Talk:Names of Anatolia/Archive 1

Needs condensation
Well, this here is admirable scholarship by a learned man. Thanks. The only thing is, his effort to find the origins of the names of all the peoples that have been in Anatolia often leads him far afield. This is not a whole ethnic history but is only on the names. Still, it is so well-connected that when I went to find material to cut I didn't find any cutting places. This is like philosophy, round all over. But condensed it needs to be. The stream has to be contained by its banks. So I'm trying to work by the method of trimming the hedge. I go around and if I see any unruly shoots I lop them off. There are some. There are some holes, too. The author appears to be a savant of central Asia and east but not on Rome and Greece. Maybe it is better that way or Lord knows we will take up all of Wikipedia on the names of Anatolia. The thing is anything I cut will be useful somewhere so I am not actually going to cut it but just comment it out. If anyone sees any way to reduce this tree to a shrub without killing it, take a hand. I notice also a certain overlap on the Name of Turkey. I will be looking at that. No one can touch Turkey now as that has a star on it and that article has more material. Too much overlap. So, if I make some excisions don't get excited. I'm going to work backward from Turkey to Anatolia. Also there will be some English edits. Just because you can write in wonderful oratorical English does not mean you can do so correctly.Dave (talk) 00:22, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Janissaries of Balkan origins did contribute to the Anatolian Turkish identity
''following is a section formerly part of the article. However, it was clipped because undecided place of "history of people" within an article that deals with "history of land"''

The Ottoman State, especially with regard to its ruling class, the Askeri, included many elites from diverse backgrounds. While membership in the Askeriya most certainly required Muslim identity, many of the Ottoman ruling elites were converts of devshirme upbringing. Young, bright boys from Balkan or Caucasus communities, especially non-Muslim ones not protected from legal slavery, became enlisted and enslaved from early age to be trained as "men of the Sultan", or memluks. All had to nominally convert to Islam, but not all lost their peculiar Christian and non-Turkish heritages. This was displayed in the immensely popular Shiite Bektashi sect among the slave Janissary troops, and also the spread of the Croatian, Circassian and Albanian languages among Ottoman elites. Devshirme boys not only contributed to the Janissary in the military, but also the kutub (scribes) in the imperial administration. It was reported that at the height of Janissary power in the 17-18 centuries, the Croatian language was a ubiquitous "secret code language" in the vizieral administrative office of the Sublime Porte. "Croat" then both described Catholic and Muslim Croats. It was not until late that Croatian-speaking Muslims were numerous enough to consider a separate communal consciousness as "Bosniaks". The office of the Koprulu viziers countered the influence of the Janissary, only to wit that the Kopruluzades themselves were originally descended from an Albanian memluk. Founder of the Khedival dynasty of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, was also an Ottomanized Albanian slave soldier. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bestlyriccollection (talk • contribs) 04:44, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

History re: Kurdish and Turkmen "marching lords
following was also formerly part of the article, but now taken out

Besides tribes that remained tribal and nomadic, like their Kurdish fellow colonists, there were also Turkmen chiefdoms that received blessings from the Seljuq suzerains in Iran and Iraq, that they developed into feudal states around a "Bey" or "Atabeg", sometimes incorporating non-Turkmen subjects that may or may not be Muslim. The Seljuq Empire (alongside the puppet Caliphate of the Iraqi Abbasids, count on these small feudal states headed by Muslim Atabeg "marching lords" (see: Ghazi) to expand the domain of Islam (see: Dar al-Islam) at the expense of Byzantium and the Crusader States.

It was under Seljuq suzerainty that numerous Turkmen tribes, especially those that came through the Caucasus via Azerbaijan, acquired fiefdoms (beyliks) in newly conquered areas of Anatolia, Iraq and even Levent. Thus, the ancestors of the founding stock of the modern Turkish nation were most closely related to the Oghuz Turkmen groups that settled in the Caucasus and later became the Azerbaijani nation.

The Young Turks Era: passages re: Namik Kemal and the renewed interest in Pan-Turkism over Anatolianism
formerly part of the article, now taken out

During the same troubled years of Balkan uprisings and increasing autocratism by the Caliphs, there rose a new Turkish nationalist consciousness among the elite ranks of the Prussian-trained new imperial military. Heavily influenced by the Prussians' "blood and soil" concept on nationhood, these "Young Turks" were acutely aware that they were seen as members of a Turkish nation, rather than a "Ottoman", or "Muslim" one in the eyes of the Europeans. Also rose was the discipline of Oriental Studies championed by Austrian, Prussian, Russian and Hungarian scholars. Ottoman historians such as Namik Kemal became heavily immersed into the subjects on the Huns of Attila, Chinggisid Khanates and Altaic nomadic tribes throughout the steppes' history. Ottoman curiosity in Oriental Studies later became the nourishment for both the pan-Turkist Turanism, and Ziya Gokalp's idea of an Anatolian Turkish nationhood.

The Young Turks defeated the Caliph's autocratic reign and brought in an era of increasing consolidation of the centrality of Turkishness as the bedrock of the Ottoman Empire, now under the de facto rule of a military triumvirate rather than the Sultan. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's Republican Revolution was, in essence, latest manifestation and the culmination of the Young Turks Movement.

The Chinese reformer Kang Youwei, traveling through Ottoman lands toward Europe, was thus witnessing a "Turkish Nation" (or in his own word, "Tujue Nation") not merely through the slanted lenses of Christian Europe, but through the eyes of the Young Turks themselves. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bestlyriccollection (talk • contribs) 05:00, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Turks, Turan and Turkestan
All this is said to be moved to Turkic migration



By early modern times, the name "Turkestan" has several definitions:
 * 1) land of sedentary Turkic-speaking townspeople that have been subjects of the Central Asian Chagatayids, i.e. Sarts, Central Asian Mughals, Central Asian Timurids, Uyghurs of Chinese Turkestan and the later invading Tatars that came to be known as Uzbeks; This area roughly coincides with "Khorasan" in the widest sense, plus Tarim Basin which was known as Chinese Turkestan. It is ethnically diverse, and includes homelands of non-Turkic peoples like the Tajiks, Pashtuns, Hazaras, Dungans, Jungars. Turkic peoples of the Kypchak branch, i.e. Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, are not normally considered "Turkestanis" but are also populous (as pastoralists) in many parts of Turkestan.
 * 2) a specific district governed by a 17th century Kazakh Khan, in modern day Kazakhstan, which were more sedentary than other Kazakh areas, and were populated by towns-dwelling Sarts
 * 3) in late Ottoman period (1800s), Turkish nationalist writers including Ziya Gokalp, in search of national identities other than "Muslims", "Rumians", "Ottomans", suggested that the Turkish-speaking domain of the Empire be called either "Turkestan" (with a Persian flavor), or "Turkia", a name which Europeans had long employed before it was used by the Turks or Muslims themselves.

While the Karakhanid state remained in this territory until its conquest by Genghis Khan, the Turkmen group of tribes was formed around the core of westward Oghuz. The name "Turkmen" originally simply meant "I am Turk" in the language of the diverse tribes living between the Karakhanid and Samanid states. Thus, the ethnic consciousness among some, but not all Turkic tribes as "Turkmens" in the Islamic era came long after the fall of the non-Muslim Gokturk (and Eastern and Western) Khanates. The name "Turk" in the Islamic era became an identity that grouped Islamized Turkic tribes in contradistinction to Turkic tribes that were not Muslim, such as the Nestorian Naiman (which became a major founding stock for the Muslim Kazakh nation) and Buddhist Tuvans. Thus the ethnonym "Turk" for the diverse Islamized Turkic tribes somehow served the same function as the name "Tajik" did for the diverse Iranic peoples who converted to Islam and adopted Farsi as their lingua-franca. Both names first and foremost labeled Muslimness, and to a lesser extend, common language and ethnic culture. Long after the departure of the Turkmens from Transoxonia towards the Karakum and Caucasus, consciousness associated with the name "Turk" still remained, as Chagatay and Timurid period Central Asia was called "Turkestan" and the Chagatay language called "Turki", even though the people only referred to themselves as "Mughals", "Sarts", "Taranchis" and "Tajiks". This name "Turk", was not commonly used by most groups of the Kypchak branch, such as the Kazakhs, although they are closely related to the Oghuz (Turkmens) and Karluks (Karakhanids, Sarts, Uyghurs). Neither did Bulgars (Kazan Tatars, Chuvash) and non-Muslim Turkic groups (Tuvans, Yakuts, Yugurs) come close to adopting the ethnonym "Turk" in its Islamic Era sense. Among the Karakhanid period Turkmen tribes rose the Atabeg Seljuq of the Kinik tribe, whose dynasty grew into a great Islamic empire stretching from India to Anatolia.

The land of the Turkic or other Altaic nomads north of Persia (later approximately coinciding with Khorasan) was vaguely named "Turan" by pre-Islamic Persians. In contrast, on their own country the Persians conferred the name "Iran", or "Land of Aryans". Also, ancient Persian national myths attribute the names of Turan and Iran to the names of mystical heroes, not unlike the Magyars' original myth which connected the birth of the Magyar and Hunnish nations to the brothers Hunor and Magor.

- 	In a legend of Iranian folklore first alluded to in the Avesta and subsequently developed in the early Islamic-era Shahnameh, when the primordial king Thraetaona (Fereydun) had ruled for 500 years, he divided his kingdom (which encompassed the world) amongst his three sons. To the youngest he gave Iran, which lay in the middle. To another son, he gave the semitic lands that lay to the west. To his eldest son, Turya/Tuirya, he gave the lands in the north and north-east. Avestan language 'Turya'&mdash;in later Iranian languages as 'Tur'&mdash;is the stem of the word 'Turan', a semi-mythological region beyond the Jaxartes River. Through a process not reconstructable, but complete by at least the 10th century Shahnameh, these peoples&mdash;who were of various ethnic groups, to include ethnic Turks&mdash;came to be known collectively as Turks, or Turkmens. Through Persian language influence these regions eventually received a -stan suffix, thus generating both Turk-e-stan and Turkmen-i-stan.

The tribes that were closely related to the Gokturks and moved into Transoxonia in the 9th century (after the fall of the Uyghur Khanate on the Mongolian Steppes and before their own Islamization under Samanid influence) were affiliated with the Eastern Turk Khanate of the Gokturks, but had names that distinguished them from the Gokturks as described by the Orhun Inscriptions: these were the Oghuz, Karluk, Yagmur, Kangli, Kinik. These ethnonyms took priority when they identified themselves, but Arab and Byzantine historians were more inclined to identify them as "Turks" than Chinese historians. This period saw the participation by Turkic mercenaries and slave soldiers in the expansions and power struggles of Islamic states, among them Mahmud of Ghazna. Also, the Karakhanid state was established by Buddhist Karluks in Balasaghun. This state governs the area between Balasaghun and Kashgar, and became, under Samanid influence the first Turkic state to adopt Islam as official religion. Islamic learning flourished under the Karakhanids. It was a Karakhanid, Mahmud al-Kashgari, who compiled the Dīwān ul-Lughat al-Turk (Arabic: Collection of Turkic words) in 1072. Mahmud Kashgari mentioned in his lexicon that twenty Turkish clans "Kirghiz, Kiptchak, Oghuz, Tokhsi, Yaghma, Çigil and Ughrak, speak only one language, that is, pure Turkish."

The Turkic family of languages were spoken by Bulgars, Pechenegs, Cumans, Dingling, Gaoche peoples long before the Gokturk Khanate came into prominence. Many groups speaking "Turkic" languages never adopted the name "Turk" as self identity. Among the peoples that came under Gokturk dominance and adopted its political culture and langua-franca, the name "Turk" wasn't always the preferred identity. In other words, there wasn't a unified movement westward by a culture under one unified ethnic identity, such as that of the Mongol conquest of Eurasia under the Chinggisid political leadership. Rather, Turkic languages, peripheral ones like the Bulgar branch and central ones like the Oghuz and Karluk-Chagatay branches, drifted westward by autonomous movements of diverse tribes and migrating traders, soldiers, townspeople, outnumbering and assimilating non-Turkic indigenous peoples along the way, and being partly replaced by other linguistic families that have become prominent in the east, such as Mongolic languages on the Mongolian steppes, Indic languages in India and Persian in post-Timurid Iran.

The term "Türk" "Türküt" corresponding to the Chinese name "tu-jue" was first used as an endonym in the Orkhon inscriptions of the Göktürks (English: Sky Turks or Blue Turks) of Central Asia. However, the Chinese name "tie-le", corresponding to "Türük", was used much earlier, around the period when the Mongolic tribes Tuoba and Rouran vied for hegemony over the Mongolian steppes around the 5th and 6th centuries.

The English name for Turkey is derived from the Medieval Latin Turchia (c.1369). The name for Turkey in the Turkish language, Türkiye, subdivides into two words: Türk, meaning "strong" in Old Turkish and usually signifying the inhabitants of Turkey or a member of the Turkish or Turkic peoples, a later form of "tie-le" (铁勒) or "tu-jue" (突厥), name given by the Chinese to the people living south of the Altay Mountains of Central Asia as early as 177 BC; and the abstract suffix -iye, which means "owner" or "related to". The first recorded use of the term "Türk" or "Türük" as an autonym is attested in the Orkhon inscriptions of the Göktürks (Blue Turks) of Central Asia (c. 8th century CE)....

Asia Minor
Current usage makes Anatolia and Asia Minor essentially synonymous but the original meaning of Asia Minores was Asia inside the Roman Empire versus Asia Magna all of Asia beyond the borders. The source for this is History of the Goths, Herwig Wolfram second edition page 81, (85-29044)Nitpyck (talk) 19:35, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

article scope
This article is entitled "Names of Anatolia". Somebody seems to have misunderstood this to mean "History of Anatolia". This article is supposed to discuss names given to the landmass known as Anatolia or Asia Minor. It remains completely unsubstantiated that Anatolia was ever known as "Rum" or "Turkia". "Rum" was a term for the Byzantine Empire, while "Turkia" was a term for the Ottoman Empire. Asking what is the Chinese name for Anatolia is about as pointless as asking what is the English name of Shaanxi. --dab (𒁳) 09:53, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I am not surprised that nobody has fixed this in the past two years, so I have done it myself now. --dab (𒁳) 09:33, 28 February 2012 (UTC)