*this is an imaginery letter aiming to be a close-reproduction of a letter that Ali Kusci would have produced. any anachronisms you find please inform me!
11 Zilkade 878
My most venerable Molla Abdurrahman Cami;
At long last I have found the oppurtunity to write you after the long and tiring, but victorious and fruitful campaign against Uzun Hasan. This will be the subject matter of my next letter I am afraid, because I need some time to contemplate on what happened and what I made of it. I can tell you this however: it has been productive for me and I have compiled a book of astronomy that I named Fethiye and presented it to the Sultan right after the campaign. I am sending you a copy of it enclosed. Please do not leave me without your most valuable interpretations of it.
I hope you are well and happy. Me and my family are very well and settled in Kostantiniyye. It seems that we are going to live in this city for some time to come, but of course these things only God knows!
To my surprise, I have come across a student of yours in Trabzon while we were on our way for campaign in Tabriz ( a certain Muhammed Samarkandi[1], if you will remember) and he has given me your latest risale. I have read it in one breath and my friend, it has opened up new horizons for me. I am sending you a risale of my own that I have written down in response to it. I would be very glad if mine instills in you what your precious work has done in me.
Thanks to the generosity of my benefactor and patron Mehmed the Conqueror –now they call him that-; me, my family and my companions were very well received on our second arrival to Kostantiniyye and we were given the most luxurious mansions to reside within the court of the New Palace. The Sultan’s officials escorted us all the way from Tabriz and we were well entertained throughout the journey. When we arrived in Kostantiniyye, I was received by a group of scholars, including the Kadi of the city known as Hocazâde Müslihü'd-Din Mustafa. He is a very wise, intellectual and influential man and I have sensed that the Sultan respects him greatly. He told me that he has no equivalents in Rum, Acem and Arab lands. You know that I am no man of politics, but I can see that any scholar who wants to establish himself here must be on good terms with him. Of course, this is not to say that the Sultan is easily influenced, but he values Hocazade immensely. I must say that he is a very respectable and intellectual man and our conversations have been inspiring and challenging for me.
From the first day of my arrival, I was surrounded by intellectuals of the city and the lively debates we had has inspired (and still does) my work. The Sultan of the sultans Mehmed is doing all he can to provide and broaden this intellectual atmosphere. In fact, he is proud to play the major role in creating such a milieu. He does not hesitate to grant presents and mansıbs so that the scholars have the means to provide for their and their families’ well being and as a result, have the chance to concentrate completely on their scholarly work. It seems to me that he wants to be an emperor, a caeser. He wants to institutionalize scholarship. We had a chance to talk this over and he told me that the steps of a career of a scholar must be elaborated and set such that he will be guarded and funded by the state at all stages. This also means that the scholar will be under the scrutiny of the state and free and/or marginal thought might be impeded. I had this in my mind, but could not speak it openly to the Sultan, yet he was wise enough to read in between my words and he said that a just and wise Sultan would definitely seek the truth rather than stifle it. I hope so, but this depends on the sultan’s personality. I am convinced that Mehmed is a Sultan as he proposes. As my personal experience and the collective memory preceding me shows science and art need a just and wise patron.
The Sultan is a man that does not differentiate between art and science that comes from a Muslim or a non-Muslim. When I arrived at his court, I have seen that he has given protection to numerous Greek and Italian artists and scholars from the Byzantine court. He is fond of Italian architecture and painting. Although he confines the exercise of his taste to his royal chambers mostly, it is not a secret that he likes paintings made in the Italian way. I have met Kritoboulos, a Greek chronicler from the Byzantine court and George Amirutzes, a Greek philosopher from Trabzon in Mehmed’s court. They were a part of the Sultan’s closest courtiers as were the Muslim scholars and I know that The Sultan himself spoke Greek with them. He also knows Latin, Arabic, Persian and some Serbian. The Florentine merchants of Pera were very frequent visitors of his court and I know that they brought valuable paintings to Mehmed’s collection.
These diverse interests of the Sultan and his palns for the new capital, however, are critiqued by some circles, of which Şihabettin Paşa, the Rumeli Beylerbeyi, plays a leading role. As far as I can understand, they were after a total islamification of the city and they found the inclusion of elements from the Byzantine court dangerous. These ideas are not openly worded to the Sultan out of fear that he would certainly reject and mock these ideas as paranoid and too rigid. Notaras, the last Prime Minister of the Paleologues, is the main target of the criticizers, but the Sultan seems to stick with him especially in the repopulation project of the city. This must be why he announced himself as the protector of the Patriarchate and appointed Gennadios as the new Patriarch of the Orthodox realm. These contradictory issues are due to cause some trouble for the Sultan if they succeed to reach and influence the janissary corps.
As to what my daily routine is: I have been offered a post at the Ayasofya Madrasah. I would like to draw your attention to the name: it is a mere change of letters of the original name Hagia Sophia. Is not this ample proof that Mehmed is a man that tries to encompass all knowledge, be it come from an infidel, a godless or a Muslim? I am also commissioned, together with Molla Husrev, to prepare a standard program for the Semaniye madrasahs founded in his formidable new mosque complex built right after the conquest. This you can take as part of the greater institutionalisation of scholarship mentioned above. By way of establishing centers of religion and education in and around the mosque complexes in various parts of Kostantiniyye, the Sultan aims to transform it into a Muslim capital of the Ottoman State. I have some very important students at Ayasofya. I heard that the Sultan wanted Sinaneddin Yusuf bin Hızır Bey bin Kadı Celaleddin Arif, his famous astronomer and mathematician, to attend my riyaziye classes. He decided to attend indirectly through Molla Lutfu, the librarian of the Sultan. I guess he had reasons for it and nevertheless, he is such a gifted and talented student that I am glad to have him even if it is indirectly. One day I have opened a discussion about how an acute angle becomes an obtuse one if one side of the angle is moved towards the direction of dilation and if this dilation is continued, the angle becomes acute again without being a perpendicular angle. The Sultan stopped me as I was explaining and Sinan Paşa was asked to prove and explain his proof. Soon, he produced a three page article proving my statement and explaining it immaculately. I was proud of this brilliant man. As you can see, I feel very productive and challenged in this wounded but healing city.
The status of the city is another matter that I have to tell you about:
Kostantiniyye, as they say, has been devastated from the looting and the siege. Sultan himself told me that he prayed that the city would surrender without resistance so that it would be spared. Nevertheless, there is gossip that the Byzantine Emperor was willing to surrender, but the Venetians and the Genoese, out of fear of losing their advantegeous position in the city in all respects, did not surrender and thus came the devastation. Notaras told us that the city was in a neglected and depopulated status even before the conquest and yet the conquest finalised it. Mehmed, however, is thrilled with the idea of a revived or even a more elavated city and he is willing to add upto the Byzantinian constructions as long as they did not contradict with the idea of a universal centralized imperial Muslim state. His conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque with only really very slight changes proves this. Yet he demolished the burial site of the Byzantine Emperors to start the construction of his new mosque complex.
My dear friend and teacher, this almost sums up my first impression of the new city, the Sultan and his court. Don’t forget to write me your ideas about my risale and Fethiye. Please be informed that our correspondence gives me power and illumination and that I miss our conversations very much. In fact why not come to Kostantiniyye and witness the grand transformation of the city and be a part of the intellectual milue here? I would like to host you here in Kostantiniyye very much and I know that The Sultan would be very proud to have a scholar as valuable as yourself in his court. Please think about my proposal and inform me in due time.
May God be with you my teacher and friend!
Yours faithfully,
Ali Kusci
[1] An imagined person
25 Mayıs 2007 Cuma
MONGOLS AS CULTURAL BROKERS IN THE EAST WEST EXCHANGE
Mongols conquered Persia in two waves, first by Chinggis Khan between 1219 and 1221 and by Möngke Khan in 1253. The first was to avenge the Kharazmshahs that slaughtered the Mongolian convoy that was sent to him by Chinggis and thus was very destructive in order to show how brutal Mongols can get if angered. The second wave came in reply to a request from the Qadi of Qazwin. He
“complained about the lack of centralized authority, the absence of any real law and order, and the arbitrary taxation and imposition of law exercised by the Mongols’ military governor, Baiju Noyan. The dangers and terror emanating from the mountain hideaways of the Assassins, as the Isma’ilis were often known , were also invoked and grossly exaggerated, with the suggestion that the court of the Qa’an himself was not safe from their machinations and murderous daggers.”[1]
Möngke was well-received in Persia: “...when his [Chinggis’] grandson Hülegü began his leisurely march westward into the Islamic lands, the prince came not as a conqueror but as a welcomed king.”[2] Because of the devastating effects of Chinggis’ conquest, the fact that Mongols have been “cultural brokers”[3] between East and West, Persia and China specifically, has been neglected or overlooked. Gregory Guzman writes in his article wherein he discusses whether the barbarians were a negative or a positive factor in ancient and medieval history:
“All written records covering barbarian-civilized interaction came from the civilized peoples at war with the barbarians - often the sedentary peoples recently defeated and overwhelmed by those same barbarians. Irritated and angered coastal historians tended to record and emphasize only the negative aspects of their recent interaction with the barbarians.”[4]
The barbarians, however, were mostly illiterate and did not leave a written record of their side of the story. The result is a perspective that evaluates the effect of barbarians –a word used interchangeably with the word nomads both in Guzman’s article and in this essay- as disruptive and negative, in general. Yet new scholar work on the culture of steppe peoples, i.e. nomads/barbarians, reveal that the role of the Mongols in the communication between the two ends of Eurasia, an incident in existence since 1000 B.C.E., has been significant, unique and positive. It is this essay’s purpose to put forward this new academic perspective by elaborating three different texts pertaining to the matter and making comparisons among the three: The first is an article titled “Biography of a Cultural Broker. Bolad Ch’eng-Hsian in China and Iran” by Thomas Allsen.[5] The second is an introductory book by George Lane: Genghis Khan and Mongol Rule and especially the Chapter 7 headed “The Legacy: China and Iran”[6]. The last is Ann K.S. Lambton’s “The Athar Wa Ahya of Rashid al-Din Fadl Allah Hamadani and His Contribution as an Agronomist, Arboriculturist and Horticulturalist”[7]
After a brief summary of the three texts, the reason for selection thereof for the purposes of this essay will be stated, followed by a discussion on the main points derived from comparisons between the three.
Allsen’s article, after a brief summary of Bolad’s career, underlines the colossal effect of Bolad’s person and works on the East-West cultural exchange and how as a party in the Bolad – Rashid al-Din friendship found a counterpart in Rashid al-Din on the Iranian side to the exchange. Lane’s book is an introductory work on the Mongol Empire, concentrating on the foundations of the Mongol state and Chinggis’s works and in chapter 7 specifically, on the relationship between the Ilkhans and the Yuan dynasty. In addition, the book includes English translations of some significant primary documents related with this subject and lastly, biographies of some of the significant contemporaries. Within the confines of this article, mainly the chapter pertaining to the exchange between China and Iran will be focused on. Ann K.S. Lambton summarizes in her article the contents of the agricultural manual by Rashid al-Din, which has partly survived to this day. She states the headings of each chapter of the book and gives examples to Rashid al-Din’s experimental and innovative approach to agriculture and how he used this know-how to help recover Persian agriculture. These three texts do not necessarily overlap in their subject. Yet they do convey the idea that the Mongols were not destructors of civilisation, but rather contributors thereto as brokers, constructors and/or sponsors.
All three texts take Mongols as a “positive factor in medieval history”. Lambton states that “it was because of the relations between the Ilkhanate on the one hand and Central Asia and the Far East on the other that Rashid al-Din was able to benefit from the experience of learned men, merchants and travellers from those areas, to import seeds and plants from beyond the confines of Persia,..”[8] She proposes that it was due to the Pax Mongolica that provided the atmosphere in which men, goods and ideas travelled safely back and forth between China and Iran. This is not to say that the Mongols left it at that; they partook in the transfer and in the constructive works that the exchange brought about. George Lane points to this agency of Mongols by saying: “The Mongols were more than just the catalyst for this cultural and commercial exchange to happen. They themselves were cultural brokers, and it was their decisions and policies that launched these exchanges.”[9] Lane recognizes the active role of the Mongolians in the exchange. In fact, there are other scholars who agree and go further by saying that it was through their selection and filtering that exchange happened. If, for example, the Mongols did not need luxury textiles to provide the retention of their followers, they would not have acquired thousands of West Asian (mostly Persian) artisans transferred on or against their will to China for provision of luxury textiles for the Yuan court[10]. Allsen proposes at the end of his aforementioned article that “...Mongols were not, as is sometimes assumed, disinterested conveyors of cultural wares between civilizations, a kind of medieval United Parcel Service; on the contrary, they were active participants in and, in many cases, the principal initiators of, such exchange, and to a remarkable degree it was the nomads’ cultural priorities and political interests that determined what travelled between East and West in the pre-modern era.”[11] Though within a differing scale, Lambton, Lane and Allsen, all acknowledge the positive contribution of Mongols to the East-West cultural exchange.
The three texts may be compared in their approach in distinguishing the positive contribution of the Mongols to history: it is a personal level. Lambton and Allsen’s articles emphasize the substantial effect of Bolad and Rashid al-Din respectively and jointly on the East-West cultural exchange as influential contemporaries of their time. Allsen explains how Bolad was Po’lo in Chinese sources and the name was mentioned so frequently in the sources that he was identified mistakenly as Marco Polo till 1928 and that in fact Bolad was no less important figure in the East-West exchange than Marco Polo.[12] Marco Polo is a well-known figure that presented most of the information on China in medieval Europe. In that respect Bolad should be an important cultural broker. As far as Lambton’s article is concerned, Rashid al-Din had a very experimental and innovative approach in reviving and improving Persian agriculture. Lambton writes:
“It is clear from the Athar wa ahya that he hoped by his knowledge to contribute to a revival of agriculture in the Ilkhanate and to stimulate others to follow his example in the cultivation of the land: and perhaps he hoped and planned for a time when Persian agriculture might be reconstructed after the recession brought about by the Mongol invasions.”[13]
His personal influence is highly perceived in the resulting revival of agriculture in Persia as he poured his accumulated knowledge on the Persian reconstruction.
Lane points to the difference between Chinggis and his sons: “If the Mongols are to be remembered, it should not be solely for the military genius of their founder Chinggis Khan, but equally for the splendor of the courts of his grandchildren Qubilai and Hülegü and their offsprings and protégés.”[14] Of course, the concentration of all three writers on a personal level may have a practical reason: that most evidence from or about Mongols names these famous persona as initiators or agents of this exchange. Given the existence of the multichannel exchange between East and West (trade, religion, science and arts, etc) exchange, it would not be wrong to predict that this exchange could not have stayed at a personal level. There was certainly some key figures and leaders or important bureaucrats must have played a crucial role.
Lambton, Lane and Allsen stand on similar grounds in proposing that Mongols were not solely disastrous, disruptive peoples. In Lane’s words:
“Two dominant aspects of the Mongol years are becoming clear. First, in China and Iran the Mongols oversaw a period of extraordinary cultural, economic, and spiritual regeneration, and second, both countries were politically, economically, and culturally far closer than had previously been recognized. The wealth and vibrancy of this period have been transmitted to history through the media of art, literature, and trade.”[15]
The Mongols had an unseen contribution to the East-West exchange. This contribution has not been in the form of as mere couriers, but Mongols have actively selected and transferred commodities, ideas and people from east to west and from west to east. This is why they are hailed as brokers of cultural exchange in the world and today, the global world owes much to this agency.
[1] George Lane, Genghis Khan and Mongol Rule (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2004), p. 57
[2] ibid, p. 56
[3] Thomas Allsen, “Biography of a Cultural Broker. Bolad Ch’eng-Hsiang in China and Iran”, in The Court of the Ilkhans 1290-1340, ed. By Julian Raby and Teresa Fitzherbert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
[4] Gregory G. Guzman, “Were the Barbarians a Negative or a positive Factor in Ancient and Medieval History?”, Historian (August 1988), 558-9
[5] Allsen
[6] Lane
[7] Ann K. S. Lambton, “The Athar Wa Ahya of Rashid Al-Din Fadl Allah Hamadani and His Contribution As an Agronomist, Arboriculturist and Horticulturist” in The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy ed. By Reuven Amitai-Preiss and David O. Morgan (Leiden: Brill, 1999).
[8] Lambton, 126
[9] Lane, p. 97
[10] Thomas Allsen, Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p.101
[11] Allsen, 19
[12] ibid, 7
[13] Lambton, 153-4
[14] Lane, p.98
[15] ibid, p.83
“complained about the lack of centralized authority, the absence of any real law and order, and the arbitrary taxation and imposition of law exercised by the Mongols’ military governor, Baiju Noyan. The dangers and terror emanating from the mountain hideaways of the Assassins, as the Isma’ilis were often known , were also invoked and grossly exaggerated, with the suggestion that the court of the Qa’an himself was not safe from their machinations and murderous daggers.”[1]
Möngke was well-received in Persia: “...when his [Chinggis’] grandson Hülegü began his leisurely march westward into the Islamic lands, the prince came not as a conqueror but as a welcomed king.”[2] Because of the devastating effects of Chinggis’ conquest, the fact that Mongols have been “cultural brokers”[3] between East and West, Persia and China specifically, has been neglected or overlooked. Gregory Guzman writes in his article wherein he discusses whether the barbarians were a negative or a positive factor in ancient and medieval history:
“All written records covering barbarian-civilized interaction came from the civilized peoples at war with the barbarians - often the sedentary peoples recently defeated and overwhelmed by those same barbarians. Irritated and angered coastal historians tended to record and emphasize only the negative aspects of their recent interaction with the barbarians.”[4]
The barbarians, however, were mostly illiterate and did not leave a written record of their side of the story. The result is a perspective that evaluates the effect of barbarians –a word used interchangeably with the word nomads both in Guzman’s article and in this essay- as disruptive and negative, in general. Yet new scholar work on the culture of steppe peoples, i.e. nomads/barbarians, reveal that the role of the Mongols in the communication between the two ends of Eurasia, an incident in existence since 1000 B.C.E., has been significant, unique and positive. It is this essay’s purpose to put forward this new academic perspective by elaborating three different texts pertaining to the matter and making comparisons among the three: The first is an article titled “Biography of a Cultural Broker. Bolad Ch’eng-Hsian in China and Iran” by Thomas Allsen.[5] The second is an introductory book by George Lane: Genghis Khan and Mongol Rule and especially the Chapter 7 headed “The Legacy: China and Iran”[6]. The last is Ann K.S. Lambton’s “The Athar Wa Ahya of Rashid al-Din Fadl Allah Hamadani and His Contribution as an Agronomist, Arboriculturist and Horticulturalist”[7]
After a brief summary of the three texts, the reason for selection thereof for the purposes of this essay will be stated, followed by a discussion on the main points derived from comparisons between the three.
Allsen’s article, after a brief summary of Bolad’s career, underlines the colossal effect of Bolad’s person and works on the East-West cultural exchange and how as a party in the Bolad – Rashid al-Din friendship found a counterpart in Rashid al-Din on the Iranian side to the exchange. Lane’s book is an introductory work on the Mongol Empire, concentrating on the foundations of the Mongol state and Chinggis’s works and in chapter 7 specifically, on the relationship between the Ilkhans and the Yuan dynasty. In addition, the book includes English translations of some significant primary documents related with this subject and lastly, biographies of some of the significant contemporaries. Within the confines of this article, mainly the chapter pertaining to the exchange between China and Iran will be focused on. Ann K.S. Lambton summarizes in her article the contents of the agricultural manual by Rashid al-Din, which has partly survived to this day. She states the headings of each chapter of the book and gives examples to Rashid al-Din’s experimental and innovative approach to agriculture and how he used this know-how to help recover Persian agriculture. These three texts do not necessarily overlap in their subject. Yet they do convey the idea that the Mongols were not destructors of civilisation, but rather contributors thereto as brokers, constructors and/or sponsors.
All three texts take Mongols as a “positive factor in medieval history”. Lambton states that “it was because of the relations between the Ilkhanate on the one hand and Central Asia and the Far East on the other that Rashid al-Din was able to benefit from the experience of learned men, merchants and travellers from those areas, to import seeds and plants from beyond the confines of Persia,..”[8] She proposes that it was due to the Pax Mongolica that provided the atmosphere in which men, goods and ideas travelled safely back and forth between China and Iran. This is not to say that the Mongols left it at that; they partook in the transfer and in the constructive works that the exchange brought about. George Lane points to this agency of Mongols by saying: “The Mongols were more than just the catalyst for this cultural and commercial exchange to happen. They themselves were cultural brokers, and it was their decisions and policies that launched these exchanges.”[9] Lane recognizes the active role of the Mongolians in the exchange. In fact, there are other scholars who agree and go further by saying that it was through their selection and filtering that exchange happened. If, for example, the Mongols did not need luxury textiles to provide the retention of their followers, they would not have acquired thousands of West Asian (mostly Persian) artisans transferred on or against their will to China for provision of luxury textiles for the Yuan court[10]. Allsen proposes at the end of his aforementioned article that “...Mongols were not, as is sometimes assumed, disinterested conveyors of cultural wares between civilizations, a kind of medieval United Parcel Service; on the contrary, they were active participants in and, in many cases, the principal initiators of, such exchange, and to a remarkable degree it was the nomads’ cultural priorities and political interests that determined what travelled between East and West in the pre-modern era.”[11] Though within a differing scale, Lambton, Lane and Allsen, all acknowledge the positive contribution of Mongols to the East-West cultural exchange.
The three texts may be compared in their approach in distinguishing the positive contribution of the Mongols to history: it is a personal level. Lambton and Allsen’s articles emphasize the substantial effect of Bolad and Rashid al-Din respectively and jointly on the East-West cultural exchange as influential contemporaries of their time. Allsen explains how Bolad was Po’lo in Chinese sources and the name was mentioned so frequently in the sources that he was identified mistakenly as Marco Polo till 1928 and that in fact Bolad was no less important figure in the East-West exchange than Marco Polo.[12] Marco Polo is a well-known figure that presented most of the information on China in medieval Europe. In that respect Bolad should be an important cultural broker. As far as Lambton’s article is concerned, Rashid al-Din had a very experimental and innovative approach in reviving and improving Persian agriculture. Lambton writes:
“It is clear from the Athar wa ahya that he hoped by his knowledge to contribute to a revival of agriculture in the Ilkhanate and to stimulate others to follow his example in the cultivation of the land: and perhaps he hoped and planned for a time when Persian agriculture might be reconstructed after the recession brought about by the Mongol invasions.”[13]
His personal influence is highly perceived in the resulting revival of agriculture in Persia as he poured his accumulated knowledge on the Persian reconstruction.
Lane points to the difference between Chinggis and his sons: “If the Mongols are to be remembered, it should not be solely for the military genius of their founder Chinggis Khan, but equally for the splendor of the courts of his grandchildren Qubilai and Hülegü and their offsprings and protégés.”[14] Of course, the concentration of all three writers on a personal level may have a practical reason: that most evidence from or about Mongols names these famous persona as initiators or agents of this exchange. Given the existence of the multichannel exchange between East and West (trade, religion, science and arts, etc) exchange, it would not be wrong to predict that this exchange could not have stayed at a personal level. There was certainly some key figures and leaders or important bureaucrats must have played a crucial role.
Lambton, Lane and Allsen stand on similar grounds in proposing that Mongols were not solely disastrous, disruptive peoples. In Lane’s words:
“Two dominant aspects of the Mongol years are becoming clear. First, in China and Iran the Mongols oversaw a period of extraordinary cultural, economic, and spiritual regeneration, and second, both countries were politically, economically, and culturally far closer than had previously been recognized. The wealth and vibrancy of this period have been transmitted to history through the media of art, literature, and trade.”[15]
The Mongols had an unseen contribution to the East-West exchange. This contribution has not been in the form of as mere couriers, but Mongols have actively selected and transferred commodities, ideas and people from east to west and from west to east. This is why they are hailed as brokers of cultural exchange in the world and today, the global world owes much to this agency.
[1] George Lane, Genghis Khan and Mongol Rule (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2004), p. 57
[2] ibid, p. 56
[3] Thomas Allsen, “Biography of a Cultural Broker. Bolad Ch’eng-Hsiang in China and Iran”, in The Court of the Ilkhans 1290-1340, ed. By Julian Raby and Teresa Fitzherbert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
[4] Gregory G. Guzman, “Were the Barbarians a Negative or a positive Factor in Ancient and Medieval History?”, Historian (August 1988), 558-9
[5] Allsen
[6] Lane
[7] Ann K. S. Lambton, “The Athar Wa Ahya of Rashid Al-Din Fadl Allah Hamadani and His Contribution As an Agronomist, Arboriculturist and Horticulturist” in The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy ed. By Reuven Amitai-Preiss and David O. Morgan (Leiden: Brill, 1999).
[8] Lambton, 126
[9] Lane, p. 97
[10] Thomas Allsen, Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p.101
[11] Allsen, 19
[12] ibid, 7
[13] Lambton, 153-4
[14] Lane, p.98
[15] ibid, p.83
merhaba
başlamak bitirmenin yarısıdır. gerçi hiç bitmesin, sürece bakalım ne olacak. yazdın mı senden çıkar…
burada yapmak istediğim tarihe olan merakımla, bencileyin düşüncelerimi ola ki şahitlik edenlerle de çakıştırarak kayda geçirmek. kimbilir belki birileri de gelecekte… anladınız değil mi?
insan merak eder. ediyor yahu basbayağı (benim ilk sebebim). ya da kendini var etmek için (hem birey hem topluluk hem de toplum olarak) bir gelenekle bağ kurmak ister ya da o geleneği hatta bizzat kurar. insanlığı soyut olarak kavramak ister, gene insanlığın oluşturduğu kategorilerle akla mantığa uygun kılmak ister tüm yaşamı: tarih yapar, okur, yazar. bence bu işle ilgi bunlardan mütevellit. ha, meşru bulursunuz, eleştirirsiniz bu sebepleri o işin idealini elinde bir metre gibi tutup konuşmak. ama gerçek böyle. hatta tarih uğraşısını akademik bir iş olarak yapan için bile bu sebepler etken olabilir. olduğuna tanıdığım ve konuştuğum kişilerden şahidim. zaten herhalde tarihle uğraşan sadece kendine de olsa benim geçmişe olan ilgim şu şu nedenden, bu yüzden de şu şu noktalar benim zayıf karnım, beni bu noktalarda sınayabilirler, sınasınlar diyebilmeli, demeli.
tarih üzerine okuyup konuşup düşününce yazmak da yüksek bir olasılık. o zaman kayıt bırakmaktan bahsedelim. bu da bir sebep olarak sayılabilir (nitekim ikinci paragraf göz kırpıyor…). işte kaydımdır: yazıyı çözen 21 mayıs 2007 pazartesi’nde saat 10:07′de tarihe düştüğüm işbu kaydı okursa ben de her ne kütlede ne karbonu isem bin kez şad olur, kendimi geleceğe bırakmış olurum.
bu konu üzerine düşünceler devam edecek.
burada yapmak istediğim tarihe olan merakımla, bencileyin düşüncelerimi ola ki şahitlik edenlerle de çakıştırarak kayda geçirmek. kimbilir belki birileri de gelecekte… anladınız değil mi?
insan merak eder. ediyor yahu basbayağı (benim ilk sebebim). ya da kendini var etmek için (hem birey hem topluluk hem de toplum olarak) bir gelenekle bağ kurmak ister ya da o geleneği hatta bizzat kurar. insanlığı soyut olarak kavramak ister, gene insanlığın oluşturduğu kategorilerle akla mantığa uygun kılmak ister tüm yaşamı: tarih yapar, okur, yazar. bence bu işle ilgi bunlardan mütevellit. ha, meşru bulursunuz, eleştirirsiniz bu sebepleri o işin idealini elinde bir metre gibi tutup konuşmak. ama gerçek böyle. hatta tarih uğraşısını akademik bir iş olarak yapan için bile bu sebepler etken olabilir. olduğuna tanıdığım ve konuştuğum kişilerden şahidim. zaten herhalde tarihle uğraşan sadece kendine de olsa benim geçmişe olan ilgim şu şu nedenden, bu yüzden de şu şu noktalar benim zayıf karnım, beni bu noktalarda sınayabilirler, sınasınlar diyebilmeli, demeli.
tarih üzerine okuyup konuşup düşününce yazmak da yüksek bir olasılık. o zaman kayıt bırakmaktan bahsedelim. bu da bir sebep olarak sayılabilir (nitekim ikinci paragraf göz kırpıyor…). işte kaydımdır: yazıyı çözen 21 mayıs 2007 pazartesi’nde saat 10:07′de tarihe düştüğüm işbu kaydı okursa ben de her ne kütlede ne karbonu isem bin kez şad olur, kendimi geleceğe bırakmış olurum.
bu konu üzerine düşünceler devam edecek.
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