled by the Ottomans (Mesopotamia and Syro-Palestine) and the Anglo-French colonials (Egypt), and there was not much at stake. Contrarily, in the lands that Mackinder described as ‘pivot’, the possible limits of a) the German involvement, b) the English infiltration, c) the Russian advance, and d) the Chinese presence were unknown, whereas all borders were essentially ill-defined.

Last, Mackinder’s tripartite division of the world {into World-Island, offshore islands (England and Japan), and outlying islands (America and Oceania)} is nonsensical either at the historical or the geographical level. Why didn’t he include Indonesia? Probably because it was already colonized by the Dutch and nothing was at stake there. Inane!

On the other hand, Karl Haushofer (1869-1946) produced a geopolitical system that reflected many historical concepts and approaches to imperial governance. In strong contrast with Mackinder’s bizarre abstractions and ahistorical maps, Haushofer’s ideas appear sound and solid. But they are not … ‘geopolitical’! They represent merely a traditional imperial worldview, and they constitute the basics of the state prosperity and expansion as documented in 18th dynasty Kemet (Egypt), Sargonid Assyria, Achaemenid or Sassanid Iran, Han or Tang China, the Abbasid caliphate, and the Timurid Empire.

As a matter of fact, there is nothing ‘new’ or ‘modern’ in Haushofer’s ideas; they are correct, but they constitute the antipodes of the colonial nonsense that we nowadays call ‘geo-politics’. I simply wonder why the distinguished German scholar did not have the courage to decry ‘geo-politics’ as a fake science and to portray the Anglo-Saxon colonial paranoia as the supreme danger for the Mankind’s survival.

The notion of the organic state, the theory of Lebensraum, the need for self-sufficiency-self-reliance (autarky), and the division of the world into spheres of influence or distinct realms (pan-regions) can be found in cuneiform, hieroglyphic, Chinese, Middle Persian, Arabic and Farsi historical sources – millennia before Haushofer put them down on a piece of paper. But they were not described as ‘geopolitical notions’; they were viewed as basics of imperial governance. The only element that did not exist during the Antiquity and the Christian-Islamic times is the delusion of dichotomy between land power and sea power. But in this, Haushofer was apparently influenced by those whom he had to firmly oppose but failed to do so: his Anglo-Saxon opponents.

As it could be expected, on the earlier basis of ahistorical sketches and arbitrary aberrations, further fallacies and false notions were progressively added. Nicholas Spykman (1893-1943) expanded the erroneous concept as per which today’s NE Siberia, Central Siberia, Central Asia, and Iran’s northern and central parts are the ‘pivotal’ area. He then peremptorily and therefore erroneously divided the Afro-Asiatic landmass into a) the so-called ‘heartland’ and b) the ‘rimland’. These jolly delusions never existed in the History of Mankind; they actually do not consist in any worthwhile synthesis or serious interpretation of the existing historical sources. They only reflect the Anglo-Saxon regimes’ final goals, and the evil methods that they intend to use in order to achieve them; in other words, one can surely describe them as ‘wishful thinking’ and properly decry them as the most serious threat against the entire Mankind.  

Fake lines, fake borders, fake concepts and fake science: geo-politics

Before ending this unit, I feel obliged to shift the discussion from the false and fake ‘geo-politics’ to the true and genuine ‘geographical determinism’. When it comes to topics pertaining to the Earth’s impact on empires, peoples and cultures, one has to point out that these topics did not come to surface only in Modern Times; they have constituted an integral part of all the major civilizations of World History. They were known as part of the ancient wisdom, knowledge and sciences; and this was already known to Orientalists, historians and philologists. This knowledge we presently define as ‘geographical determinism’.

Ancient erudite scholars, high priests, mystics and explorers always viewed the material universe as hinging on the spiritual universe; consequently, they were adamant in identifying concordances between the two entities. Part of their scientific knowledge and understanding depended on their spiritual wisdom and exploration. Among the scientific disciplines that they developed and which they viewed as an undividable unity of spiritual and material knowledge and wisdom, ‘geographical determinism’ was only one.

Geographical determinism was not only a concept and a theory, but a practice and a set of criteria as to how to live in Ancient Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Hittite Anatolia, Elam, Cush, Canaan-Phoenicia, and Iran. The same is valid for Carthage, Yemen, the Indus Valley, Turan, and China. The choice of dwelling places, the urban plans, the construction of temples and palaces, the orientation of cities, the identification of sacred sites, the direction of prayer, the selection of specific locations for rock reliefs and inscriptions, the recognition of the correct spots to place enormous statues, pillars and obelisks, altars and thrones, in one word everything, depended on the conclusions drawn after a deep study of geographical determinism.

Nineveh

Etemenanki, the world’s holiest location as per the Babylonians

Ishtar’s Gate, Babylon – Berlin Museum

Parsa (Persepolis), the Achaemenid capital of Iran. Not only the selection of major sites (for palaces and temples) but also the minor details of a society’s daily life were arranged on the basis of geographical determinism.

In fact, the interconnection of the spiritual and material universes is the sole factor that denotes and specifies the nature and the traits of every single geographical point, therefore revealing its uniqueness, importance and possible use. High priests, mystics and hierophants were able to duly explore and describe the locally particular interaction of the five elements (i.e. Ether, Soft Waters, Earth, Air, and Salt Waters) and the subsequent generation of electromagnetic flow per point. This is how they concluded as regards the eventual use of the geographical point, ground, space or area.

It matters little whether you delve in Assyrian-Babylonian, Egyptian and Iranian Cosmogony and Spiritual Ontology (see above, as regards the five elements) or you explore the Traditional Chinese Wuxin (五行) Ontology, as per which the five elements are the following: Metal (initially conceived as Gold and corresponding to Ether), Water (evidently conceived as Soft Waters), Earth, Wood (corresponding to Air) and Fire. The conclusions were always identical. At the end of the day, either you were at the banks of Tigris, Euphrates, Nile, Huang-he (黃河/Yellow River) or Chang Jiang (黃河/Yangtze), geographical determinism functioned always as (to use a modern term) a fully accredited ‘urban environmental acupuncture’.

Traditional Chinese Wuxin (五行) Ontology

The ‘woke’ attitude to transfigure the term and turn ‘geographical determinism’ into ‘environmental determinism’ reveals only the ignorance and the paranoia of the corrupt left-wing social-justice movements and ideologies that currently exist in the worthless and already defunct Western world. This is so, because ‘geography’ meant always the study of the environment (not only the earth) in historical periods.

VII. From the Great Game to the Final Game

European colonial powers’ expansion brought destruction, barbarism, pandemics, wars, deaths, misery, poverty, inhumanity, demolition of cultures, and deracination of millions of people. European colonialism caused also two world wars and a 44-year long ‘cold war’. For these nefarious results and for all the crimes perpetrated, the European colonial states (Portugal, Spain, France, Holland, Belgium, and England) and their derivatives (USA, Canada, and Australia) will have to pay dearly for their attempt to annihilate so many historical nations, destroy their traditions, and uproot their cultures.

Quite unfortunately, the Western colonial and neo-colonial powers did not regret and did not repent for the calamitous and inhuman deeds that they carried out worldwide. There is a serious reason for this grave mistake and unacceptable attitude; the unrepentant savages of US, UK, NATO and their allies are controlled by forces that push the world to the edge, as they advance in the implementation of an eschatological agenda that provides for the extermination of more than nine tenths of the current world’s population. If this claim appears farfetched, one has only to read the text of the magnificent monument known as the Georgia Guidestones; it will be enough.

The persistent manner by which the ruling classes of the colonial powers seek to achieve the extermination of the largest part of world’s population is not a reason for inactivity and despair. There are opposite forces actually working to avert the evil plans, cancel the targets, and lead the colonial powers to self-destruction, social chaos, climactic disorder, ultimate implosion, and total decomposition. Constituting a continuation of the Shanghai Five, which started in 1996 as a mutual security agreement between China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) consists in the greatest alliance in the History of Mankind as it represents more than 40% of the world’s population and almost 25% of the global GDP.

Offering a multi-level synergy in diverse fields, such as security, economy and cultural cooperation, SCO was launched in 2001 with the additional engagement of Uzbekistan; it was considerably enlarged in 2017 with the participation of Pakistan and India as full members. Observer status was offered to Mongolia (2004), Pakistan, India and Iran (2005), Afghanistan (2012) and Belarus (2015). Dialogue partner status was extended to Sri Lanka (2009), Turkey (2012), Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia and Nepal (2015).

SCO expanded in parallel with the groundbreaking Belt and Road Initiative (OBOR) and in cooperation with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU: Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Armenia as members and Uzbekistan, Moldova and Cuba as observers). On 17th September 2021, Iran was accepted as full member state (the technical and legal processes may take more than a year to be completed) and Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia were granted dialogue partner status.

Tacikistan’ın başkenti Duşanbe’de Şangay İşbirliği Örgütü’nün (ŞİÖ) Devlet Başkanları Zirvesi düzenlendi. Zirve toplantısına katılan İran Cumhurbaşkanı İbrahim Reisi (solda), Tacikistan Cumhurbaşkanı İmamali Rahman (sağda) tarafından karışlandı. ( İran Cumhurbaşkanlığı – Anadolu Ajansı )

Governed by consensus, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is not the anti-NATO or anti-EU as many people think; however, if we take into consideration the brilliant failures of NATO where one member sabotages the goals of the other and the final impasse of the European Union where every plan has been in deadlock after the European refugee crisis (2015) and the Brexit referendum (2016), no one needs to repeat the experience of these two bodies or to function similarly. The Turkish-Greek row for the case of NATO and the courageous, constant and resolute opposition of the Visegrad Group to the Brussels authorities constitute the perfect examples in this regard.

Being a forum for cooperation, synergy and engagement rather than a typical regional alliance, SCO will be able to gradually encompass Southeast Asia and Africa, thus leaving US, UK, Canada, Australia, France and Holland to implode all on their own. To mark an outstanding success as the world’s first superpower with human face and without colonial past, Beijing must steadily maintain a multilayered approach to international affairs, distinguishing bilateral alliance from multilateral cooperation.

Drawing on hitherto successes and capitalizing on its enormous resources, China must act as the liberating force within a world plagued with colonial divisions, racist concepts, discriminatory prejudices, delusional Euro-centric theories, and historical falsifications. Creating the image of a popular superpower, China must build on Education, Culture, Intellect, Science, Humanity and Justice, unveiling to all and demolishing forever the myths, the delusions, the aberrations and the forgeries that supported the West European and North American colonial adventure, i.e. mankind’s worst nightmare.

About:

https://www.president.ir/en/131311

https://tass.ru/politika/12380355

https://www.mk.ru/social/2021/09/17/iran-poluchil-status-polnopravnogo-chlena-shos.html

https://news.cctv.com/2021/09/09/ARTI7XWt2KbA2OzpqwkLmh1a210909.shtml

http://world.people.com.cn/n1/2021/0917/c1002-32230485.html

http://www.news.cn/english/2021-09/18/c_1310196298.htm

http://www.news.cn/2021-09/19/c_1127879690.htm

https://www.ntv.ru/novosti/2607682/

https://www.irna.ir/news/84473661/دستاورد-های-عضویت-کامل-ایران-در-سازمان-همکاری-شانگهای

h ttps://www.farsnews.ir/news/14000626000399/واکنش-کاربران-به-عضویت-دائم-ایران-در-سازمان-همکاری-شانگهای-این-ترکیب

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/465134/Iran-becomes-full-member-of-Shanghai-Cooperation-Organization

http://eg.china-embassy.org/eng/zxxx/t1907870.htm

https://business.com.tm/post/7609/turkmen-leader-emphasizes-scos-role-in-countering-global-threats

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/iran-gets-full-shanghai-cooperation-organization-membership-with-russias-help/2367372

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-to-join-sco-summit-in-dushanbe-today-afghanistan-affairs-high-on-agenda-101631837729929.html

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Iran-to-gain-Central-Asia-clout-with-entry-into-SCO-security-club

https://www.silkroadbriefing.com/news/2021/08/12/iran-to-finally-take-full-membership-of-the-shanghai-cooperation-organisation/

https://www.silkroadbriefing.com/news/2021/09/01/egypt-saudi-arabia-to-join-shanghai-cooperation-organisation-as-dialogue-partners/

https://www.turan.az/ext/news/2021/9/free/analytics/en/7826.htm/001

——————————————

Download the article in Word doc.:

from-the-great-game-to-the-final-game-2Download

Download the article in PDF:

from-the-great-game-to-the-final-game-1Download

Download the article (text, pictures, legends) in PDF:

great-game-to-final-game-text-pictures-1Download