ATHENS DIALOGUES :

The Heirs of Greek Civilization: Indians and Turks? (Response to Athens Dialogues: Stories and Histories; Koder and Ray)

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Response to Athens Dialogues: Stories and Histories; Koder and Ray


The Heirs of Greek Civilization: Indians and Turks?


1.1 
After reading two fascinating papers, one by Professor Koder and another by Professor Prabha Ray, although intrigued and certainly impressed, initially I could not fathom how I could possibly write a response to two papers that seemingly have little connections to each other. Professor Koder explores the fascinating phenomenon of Greek Byzantine writers in the 15th century attributing knowledge of the Greek Classics to Sultan Mehmed II, the Fatih Sultan, who in his propaganda whether self-consciously or otherwise claimed the mantle of the Roman Caesars and adopted the title Kayser-i-Rum. Professor Ray on the other hand demonstrates the extensive maritime networks that linked the Roman Mediterranean world to India. How could these two topics have anything to do with each other? The time gap between the two periods under consideration is well over a thousand years.

1.2 
At first glance such would be the natural conclusion to be drawn from this interdisciplinary exercise as a whole. Is it even worth the effort? My answer is absolutely yes. As the declared objective of this conference brings to the fore we have finally reached a point in scholarship where not just the synchronic, but also the diachronic impact of Greek civilization on the world is increasingly an important focal point of discussion. Despite the enormous time gap between the heydays of maritime trade between India and Imperial Rome in the early centuries of the first millennium of the common era and the later surge of the Ottoman Turks into Constantinople in 1453 AD that ended once and for all the vestiges of Greco-Roman political hegemony over the Mediterranean world, the two periods under consideration offer us the same pertinent and arguably timeless questions. Whose inheritance exactly is the intellectual wonders and traditions of the Classical Hellenes?

1.3 
During the nineteenth century and arguably even the twentieth century Greco-Roman civilization was often in both Classical scholarship and among the wider public seen as the inheritance solely of the Western European world.The Greek-Barbarian antithesis [1] developed by the Classical Greeks, mostly in Athens, to denigrate all their neighbours, not just the ‘oriental, effeminate’ Persians [2] , but also the wild western barbarians [3] such as the Thracians, Romans and the Celts, was conveniently remodeled and reinterpreted to be the prototype of or rather an exemplum for a new modern, western, European chauvinism or ‘orientalism’, as Edward Said puts it, towards the Near East and sometimes the Far East [4] . The very terminology, Near and Far which we still use in scholarship are themselves of course the residue of a Eurocentric world view.Thus an odd distortion of the rhetoric of Greek ethnocentrism [5] was used to render the Greek inheritance an exclusively European one. Professor Ray also illuminates this phenomenon in the case of the British Raj in India. By some bizarre logic the Hellenic invaders of Ancient India and even Roman merchants were equated in the British imagination and propaganda with 18th and 19th century British adventurers in India.

1.4 
Despite the fact that the territories covered by the Empires of Alexander [6] , the Seleucids, and the Caesars included not just parts of western Europe, but also the entirety of the Near Eastern world and even parts of northern India, the extent to which these regions also were the legitimate heirs to the Greco-Roman cultural and political tradition was not even seriously contemplated in western scholarship. This exclusion of the East from the heritage of the Greeks in European literary discourse stretches back as far as the capture of Constantinople in 1453.In that same year Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, the Humanist bishop of Siena and later Pope of the Renaissance, would mock the views of some of his contemporaries that the Turks were Trojan descendents or had anything to do with the Homeric or Roman tradition [7] .Yet mythographers and pseudo-genealogists of the same age were much more open to such possibilities and even contemplated the ancient ‘kinship’ between the infidel Turks and the most Christian nation of the Franks (France) via their putative common origins in the Homeric Trojans [8] . Interestingly, even Aeneas, who wished to banish the Turks from the list of civilized and legitimate kingdoms of the world, felt obliged nonetheless to place the hated Turks within the boundaries of the Classical tradition by identifying them with Herodotus’ Scythians [9] .

1.5 
The historical Turks were indeed in a way related to the Scythians, but certainly not to the Trojans, at least directly [10] . What is obvious though is the extent to which the Classical tradition together with the Judeo-Christian tradition that also arguably derived from a related cultural milieu, determined the ways in which the western world or Christendom viewed the world. However, is it accurate to say that this Classical cum Judeo-Christian tradition was exclusively Western or European? Fanciful genealogies that traced the ancestry of individuals and whole peoples to figures either in the Classical tradition or in the Jewish bible are as frequently found in Islamic religious, historiographical and geographical literature as in the corresponding Christian literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.By way of example by the seventeenth Century Oghuz, the eponymous ancestor of the Oghuz Turks from whom both the Seljuks and the Ottomans derived, was widely recognized in Turkish ‘historiography’ as the descendent of Nuh (Noah) via Yafes (Japheth) [11] .

1.6 
While Mehmed the Conqueror was claiming the mantle of the Roman Caesars, further to the east a contemporary figure, albeit a rather less significant warlord, in Badakhstan (modern day Afghanistan) by the name of Shah Sultan Muhammad Badakhshi claimed that he was the direct descendent of none other than Iskandar Zulkarnain (Alexander the Great) son of Filikus Rumi (Phillip of Rome/Macedon) [12] . This Shah Sultan Muhammad, supposedly a descendent of Alexander, was esteemed by his more powerful neighbours in Central Asia, precisely and only because of his fabulous ancestry.The Amir Zia-ud-Din, a respected sayyid of Kashgar in present day Chinese Turkestan (Xinjiang), then called Moghulistan (the land of the Mongols) [13] , visited Badakhstan to ask for the hand of one of the prince’s daughters in marriage for his patron Yunus Khan, the Chagatai Mongol Khan of Moghulistan, the direct descendent of Genghis Khan [14] and one of the most powerful princes of his time. Shah Sultan readily agreed to the match and sent his fourth daughter Shah Begum to Yunus.Yunus himself would later become the maternal grandfather of the famous Zahir-ud-Din Muhammad Babur, the Timurid, Moghul emperor of India [15] .

1.7 
Both the Moghuls in India and their Mongol forbears in Central Asia and Persia were fascinated with Alexander the Great and the Turks were no less enthusiastic about him. The extraordinary level of diffusion of these traditions about the Macedonian conqueror is reflected by the fact that one of the best known Alexander romances of the Muslim world the A’ina-yi Sikanderi in Persian was written during the Mongol Ilkhanid period in the rival Turk/Mamluk dominated court of the Delhi Sultanate by Amir Khusrow, a Turkic Indian whose family derived from the Mongol Kara-Khitans. Sultan Alauddin Khalji, his patron and master, the Turco-Afghan ruler of Delhi, inscribed on his coins the legend Sikander-i-sani, ‘the Second Alexander’ and aspired to imitate his hero by becoming a conqueror of the world [16] .

1.8 
Alexander together with the more recent conquerors of the known world such as Chinggis Khan and Tamerlane [17] became a by-word for extraordinary feats of military achievement among the Turco-Mongol rulers of the Islamic world. The Turkish admiral Sidi Ali Reis, who visited the court of the second Mughal Emperor Humayun in Delhi in ca.1555 AD, in order to both impress and intimidate his host boasted that his sovereign Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Sultan, had conquered all the lands conquered by Alexander the Great and more, to which Humayun in amazement supposedly commented that surely no-one deserved the title of Padishah (emperor) except the Ottoman Sultan [18] . Such was the esteem in which Alexander was held by the Turco-Mongols that at the far eastern end of the Muslim world a late 16th century sultan of Aceh in Indonesia, then under heavy Ottoman Turkish influence, would bear the name Sikander Muda (c. 1583-1636), the young Alexander, and liken his own less impressive conquests in Malaysia and Sumatra to the deeds of the Macedonian conqueror [19] .

1.9 
The romanticized history of Alexander the Macedonian and his Hellenic Empire was thus as cherished in the East as in the West. So how outlandish or preposterous was it for a Turkish Sultan of Constantinople to claim that he was the heir to the legacy of Alexander and Julius Caesar? Well no more than the claims of Ivan the Terrible, the Tsar of Russia to being the descendent of Augustus Caesar [20] or a German Saxon Duke Otto claiming to be the heir of the Roman tradition and calling himself the Holy Roman emperor. If the Anglo-Saxons and the Franks who were never a part of the Greco-Roman world can later claim the mantle of heirs to this ancient tradition then why can’t the Turks, Russians or even the Mongols? After all they all had the distinction of ruling over areas that had formerly formed a part of the Greco-Roman world.

1.10 
One other important fact which we should briefly acknowledge is the fact that the trade networks of antiquity so ably illuminated by Professor Ray, covered the entirety of the Mediterranean world, the Near East, South Asia, East Asia and even the steppe of Inner Asia. The civilizations of the world in recorded history never existed in splendid isolation.The neologism Afro-Eurasian interactive system [21] has lately been coined to describe this immense system of trade networks that by the 5th century AD saw Roman glass being exported as far East as Silla in modern day Korea [22] and even earlier in the 1st century AD the phenomenon of the excessive intake of Chinese silks emptying the coffers of the Roman upper class elite [23] at the other end of Eurasia.

1.11 
The Kushans, a Tocharian-Scythian people [24] , whose empire flourished simultaneously with the Roman Principate, the Parthian Empire and the Chinese Han Empire, in what is now Central Asia and India, are a prime example of how interconnected the civilizations of antiquity actually were.Situated at the very center of the vast trade networks between the Mediterranean world and East Asia, the Kushans would use the Greek alphabet [25] as part of their writing system and trade actively with both the Greco-Roman world and the Chinese [26] .Greco-Roman artistic traditions would have quite a significant impact on the art and architecture of the Kushans, especially in the realms of sculpture and ornamentation [27] , and via them on the artistic tradition of East Asia [28] . Thus via the Kushans Greek art became part of the cultural legacy of East Asians.

1.12 
Even in realms traditionally thought to be exclusively a western inheritance from the Greeks, philosophy and the natural sciences, Islam was as much the heirs of the Classical Greeks as the Latin west. Avicenna and Averroes knew their Aristotle arguably much better than their ‘Latin’ contemporaries. What all this shows quite clearly is that the Greco-Roman civilization is the heritage of the entire Afro-Eurasian world not just the west. Are the lessons and precedents set by the Greeks, for instance their democracy and the sciences needed only in Western Europe? Are they only applicable in the Western, European context? Are they incompatible with the Eastern mindset? All these issues have been raised before in scholarship.Democracies have been shown to flourish in non-Western settings in East Asia and South Asia and scientific research in the Greek tradition flowered in the Islamic East under the Abbasids, the Ilkhanids and the Timurids before it was rediscovered in the West [29] . In our multi-polar world it is m ore essential than ever before to acknowledge the global reach and impact of the Classical Tradition. Only then can the legacy of the Ancient Greeks be well and truly appreciated.

Footnotes


2.1 
For in depth discussions on the Greek-Barbarian antithesis see Hall, E. (1989) Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-definition through Tragedy , Oxford; Tuplin, C. (1999). ‘Greek Racism?’ in G. Tsetskheladze, ed., Ancient Greeks West and East , Leiden, Boston and Köln, 47-76; Isaac, B. (2004). The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity , Princeton and Oxford; Kim, H.J. (2009). Ethnicity and Foreigners in Ancient Greece and China , London.

2.2 
For an in depth analysis of the reality of Greek-Persian interrelations see Miller, M. (1997). Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century BC: A Study in Cultural Receptivity , Cambridge.

2.3 
For an expression of Greek attitudes towards the ‘barbarians’ of Europe see Aristotle Politics 1327b 23-6, who defines the barbaroi in Europe as free, but deficient in intelligence and skill, and Thucydides’ tirade against the European Thracians (7. 29-30).

2.4 
Said, E. (1979). Orientalism , New York. For a counter-argument see Irwin, R. (2006). For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies , London, esp. 9-18.

2.5 
Isaac, B. (2004), 302.

2.6 
Dani, A.H. and Bernard, P. (1994), ‘Alexander and his successors in Central Asia’ in J. Harmatta, ed., History of Civilizations of Central Asia , Paris, 67-97.

2.7 
Meserve, M. (2008). Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought , Cambridge Mass.; London, Harvard University Press, 1.

2.8 
Meserve (2008), 47-8.

2.9 
Meserve (2008), 74-5. On Herodotus’ Scythians see Rolle, R. (1989). The World of the Scythians , tr. G. Walls, London, and Kim (2009), 100-115.

2.10 
For the early history of the Turks see Findley , C.V. (2005). The Turks in World History , Oxford, 21-55, and Sinor, D. (1990). ‘The Establishment and Dissolution of the Turk Empire’ in D. Sinor, ed., The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia , Cambridge, 287, 295.

2.11 
Findley (2005), 64.

2.12 
Elias, N., ed., and Denison Ross, E., trans. (1895, reprint 2008). A History of the Moghuls of Central Asia: The Tarikh-i-Rashidi of Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlat , New York, 107.

2.13 
For background information on Moghulistan see Kim, Hodong (2000). ‘The Early history of the Moghul Nomads: The Legacy of the Chaghatai Khanate’ in R. Amitai-Preiss and D. Morgan, eds., The Mongol Empire and its Legacy , Leiden, 290-318.

2.14 
Roemer, H.R. (1986). ‘The Successors of Timur’ in P. Jackson, ed., The Cambridge History of Iran , vol. 6, Cambridge, 119.

2.15 
Ibid.

2.16 
Akhtar, N. (2007) ‘ Visual illustrations of the Life of Alexander in Persian Manuscripts’ in H.P. Ray and D. Potts, eds., Memory as History: The Legacy of Alexander in Asia , New Delhi,76-88, 86. For information on earlier Alexander romances in the Muslim East see Bladel, K. (2007). ‘The Syriac Sources of the Early Arabic Narratives of Alexander’ in the same volume, 54-75.

2.17 
For the history of the Mongol conquerors see Grousset, R. (1944) Le conquérant du monde : vie de Gengis-Khan , Paris, and Hookham, H. (1962). Tamburlaine the Conqueror , London.

2.18 
Sidi Ali Reis, Mirat ul-Memalik , A. Vambéry, trans., The Travels and Adventures of the Turkish Admiral Sidi Ali Reïs (London, 1899), e-resource:

2.19 
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/sidialireis/txt_023_hindustan.html.

2.20 
http://www.asnlf.net/asnlf_int/acheh/history/rulersofacheh/iskandarmuda/sultan_iskandar_muda.htm.

2.21 
Madariaga, I. (2005). Ivan the Terrible: The First Tsar of Russia , New Haven and London, 97.

2.22 
Chase-Dunn, C. and Hall, T. (1997), Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems , Boulder, CO., 149.

2.23 
Francis, P. (2002). Asia’s Maritime Bead trade: 300 B.C. to the Present , Honolulu, 89.

2.24 
Thorley, J. (1971). ‘The Silk Trade between China and the Roman Empire at its Height, Circa AD 90-130’, Greece and Rome , Second Series, Vol. 18, No. 1, 71-80.

2.25 
See Enoki, K., Koshelenko, G.A., and Haidary, Z. (1994), ‘The Yüeh-chih and their migrations’, in J. Harmatta, History of Civilizations of Central Asia , vol. 2, Paris,171-189, 172.

2.26 
See Harmatta, J. (1994). ‘Languages and Literature in the Kushan Empire’ in J. Harmatta, ed., History of Civilizations of Central Asia , vol. 2, Paris, 417-440, 422-433, and Mukhamedjanov, A.R. (1994). ‘ Economy and Social System in Central Asia in the Kushan Age’ in Harmatta, ed., History of Civilizations of Central Asia , vol. 2, Paris, 265-290, 280.

2.27 
J. Mukhamedjanov (1994), 286, and Puri, B.N. (1994). ‘The Kushans’ in J. Harmatta, ed., History of Civilizations of Central Asia , vol. 2, Paris, 247-263, 257-8.

2.28 
Pugachenkova, G.A., Dar, S.R., Sharma, R.C., Joyenda, M.A., and Siddiqi, H. (1994). ‘Kushan Art’ in J. Harmatta, ed., History of Civilizations of Central Asia , vol. 2, Paris, 331-395, 333, 348, 367, and 372. See also Puri (1994), 258.

2.29 
Grayson, J.H. (1985). Early Buddhism and Christianity in Korea: A Study in the Emplantation of Religion , Leiden, 3-4.

2.30 
Kennedy, E.S. (1968). ‘The Exact Sciences in Iran under the Saljuks and Mongols’ in J.A. Boyle, ed., The Cambridge History of Iran , vol. 5, Cambridge, 659-679.