|
Isaac Newton | Protestant History | 3 Interpretations | Daniel | Revelation | Armageddon | Audio Links | Site Index |
| Home ¬ Previous Page ¬ The Turks From the Euphrateds FN | ||||||||
1 So Turner in his History of England, Vol. i. p. 307. "Togrul Beg, produced… a revolution still more momentous to the mind and fortunes of mankind. Under his reign the great Turkish nation adopted the religion of Islam. And professing it with all the energy of their native character, and all the zeal of recent converts, they became its fierce champions at that precise era when it was losing its hold on the human intellect; and, but for the support of their simple, rude, uncritical, credulous, and vehement spirit, might have quietly expired." I copy from Mr. Forster's Mahomm. Unveiled, L 221.
2 " The Turks deem no Sultan legitimately inaugurated until the Hutbe prayers, on a regularly appointed Friday, shall have been solemnly offered up, for the health and prosperity of the new sovereign." Faber, S. C. ii. 297.
3 This kind of title, which reminds one of those of the American Indians, seems to have been common among the Turkmen. So Kizil-Arsian, the red lion, (as D'Herbelot, iii. 370, in the Article on Tacash explains it, a chief cotemporary with Thogrul Beg: and again, Kilidge Arslan, the Sultan of the Turks encountered by the Franks of the first Crusade, at Nice.
4 In 1066 appeared the great comet; great as never seen before. "The appalled multitude," it has been said, "gazed night after night at the messenger of evil the long haired star darting its awful splendor from the horizon to the zenith: a portent that "with fear of change perplexed monarchs." Quart. Rev. Oct. 1844, p. 301.
5 "Ortogrul became the subject and soldier of Aladin; and established at Surrut, on the banks of the Sangar, a camp of 400 families, whom he governed fifty-two years (A.D. 1247-1299), in peace and war." Gibb 11 p 431
6 The origin and date of the adoption of the crescent as a Turkish ensign, has been a subject of much difference of opinion among the learned. Many suppose that it was not adopted till the taking of Constantinople; and then because of its having been a symbol of old Byzantium. So Franciscus Menenius and Busquebius; towards whose opinion Paulus Pater leans, as I am informed, in his Dissertation entitled "Insignia Turcica;" though allowing the uncertainty of the question. Von Hanmer too thinks it not improbable that European writers (among whom are Gibbon, Hallam, Mills, &c.) may have been guilty of anachronism; and have spoken of the crescent, as waving on the banners of Saladin and the Seljukian Turks, by anticipation.
On the other hand, Sir Harford Jones Brydges, whose oriental knowledge is well known, and who has been engaged in a Life of Saladin, gives it as his opinion on the subject, that the crescent was one of the earliest bannerial distinctions used by the Sunni Mahommedans. Thus he thinks that Saladin, for example, (who was a Sunni,) carried a crescent marked on a green flag, the Abbassides of Baghdad on a black.
For my own part I cannot but strongly incline to the latter view. For 1st, it seems little credible to me that the Turks should have gone back above 1000 years to the antiquities of the old Byzantium for an ensign. 2nd, I read in D'Herbelot, on the word Tacash, that in a poem composed by one Kemaleddin in honor of his prince, a Chorasmian Turkmen after his defeating the Seljukian Thogrul Beg, there occurs in it the passage following: "Takash will raise the religion and state of the Mussulman as high (as the Seljukidae themselves).
The crescent, which glitters above his pavilions, has already received the homage of the greatest princes on earth."So that at that early date, about A.D. 1070, it is spoken of as a Mussulman ensign. 3rd. In the conquest of Muscovy, about 1250 A.D. by Tartar detachments from Zenghis Khan, we read that, on converting the churches of the country into mosques, they fixed the crescent as the badge of Islam upon them: and that when, 200 years after, John Bascovitch delivered his country from the Tartar yoke, and restored the churches, he left the crescent standing, and planted a cross over it.-See Rees' Encyclopedia, on the word Crescent.
Hence on the whole I infer that it was, as a Mussulman ensign, common to various Mussulman nations, as early as the 11th century ; and so to the Seljukian Turks, the chief of the Mussulman. Considering the Turks' (I might say the Moslems') reverence for the new moon, of which Purchas speaks in his Pilgrimage, p. 295, the ensign was very natural.
Mr. Forster in his late work on Arabian Geography, i. 340, assuming that the crescent was a Saracen banner, suggests the passage Judges. viii. 21, "Gideon took away the ornaments (Marg. ornaments like the moon) that were on the camels' necks," (of the Midianites Zeba and Zalmunna,) in illustration. "The regal crescent," he says, "on the war camels of the Midianitish kings would naturally pass into the standard of the nation, and hence become the standard of Islam." He allows, however, that no mention of the crescent occurs in the early history of the Saracens. And I believe it was a Turkmen ensign, not Arabian.
7 Mills, Hist. of Mahommedism; "The Seljukian of lconium and the Chorasmian Tartars became one people, known in history by the common name of Ottoman Turks; and the sword and scepter of power were transferred from the sluz1ard Seljukian princes, to their ambitious and enterprising generals." p. 2161. Cited by Faber, ii. 288.
I believe the title Tartar is here incorrectly given to the Ottoman Turks. M. Klaproth distinguishes between Turks and Tartars; considering the former as of Caucasian, the latter of Mongol race.
8 The dates of the reigns of the four first Ottoman princes are as follows: Othman, A.D. 1299-1326; Orchan, A.D. 1326-1360; Amurath, A.D. 1360-1389; Bajazet, A.D. 1389-1403.
It was about the time of the decline of the Moguls, and a little before the accession of Othman, that the Latin Crusaders were finally driven out of Palestine. 1291 was the date of that event.
Orchan subdued the Asiatic provinces to the Bosphorus and Hellespont, consummating the captivity or ruin of the seven Asiatic churches. Amurath was the first to cross into Europe.
9 Gibbon 11. 445.
10 It was solemnly renounced in the year 1317, in favor of the Turkish Sultan Selim, by the Caliph Motawakkel, Mohammed, after the overthrow of the Circassian Mamelucs in Egypt. This was at that time the only Moslem caliphate remaining: the caliphate at Baghdad having been extinguished by the Tartars in the year 1258 ; and that of Cordova yet earlier, before the middle, I believe, of the eleventh century. Hence the Sultan's title of Imam ul Muslimim Chief Pontiff of Mussulmans; and the almost divine sacredness of his character in their eyes, in consequence. Thornton pp. 93, 94.