Cosmas Megalommatis, Atra-Hasis: World Mythology, Greek Pedagogical Encyclopedia, 1989

Ashurbanipal: the Righteous Suffering - Part I / Ασσουρμπανιπάλ Πάσχων – Α' (1987)

Ashurbanipal: the Righteous Suffering - Part I

In this 2-series article (published back in 1987), I present a brief diagram of the Messianic Assyrian dynasty of the Sargonids (722-609 BCE), who ruled Nineveh as the exemplary universal empire of the World History; accepting Jonah's preaching, Sargon of Assyria (722-705 BCE) and his son and grandson, Sennacherib (705-681 BCE) and Esarhaddon (681-670 BCE), ushered the world to the Messianic Era of Ashurbanipal (669-625 BCE), who lived a first life as the Suffering Messiah, on the basis of contemporaneous historical texts and personal declarations, only to leave to posterity the claim to his exulted return and celestial reign. All posterior adaptations and identifications being fraudulent, the Second Coming of Ashurbanipal is instantly corroborated by the nature of his magnum opus. The two titles of the series are: "Ashurbanipal: the Righteous Suffering" and "Ashurbanipal: the Coming King". 

Ашурбанипал: Праведный Страдающий - Часть I

В этой 2-серийной статье (опубликованной еще в 1987 г.) я представляю краткую схему мессианской ассирийской династии Саргонидов (722-609 гг. до н. э.), правивших Ниневией как образцовой универсальной империей Всемирной истории; приняв проповедь Ионы, Саргон Ассирийский (722-705 гг. до н.э.) и его сын и внук Сеннахирим (705-681 гг. до н.э.) и Асархаддон (681-670 гг. до н.э.), открыли миру мессианскую эру Ашшурбанипала (669–625 гг. до н. э.), который прожил первую жизнь как Страдающий Мессия, на основании современных ему исторических текстов и личных заявлений, только для того, чтобы оставить потомкам притязания на его ликующее возвращение и небесное правление. Все последующие адаптации и отождествления являются мошенническими, и Второе пришествие Ашшурбанипала немедленно подтверждается характером его великого произведения. Два названия сериала: «Ашурбанипал: Праведный Страдающий » и «Ашурбанипал: грядущий царь».

Ασσουρμπανιπάλ Πάσχων – Τμήμα Α'

Σε αυτή την σειρά δύο άρθρων (δημοσιευμένων το 1987), παρουσιάζω ένα σύντομο διάγραμμα της Μεσσιανικής Ασσυριακής δυναστείας των Σαργονιδών (722-609 πτεμ), οι οποίοι κυβέρνησαν τη Νινευή ως την υποδειγματική παγκόσμια αυτοκρατορία της Παγκόσμιας Ιστορίας. Αποδεχόμενοι το κήρυγμα του Ιωνά, ο Σαργών της Ασσυρίας (722-705 π.Χ.), καθώς και ο υιός και εγγονός του, Σεναχειρίμπ (705-681 πτεμ) και Ασσαρχαδδών (681-670 πτεμ), οδήγησαν τον κόσμο στη Μεσσιανική Εποχή του Ασουρμπανιπάλ (669-625 πτεμ), ο οποίος έζησε μια πρώτη ζωή ως ο Πάσχων Μεσσίας, με βάση τα σύγχρονα τότε ιστορικά κείμενα και τις προσωπικές του διακηρύξεις, μόνο για να αφήσει σε όλους τους επόμενους την αξίωση για την εξυμνηθείσα επιστροφή του και την ουράνια βασιλεία του. Καθώς όλες οι μεταγενέστερες προσαρμογές του θέματος και ταυτίσεις προσώπων είναι ολότελα δόλιες, η Δευτέρα Παρουσία του Ασουρμπανιπάλ επιβεβαιώνεται ακαριαία από τη φύση του μεγάλου έργου του. Οι δύο τίτλοι της σειράς είναι: «Ασσουρμπανιπάλ Πάσχων» και «Ασσουρμπανιπάλ  Ερχόμενος».

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Main units:

Introduction

Who were the Assyrians?

Jonah's Sermon at Nineveh

The structure of Assyrian society and power

The transfer of the Ten Tribes of Israel to Assyria

Sennacherib: the destroyer of "nations"

The Assassination of Sennacherib

Esarhaddon and the Tree of Life

The Great Opus and Ashurbanipal

The Particularities of Ashurbanipal

The last conspiracy

Appendices:

Assyrian expansion and obstacles

Ashurbanipal and ... Sardanapalus

in: Inexplicable, January 1987, pp. 212-223

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Основные главы:

Введение

Кем были ассирийцы?

Проповедь Ионы в Ниневии

Структура ассирийского общества и власти

Переселение десяти колен Израиля в Ассирию

Синаххериб: разрушитель «наций»

Убийство Синаххериба

Асархаддон и Древо Жизни

Великий Опус и Ашшурбанипал

Особенности Ашшурбанипала

Последний заговор

Приложения:

Ассирийская экспансия и препятствия

Ашурбанипал и ... Сарданапал

в: Необъяснимое, январь 1987 г., стр. 212-223.

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Κυρίως ενότητες:

Εισαγωγή

Ποιοι ήταν οι Ασσύριοι

Το Κήρυγμα του Ιωνά στη Νινευή

Η δομή της ασσυριακής κοινωνίας και εξουσίας

Η μεταφορά των Δέκα Φυλών του Ισραήλ στην Ασσυρία

Σεναχειρίμπ: ο εξολοθρευτής των "εθνών"

Η δολοφονία του Σεναχειρίμπ

Ο Ασσαρχαδών και το Δέντρο της Ζωής

Το Έργο και ο Ασσουρμπανιπάλ

Οι ιδιαιτερότητες του Ασσουρμπανιπάλ

Η τελευταία συνωμοσία

Παραρτήματα:

Ασσυριακή εξάπλωση και εμπόδια

Ασσουρμπανιπάλ και ... Σαρδανάπαλος

στο Ανεξήγητο, Ιανουάριος 1987, σ. 212-223

----------------------

Κατεβάστε το άρθρο: / Download the article: / Скачать статью:

Breakfast at Punta Tragara Hotel. Capri. Italy.

Your summer in Italy.

Ισπαχάν: η Αυτοκρατορική Πρωτεύουσα των Σαφεβιδών (:των Σούφι Σάχηδων) που είναι ο Μισός Κόσμος

Esfahan: the Imperial Capital of Safavid dynasty (: the Sufi Shahs) which is already "Half the World"

ΑΝΑΔΗΜΟΣΙΕΥΣΗ ΑΠΟ ΤΟ ΣΗΜΕΡΑ ΑΝΕΝΕΡΓΟ ΜΠΛΟΓΚ “ΟΙ ΡΩΜΙΟΙ ΤΗΣ ΑΝΑΤΟΛΗΣ”

Το κείμενο του κ. Νίκου Μπαϋρακτάρη είχε αρχικά δημοσιευθεί την 22α Ιουνίου 2019.

Στο κείμενό του αυτό, ο κ. Μπαϋρακτάρης παρουσιάζει τμήμα ομιλίας μου στην Νουρ-σουλτάν (πρώην Αστανά) του Καζακστάν τον Δεκέμβριο του 2018 με θέμα τις μεγάλες αυτοκρατορικές πρωτεύουσες της Ασίας και της Αφρικής, καθώς και την εμφανή κατωτερότητα και αθλιότητα των δυτικο-ευρωπαϊκών πρωτευουσών αποικιοκρατικών χωρών.

--------------------------------

https://greeksoftheorient.wordpress.com/2019/06/22/ισπαχάν-η-αυτοκρατορική-πρωτεύουσα-τ/ ===============

Οι Ρωμιοί της Ανατολής – Greeks of the Orient

Ρωμιοσύνη, Ρωμανία, Ανατολική Ρωμαϊκή Αυτοκρατορία

Όπως και στην περίπτωση της Σαμαρκάνδης, δεν υπάρχει καμμιά ευρωπαϊκή πόλη πλην της Σταμπούλ που να μπορεί να αντιπαραβληθεί με το Εσφαχάν σε αυτοκρατορικό μεγαλείο.

Μαζί με τις προαναφερμένες δύο πρωτεύουσες, καθώς και την Σαχ Τζαχάν Αμπάντ (το λεγόμενο Παλαιό Δελχί), πρωτεύουσα των Μογγόλων αυτοκρατόρων (Γκορκανιάν) της Ινδίας, και το Πεκίνο, το Εσφαχάν είναι μία από τις πέντε μεγαλύτερες και πιο εντυπωσιακές αυτοκρατορικές πόλεις και τις πέντε πιο σημαντικές πρωτεύουσες του Παγκόσμιου Πολιτισμού και της Παγκόσμιας Ιστορίας των τελευταίων δύο χιλιετιών.

Οι Ιρανοί το λένε πιο λακωνικά κι έχουν δίκιο: το Εσφαχάν είναι ο Μισός Κόσμος. Όλη η υπόλοιπη επιφάνεια της γης είναι το υπόλοιπο μισό του κόσμου.

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Το Τζαμί του Σάχη, Εσφαχάν

Το Τζαμί του Σεΐχη Λουτφολλάχ, Εσφαχάν

Ανακτορικό Περίπτερο Αλί Καπού, Εσφαχάν

Ανάκτορο των Σαράντα Κιόνων (Τσεέλ Σοτούν), Εσφαχάν

Ανάκτορο των Οκτώ Παραδείσων (Χαστ Μπεχέστ), Εσφαχάν

——————————————————————-

Δείτε το βίντεο:

Исфахан: имперская столица сефевидов (суфийской династии Ирана) – половина мира

https://www.ok.ru/video/1416652720749

Isfahan: the Imperial Capital of the Safavid (: Sufi) Dynasty of Iran is Half of the World

https://vk.com/video434648441_456240217

Ισπαχάν: η Πρωτεύουσα των Σαφεβιδών (της Δυναστείας των Σούφι) είναι ο Μισός Κόσμος

Περισσότερα:

Στα περσικά (φαρσί) λένε “Εσφαχάν νασφ-ε Τζαχάν”, δηλαδή ότι το Ισπαχάν είναι ο μισός κόσμος. Γνωστή ως Ασπάδανα στα αρχαία ελληνικά, το Ισπαχάν ήταν μια μικρή πόλη στα αχαιαμενιδικά (550-330), αρσακιδικά (250 π.Χ. – 224 μ.Χ.) και στα σασανιδικά (224-651) χρόνια. Όταν με την ισλαμική κατάκτηση (636-642-651), το Ισπαχάν έγινε πρωτεύουσα της χαλιφατικής επαρχίας Τζεμπάλ (: βουνά) που περιλάμβανε την οροσειρά του Ζάγρου και το δυτικό ιρανικό οροπέδιο, άρχισε μία ανέλιξη που κορυφώθηκε στα σαφεβιδικά (1501-1736) χρόνια.

Το Εσφαχάν, όπως λέγεται στα περσικά, είναι μια από τις πιο εντυπωσιακές αυτοκρατορικές πρωτεύουσες του κόσμου. Επίκεντρο της σαφεβιδικής πρωτεύουσας ήταν η τεράστια πλατεία Νακς-ε Τζαχάν (εικόνα του κόσμου), όπου από το αυτοκρατορικό περίπτερο Αλί Καπού ο σάχης παρακολουθούσε τους αγώνες πόλο που λάμβαναν χώρα. Εκεί βρίσκονται και δυο από τα ωραιότερα τζαμιά του κόσμου: το Τζαμί του Σεΐχη Λουτφολάχ και το Τζαμί του Σάχη (σήμερα: ‘ταμί του ιμάμη’).

Για τους Ιρανούς από τα πρώιμα αχαιμενιδικά χρόνια ‘κήπος’ σήμαινε ‘παράδεισος’ κι όλοι οι σάχηδες των προϊσλαμικών και των ισλαμικών χρόνων οργάνωσαν εντυπωσιακούς κήπους κι έκτισαν ανάκτορα μέσα σε κήπους με λίμνες. Το ανάκτορο Τσεέλ Σοτούν (των σαράντα κιόνων) και το ανάκτορο Χαστ Μπεχέστ (των οκτώ παραδείσων) είναι τα πιο εντυπωσιακά από όσα σώζονται.

Περισσότερα: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isfahan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naqsh-e_Jahan_Square

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80l%C4%AB_Q%C4%81p%C5%AB

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

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

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

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

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

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Исфахан

https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ισφαχάν

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Διαβάστε:

Isfahan (اصفهان), ancient province and old city in central Iran (Middle Pers. “Spahān,” New Pers. “Eṣfahān”). Isfahan city has served as one of the most important urban centers on the Iranian Plateau since ancient times and has gained, over centuries of urbanization, many significant monuments; a number of Isfahan’s monuments have been designated by UNESCO as world heritage sites. Isfahan city, the capital of Isfahan Province, is located about 420 km south of Tehran, and is Persia’s third largest city (after Tehran and Mashad) with a population of over 1.4 million in 2004.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/isfahan

Isfahan v. Local Historiography

Isfahan is exceptional in the number and variety of works of local historiography; no other Persian city has attracted nearly as many such works. These works were written predominantly in two periods: the pre-Mongol (and in particular the pre-Saljuq) period and the 19th century; works written in the 20th century will not be dealt with extensively here. Works of local historiography about Isfahan can be classified into two distinct literary genres: the biographical dictionary and the adab-oriented local history.

Biographical dictionaries. Biographical dictionaries of local perspective were written for a large number of Persian cities in the pre-Mongol period, but only a fraction of them are extant in either the original Arabic or Persian renderings. Two biographical dictionaries about scholars from Isfahan, both written in Arabic, have come down to us. The earlier of these two, the Ṭabaqāt al-moḥaddeṯin be-Eṣfahān wa’l-wāredin ʿalayhā, by Abu’l-Šayḵ ʿAbd-Allāh b. Moḥammad (274-369/887-979), was probably written in the 350s/960s, since the latest dates mentioned do not relate to events far beyond 350 (ed. Baluši, IV, p. 230, dated 353).

The mention of dates as late as that seems to be exceptional, so they could have been added during the final stages of the process of completing the work. The second work of this genre is Ḏekr akbār Eṣfahān by the Hadith transmitter and historian Abu Noʿaym Eṣfahāni (q.v.; d. 430/1038). The latest dates in this work suggest that it was completed in the 410s/1020s.

Abu’l-Šayḵ was not necessarily the first author from Isfahan to write a biographical dictionary about the scholars who lived in, or had come to, his hometown. Among the many sources he quotes, the Hanbalite scholar Ebn Manda (d. 301/913-14) is the most prominent. On the basis of this and other later sources, it is almost certain that Ebn Manda wrote such a work. It seems that it was still known in the immediate pre-Mongol period, since the author of an analogous work on the scholars of Qazvin was apparently able to use it then (Rāfeʿi, I, p. 2).

Moreover, Abu’l-Šayḵ frequently mentions men who wrote their mašyaḵa (list of teachers with whom they studied Hadith and other Islamic sciences); thus, it would be reasonable to assume that he used a number of these in preparing his work. The transition from writing down one’s own mašyaḵa to compiling a book on the “categories” or “generations” of scholars is likely to have been a relatively smooth one.

Undoubtedly, Abu’l-Šayḵ was, in turn, one of the most important, perhaps even the single most important, source for Abu Noʿaym, who referred to him as Abu Moḥammad b. Ḥayyān. Except for a very few, all the scholars included in Abu’l-Šayḵ’s work are also mentioned by Abu Noʿaym. Abu Noʿaym did not, however, merely write a continuation (ḏayl) to Abu’l-Šayḵ’s work; rather, he used most of his material in a slightly abridged or otherwise adapted form; thus, any changes that Abu Noʿaym introduced into the text of his source can be taken to be intentional.

Other sources of comparable character were identified first by Sven Dedering in the introduction to his edition of Abu Noʿaym’s work, and have recently been discussed more comprehensively by Nur-Allāh Kasāʾi in the introduction to his Persian translation of the work. Kasāʾi also provides a detailed comparison between the respective works of Abu’l-Šayḵ and Abu Noʿaym. It is also worth mentioning that an important source for Abu Noʿaym was the (apparently lost) Ketāb Eṣfahān by Ḥamza Eṣfahāni (see below).

These two biographical dictionaries are similar in scope, but they offer a number of differences in form: Abu’l-Šayḵ arranged his entries according to the principle of ṭabaqāt (categories), whereas Abu Noʿaym adhered to alphabetical order (except for the Companions of the Prophet), using the ṭabaqāt principle only within larger groups made up of men who bore very common given names such as Aḥmad (I, pp. 77 ff.).

Both works start with an introductory chapter, that of the earlier work being much more concise. Abu Noʿaym places a perceptible stress on the good qualities of the Persians and their merits in contributing to the spread of Islam and the maintenance of its purity.

For instance, half of the section on the Companions of the Prophet is devoted to Salmān Fār(e)si (q.v.), and the stories about the Arab conquest of Isfahan provide unfavorable details about how the invaders proceeded. Both works link the early history of Isfahan back to the prophetic cycle of history by claiming that the people of Isfahan were the only ones who did not support Nimrod in his rebellion against God, but supported Abraham instead (Abu’l-Šayḵ, 1989, I, p. 150; 1987-92, I, p. 28, Abu Noʿaym, I, pp. 48 ff.).

The biographical parts of both of these works shed some light on institutions of learning and their development. The earlier work describes teaching activity taking place mainly in mosques and in private homes, whereas the later one refers to specialized institutions unknown to the earlier source, such as a “House of learning and transmission,” (bayt al-ʿlm wa’l-rewāya) mentioned in relation to someone who died in 363/973, as well as a “House of Hadith and transmission” (baytal-ḥadiṯ wa’l-rewāya )(ed. Dedering, I, pp. 156, 221).

Other matters for which contemporary scholars have found it useful to resort to using local biographical dictionaries in general, and in particular those written about Isfahan, include the office of the judge (Halm) and the spread of law schools (Melchert; Tsafrir). Scholars have also offered, on the basis of such sources, reconstructions of the rise of Sufism to a respected movement that managed to attract even some of the more prominent religious scholars (Paul, 2000a, using methods developed by Chabbi).

Both books discuss in their introductions the pleasant landscape and climate of Isfahan and its surroundings in a very similar way, thus apparently laying the foundation for further developments of the genre that treats local history and geography as closely related subjects.

Adab-oriented local historiography. Works of local historiography written in the pre-Mongol period mostly belong to the genre of biographical dictionaries. The only extant work of this genre about Isfahan is Māfarruḵi’s Maḥāsen Eṣfahān in Arabic, which was written probably some time between 464/1072 and 484/1092 (Bulliet), when Isfahan had become the capital of the Great Saljuq empire.

Māfarruḵi includes quotes from Ketāb Eṣfahān, the lost work of Ḥamza Eṣfahāni; thus it seems that in Isfahan there was something like a tradition of writing local history in both genres. It is, however, impossible to venture a reconstruction of Ḥamza’s work based on the rather short references in Abu Noʿaym and Māfarruḵi, but it seems likely that it had a part similar to a biographical dictionary (including not only scholars, but also men of letters) and another one on antiquities (Paul, 2000b).

Another such work on “the glories of Isfahan” (fi mafāḵer Eṣfahān) may have existed in the form of ʿAli b. Ḥamza b. ʿOmāra’s Qalāʾed al šaraf, which is mentioned by Mā-farruḵi (p. 27) and Yāqut (V. pp. 200 f.) but seems to be lost. Nevertheless, it is probable that there was a tradition of writing adab-oriented local histories of Isfahan as well as biographical dictionaries of scholars.

Māfarruḵi’s work was translated into Persian in the 14th century by Ḥosayn b. Moḥammad b. Abi’l-Reżā Āvi, who rearranged it by dividing the text into eight chapters and added further material in several places, in many cases poetry, as well as praise of the Il-khanid vizier who governed Isfahan in his time. Māfarruḵi’s work is a pleasantly arranged assortment of stories, including some about storytelling itself. It was written from the vantage point of the secretarial class that focuses on the rules of good governance, which are sometimes linked to the pre-Islamic past.

This is history as a means of conveying contemporary messages; the rules are set first in a distant past, and later cases are used to illustrate that they are still valid. In its historical parts, the text certainly does not aim to recount history “as it really happened,” but tells stories of a historical nature as exempla to illustrate general rules that mostly pertain to good governance. Since these rules are grounded in a common cultural code shared by the author and his audience (and, in fact, later generations as well), the work is permeated with the values that were characteristic of the author’s time and social background. This work’s overall message is that experience (tajreba) has shown time and again that successful rulers are those who heed the advice of secretaries, viziers, and even the ordinary public. It is irrelevant that some of the stories told to convey this point of view may be fictitious.

Works written in the later 19th century; No local history of Isfahan seems to have been written under the Safavids or in the period immediately following their downfall. Local historiography resumed only in the second half of the 19th century, particularly as a response to Nāṣer-al-Din Shah’s project for a general description of the regions of Persia called Merʾāt al-boldān. Thus geography, in particular historical geography, is the focus of interest in some of these works, which are a source of information about city quarters and even about individual buildings.

One of the works written for Nāṣer-al-Din Shah was Neṣf al-jahān fi taʿrif al-Eṣfahān (in classical Arabic, the name of the city did not bear the definite article) by Moḥammad-Mahdi b. Moḥammad-Reżā Eṣfahāni. The earliest extant manuscript of this work is dated 1287/1870, but additions and revisions were made, apparently, until 1303/1885. It continued the tradition of adab-oriented historiography from the earlier periods in that it also presented a mix of history and geography, as indeed would have been what the king wanted.

The historical part takes up almost half of the text, highlighting two periods. In the section dealing with early history (pp. 139-69), the author tried to link his understanding of the results of modern (Western) scholarship (archeology and research on cuneiform texts) to the Persian (Šāh-nāma) tradition. After the legendary kings of Persia and Babylon, most of ancient and medieval history is given short shrift; but the author still manages to quote Māfarruḵi a couple of times and refers to Jean Chardin (q.v.) and Engelbert Kaempfer as witnesses to the prosperity of the country under the Safavids (pp. 178-79).

The second period focuses on the conquest of Persia by the Afghans and the ensuing period of upheaval, which he pursues as far as the reign of Fatḥ-ʿAli Shah Qājār (q.v.; pp. 180 ff.). In this part, he frequently refers to European writers, among whom Sir John Malcolm’s History of Persia (1829) holds a prominent place (the references to Chardin and Kaempfer are probably also taken from here). Whenever the author has to decide whether the chronicle written by Mirzā Mahdi Khan Estrābādi (certainly the Tāriḵ-e nāderi is intended) or the English work is more reliable, he opts for the latter work.

Ḥājj Mirzā Ḥasan Khan Jāberi Anṣāri (1870-1957) wrote a history of Isfahan, which is called Tāriḵ-e Eṣfahān in the latest edition. (An earlier version, shorn of the third volume, which is a collection of biographies, is known as Tāriḵ-e Eṣfahān wa-Ray wa hama-ye jahān; the first version, called Tāriḵ-e neṣf-e jahān wa hama-ye jahān, was published in lithograph edition in Isfahan in 1914.) This is also a combination of both geography and history, and it seems particularly valuable for its detailed description of the Zāyandarud river and the system through which its waters were distributed (Lambton).

In a section consisting of biographies, dates as late as 1350/1931 are given, thus reaching far into the 20th century. The author was one of the main proponents of the constitutional movement in Isfahan, and so his perspective is also partisan. He was well informed about questions of governance and administration, since he held posts in the provincial administration under Masʿud Mirzā Ẓell-al-Solṭān for long periods, so it is not surprising that his main categoried are ʿemārat (flourishing parts) and virāni/ḵarābi (ruinous state).

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/isfahan-v-local-historiography

Isfahan vii. Safavid Period

Isfahan came under Safavid rule in 1503 following Shah Esmāʿil’s defeat of Solṭān Morād, the Āq Qoyunlu (q.v.) ruler of Erāq-e ʿAjam, near Hamadān. No contemporary source describes the conquest of the city in any detail, but we do know that it was accompanied by great brutality. In retaliation for the killing of many Shiʿite inhabitants under the Āq Qoyunlu, Shah Esmāʿil caused a bloodbath among the city’s Sunnites. The Portuguese traveler, Tenreiro, visiting Isfahan in 1524, reports seeing mounds of dirt with bones sticking out that were reportedly the remains of 5,000 people killed by the Safavids (Tenreiro, pp. 20-21).

Following the conquest, Esmāʿil appointed Dormeš Khan Šāmlu governor. Mirzā Šāh-Ḥosayn, originally a builder (bannā, meʿmār) in Isfahan, at that point started his political career by serving Dormeš Khan as vizier of the dāruḡa (“mayor”; see below and CITIES ii) of the city. He was later promoted to the post of wakil (royal deputy, the highest subject of the king) of Shah Esmāʿil, and was so influential that his enemies finally assassinated him in 1523 (Rumlu, pp. 231-32). In fact, his case is not an exception. Beginning with the reign of Shah Esmāʿil, Isfahani families occupied high positions in the Safavid administration, and at least one Safavid grand vizier, Mirzā Salmān Jāberi, appointed by Moḥammad Ḵodābanda in 1578, hailed from an Isfahani family.

Isfahan continued to be a focus of Shah Esmāʿil even as he set out to conquer other parts of the Iranian plateau. Stopping at the city from time to time, he is said to have been keen to restore the city to its pre-Mongol significance and in this regard paid particular attention to the role and function of its squares. In 1509 he ordered the enlargement of the Meydān-e Naqš-e Jahān (Royal Square) to accommodate the playing of polo, qabāq-bāzi, and other games and forms of entertainment. He used the Old Meydān (Meydān-e kohna) as the place of execution of rebels. The building of Hārun-e Welāyat, the mausoleum of a saint, at the southern end of the Old Meydān, was completed by Mirzā Šāh-Ḥosayn in 1512 (Ḵᵛāndamir, IV, p. 500; Quiring-Zoche, p. 64).

Shah Ṭahmāsb (r. 1524-76), who was born in a suburb of Isfahan in 1514, added several other buildings, mostly mosques, to the city. He incorporated Isfahan into the royal domain in 1534, and the city’s status as crown land (ḵāṣṣa) remained largely unchanged until the end of the Safavid period (Röhrborn, p. 118). The only exception is the reign of Moḥammad Ḵodābanda (1577-87), who offered Isfahan as a revenue assignment (teyul) to Ḥamza Mirzā, one of his sons and his heir.

The de-facto ruler of Isfahan, however, became his plenipotentiary (ṣāḥeb-e eḵtiār), Farhād Khan (q.v.), who did much to secure the city from the Arašlu tribe, who had taken control of the environs and were moving into the city as well. Once in power, Farhād Beg built himself a fortified residence alongside the Bāḡ-e Naqš-e Jahān (Royal Garden) and designed a new garden around it, destroying the bāḡ itself and moving its trees in the process (Afuštaʾi Naṭanzi, pp. 339-40).

During the reign of Shah Ṭahmāsb, the city twice experienced wartime disorder. The first time was during the civil war between two Qezelbāš tribal leaders, Čoḡā Solṭān Takkalu and Ḥosayn Khan Šāmlu, in 937/1530. The latter attacked Čoḡā Solṭān in a suburb of Isfahan, and Čoḡā Solṭān took refuge in the royal tent located near his camp. Ḥosayn Khan managed to kill Čoḡā Solṭān but ultimately was defeated by Takkalu reinforcements. He retreated to Isfahan and then fled to Fārs. It seems that the city itself was not thrown into disarray during this conflict (Rumlu, pp. 308-10).

The revolt of Alqās Mirzā (q.v.), Ṭahmāsb’s brother, in 1548-49 represents the second period of disorder for Isfahan. After ravaging Hamadān, Ray, and Qom, Alqās Mirzā’s troops, supported by the Ottoman Sultan Solayman, came close to Isfahan. He believed that the citizens would open the city’s gate without fighting, because no substantial Safavid force was around. Instead, the people of Isfahan, led by Šāh Taqi-al-Din Moḥammad Mir-e Mirān, a community leader (naqib), and his brother Mir Ḡiāṯ-al-Din Moḥammad, shut the city gates and put up strong resistance, strengthened in their determination by the fact that the shah had sent his own harem to Isfahan (Navidi, p. 101).

Alqās, finding it difficult to subdue Isfahan, gave up on his attempt to take the city and left for Shiraz (Rumlu, p. 434). The event became certainly the turning point of Alqās Mirzā’s revolt, which ended with his arrest and confinement in Qahqaha castle the following year (Rumlu, pp. 437-38). Although Isfahan made a great contribution to Ṭahmāsb’s cause through its fierce resistance, it does not seem to have received any royal favors in return. We only know of an order by Ṭahmāsb to abolish various taxes imposed on guilds in 1563 (Honarfar, pp. 88-90). This may simply have been part of the exemption from the tax on commerce (tamḡā), which Ṭahmāsb offered throughout the kingdom in 972/1564. The measure was apparently taken after the oracle of Ṣāḥeb-al-Amir appeared in the ruler’s dream (Qāżi Aḥmad, p. 449).

After Ḥamza Mirzā’s death in 1586, Isfahan fell to his brother, Abu Ṭāleb Mirzā. Farhād Khan lost his post and was incarcerated. Ḡolām (slave) forces loyal to him revolted, however, and managed to take hold of the city fortress with their own hostages. Long negotiations with representatives of Shah Ḵodābanda, who had meanwhile arrived in Isfahan, led to the release of the hostages but not the freeing of Farhād Khan. The ḡolāms only surrendered after royalist forces threatened to bombard the citadel.

The structure was destroyed after the rebels had left it. Shortly thereafter Moḥammad Ḵodābanda died, and Isfahan opened up its gates to the forces of the new ruler, Shah ʿAbbās I, who proceeded to grant the city and its environs to his wakil, Moršedqoli Khan, as a teyul. As city mayor he appointed Yuli Beg. The latter set out to restore the Tabarak fortress but also showed signs of autonomy. The decision of Shah ʿAbbās to visit Isfahan in 1590 led to a confrontation, with Yuli Beg retreating into the fortress with his troops.

Ultimately the shah reconciled himself with Yuli Beg, although the post of senior governor (ḥākem) went to ʿAli Beg Ostājlu (Afuštaʾi Naṭanzi, pp. 33-35, 233-38; Quiring-Zoche, pp. 80-89). Shortly thereafter, in early 1590, Isfahan was made crown land again, with the post of vizier going to Mirzā Mo-ḥammad Nišāpuri (Ḵuzāni Eṣfahāni, fol. 39b).

Isfahan as the Safavid Capital

The idea of turning Isfahan into a new capital must have come to Shah ʿAbbās shortly after his accession in 1587, for the first mention of designs for the new Isfahan occurs under 998/1588 in the Afżal al-tawāriḵ (Ḵuzāni Eṣfahāni, fol. 38v). At that early date some changes were made, among them the beginnings of the ʿĀli Qāpu palace (q.v.), but an overall new design did not come to fruition, possibly because of opposition.

The choice of Isfahan as the new administrative and cultural center was based in part on the availability of water—in the form of the Zāyandarud—but was clearly politically motivated as well. The city was located deep into the interior and thus far less exposed to the Ottoman threat than Tabriz and even Qazvin had been. It was also well positioned vis-à-vis the Persian Gulf, and thus played a pivotal role in Shah ʿAbbās’s territorial and commercial designs in that direction, which he initiated shortly after Isfahan had become the new capital (Mazzaoui).

Both Eskandar Beg Torkamān and Mollā Jalāl Monajjem tell us that the royal household moved to Isfahan and that Shah ʿAbbās proclaimed the city his capital (maqarr-e dawlat) in 1006/1597-98, giving orders for the erection of “magnificent” buildings (Eskandar Beg, tr. Savory, pp. 724; Mollā Jalāl, p. 161). Most scholars in fact consider this year as the time of transfer of the Safavid capital from Qazvin to Isfahan.

Stephen Blake’s new interpretation, which attaches crucial importance to the mentioning of the older design, is convincingly refuted by Babaie (see Blake, and the review by Babaie, pp. 478-82; for the various phases of the new design, see also Haneda, 1990). It is true that, from 1590 onward, Isfahan was often called dār al-salṭana in the sources, but we have to realize that it was not the capital in the modern sense of the word. As had always been the case among rulers of nomadic background and as would be true until the 19th century in Persia, the capital really was where the ruler happened to be.

The Dutch noted how, in the later 17th century, Isfahan’s population would swell by some 60,000 whenever the shah returned to the city. Tabriz and Qazvin were still referred to as dār al-salṭana as well, after the “transfer” of the capital, and Shah ʿAbbās stayed in Isfahan less than two months a year on average throughout his reign, less than the three months he spent in Māzandarān as of 1619.

Shah Ṣafi was absent from Isfahan for a full five years between 1631 and 1636. Still, Isfahan played a central role from the inception of Safavid rule, with members of its prominent families heavily represented in key bureaucratic positions as early as Shah Esmāʿil I’s administration (Quiring-Zoche, pp. 252-52).

That the city grew in importance throughout the 1590s is suggested by the fact that Shah ʿAbbās made the trip to and from Qazvin at least eighteen times in this period and visited Isfahan every year between 1590 and 1603 (Melville, p. 200). After it became the capital, all coronation ceremonies were held in Isfahan. The city in the course of time also gained more of a central focus as later shahs lost their appetite for campaigning. Shah ʿAbbās II was the last Safavid monarch who spent considerable time on the battlefield, as well as in the royal residence in Māzandarān.

Especially the last two rulers, Solaymān and Solṭān-Ḥosayn, rarely left the confines of their palace, and Solṭān-Ḥosayn often resided at Faraḥābād, the pleasure garden built outside Isfahan (although between 1717 and 1721 the shah was absent from Isfahan, spending time in Kāšān and Qazvin and returning to the capital just a year before the fall of the capital to the Afghans; Floor, 1998, pp. 31, 36). In sum, it may be said that Isfahan gradually acquired the status of capital (Quiring-Zoche, p. 105).

Isfahan’s newly acquired status found expression in the construction of a new governmental and commercial center southwest of the existing one, in a shift in that direction that had begun under the Saljuqs (Gaube and Wirth, pp. 47, 54). A new royal square, the Meydān-e Naqš-e Jahān, measuring 524 x 158 m, formed the fulcrum of this development. The model for the meydān seems to have been the meydān of the old city, although it has been suggested that the meydān of Kermān, laid out by Ganj-ʿAli Khan in the late 16th century, served as a model as well (Galdieri, 1974, p. 385; Gaube and Wirth, p. 55).

The outline of the meydān and the adjacent Qay-ṣariya bazaar was begun in 1001—a one-year tax relief was granted for the purpose—and the Čahār Bāḡ as well as the Shaikh Loṭf-Allāh mosque were designed in 1002 (Ḵuzāni Eṣfahāni, foll. 61v, 74). In the year 1012/1603, the shops, the caravansaries, the bathhouses, and the coffeehouses around the meydān were completed (Jonā-bādi, pp. 759-60). The same year saw the first proposal to connect the waters of the Zāyandarud with those of the Kuhrang river.

This scheme came up again in 102930/161619-20 and in the 1680s, but would only be executed in the 19th century (Mollā Jalāl, p. 244; Eskandar Beg, pp. 1170-71, 1180 see i[2], above). The Masjed-e Šāh, anchoring the southern end of the square, was begun in 1020/1611. The mosque complex was virtually completed by the end of Shah ʿAbbās I’s reign, although additions and repairs continued to be made until 1078/1667 (Blake, p. 140).

Following the completion of the royal square, the Qayṣariya bazaar, with its entry gate at the north end of the square, gradually developed into a huge covered marketplace (for its development, see Gaube and Wirth, pp. 31 ff.; Blake, pp. 101 ff.). Henceforth this part of the city would be its preeminent commercial center, even if the old center continued to play an important role in social life (see x, below).

In later years more building activity took place, mostly involving palaces. A new royal palace took shape in the Naqš-e jahān garden, adjacent to the new meydān, which had been a garden retreat for Shah Esmāʿil I. The palace grew out a series of mansions, principally one owned by Farhād Khan (q.v.), but the exact stages of its construction remain unclear (Eskandar Beg, II, p. 780; tr., II, p. 977; discussion in Blake, pp. 58 ff.).

The same is true of the building of the ʿĀli Qāpu, the five-storey audience hall overlooking the meydān, which was begun under Shah ʿAbbās but not used until the reign of Shah Ṣafi (Galdi-eri, 1979). The Ṭālār-e Ṭawila, the Āyena-Ḵāna, and the Čehel Sotun (Forty columns), too, date from this period; they were all built in the period 1635-47, under the auspices and patronage of Moḥammad Sāru Taqi (Floor, 2002; Babaie, 1994, pp. 128-29; idem, 2002, pp. 23-24).

The Čehel Sotun was constructed in 1056/1646 or 1057/1647. It was rebuilt after it burned down in 1706, and the structure as it exists today dates from that time (Blake, pp. 66-69). The Pol-e Ḵᵛāju was erected under Shah ʿAbbās II as well (see x, below).

The wall that had surrounded Isfahan for centuries and that had always marked the boundary between the inner city and the suburbs continued to exist, but by the early 17th century it had lost its significance as a defense mechanism and thus was allowed to become dilapidated (Gaube and Wirth, p. 33; Haneda, 1996, pp. 370-72).

The old city anyhow was unable to accommodate ʿAbbās I’s designs for a new capital, and much of the new development took place beyond the perimeter of the wall. Southwest of the new royal palace and the area around the square, new quarters such as ʿAbbāsābād and Ḵᵛāju were developed in the western and southern suburb. Craftsmen and merchants from all over the country were urged to come to settle in Isfahan.

Most notably, the shah resettled craftsmen from newly conquered Tabriz to ʿAbbāsābād and had Armenian merchants from Julfa settle in New Julfa (Pers. Jolfā; see JULFA), which was specially built for them at the southern bank of the Zāyandarud. In the middle of these new quarters ran the long and straight avenue of Čahārbāḡ from a gate of the old city to the Hazār Jarib garden situated at the southern hill. Beautiful gardens were built at both sides of the avenue.

With its canals and their abundant water, the greenery of its parks, its wide and straight streets and its spacious layout, the urban plan of the new city suited the elite, government officials and the rich, who came to settle down there from outside of Isfahan. Thus, the character of the new city differed substantially from that of the old city, which maintained the character of a traditional Persian city with its winding streets, small houses, and little public greenery, and where most Isfahanis continued to live.

The building activities continued until nearly the end of the Safavid rule in the 18th century. Various shahs also built pleasure gardens across the Zāyandarud. Thus Shah ʿAbbās I had ʿAbbāsābād (Hazār Jarib) constructed as an extension of the Čahārbāḡ ʿAbbās II created Saʿādatābād in 1070/1659; and Shah Solṭān-Ḥosayn had Faraḥābād laid out in 1697, making further additions and embellishments in 1711 and again in the period 1714-17 (Ḵātunā-bādi, pp. 562-63; NA, VOC 1856, 15 April 1714, fol. 714; Darhuhaniyan, p. 146; VOC 1870, 9 March 1715, foll. 614-15; VOC 1870, 25 November 1714, fol. 495; VOC 1848, 13 April 1715, fol. 2280v; VOC 1897, 3 December 1716, fol. 247; Honarfar, pp. 722-25; Blake, pp. 74-81).

The Madrasa-ye Maryam Begom was built and turned into waqf (endowment) property by Maryam Begom, Shah Solṭān-Ḥosayn’s great aunt, in 1703 (Honarfar, pp. 662-67). The Madrasa-ye Čahārbāḡ, the blue, lofty dome of which can be seen from anywhere in Isfahan, was also built under the reign of Solṭān-Ḥosayn, begun in 1704-05 and finished in 1706-07 (Ḵātunābādi, p. 556; Herdeg). Isfahan and its buildings are always associated with the name of Shah ʿAbbās I. In reality, however, they are the cooperative work of many people, royal, religious, military and civil, throughout the Safavid period (see x, below).

Various Western observers claimed that 17th-century Isfahan was the largest city in all of Safavid Persia (Schillinger, p. 228). According to Jean Chardin (q.v.), Isfahan had 162 mosques, 48 madrasas, 1,802 caravansaries, 273 public baths, and 12 cemeteries within its walls (for an overview of the city’s caravansaries, see Vademecum of Caravanserais in Isfahan). The exact number of its population is not known, but clearly grew over time, especially after the city gained the status of capital.

Don Juan of Persia for the 1590s estimated 80,000 households and 360,000 inhabitants (Don Juan, p. 39). Thomas Herbert (q.v.), visiting in 1627-29, calculated 70,000 households and a total of 200,000 people (Herbert, p. 126). Adam Olearius in 1637 gives a figure of 500,000 inhabitants (Olearius, p. 553).

Chardin confirms this by suggesting that in the late 17th century the population of Isfahan was almost as numerous as that of London, then the biggest city in Europe with an estimated population of 500,000. Three-quarters of the population may have lived within the city walls, and one-quarter outside of them (Blake, p. 38). This would have made late Safavid Isfahan one of the biggest cities in the world, besides London, Istanbul, Šāhjahānābād (Delhi), Beijing, and Edo (Tokyo).

Administration

The post of ḥākem as the local governor of Isfahan goes back to the period before the Safavids. In the 16th century, the ḥākem was often an individual of high rank in the larger administration. Thus two of the ḥokkām were also preceptors of rulers, Durmiš Khan for Sām Mirzā, and Mohammad Khan for the young Moḥammad Ḵodā-banda. In the early reign of Shah ʿAbbās I, Farhād Khan served as ḥākem (Quiring-Zoche, p. 138). Another one of Isfahan’s principal administrators was the dāruḡa. In the 16th century the dāruḡa may have been appointed by the ḥākem, but later on it was the shah who appointed him, something that is reflected in the rather frequent mention of the position in the Persian chronicles.

In the European sources, the dāruḡa is often equated with the post of mayor (Chardin, X, p. 28; Fryer, III, p. 23; Kaempfer, p. 110). The jurisdiction is not always clear, but it seems that, as a rule, the dāruḡa was not in charge of fiscal matters. Initially the function may have had a military aspect, but, as it evolved in the 17th century, the dāruḡa mostly dealt with issues of law and public security (Fryer, III, p. 23; Minorsky, pp. 82, 149; Floor, 2001, p. 118). The association of the function of dāruḡa with crown domain (Floor, 2001, pp. 116-17) is not fully borne out by the evidence. Already in the 15th century we hear of a dāruḡa in Isfahan (Quiring-Zoche, pp. 130, 134).

In the Safavid period we have Mirzā Jān Beg, who was appointed dāruḡa in 1530-31, three or four years before the conversion of Isfahan to crown land (Haneda, p. 80). The appointment of Georgians to the post also goes back further than 1620, for Bižan Beg Gorji acceded to the post in 998/1590 and Kostandil (Constantine), the son of the Georgian King Alexander II, was appointed dāruḡa in 1602-03 (Ḵuzāni Eṣfahāni, foll. 40b, 148; Maeda, pp. 261-62). Still, several non-Georgians were appointed in later years, for instance, Tahtā Khan Beg and Bektāš Beg Ostājlu, and only in 1620 did the post become the prerogative of a son of the governor of Georgia, in an arrangement made by Shah ʿAbbās (Della Valle, II, p. 176; Chardin, X, p. 29; Kaempfer, pp. 110-11).

From that moment until the end of Safavid rule, the dāruḡa was always a Georgian. From the moment Isfahan turned into crown domain, a vizier was appointed as well (Quiring-Zoche, p. 145). Typically a ḡolām, this official was assigned to the divān-e ḵāṣṣa (office of the crown lands) and as such charged with the fiscal administration of the town. The vizier also had a judicial function in that, once a week, he had petitions read to him from people with grievances (Pacifique de Provins, p. 393).

However, the position was fluid. Thus in 1046/1636 the post of vizier was combined with that of the wazir-e mawqufāt (minister of property endowments) in the person of Moḥammad-ʿAli Beg Eṣfahāni, but the two were divided again two years later, when Mirzā Taqi Dawlatābādi became vizier and Mir Ṣafi-al-Din Mo-ḥammad was appointed wazir-e mawqufāt (Eskandar Beg, 1938, p. 296).

The kalāntar was another city official. He may have taken over from the raʾis in the 16th century as a representative of the local population, as part of a development whereby local notables made room for centrally appointed bureaucratic officials, who were often outsiders. He should not be confused with the Armenian kalāntar of New Jolfā. Although appointed by the shah, he was chosen in consultation with the people and served as an intermediary between them and the authorities.

One of his tasks was to defend the populace against tyranny, including the tyranny of unscrupulous vendors, examine their complaints and the grievances of merchants. He also acted as a mediator with the guilds, and appointed the heads of city wards, the kadḵodās. Collecting rent and taxes appears to have been among his responsibilities as well (Minorsky, p. 82; Rafiʿā, p. 73; Thevenot, p. 103; Fryer, III, p. 24; Sanson, p. 29; Quiring-Zoche, pp. 162-67; Aubin, p. 37; Floor, 2000, p. 46).

A Multi-lingual, Multi-ethnic City

In the course of Shah ʿAbbās I’s reign Isfahan developed into a lively, cosmopolitan city, home to Muslims, Armenians, Georgians, and Jews, Indians, as well as representatives of European religious orders and agents of trading companies. The center of town, the Meydān-e Naqš-e Jahān, was frequently the scene of popular games such as polo and qabāq-andāzi, an archery game; and there ram fighting, bull fighting, wolf baiting, and other forms of entertainment were performed (examples in Della Valle, I, pp. 709-10, 713-14; Chick, p. 184; Fi-gueroa, II, pp. 58 f.; Gaudereau, pp. 71-72).

Following a military victory, on holidays, and on the occasion of visits by important foreign envoys, the Meydān and the bazaar were illuminated and performances of jugglers and rope dancers staged (Jonābādi, pp. 805, 829-31; Della Valle, I, pp. 821, 829; II, pp. 7-8, 36; Chardin, IX, pp. 329-30). People mingled in the coffeehouses that flanked the square, lined the Čahār-bāḡ, and were also spread around various other neighborhoods, or sought oblivion in the many establishments concentrated around the Old Meydān that served an opium drink called kuknār (Matthee, 2005, p. 108). Seventeenth-century Isfahan was also home to reportedly 12,000 prostitutes, who occupied the porticos around the Meydān-e Naqš-e Jahān and also served their clientele in an area between the Madrasa-ye Ṣafaviya and the Fatḥ-Allāh mosque (Matthee, 2000).

By the middle of the 17th century, most people in Isfahan had become Shiʿite Muslim as a result of Safavid Shiʿite propaganda policy. They occupied without doubt the most important part of the urban society. There were two kinds of Shiʿite Muslims: Persian speakers and Turkic speakers.

People living in the old city of Isfahan were mostly Persian-speaking. Government officials and their servants, merchants, artisans and their apprentices, professors and students, all spoke Persian. Business and preaching were usually done in Persian. Persian was without doubt the most popular language in the city.

Turkic-speaking people were mainly found at the royal court. Even in the 17th century, when the influence of the turcophone Qezelbāš had diminished considerably, people at the court continued to speak in Turkic. In the 16th century, the wives and mothers of the king had usually been of Turkish origin. Therefore it is not surprising that people spoke Turkic there in and around the royal palace. However, in the 17th century, as most women in the harem were of Georgian origin, they still retained the habit of speaking in Turkic.

In the city itself, the use of Turkic must have been very limited. However, in caravansaries visited by people from Azerbaijan, for example, the common language was Turkic. Members of Turkish tribes coming to the city for commerce would have spoken Turkic as well. Thus, Turkic would have been the second popular language. It was, however, only a colloquial language and never was used as a literary language.

Isfahan was home to many Armenians as well. The city’s Armenians became concentrated in Jolfā as part of a resettlement under Shah ʿAbbās II. Jolfā had an estimated 20,000 inhabitants in the mid-17th century, a number that may have gone up to 30,000 by the end of the century (Herzig, p. 81). These spoke Armenian and for the most part belonged to the Armenian Orthodox church. Most of them were merchants engaged in the trade of Persian silk and precious metals. They had their own networks with compatriots in Europe and India. In their dealings with other merchants in Isfahan they must have spoken Persian.

Further, many of the city’s inhabitants were of Georgian, Circassian, and Daghistani descent. Engelbert Kaempfer, who was in Persia in 1684-85, estimated their number at 20,000 (Kaempfer, p. 204). Following an agreement between Shah ʿAbbās I and Taimuraz Khan, Georgia’s last independent ruler, whereby the latter submitted to Safavid rule in exchange for being allowed to rule as the region’s wāli and for having his son serve as dāruḡa of Isfahan in perpetuity, a Georgian prince converted to Islam served as governor (Chardin, X, p. 29; Kaempfer, pp. 110-11).

He was accompanied by a certain number of soldiers, and they spoke in Georgian among themselves. There must also have been some Georgian Orthodox Christians. The royal court had a great number of Georgian ḡolāms as well as Georgian women. Although they spoke Persian or Turkic, their mother tongue was Georgian.

Isfahan was home to a large Indian community as well. Their presence was particularly important from the commercial point of view. There were two kinds of Indians, Muslim and Hindu. Indians formed a large ethnic community in Isfahan, and their numbers is given as between ten and fifteen thousand (Tavernier, I, pp. 421-22; Thevenot, p. 217). Merchants were engaged in the trade of various Indian goods, such as textiles, indigo (a dyestuff, q.v.), sugar, and tobacco.

Hindu moneylenders had a good business, because Islamic law prohibits Muslims from lending money for interest. The moneylending business was almost an Indian monopoly. They spoke various languages, including Urdu (q.v. at iranica.com), Hindi, and Gujarati (q.v.). Insofar as commerce in Isfahan was concerned though, they certainly spoke in Persian. Hindus often served European companies as interpreters and as brokers (Dale, pp. 70 ff.).

Besides these large groups, there were small communities of Persian-speaking Zoroastrians and Jews. Catholics and Protestants, monks, merchants, and court artisans, were present in small numbers, too. Most of them came from Europe and returned there after several years. There were, however, several monks like Raphael du Mans of the Capuchin order, who lived in Isfahan almost fifty years and died there.

Social divisions were expressed in the distinction between the elite and the common people, but also found expression in traditional rivalries in the old city, where two groups, the Ḥaydari and Neʿmati (q.v.), representing the two quarters of the old city, Dardašt and Jubāra, periodically engaged in communal fighting (Chardin, VII, pp. 289-93; Perry, pp. 107-18).

Isfahan in Crisis

Isfahan’s population is said to have grown by one-fifth or even one-fourth between 1645 and 1665 (Richard, ed., II, p. 262). But thereafter, conditions grew worse for the city as part of an overall deterioration in political management and economic wellbeing in Safavid territory in the second half of the 17th century. In 1662, the city was struck by famine, causing people to assemble in front of the dawlat-ḵāna demanding measures against hoarding (Waḥid Qazvini, p. 307). In 1668-69, famine struck again.

Its main cause was a drought, but hoarding by bakers and grain merchants exacerbated the misery of Isfahan’s residents, and the situation got even worse when, following Shah Solaymān’s coronation, the court and its huge entourage returned to the city before adequate provisioning measures were taken (Chardin, IX, p. 571; X, pp. 2-4; NA, VOC 1266, 8 November 1668, foll. 155, 923v, 941; IOR, G/36/105, 14 August 1668, fol. 36). In the latter part of the 1670s the high cost of living and growing deprivation caused a bread riot in the city, with people pelting political officials with rocks. From early 1678 until mid-1679 in Isfahan alone, more than 70,000 people are said to have died from a terrible famine. In 1678 the common people of the city rose in revolt against inflation and famine (Matthee, 1999, p. 177).

In the second half of the 17th century, the position of religious minorities in the city also worsened. Clerically inspired campaigns put pressure on Jews to convert to Islam; the authorities took various measures to curb wine-drinking and vices associated with coffeehouses, and several decrees were issued restricting the activities of Armenian merchants and Catholic missionaries (Moreen; Matthee, 2006a, pp. 84-94; idem, 2006b). The local Armenian population was made more vulnerable to political and religious pressure by internal splits in the community between Catholics and Schismatics (Ghougassian, passim; Baghdiantz-McCabe, passim).

A new crisis hit Isfahan at the beginning of the 18th century as part of a deepening malaise that affected all of Persia. In 1713 the Isfahan region was made unsafe by Baḵtiāri and Lor brigands, so that no caravans could leave or enter the city unless accompanied by large contingent of soldiers (NA, VOC 1856, 9 October 1713, foll. 494-95). Too years later, famine struck again. Exacerbated by a grain monopoly by harem eunuchs and high-ranking clerics, this crisis pushed bread prices in the city so high that it caused people to riot on 20 February 1715. Cursing the shah and his ministers, the rioters threw rocks at the ʿĀli Qāpu and damaged the gate of the royal kitchen. They also assailed the residence of chief cleric Mollā Moḥammad Bāqer Majlesi.

The shah (Solṭān-Ḥosayn) thereupon dismissed the current city dāruḡa, Qurčišāh Beg, who combined his function with that of supervisor of the city’s victuals (moḥtaseb), and appointed Emāmqoli Khan Zangana, the amirāḵor-bāši and a son of grand vizier Šāhqoli Khan, in his stead. The monarch also had officials dispatched to the residence of Mir Moḥammad-Bāqer to order him to offer a large volume of grain on the royal square. This did not quell the unrest, however.

On 16 June 1715 the people forced the shah, who intended to leave Isfahan, to stay in the city, and the next day they crowded together in front of the royal palace and threatened to plunder and set fire to it (Floor, pp. 26-27; Matthee, 2004, pp. 187-88). From that moment until the fall of the city to the Afghans, the post of moḥtaseb was rotated with increasing speed, but to little avail. Food prices remained sky-high, and the misery in the city continued, with theft, burglaries, and murder becoming common (NA, VOC 1897, 14 November 1716, fol. 237; ibid., 3 December 1716, fol. 268). Beggars were said to be ubiquitous in the city and poverty had reached such levels that the poor would quickly strip the flesh of any dead camel, mule, or horse left out on the street (Worm, p. 293).

The Afghans arrived in Golnābād on 8 March 1722 and defeated the Persian army, which, at about 40,000 men and an additional 30,000 infantry troops, was at least twice as large as that of the Afghans. The Georgian contingent, the only one to fight, was decimated. Losing some 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers on the battlefield, the remainder of the Safavid army sought refuge in the city (Lockhart, pp. 130-43; Floor, 1998, p. 87).

Maḥmud Ḡilzāi with his Afghan tribal forces then moved to Faraḥābād, which he took without meeting any resistance. He next seized Julfa, where the inhabitants welcomed him with food and wine and accepted him as their new ruler. After a few days of panic in which the Afghans could have taken Isfahan proper, the inhabitants quickly reinforced the defenses, and a long siege ensued. The city soon ran out of food, and, especially toward the end of the summer, the misery grew to the point at which people first took to eating tree bark, leaves, and dried excrement and eventually resorted to cannibalism.

After a six-month siege, the city fell to Maḥmud on 23 October 1722 (IOR, G/29/15, 20 October 1722, fol. 80; 30 November 1722, fol. 83; diary of the siege in Floor, 1998, pp. 83-176). Isfahan suffered greatly during the assault and the ensuing occupation. It lost a large part of its population, many of its buildings lay in ruins, and its economy was destroyed. The city survived but its revival would take until the 19th century, and it never regained its former importance.

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/isfahan-vii-safavid-period

-----------------------------

Κατεβάστε την αναδημοσίευση σε Word doc.:

https://www.slideshare.net/MuhammadShamsaddinMe/ss-250750290

https://issuu.com/megalommatis/docs/esfahan.docx

https://vk.com/doc429864789_622448190

https://www.docdroid.net/EP63uxd/ispakhan-i-autokratoriki-proteuoysa-ton-safevidwn-docx

Bulgarians Mentioned in Egyptian Papyri from Fayoum

What was Ordinary in the Antiquity looks Odd today, due to the Greco-centric Fallacy of the Biased European Colonial 'Academics'

A while back, I received a brief email from a Bulgarian friend, who urgently asked me to watch a video and comment on the topic. The video offered links to a blog in Bulgarian and to an Austrian site of academic publications. The upsetting affair was the mention of a Bulgarian, or to put it rather correctly of a Bulgarian item or product which was imported in Coptic Egypt. As I understand Bulgarian to some extent, due to my Russian, I read the long presentation of the informative blog, and then replied to my friend. The video was actually a most abridged form of the article posted on the blog of a non-conventional Bulgarian blogger.

Contents

Introduction

I. Fayoum, Al Bahnasa (Oxyrhynchus), and Ancient Egyptian Papyri

II. Karl Wessely and his groundbreaking research and publications

III. Papyrus fragment 1224 of Karl Wessely's SPP VIII 

IV. Βουλγαρικ- (Vulgarik-)

V. Eastern Roman Emperor Maurice's Strategicon and the Bulgarian cloaks

VI. Historical context and the Ancient History of Bulgars  

VII. Historical context, the Silk Roads, and Bulgarian exports to Egypt  

VIII. Academic context and the Western falsehood of a Euro-centric World History

i- the conceptualization of World History

ii- the contextualization of every single document newly found here and there

iii- the stages of historical falsification that were undertaken over the past 500 years

iv- the forgers themselves and their antiquity

v- and last but not least, several points of

a) governance of modern states

b) international alliances, and

c) the ensuing captivity of all the targeted nations, each one well-adjusted into the preconceived role that the forgers invented for it

Introduction

What follows is my response on the topic; although it concerns an undeniably very specific affair, it helps greatly in making general readership aware of how deeply interconnected the Ancient World was, of how different it was than it is presented in conventional publications, and of how many layers of fact distortion, source concealment, systematic forgery, academic misinterpretation, and intellectual falsification have been adjusted to what average people worldwide think of as 'World History'. In brief, the modern Western colonial presentation of World History, which was dictatorially imposed worldwide, is nothing more than a choice-supportive bias and a racist construct. You can also describe it as 'Hellenism', Greco-centrism or Euro-centrism.

----- Response to an inquisitive Bulgarian friend -----

My dear friend,  

Your question and the associated topic are quite complex. 

The video that you sent me is extremely brief and almost introductory.

Папирусът от Фаюм

However, in the description, it offers two links.

I read the article in the blog; I noticed that it was published before 12-13 years (13.10.2011). Папирусът (който щеше да бъде) с истинското име на българите?

d3bep.blog.bg

d3bep :: ( ) ?

The author seems to have been taken by surprise due to the Fayoum text, but as you will see, there is no reason for that.

The second link included in the video description offers access to Tyche, an academic annual (Fachzeitschrift) published by the Austrian Institut für Alte Geschichte und Altertumskunde, Papyrologie und Epigraphik der Universität Wien. But this is an introductory web page (https://tyche.univie.ac.at/index.php/tyche) that has links to many publications, which you can download in PDF.

You must not be surprised by such findings; they are old and known to the specialists; there are many Bulgarian professors specializing in Ancient Greek. Some of them surely know about the text. But it is in the nature of the Western sciences that scholars do not write for the general public; it is very different from what happened in the Soviet Union and the other countries of the Socialist bloc. Reversely, all the average bloggers, who find every now and then a historical document known but not publicized, think that they discovered something incredible, but in most of the cases, we don't have anything to do with an extraordinary discovery. Simply, History has been very different from what average people have been left to believe.

I. Fayoum, Al Bahnasa (Oxyrhynchus), and Ancient Egyptian Papyri

Fayoum by the way is an enormous oasis. It has cities, towns and villages. In our times, it was one of the strongholds of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Former president Muhammad Morsi got ca. 90% of the votes locally. About:

en.wikipedia.org

Faiyum - Wikipedia

The discoveries of papyri in Egypt started mainly in the 19th c.; excavators unearthed tons of valuable documentation, unfortunately in fragmentary situation most of them; indicatively: 

Internet Archive

Fayûm towns and their papyri : Grenfell, Bernard P. (Bernard Pyne), 1869-1926 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Book digitized by Google from the library of the University of Michigan and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.

Internet Archive

Fayûm towns and their papyri : Grenfell, Bernard P. (Bernard Pyne), 1869-1926 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The present volume is a record of two years' excavations in the Fayûm, the first in 1895-96 conducted by D. G. Hogarth and B. P. Grenfell, w

Such is the vastness of the documentation that either Egyptologists or Coptologists or Hellenists, there are many scholars of those disciplines who specialize in papyri only: the Papyrologists. 

Fayoum map with Ancient Greek names

Fayoum Lake (above) - Wadi El Rayan waterfalls (below)

Temple of Soknopaios at Soknopaiou Nesos (Island), Fayoum (viewed from the SE)

Fayoum: a tourist destination

Another major site of papyri discovery is Oxyrhynchus (Ancient Greek name of the Egyptian site Per medjed / Oxyrhynchus is merely the Ancient Greek translation of Per medjed), i.e. the modern city of Al Bahnasa. Indicatively: 

en.wikipedia.org

Oxyrhynchus - Wikipedia

To get a minimal idea of the vastness of this field of research, go through the following introductory readings:

Cairo Fayum Papyri: http://ipap.csad.ox.ac.uk/Fayum.html

sv.wikipedia.org

Fayoum papyri – Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Nag Hammadi library - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

List of New Testament papyri - Wikipedia

II. Karl Wessely and his groundbreaking research and publications

The fragment of papyrus that mentions in Ancient Greek an adjective, which means «Bulgarian» in English, was found in the Fayoum (you can write the word with -u or -ou). It was first published by a great scholar C. (Carl or Karl) Wessely (1860-1931).

en.wikipedia.org

Karl Wessely - Wikipedia

He was one of the 10 most prominent scholars and philologists of the 2nd half of the 19th and the 1st half of the 20th c. He published a voluminous series of firsthand publications of discoveries, which was named Studien zur Paleographie und Papyruskunde (SPP). As you can guess, this took decades to be progressively materialized. Here you have an online list: 

Unfortunately, the volume VIII (Leipzig 1908), which is mentioned in the article of the blog, is missing in the wikisource list!

No problem! You can find the PDF in the Internet Archives site. Here is the link: 

You will find the text’s first publication on page 189 of the book; this is the page 63 of 186 of the PDF. This means that you will find this indication at the bottom of the PDF:  189 (63 / 186).

This volume, as stated on p. 7, contains «Griechische Papyrusurkunden kleineren Formats», i.e. Greek papyri documents of smaller format. If you find it strange that on the first page of the main text (137 (11 / 186) as per the PDF), the first text has the number 702, please remember that this is an enormous documentation published in the series of volumes (SPP) published by Wessely between 1900 and 1920.

III. Papyrus fragment 1224 of Karl Wessely's SPP VIII  

As you will see, the text slightly differs from what is shown in either the blog article or the video. It is indeed the 1224 papyrus fragment as per the enumeration of the publication. Similarly to many other cases, most of the text is lost; this is quite common. Few things are easy to assess, if you through the entire volume; apparently the background reflects Coptic Egypt, which means that all the texts date between the early 4th and 7th c. CE. This is clearly visible because the dating system is based on indiction, which was a Roman system of periodic taxation and then chronology. About: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiction 

This Latin word was accepted in Greek: ινδικτιών, 

We can also understand that the person, who wrote this specific document, was following (not the Julian calendar but) the Coptic calendar, because on the 8th line the remaining letters αρμουθί (armouthi) help us reconstitute the well-known Coptic month of Pharmouthi (or Parmouti) which corresponds to end March-beginning April (in the Julian calendar) or April and early May in the Gregorian calendar. In Arabic, it is pronounced 'Bermouda' (unrelated to the Bermuda islands).

About: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmouti

It has to be noted that the pagan Greek calendar was abolished, and that the use of 'Greek' ('Alexandrine Koine, to be correct) in the Fayum papyri texts and elsewhere does not imply 'ethnic' membership but rather religious affiliation (in this case, in contrast to Coptic).

About the Coptic calendar: 

In addition, you can see the first letter of the word «indiction» ι (ι) after Pharmouthi. 

Apparently, this papyrus documented a transaction effectuated by a certain Cyril (Cyrillus / Κύριλλος). Only the letters «rill» (ριλλ) are saved, as you can see, but the high frequency of the name among the Copts makes of this word the first choice of any philologist. By the way, the name is still widely used among today’s Copts as «Krulos». 

I fully support Wessely’s reconstitution of the document on lines 7, 10 and 11.

Line 7 (εγράφη out of εγρα-), i.e. «it was written»

Line 10 (απείληφα out of -ειλ-), i.e. «I received from»

Line 11 (και παρών απέλυσα out of -αρω-), i.e. «I set free by paying a ransom or I disengaged or I released». Details:

Now comes a thorny issue, because on line 6, Wessely wrote «λαμιο(υ)» (: lamio reconstituted as lamiu), and went on suggesting a unique term «χαρτα-λαμίου» (charta-lamiou). This is not attested in any other source. Λάμιον (lamium) is a genus of several species of plants, whereas Lamios (Λάμιος) is a personal name. About:

Also: (ἡμι-λάμιον) https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dh(mila%2Fmion 

But «χαρτα-λαμίου» (in Genitive declension) is a hapax. Still the opinion of the first explorer and publisher is always crucial; but as in many other cases, these people publish such an enormous volume of documentation that they do not have enough time to explain their suggestions and reason about their choices. To them, publishing hitherto unpublished material is undisputedly no 1 priority. 

Other scholars attempted a different approach; they hypothetically added «υιός» (yios), i.e. «son», before λαμίου (Lamiou)

Personally, I find it highly unlikely. First, I most of the times support the first explorer’s / publisher’s approach. 

Second, I believe that those, who add «υιός» (yios), i.e. «son» on line 6, are forced to reconstitute Βουλγαρικ̣[ὸς on line 5. This is most probably wrong.

But Wessely did not attempt something like that, preferring to leave the only saved word on line 5 as it is «Βουλγαρικ̣».

Now, what stands on lines 1 to 4 is really too minimal to allow any specialist to postulate or speculate anything. Perhaps there was something «big» mentioned on line 3 («-μεγ-»/«-meg-»), but this is only an assumption. Also, on line 4, we read that something (or someone) was (or was sent or was bought) from somewhere, because of the words «από της» (apo tis), i.e. «from the» (in this case, «the» being the feminine form of the article in Genitive declension). 

IV. Βουλγαρικ- (Vulgarik-)

Now, and this is the most important statement that can be made as regards this fragment of papyrus, the word that stands on line 5 is undoubtedly an adjective, not a substantive! This is very clear. This means that the word is not an ethnonym. In English, you use the word «Bulgarian», either you mean a Bulgarian man (in this case, it is a noun) or a Bulgarian wine (on this occasion, it is an adjective). Bulgarian is at the same time a proper noun and an adjective in English.

However, in Greek, there is a difference when it comes to names of countries and nations. When it is a proper noun (substantive), you say «Anglos» (Άγγλος), «Sikelos» (Σικελός), «Aigyptios» (Αιγύπτιος), etc. for Englishman, Sicilian man, Egyptian man, etc. But you say «anglikos» (αγγλικός), «sikelikos» (σικελικός), «aigyptiakos» (αιγυπτιακός), etc. for adjectives of masculine gender. 

Discussing the word attested on line 5 of the papyrus fragment 1224 of Karl Wessely's SPP VIII, I have to point out that in Ancient 'Greek' and in Alexandrine Koine, there is a vast difference between Βούλγαρος (Vulgaros) and βουλγαρικός (vulgarikos). 

The first denotes a Bulgarian national, someone belonging to the ethnic group / nation of Bulgars and/or Bulgarians. At this point, I have to also add that these two words in English are a modern academic convention to distinguish Proto-Bulgarians (Bulgars) from the Bulgarians, who settled in the Balkan Peninsula. However, this distinction did not exist in Late Antiquity Greek texts and in Eastern Roman texts. 

The second is merely an adjective: βουλγαρικός (vulgarikos), βουλγαρική (vulgariki), βουλγαρικόν (vulgarikon) are the three gender forms of the adjective: masculine, feminine and neutral. 

So, as the preserved part of the word being «βουλγαρικ-» (vulgarik-), we can be absolutely sure that the papyrus text mentioned a Bulgarian item (a product typical of Bulgars or an imported object manufactured by Bulgars) — not a Bulgarian man.

All the same, it makes sure the following points:

a. in 4th-7th c. CE Egypt, people imported products that were manufactured by Bulgars in their own land (Bulgaria).

b. since the products were known, imported and listed as «Bulgar/Bulgarian», people knew the nation, which manufactured them, and its location.

c. considering the magnitude of the documentation that went lost, we can safely claim that there was nothing extraordinary in the arrival of Bulgar/Bulgarian products in in 4th-7th c. CE Egypt.

d. the papyrus in question presents the transaction in terms of «business as usual». 

This is all that can be said about the papyrus text, but here ends the approach of the philologist and starts the viewpoint of the historian. However, before presenting the historical context of the transaction recorded in the fragmentarily saved papyrus from Fayoum, I have to also discuss another issue, which was mentioned in the blogger's interesting discussion.

V. Eastern Roman Emperor Maurice's Strategicon and the Bulgarian cloaks

Of course, as anyone could expect, several historians and philologists would try to find parallels to the mention of Bulgarian imports made in this papyrus fragment.

And they did. In his presentation, the blogger already mentioned several academic efforts. So, the following paragraphs, which are to be found almost in the middle of the article (immediately after the picture), refer to two scholarly efforts to establish parallels:

«Публикуван е за пръв път от SPP VIII 1124, Wessely, C., Leipzig 1908 и по - късно препубликуван от Diethart, в публикация с многозначителното заглавие  „Bulgaren“ und „Hunnen“, S. 11 - 1921. Въпреки това папирусът не стига много бързо до родна публика.

"По пътя" един учен, Моравчик, стига и по - далеч при превода. Той разчита в откъсите и думата "Пояс" и включва в теорията ново сведение(Mauricii Artis mllltaris libri duodecim, Xll (ed. Scheffer), p. 303) , където се казва, че пехотинците трябвало да носят "ζωναρία bм λιτά, xal βουλγαρική cay ία" - т.е. смята, че става дума за носен в Египет от военните "български пояс"(сведенията за публикациите дотук са по Иван Костадинов).

Вдясно виждате лична снимка. Коптска носия от 4-ти век н.е. Пази се в етнографския музей на александрийската библиотека. По необходимост за пустинния климат е от лен. Оттам вече аналогиите оставям изцяло на вас.

Папирусът "идва в България" късно. По спомени казвам ,че мисля, че първият публикувал го е доста уважаваният Иван Дуриданов, който с радост представя на българската публика вече 4 деситилетия предъвкваният от западната лингвистика български папирус. Той публикува радостна статия, с която приветства откритието».

Certainly, Gyula Moravcsik (1892-1972) and Johannes Diethart (born in 1942) proved to be great scholars indeed. About: 

The adjective Vulgarikos, -i, -on («Bulgarian» in three genders) is attested in a famous Eastern Roman text, which is rather known under the title «Maurice’s Strategicon»; this was a handbook of military sciences and a guide to techniques, methods and practices employed by the Eastern Roman army. It was written by Emperor Maurice (Μαυρίκιος- Mauricius /reigned: 582-602) or composed according to his orders. About:  

I did not read Moravcsik’s article, but I read the Strategicon; it does not speak of «Bulgarian belts», but of «Bulgarian cloaks». In this regard, the blogger mentions a very old edition of the text, namely Mauricii Artis mllltaris libri duodecim, Xll (ed. Scheffer), p. 303). This dates back to 1664:

At those days, all Western European editions of Ancient Greek texts involved Latin translations. Scheffer's edition of the Strategicon can be found here:    

https://books.google.ru/books?id=77NODQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=ru&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (page 303)

George T. Dennis' translation (1984) makes the text accessible to English readers:

In the 12th chapter, which is the last of the Strategicon, under the title "Mixed Formations, Infantry, Camps and Hunting", in part I (Clothing to be Worn by the Infantry), on page 138 (University of Pennsylvania Press), the word σαγίον (sagion) is very correctly translated as "cloak". The author refers to "βουλγαρικά σαγία" (Latin: sagia Bulgarica) in plural; this is rendered in English "Bulgarian cloaks", which are thought to be very heavy. Already, the word σαγίον (sagion) is of Latin etymology. About:

and https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100436640

Also: https://greek_greek.en-academic.com/151302/σαγίον 

In that period and for more than 1000 years, what people now erroneously call «Medieval Greek» or «Byzantine Greek» (which in reality is «Eastern Roman») was an amalgamation of Alexandrine Koine and Latin. There were an enormous number of Latin words written in Greek characters and in Alexandrine Koine form. Indicatively: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koine_Greek

At this point, I complete my philological commentary on the topic. I read the Strategicon of Emperor Maurice when I was student in Athens in the middle 1970s. 

I did not remember the mention of Bulgarian cloaks, but I know however that the Bulgars, who founded the Old Great Bulgaria, appear in Eastern Roman texts at least 100 years before the purported establishment and growth of that state (632–668). The academic chronology for the First Bulgarian Empire may be correct (681–1018), but the dates given for the Old Great Bulgaria and the Volga Bulgaria (late 7th c.–1240s) are deliberately false. General info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Great_Bulgaria  and  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Bulgarian_Empire 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Bulgaria  and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgars#Etymology_and_origin

VI. Historical context and the Ancient History of Bulgars  

It is now time for me to briefly discuss the historical context within which the aforementioned topics took place. Let’s first ask some questions: 

Is it strange that a Fayoum papyrus of the 3rd-7th c. CE mentions Bulgarian products that arrived in Egypt? 

Is it odd that in Emperor Maurice’s Strategicon we find a mention of Bulgarian cloaks used or not used by the Eastern Roman army?

In both cases, the response is «no»!

From where did these Bulgarian products come?

Where did Bulgars (or Bulgarians) live at the time?

My personal response is somehow vague: they came from some regions of today’s Russia’s European soil, either in the southern confines (the Azov Sea, the northern coast of the Black Sea, and the North Caucasus region) or in the area of today’s Tatarstan and other lands north-northeast of the Caspian Sea. 

It is not easy to designate one specific location in this regard, and this is so for one extra reason: it seems that there were several tribes named with the same name, and they were distinguished among themselves on the basis of earlier tribal affiliations, which may go back to the Rouran Khaganate (330-555 CE). There are actually plenty of names associated with the early Bulgars, notably the Onogurs, the Kutrigurs, etc. About:

Many readers may be taken by surprise because I go back easily from the time of the Old Great Bulgaria (630-668 CE) to that of the Rouran Khaganate and the Huns. All the same, there is no surprise involved in this regard. Western European historians deliberately, systematically and customarily underestimate across the board the value of Oral History and attempt to dissociate Ethnography from History; these approaches are wrong. It is quite possible that, from the very beginning of the establishment of Rouran Khaganate, many tribes, clans or families (which later became nations) started migrating. The very first Bulgars (Bulgarians) may have reached areas north of the Iranian borders in Central Asia or in Northern Caucasus much earlier than it is generally thought among Western scholars. See indicatively:

Now, the reasons for which I intentionally date the first potential interaction of Bulgars/Bulgarians with other tribes (or nations) in earlier periods are not a matter of personal preference or obstinacy. There is an important historical text named «Nominalia of the Bulgarian Khans». It has not been duly comprehended let alone interpreted thus far. About: 

Three Russian copies of the text have been saved (in Church Slavonic); they date back to the 15th and 16th c. They are generally viewed as later copies of a potential Old Bulgarian text of the 9th c. Other specialists also pretend that there may/might have been an even earlier text, in either Eastern Roman («Medieval Greek») or Bulgar, which was eventually a stone inscription. 

In this document, the highly honorific title «Knyaz» (Князь) is given to Asparuh (ca. 640-700) and to his five predecessors. I must add that the said document was always an intriguing historical source for me due to two bizarre particularities to which I don't think that any scholar or specialist gave due attention, deep investigation, and persuasive interpretation.

First, the antiquity of the document is underscored by the fact that the early Bulgar calendar, which is attested in this text, appears to be an adaptation of the Chinese calendar. This fact means that the primeval Bulgars, when located somewhere in Eastern Siberia or Mongolia, must have had dense contacts with the Chinese scribal and imperial establishment; perhaps this fact displeased other Turanian-Mongolian tribes of the Rouran Khaganate and contributed to the emigration of those «Ur-Bulgaren». The next point is however more impactful on our approach to the very early phase of the Bulgars.

Second, although for most of the rulers immortalized in the historical document, the duration of their lifetimes or tenures are of entirely historical nature (involving brief or long periods of 5 up to 60 years of reign or lifetime), the two first names of rulers are credited with incredibly long lifetimes. This is not common; actually, it does not look sensible; but it is meaningful.

More specifically, Avitohol is said to have lived 300 years, whereas Irnik is credited with 150 years. But we know who Irnik was! Irnik or Ernak was the 3rd son of Attila and he is said to have been his most beloved offspring. Scholars fix the beginning of his reign in 437 CE, but this is still not the important point. The crucial issue with the partly «mythical» and partly historical nature of the text «Nominalia of the Bulgarian Khans» is the fact that the two early rulers, whom the Bulgarians considered as their original ancestors, are credited with extraordinarily long and physically impossible lives. General reading: 

This can therefore imply only one thing: at a later period, when the earlier memories were partly lost for various reasons, eventually because of the new environment namely the Balkan Peninsula, in which the then Bulgars were finding themselves, Avitohol and Irnik were retained as the leading figures of ruling families, and not as independent rulers. Consequently, the dates given for their lives were in fact those of their respective dynasties. It was then that the very early period of Bulgar History was mythicized for statecraft purposes, mystified to all, and sanctified in the national consciousness.

Many Western scholars attempted to identify Avitohol with Attila, but in vain; I don’t think that this attempt can be maintained. So, I believe that the Bulgars were one of the noble families of the Huns (evidently involving intermarriage with Attila himself), and that before Attila, the very earliest Bulgars were ruled by another dynasty which had lasted 300 years. But if it is so, we go back to the times of the Roman Emperor Trajan (reign: 98-117 CE), Vologases III of Arsacid Parthia (110–147 CE) and the illustrious Chinese general, explorer and diplomat Ban Chao (32-102 CE) of the Eastern Han dynasty. About:

The latter fought for 30 years against the Xiongnu (Hiung-nu/匈奴, i.e. the earliest tribes of the Huns, consolidated the Chinese control throughout the Tarim Basin region (today's Eastern Turkestan or Xinjiang), and was appointed Protector General of the Western Regions. He is very famous for having dispatched Gan Ying, an envoy, to the West in 97 CE. According to the Book of the Later Han (Hou Hanshu/後漢書), which was compiled in the 5th c. CE by Fan Ye, Gan Ying reached Parthia (Arsacid Iran; in Chinese: Anxi, 安息) and gave the first Chinese account of the Western confines of Asia and of the Roman Empire. About:

It is n this historical environment that we have to place the very early ancestors of the Bulgars.

VII. Historical context, the Silk Roads, and Bulgarian exports to Egypt  

Consequently, I believe that it is more probable that the Bulgarian products of those days were first appreciated by the Iranians and later sold to Aramaeans, Armenians, Iberians and other nations settled in the western confines of the Arsacid (250 BCE-224 CE) and the Sassanid (224-651 CE) empires, i.e. in Mesopotamia and Syria, and thence they became finally known in Egypt as well.  

The incessant migrations from NE Asia to Central Europe and to Africa, as a major historical event, were not separate from the 'Silk Roads'; they were part, consequence or side-effect of that, older and wider, phenomenon. Actually, the term 'Silk Roads' is at the same time inaccurate and partly; the magnificent phenomenon of commercial, cultural and spiritual inter-exchanges, which took place due to the establishment (by the Achaemenid Shah Darius I the Great) of a comprehensive network of numerous older regional trade routes, is to be properly described as 'silk-, spice-, and perfume-trade routes across lands, deserts and seas'. About: https://silkroadtexts.wordpress.com/

It has to be said that, after the Achaemenid Iranian invasion, annexation and occupation of Egypt, Sudan and NE Libya (525-404 BCE and 343-332 BCE), Iranian settlers remained in Egypt; they were known to and mentioned by the Macedonian settlers, who manned the Macedonian dynasty of Ptolemies (323-30 BCE). General info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Achaemenid_conquest_of_Egypt

Those Iranian settlers were called 'Persai (ek) tis epigonis' (Πέρσαι τῆς ἐπιγονῆς), lit. 'Iranian settlers' descendants'. About:

Pieter W. Pestman, A proposito dei documenti di Pathyris II Πέρσαι τῆς ἐπιγονῆς

Xin Dai, Ethnicity Designation in Ptolemaic Egypt https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329265278_Ethnicity_Designation_in_Ptolemaic_Egypt

See a text from the time of the Roman Emperor Domitian (reign: 81-96) here: https://papyri.info/ddbdp/p.athen;;23

See another text from the time of the Roman Emperor Nerva (reign: 96-98) here:

There were also in Egypt Jewish Aramaean descendants of the early Iranian settlers: "οἱ τρ(ε)ῖς | Ἰουδαῖοι Πέρσαι τῆς ἐπιγονῆς τῶν [ἀ]πὸ Σύρων κώ- | μης" (lit. Jewish Iranians, who were the descendants of an Aramaean town) - From: Database of Military Inscriptions and Papyri of Early Roman Palestine https://armyofromanpalestine.com/0140-2

Please note in this regard that the title given to the web page and the document is very wrong and extremely biased: "§140 Loan between Jews and Lucius Vettius"; the three persons who received the loan were not ethnic Jews. Their religion was surely Judaism, as it was the case of the renowned Samaritan woman with whom Jesus spoke according to the Gospels. Several other nations accepted Judaism, notably Aramaeans in Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia (they were called 'Syrians' by the Macedonians and the Romans). It is well known that there were many clashes and strives between them and the ethnic Jews. The latter were few and lived either in Jerusalem (and its suburbs) or in Egypt (in Alexandria and many other locations) or in the centers of Talmudic academies in Mesopotamia (namely Nehardea, Pumbedita and Mahoze / Ctesiphon). About:

If I expanded on this topic, it is precisely because the merchants, who were most active across the Silk Roads, were the Aramaeans, and that is why Aramaic became almost an official language in the Achaemenid Empire of Iran, whereas at the same time it turned out to be the lingua franca alongside the trade routes. Furthermore, a great number of writing systems in Central Asia, Iran, India, and Western Asia were developed on the basis of the Aramaic alphabet. Last but not least, Arabic originates from Syriac, which is a late form of Aramaic. About:

It is therefore essential to state that the Bulgarian products, which (either from North Caucasus and the northern coastlands of the Black Sea or from the regions around the north-northeastern shores of the Caspian Sea) reached Egypt (via most probably North Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine), were transported on camels owned by Aramaean merchants and due to caravans organized and directed by Aramaeans.

It is also noteworthy that, during the Arsacid times, several buffer-states were formed between the eastern borders of the Roman Empire and the western frontiers of Parthia: Osrhoene, Sophene, Zabdicene, Adiabene, Hatra, Characene, Elymais, Gerrha (the illustrious port of call and major trade center of the Persian Gulf that rivaled with Alexandria in the Mediterranean), the Nabataean kingdom, and the short-lived but most formidable Tadmor (Palmyra). This situation favored the world trade between East and West, as well as North and South. General info:

The great rivalry and ferocious antagonism between the Romans (and later the Eastern Romans) and the Iranians after the rise of the Sassanid dynasty (224 CE) did not affect in anything the good relations and the trade among Egyptians, Aramaeans, and Iranians; there were numerous Aramaean populations in both empires, so, we feel safe to conclude that any products from lands north of Caucasus mountains and north of Iran were transported by Aramaeans via Palestine or Nabataea to Egypt.

There have been additional reasons for the good feelings of the Egyptians toward the Iranians, and they were of religious nature. The Christological disputes generated enmity and great animosity between

a) the Copts (: Egyptians) and the Aramaeans, who adopted Miaphysitism (also known as Monophysitism), and

b) the Eastern Romans and the Western Romans, who thought they preserved the correct faith (Orthodoxy).

One has to bear always in mind, that in order to define themselves, the so-called Monophysites (also known more recently as 'Miaphysites') used exactly the same term (i.e. 'Orthodox'), which means that they considered the Eastern Romans and the Western Romans as heretics. The patriarchates of Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem were split. Atop of it, other Aramaeans (mostly in Mesopotamia and Iran) accepted the preaching of Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who was also deposed as a heretic (in August 431). For the aforementioned religious reasons, the Eastern Roman armies were most loathed in Syria, Palestine, North Mesopotamia (today's SE Turkey), and Egypt as oppressors. About:

In addition, one has to take into consideration the fact that the Jews, who inhabited the eastern provinces of the Roman (and later the Eastern Roman) Empire, were also pro-Iranian and they expected that the Iranians would liberate them one day from the Roman yoke pretty much like the Achaemenid Iranian Emperor Cyrus delivered their exiled ancestors from the tyranny of Nabonid Babylonia (539 BCE).

The Axumite Abyssinian invasion of Yemen (ca. 530 CE; in coordination with the Roman Emperor Justinian I), the ensued Iranian-Axumite wars, the Iranian invasion of Yemen (570 CE; known as the Year of the Elephant among the Arabs of Hejaz), and the incessant battles and wars between the Eastern Roman and the Sassanid Iranian armies were closely watched by all populations in Egypt. The third Iranian conquest of Egypt (618 CE) was a matter of great jubilation for Copts and Jews; Egypt was annexed to Iran for ten (10 years), before being under Eastern Roman control again for fourteen years (628-642 CE) and then invaded by the Islamic armies. General info:

Indicative of the good Egyptian feelings for the Sassanid emperors and Iran is a tapestry weave found by Albert Gayet in his 1908 excavations in Antinoe (also known as Antinoöpolis, i.e. the town of Sheikh Ibada in today's Egypt); this is a textile fragment of legging that dates back to the late 6th and early 7th c. (Musée des Tissus, in Lyon-France; MT 28928). It features the scene of an unequal battle that has been identified as one of the engagements between the Sassanid and the Axumite armies in Yemen; Iranian horse-archers are depicted at the moment of their triumph over Abyssinian infantry opponents, who appear to be armed with stones. In the very center of the scene, an enthroned figure was often identified with the great Iranian Emperor Khosrow (Chosroes) I Anushirvan (Middle Persian: Anoshag ruwan: 'with Immortal Soul'), who was for Sassanid Iran as historically important as Justinian I, his early rival and subsequent peace partner, for the Roman Empire. About:

This was the wider historical context at the time of the arrival of the first Bulgarian exports to the Sassanid Empire of Iran, the Eastern Roman Empire, and Egypt more specifically. And the Bulgarian cloaks, as mentioned in Maurice’s Strategicon, make every researcher rather think of heavy winter cloaks, which were apparently not necessary for the Eastern Roman soldiers, who had to usually fight in less harsh climatological conditions. It is possible that those heavy cloaks were eventually used by the Iranian army when engaged in the Caucasus region, and thence they were noticed by the Eastern Romans.

With these points, I complete my philological and historical comments on the topic. However, the entire issue has to be also contextualized at the academic-educational level, so that you don't find it bizarre that not one average Bulgarian knew about the topic before the inquisitive blogger wrote his article and the YouTuber uploaded his brief video. 

VIII. Academic context and the Western falsehood of a Euro-centric World History

This part does not concern the Fayoum papyri and the Strategicon of Emperor Maurice; it has to do with what non-specialists, the average public, and various unspecialized explorers do not know at all.

This issue pertains to

i- the conceptualization of World History;

ii- the contextualization of every single document newly found here and there;

iii- the stages of historical falsification that were undertaken over the past 500 years;

iv- the forgers themselves and their antiquity, and last but not least; and

v- several points of

a) governance of modern states,

b) international alliances, and

c) the ensuing captivity of all the targeted nations, each one well-adjusted into the preconceived role that the forgers invented for it.

As you can guess, one can write an encyclopedia on these topics, so I will be very brief. Attention: only at the end, you will understand that all these parameters fully precondition the topic that we already discussed, and any other that we have not yet discussed, because simply it does not exist as a standalone entity but as a fact entirely conditioned by what I herewith describe in short.

What I want to say is this: if tomorrow another Fayoum discovery brings to light a 3rd c. BCE papyrus with the mention of something Bulgarian (Voulgarikon), this will not affect in anything the prevailing conditions of the so-called academic scholarship. In other words, do not imagine that with tiny shreds of truth unveiled here and there, you are going to change anything in the excruciatingly false manner World History was written.

i- the conceptualization of World History

It may come as a nasty surprise to you, but what we know now about History is not the conclusion or the outcome of additional discoveries made one after the other over the past 400-500 years. Contrarily, it was first preconceived, when people had truly minimal knowledge of the past, and after they had forged thousands of documents and manuscripts for at least 500-600 years, long before the early historiographical efforts were undertaken during the Renaissance.

After they destroyed, concealed and rewrote tons of manuscripts of Ancient Greek and Roman historiography from ca. 750 CE until 1500 CE, Western European monks and editors, philosophers and intellectuals, popes, scientists and alchemists started propagating their world view about the assumingly glorious past of their supposedly Greek and Roman ancestors – a nonexistent past that the Renaissance people were deliberately fooled enough to believe that they had lost and they had to rediscover it. In fact, all the discoveries made afterwards, all the decipherments of numerous ancient writings, and all the studies of original material from Mesopotamia, Egypt, North Africa, Caucasus, Central Asia, China and India was duly processed and adjusted in a way not to damage or challenge in anything the preconceived scheme which was named 'World History' by the vicious and criminal Western European forgers.

This means that you should never expect 'new discoveries' to challenge the officially established dogma of the Western academia; it is not about Bulgars and the past of today's Bulgarians, Thracians, Macedonians, etc., etc., etc. It is about all. What type of position the Bulgarians, the Russians, the Turks, the Iranians, the Egyptians and all the rest occupy in today's distorted historiography had been decided upon long before the establishment of the modern states that bear those names. 

ii- the contextualization of every single document newly found here and there

Any finding unearthed by anyone anytime anywhere means nothing in itself; this concerns every historiographer, truthful or dishonest. What truly matters for all is contextualization. It so did for the original forgers. Theirs was an arbitrary attempt; they contextualized the so-called 'Ancient Greece' in a way that would have been fully unacceptable, blasphemous and abominable for the outright majority of all the South Balkan populations during the 23 centuries prior to the foundation of Constantinople by Constantine the Great.  

It was peremptory, partial and biased; according to the fallacious narratives of the forgers, centuries were shrunk and shortened in order to fit into few lines; moreover the schemers stretched geographical terms at will; they did not use various terms, which were widely employed in the Antiquity; they passed important persons under silence, while exaggerating the presentation of unimportant ones. This is what contextualization was for the forgers: they applied a Latin recapitulative name (Graeci) to a variety of nations, which never used this Latin term or any other recapitulative term for them; they applied a non-Ionian, non-Achaean, and non-Aeolian term (Hellenes) to them and to others; and after the decipherment of many Oriental languages, they did not rectify their preposterous mistakes, although they learned quite well that the two fake terms about those populations (Graecus and Hellene) did not exist in any other language of highly civilized nations (Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Hittite, Hurrian, Canaanite, Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Old Achaemenid Iranian).

Consequently, every other information, data and documentation pertaining to any elements of the said context was concealed, distorted or misinterpreted in order to be duly adjusted to the biased context that had been elaborated first.

iii- the stages of historical falsification that were undertaken over the past 500 years

Following the aforementioned situation, many dimensions of historical falsification were carried out and can actually be noticed by researchers, explorers, investigators and astute observers. The 'barbarian invasions' (or Migration Period) is only one of them; I mention it first because it concerns the Bulgars. Long before distorting the History of Great Old Bulgaria and that of Volga Bulgaria systematically, Western historical forgers portrayed Bulgars and many other highly civilized nations as barbarians. Why?

Because the historical forgers of the Western World hate nomads! This is an irrevocable trait of them; that's why they fabricated the fake term 'civilization' in their absurd manner: originating from the Latin word 'civitas', the worthless and racist term 'civilization' implies that you cannot be 'civilized' unless you are urban. This monstrous and unacceptable fact reveals the rotten roots of the hideous, vulgar, sick and villainous Western world and colonial academia.

In the Orient, there was never a cultural divide between urban populations and nomads; some nomadic tribes were considered as barbarians; that's true. But also settled populations and urban inhabitants were also considered as barbarians (like the Elamites, who were considered as inhuman by the Assyrians). The rule was that the settled nations were nomads in earlier periods. But the status of a society was irrelevant of the consideration and the esteem (or lack thereof) that others had about a certain nation. This started with the Romans and their interpretation of the South Balkan, Anatolian, and Cretan past. It was then re-utilized and modified by Western Europeans. To some extent, the papal approval was tantamount to acquisition of credentials and to promotion to 'civilized nation status'. Actually, this is today the nucleus of the whole problem concerning Ukraine.

That is why the so-called Migration Period was so terribly distorted by Western historians. Western historians deliberately preferred to stay blind and not to study the Ancient Mongol chronicles (notably the Secret History of The Mongols) in order to avoid assessing the Mongol-Turanian standards and principles of civilization. Had they proceeded in the opposite way, they would have discovered that, for the nomads, it is the settled people and the urban populations, who are barbarians, decayed and shameful.

The truth about the fallacious term 'Migration Period' is simple: there was never a migration period before 1500 CE (and certainly none afterwards), because every century was actually a migration period. Human History is a history of migrations.

The distorted linguistic-ethnographic division of the migrant nations helped forgers to dramatically increase the confusion level; as a matter of fact, there was no proper ethnic division (in the modern sense of the term) among Mongols, Turanians, Slavs and several other migrant nations. The languages change when people migrate and settle, resettle, move again, and end up in faraway places. For Muslim historians, the khan of the Saqaliba (: Slavs) was the strongest of all Turanian rulers. The arbitrary distinction of the migrant nations into two groups, namely Indo-European and Ural-Altaic/Turco-Mongolian nations was done deliberately in order to intentionally transform the face of the world and adjust it to the so-called Table of Nations, a forged text that made its way into the biblical book of Genesis in later periods (6th–4th c. BCE). General reading:

The Western academic tyranny is so deeply rooted that, irrespective of your political, ideological or philosophical affiliation (fascist, Nazi, communist, conservative, social-democrat, liberal, atheist, evolutionist, creationist, anarchist, etc.), you always have to adjust your seminars, courses, lectures, contributions, books and publications to the fallacy of Genesis chapter 10. The absurd logic of this system is the following: "since no Bulgars are mentioned in the Table of Nations, they must be a later tribe". Then, believe it or not, whatever documentation may be found in Aramaic, Middle Persian, Pahlavi, Brahmi, Kharosthi, Avestan, Sogdian, Tocharian, Chinese or other texts about the Bulgars will be deliberately presented as irrelevant to Bulgars. If a new Sogdian document is found in Central Asia (dating back to the middle Arsacid times: 1st c. CE) and there is a certain mention of Bulgars in the text, the criminal gangsters and the systematic fraudsters of the Western universities and museums will write an enormous amount of articles to stupidly discredit the document or attribute the word to anything or anyone else.

iv- the forgers themselves and their antiquity

The above makes it clear that the foundations of today's Western academic life, historiographical research, sector of Humanities, and all the associated fields of study were laid by the Western European Catholic monks and only after the end of the Eastern Roman imperial control, appointment and approval of the Roman popes (752 CE).

This changes totally the idea that you and the entire world have of the History of Mankind because it means that the Benedictine-Papal-Roman opposition to and clash with the Eastern Roman Empire (and the subsequent schisms of 867 and 1054) were entirely due to the resolute papal attempt to forge the World History, to substitute it with a fake History, and to diffuse all the Anti-Christian schemes that brought the world to today's chaos. As the Muslims were totally unaware of the confrontation, the Crusades were undertaken against (not the Caliphate but) Constantinople. All the Christian Orthodox monasteries and libraries were controlled by Catholic monks, scribes, copyists and priests who had the time (from 1204 until 1261) to rob whatever manuscripts they had to rob, destroy whatever manuscripts they had to destroy, and leave all the rest as 'useless' to their enterprise.  

That is why modern scholars are ordered to jubilate every time a papyrus fragment is found in Egypt with few lines of verses from Homer, Hesiod and the Ancient 'Greek' tragedians, historians or philosophers! They publicize these discoveries in order to make every naïve guy believe that the bulk of their forged documentation is genuine. But it is not.

v- and last but not least, several points of

a) governance of modern states

The consolidation of the historical forgery was top concern for the colonial puppets of the Western European powers and for the powers hidden behind the scenes. I still remember the blogger's comments about the late 19th and early 20th c. Bulgarian statesmen, politicians and academics, who were not so enthusiastic about the Fayoum papyrus! He made me laugh at; of course, he was very correct in writing what he did. Absolutely pertinent! But also very naïve!

He failed to remember that the top Ottoman military officer in Salonica during the First Balkan War, lieutenant general Hasan Tahsin Pasha (also known as Hasan Tahsin Mesarea; 1845-1918), as soon as he learned that the 7th Bulgarian Division was coming from the northeast, decided on his own to surrender the Salonica fortress and 26000 men to the Greek crown prince Constantine, being thus deemed a traitor and sentenced to death by a martial court.  

No Bulgarian (or other) official had ever the authority to go beyond the limits specified as regards either borderlines or historical approaches and conclusions.

b) international alliances, and

The same is valid today; it would be bizarre for Bulgarian professors of universities and academics to teach, diffuse, publish and propagate ideas, concepts and interpretations that contravene the worldwide norm that the Western colonials imposed across the Earth. It is as simple as that: Bulgaria, as EU member state, participates in many academic projects like Erasmus, etc. The professor, who would challenge the lies and the falsehood, which are at the basis of the so-called European values, principles and standards, would automatically become a problem for his rector, who would be receiving most unpleasant if not threatening calls from every corner of the Earth, as well as demands to fire the uncooperative, 'controversial' professor.

c) the ensuing captivity of all the targeted nations, each one well-adjusted into the preconceived role that the forgers invented for it

Actually, it is not a matter of Bulgaria and how the true History of Bulgaria is hidden from the Bulgarians; the same is valid in Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Sudan, Israel, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, etc. As I lived in all these countries, I have personal experience and deep knowledge as regards their pedagogical systems and the contents of their manuals. In Egypt, schoolchildren study the History of Ancient Egypt down to Ramses III only (ca. 1200 BCE) and next year, they start with the beginning of Islam (642 CE). Why?

Because during the falsely called Roman times, Egyptian mysticisms, religions, spirituality, cults, sciences, arts, wisdom, cosmogony, cosmology, and eschatology flooded Greece, Rome, the Roman Empire, and even Europe beyond the Roman borders. The Egyptian pupil must not learn that the Greeks, the Romans, and the Europeans were dramatically inferior to his own cultural heritage. That's why stupid and illiterate sheikhs, ignorant imams, and evil theologians intoxicate the average Egyptians with today's fake Islam, which is not a religion anymore but a theological-ideological-political system at the antipodes of the true historical Islam. It cuts the average Egyptian from his own cultural heritage, thus making him stupidly care about the wives and the prematurely dead children of prophet Muhammad, as well as other matters of no importance for the spiritual-cultural-intellectual phenomenon of Islam.

Best regards,

Shamsaddin

Ardashir Captures Ardava, Folio 181 from the Demotte Shahname, Ilkhanid, c. 1330-1340 CE. Freer Gallery of Art (ID: S1986.103), Smithsonian, Washington D.C.

Scythian mummy tomb (Fifth Pazyryk Kurgan), Pazyryk culture 3rd C. BCE. More pictures on my blog, link at bottom.

"The pair were buried alongside nine horses, a huge cache of cannabis and a stash of priceless treasures - including the world's oldest carpet and an ornate carriage.

The man had curly hair and was aged between 55 and 60 when he died, whilst the woman was about ten years younger.

It is believed he was a chieftain or king of the Pazyryk civilisation, which lived in Kazakhstan, Siberia and Mongolia from the 6th to 3rd centuries BC."

...

"The attractive log cabin was a prefabricated construction by the prehistoric Pazyryk culture to house an elite tomb - in which was buried a mummified curly-haired potentate and his younger wife or concubine.

The mound in the Altai Mountains was originally 42 metres in diameter, and this tattooed couple went to the next life alongside nine geldings, saddled and harnessed.

The house itself, recently reconstructed, was not built as a dwelling but nevertheless is seen by archeologists as showing the style of domestic architecture more than two millennia ago.

This structure was the outer of two wooden houses in the large burial mound in the valley of the River Bolshoy Ulagan at an altitude of around 1,600 metres above sea level.

The core of the mound including the ice-preserved bodies of the elite couple had been excavated by Soviet archeologists in 1949, and many of the finds are on on display in the world famous State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.

As we have previously written, the pair - who owned perhaps the world’s oldest carpets - are currently undergoing an ultra modern medical scan to establish the cause of death, and reconstruct the appearance of the ancient pair, and to study the techniques of mummification in more detail.

Yet in 1949 this fascinating house was left in the permafrost ground - and only retrieved now from the so-called Fifth Pazyryk Barrow, to the excitement of archeologists.

Head of the excavation Dr Nikita Konstantinov from Gorno-Altaisk State University, was full of admiration about the skills of the ancient craftsmen.

‘We took out the log house and reassembled it right next to the mound,’ he said.

‘We made kind of express reconstruction, which made it possible to study the log house in detail.

‘Notches were made on each of its logs - building marks…’.

This was like IKEA instructions today for building their products, telling modern day excavation volunteers how to correctly construct the prehistoric building kit.

The result is seen in the pictures shown here.

‘This log house was first built somewhere away from the mound, then it was dismantled, brought and reassembled in the pit,’ said Dr Konstantinov.

‘Today we build in similar way, using Roman numerals, as a rule.

‘In those times they simply made different numbers of notches.’

The archeological team followed the code left by the ancient craftsmen and reassembled the house without problems.

‘The Pazyryks knitted the corners of the building in a masterly way and chopped the attachment points of these logs.

‘They fitted very cleanly….

‘When we built the log house and began to measure the height, it turned out that the height difference in the angles is only one centimetre.’

In modern constructions, a difference of 7 cm is allowed which showed how skilful were the ancient craftsmen.

He said: ‘This is a funerary structure, but we can say with a high degree of probability that the log cabin was created in the image and likeness of the houses in which the Pazyryks lived."

-taken from siberiantimes and thesun

paganimagevault.blogspot.com

Scythian mummy tomb (Fifth Pazyryk Kurgan), Pazyryk culture 4th-3rd C. BCE

Best Wishes Eid al Adha 2022 & Ahmed Yasavi's Diwan-i Hikmet

Счастливого Курбан-Байрам!

Kurban Bayramı kutlu olsun!

Ciidul-Adxa Wanaagsan!

Құрбан айт мерекесі құтты болсын!

!   قۇربان ھېيت مۇبارەك بولسۇن

курбон хайит муборак !

Gurban baýramyňyz gutly bolsun!

!   عید قربان مبارک

Корбан бәйрәме белән!

!  عید الاضحی مبارک ہو

Иди Курбон муборак!

!   عيد الأضحى السعيد

Die besten Glückwünsche zu Eid al-Adha!

Joyeux Aïd el-Adha!

Орозо айт майрамыңыздар менен!

Gëzuar Kurban Bajramin!

Best wishes for a happy Eid al Adha!

Shamsaddin

==================================== 

Long before ….

Nezami Ganjavi (1141-1209)

long before ….

Muhi el-din ibn Arabi (1165-1240)

long before ….

Jalal al-din Rumi (1207-1273),

Haji Bektash Veli (1209-1271),

Safi-ad-din Ardabili (1252-1334),

Amir Khusraw (1253-1325),

and

Kemal Khujandi (1321-1400)

…….................... there was Ahmed Yasavi.

Ahmed Yasavi (1093-1166); one of the greatest mystics of the Turanian world at the crossroads between Tengrism and Islam

Divan-i Ḥikmet (the Book of Wisdom, Chagatai Turkic with Kipchak elements: ديوان حكمت); acknowledged as the Turkic Quran – pretty much like the illustrious Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, which is known as the Iranian Quran.

Ahmed Yasavi Mausoleum in Turkistan, Kazakhstan; built like the Arystan Bab Mausoleum (in honor of another 12th c mystic) by Timur (Tamerlane), the Islamic World Greatest Conqueror and Emperor in the late 13th c.

The Incredible Story of Divan-i Ḥikmet

"Divan-i Ḥikmet" is not only a monument of the religious Sufi literature; it is one of the most ancient monuments written in the Turkic language. Many researchers of the Turkic culture consider that it may be referred to the Karakhanid literature tradition. The sources of these poems are found also in the shaman songs of the Turkic nomads. The language of the monument contains the Kipchak elements. The famous "Divan-i Ḥikmet" is the common heritage of the Turkic people; the poems were handed down by word of mouth, from generation to generation, called upon people to honesty, justice, friendliness and patience.

The historic papers testify to the fact that "Ḥikmet" have been re-written many a time, edited, revised. The manuscripts of "Divan-i Ḥikmet" are kept mainly in the libraries of Tashkent, St. Petersburg, and Istanbul. In the depository of the St. Petersburg department of the Institute for Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences there are 23 lists of "Divan-i Ḥikmet" that are referred to the XVIII-XIX centuries. The Tashkent lists are kept in the collection of manuscripts belonging to the Institute for Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, in the Institute of Manuscripts (56 copies). These copies are mainly referred to the XIX century.

In addition to the manuscripts in Kazan city the poems of Hojja Ahmed Yasavi were published in the Arab graphic. The most complete edition contains 149 "Ḥikmets" of 1896, 1905. Currently "Ḥikmets" are survived in many lists. At different periods the scientists investigated life and creative work of Hojja Ahmed Yasavi, devoted articles to the genial poet and philosopher. During recent decades "Divan-i Ḥikmet" were re-edited several times both in our country and abroad.

This work summarizes the main provisions of the Yasavi Tarika (mystical school). Ḥikmets preached Islam and contributed to further dissemination of Islam among people. Turkic speaking nations named "Divan-i Ḥikmet" as "Korani Turki" as notably they grasped Koran through "Ḥikmets" of Hojja Ahmed Yasavi, so Turks began to name Hojja Ahmed as "Hazret Sultan" - "Holy Sultan", and Turkistan as the second Mecca.

Ḥikmets of Hojja Ahmed Yasavi both preached Islam and called upon Turkic nations to a spiritual unity, sovereignty, stipulated for all necessary conditions to achieve these aims.

---------------

Hojja Ahmed Yasavi (died 1166) was a philosopher, Sufi mystic, and the earliest known poet to write in a Turkic dialect. He was born in the city of Isfijab (present-day Sayram, in Kazakhstan) but lived most of his life in Turkestan (also in southern Kazakhstan). He was a student of Arslan Baba, a well-known preacher of Islam. At a time when Farsi dominated literature and public life, Hojja Ahmed Yasavi wrote in his native Old Turkic (Chagatai) language. Yasavi's Divan-i Ḥikmet (Book of wisdom) is not just a religious relic of Sufi literature; it is also one of the oldest written works in the Turkic language. Yasavi begins with many elements of the shamanistic songs of Turkic nomads, then endows his poems, like all Sufi poetry, with many-layered meanings from the simple to the esoteric and infuses them with the spirit of Islam. Experts have suggested that the Divan has links to both the Chinese-influenced Karakhanid literary tradition and to the literature of the Kipchak of the Eurasian steppe. Divan-i Ḥikmet was long handed down by word of mouth. The printed edition presented here was published in 1904 by the Lithographic Printing House of the Kazan Imperial University. Kazan University was founded by Tsar Alexander I in 1804 and became the premier center for oriental studies in the Russian Empire.

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Selected Verses from Divan-i Ḥikmet in English Translation

For Muslims, my sagacity will be a teacher;

Whoever one may be, he must worship God.

My sagacious words speak only to those who understand.

Praising with prayers, immerse yourself in the Mercy of Allah.

Saying "Bismillahi ...", I will begin to say sagacious words,

distributing utterances like jewels and diamonds to students;

With tension in the soul, with grief in the heart, and with blood in my breath,

I open the pages of the legends "the Notebook of the Sledge".

I bless you all, who are thirsty for truth, unity,

and sincere conversations with kindred spirits.

May I be blessed (to meet) with the unfortunate and the destitute!

May I avoid those who are satiated with life or satisfied with themselves!

Wherever you see downcast leprous people, be gentle!

If such an unfortunate person is ignorant, share the secret knowledge with him,

in order to be closer to the Almighty on the Day of Judgment!

I ran away from the arrogant, the self-assured, and the proud people.

The Prophet knew the destitute, the unfortunate, and the orphaned people.

That night, he went out in the Miʿraj (Celestial Journey) to see (the Truth).

Ask, and sympathize with, the disadvantaged!

And I, too, decided to travel in the footsteps of the unfortunate.

If you are intelligent and wise, take care of the poor!

Like Mustafa (: prophet Muhammad), gather and take care of orphans everywhere!

From the greedy and mean, stay away!

Save yourself and become like a full-flowing river!

Turned into a callous, evil-tongued, and insidious being,

the false scholar, even when reading the Quran, does not do any good deed.

I have no fortune to allow to be wasted;

Fearing the wrath of God (lit. 'the wrath of Truth'), I am burning (although) without fire.

Pleasing the defenseless, the destitute and the orphans,

give (them what they need), respect them, and lighten their souls!

You will earn bread with hard work; with pure soul (true) humans come;

having heard these words from the Almighty, I convey them to you.

If one man does follow the tradition and does not believe, he will perish;

from callous and evil-tongued people Allah turns away;

in the Name of Allah, the Hell is prepared for them.

Having heard these words from the Blood of Allah (: Imam Hussein), I convey them to you.

Having adopted the rules of the tradition, I became a true believer;

having descended under the Earth alone, I received an insight;

I saw a lot of worshipers of the Lord and I understood;

I cut off sinful joys and pleasures - with a dagger.

Sinful feelings led people astray and destroyed them;

they forced people to put on airs in front of the common people, and then humiliated them.

They (: sinful feelings) did not allow people to read prayers and spells; people with sinful feelings made friends with the demons.

I forced myself to move away, piercing my flesh with the tip of a dagger (metaphorically said about the author's effort to move away from sinful feelings).

Those who are thirsty for radiant glory are mediocre slaves;

(contrarily,) the innocent people force themselves to behave humbly;

tombs of saints, verses of the Quran, hadiths are nonsense for those thirsty for glory.

Therefore, I drown myself in inescapable heavy grief (for the ignorant people).

In the spacious gardens of love for the Most High,

I want to be the nightingale that sings its sad songs at dawn;

In those hours, I want to see the radiant appearance

of my Allah, with the eyes of my heart.

Let the heart feed on love!

The body will be covered with clothes of happiness (: those suitable for prayers).

With the strength of love, I want to levitate,

and like a bird to descend on the branch of consciousness.

Until you taste the nectar of love,

until you put on the clothes of lovers (: those suitable for prayers),

until you gather faith and worship into one,

you will not be able to see the Divine Face of the Creator.

Help all people! Work like a slave!

Do good to unfortunate people!

If (Islamic times') scholars come, greet them with reverence while standing!

From mean people, there is no help.

The prophet always helped the poor and the crippled.

When you see the unfortunate, tears of sympathy (have to) flow.

It always hurts to see destitute and disabled people.

The handicapped persons' gratitude (for those who help them) is the highest recognition.

If you are a true believer, follow the path of the prophet to Allah!

If you hear their names, worship and praise them!

Try the fate of the destitute and unfortunate! Learn from them!

Become a support for the unfortunate and disabled! Understand them!

Oh, my Merciful Creator! Put me on the right path!

Enlighten me with your Mercy and Love!

Guide your erring servants on the right path!

This path is not possible without You.

To preach the Divine, a teacher is needed.

To this teacher, a reliable student is needed.

Working hard, they should earn the highest gratitude.

Such loving and devoted people will be marked by the Almighty.

People, who are in love with the Creator, have achieved their dreams.

Look! Do not disgrace yourself pretending to be in love!

Across the bridge named Sira ('life paradigm' of prophet Muhammad), which is thinner

and sharper than a sword's blade, liars will not pass into the Hereafter.

If you're in love (with God), love like this!

With the strength of your love, let the perfume reach people!

As soon as he hears the Name of Allah, he is ready for anything;

such a lover does not need earthly things.

------------------

Download the text as Word doc.:

academia.edu

Best Wishes Eid al Adha 2022 & Ahmed Yasavi's Diwan-i Hikmet

Long before …. Nezami Ganjavi (1141-1209) long before …. Muhi el-din ibn Arabi (1165-1240) long before …. Jalal al-din Rumi (1207-1273), Haj

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