T_C wrote:phoenix wrote:T_C wrote:It doesn't matter really does it...using your theories would mean the Turks are the decendants of the indigenous people of Anatolia so I wouldn't exactly say it's irrelevant.
No it does not . . . stop grasping at straws. The Turks are not indigenous to Anatolia / Turkey either.
I've asked many times (especially in Chimera days) but we can't pinpoint their source . . . they are not indigenous to anywhere!
Until we find the missing link of their wellspring / spawning ground we can refer to it as "Ottoland" . . . OK
Honestly, I don't mind helping to find out where you did originate from. It would be a really interesting quest.
Well DUH!!!! It's the EXACT same straws your grasping at by suggesting you're related to the people who used to live in Cyprus 10 thousand years ago and whom abandoned the place 2 thousand years before you even set foot on the island....
So it's plausible that the GCs were the indigenous people who were assimilated?? But disputable when your theory is applied to the Turks??
OK . . . you came from near China!.
It was about 1000 AD before you even got near Anatolia
The Rise of the Turks and the Ottoman Empire
[Excerpted from Turkey: A Country Study. Paul M. Pitman III, ed. Washington, DC: Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress, 1987]
Turkish Origins
The first historical references to the Turks appear in Chinese records of about 200 B.C. These records refer to tribes called the Hsiung-nu, an early form of the Western term Hun, who lived in an area bounded by the Altai Mountains, Lake Baikal, and the northern edge of the Gobi Desert and are believed to have been the ancestors of the Turks. Specific references in Chinese sources in the sixth century A.D. identify the tribal kingdom called Tu-Küe located on the Orkhon River south of Lake Baikal. The khans (chiefs) of this tribe accepted the nominal suzerainty of the Tang dynasty. The earliest known example of writing in a Turkic language was found in that area and can be dated from about A.D. 730.
Other Turkish nomads from the Altai region founded the Görtürk Empire, a confederation of tribes under a dynasty of khans whose influence extended during the sixth to eighth centuries from the Aral Sea to the Hindu Kush in the land bridge known as Transoxania, i.e., across the Oxus River. The Görtürks are known to have been enlisted by a Byzantine emperor in the seventh century as allies against the Sassanians. In the eighth century some Turkish tribes, among them the Oguz, moved south of the Oxus River, while others migrated west to the northern shore of the Black Sea.
Great Seljuk Sultanate
The Turkish migrations after the sixth century were part of a general movement of peoples out of central Asia during the first millennium A.D. that was influenced by a number of interrelated factors--climatic changes, the strain of growing populations on a fragile pastoral economy, and pressure from stronger neighbors also on the move. Among those caught up in this spirit of restlessness on the steppes were the Oguz Turks, who had embraced Islam in the tenth century and established themselves around Bukhara in Transoxania under their khan, Seljuk. Split by dissension among the tribes, one branch of the Oguz had gone to India, while another, led by descendants of Seljuk, struck out to the west and entered service with the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad, who were the spiritual leaders of Islam as well as temporal rulers of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Persia.
Known as gazis (warriors of the Islamic faith), the Turkish horsemen were organized in tribal bands to defend the frontiers of the caliphate, often against their own kinsmen. In 1055, however, a Seljuk khan, Tugrul Bey (reigned 1055-63), occupied Baghdad at the head of an army composed of gazis and Mamluks (slave-soldiers, usually Circassians and Kurds). Tugrul forced the caliph to recognize him as sultan (temporal leader) in Persia and Mesopotamia. His regime eliminated Arabs from government and relied entirely on a corps of Persian ministers to administer what came to be known as the Great Seljuk sultanate.
As they engaged in state building, the Seljuks also emerged as the champions of Sunni Islam against the Shia. Tugrul's successor, Mehmed ibn Daud (reigned 1063-72)--better known as Alp Arslan (the "Lion Hero")--prepared for a campaign against the Shia Fatimid caliphate in Egypt. However, he was forced to divert his attention to Anatolia by the gazis on whose endurance and mobility the Seljuks depended. The Seljuk elite could not persuade these tribesmen to live within the framework of a bureaucratic Persian state, content with collecting taxes and patrolling trade routes. Each year the gazis cut deeper into Byzantine territory, raiding the infidels and taking booty according to their tradition. Some hired on as mercenaries in the private wars of Byzantine nobles and occasionally settled on land they had taken. The Seljuks followed the gazis into Anatolia in order to keep control over them. In 1071 Alp Arslan routed the Byzantine army at Manzikert near Lake Van, opening all of Anatolia to conquest by the Turks.
Sultanate of Rum
Within ten years of the Battle of Manzikert, the Seljuks had won control of Anatolia. Although successful in the west, the Seljuk sultanate in Baghdad reeled under attacks from the Mongols in the east and was unable--indeed unwilling--to exert its authority directly in the newly conquered territories in Anatolia. The gazis carved out a number of states there, under the nominal suzerainty of Baghdad, which were continually reinforced by further Turkish immigration. The strongest of them to emerge was the Seljuk sultanate of Rum ("Rome," i.e., Byzantine Empire), which had its capital at Iconium (Konya). During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Rum attained a position of dominance over the other Turkish states .
