Unrests in Nukus, Karakalpakstan. Karakalpakstan used to be an autonomous republic in Uzbekistan. In 1990s they proclaimed sovereignity with the right of secession. Now Uzbekistan decided to abolish it autonomy, escalating the conflict.
It's time to talk about Central Asia🧵
First thing to understand about Central Asia is that modern borders have no correlation at all with borders of historic regions. For example the historic region of Khorasan that played a key (or the key?) role in Medieval Islamic history is now divided between a number of states
Modern nation states very much exaggerate their primordiality. In case of Uzbekistan we understand this. In case of Iran we don't. And yet, in my view Islamic authors didn't talk about Iran nearly as much as about Khorasan. The former was an abstraction, the latter - a reality
Second thing to understand about Central Asia that it used to lie on commercial crossroads. Much or even may be most of the trade between East and West Eurasia went by land caravans through Central Asia. The region used to be rich and have geographic comparative advantages
Commercial transactions brought cultural contacts. Just one example. The Qing rulers of China presented themselves differently in their Chinese and Manchu correspondence. In Chinese letters Qianlong showed himself as a "normal" Confucian ruler. In Manchu letters Hongli didn't
That might not be an exaggeration to say that the Manchu served as a secret language of power in the Qing empire until very lately. Only in Manchu which their Chinese subjects couldn't understand, Qing rulers could express their thoughts relatively freely
Manchu script looked nothing like characters. It was an adaptation of Mongol script for the Manchu language commissioned by Nurhaci Khan in late 16th c. Mongol script in its own turn was an adaptation of the Old Uyghur Script for the Mongol language commissioned by Genghis Khan
Old Uyghur script itself ultimately derived from the Aramaic script, through the cultural and religious contacts of the Silk Road. So the Manchu writing system whose knowledge is necessary for understanding the politics of the Qing Empire evolved from a writing system of Levant
Modern discourse is still Eurocentric. When discussing the Silk Road cultural exchange, we focus on Marco Polo, and ignore his contemporary Rabban Sawma, a Beijing Nestorian who travelled to Europe. How did Medieval Paris look for a native of Khanbaliq?
Out of all branches of Christianity, it was Nestorianism, that was the most successful along the Silk Road. Btw: this map is incomplete, it did important conquests in Northern Steppe as well. To my best knowledge, Nestorianism really declined in China only after the Ming ascent
Manichaeism was another faith successful in the Silk Road context. In the early Middle Ages Muslim authors often presumed that China is mostly Manichaean. Manichaeans were overrepresented among the commercial class that Muslim merchants interacted with
13th c Mani shrine, Fujian
Until the late Middle Ages, Central Asia was a vibrant commercial and cultural crossroad, an oasis of cultural, intellectual and scientific life. Then it gradually declined. Why? First of all, the Portuguese found a maritime way to Asia. Dutch, English and French followed soon
Initially the Portuguese maritime shipping was not *that* cheaper than the land shipping through the Silk Road or a combined maritime-land route through the Indian Ocean. So they used violence to monopolise the trade, forcing the Indian Ocean rulers to call for the Ottoman help
But with the time going, maritime freight rates were rapidly decreasing. Very soon neither the old Silk Road nor the new land routes opened by the Russian Empire couldn't really compete with the maritime route. That is a major reason Russians couldn't properly exploit Alaska btw
Another major factor of the decline was the rise of the Safavi empire and the subsequent escalation of the Sunni vs Shia conflict that happened in the 16th c. That's a very complicated story that I honestly don't understand. Still, I'll summarise my POW
In the late Middle Ages, the Islamic heartland was divided between a few empires of sword. They quarrelled with each other, but pretty much all governing elites were:
1. Sunni 2. Turkic or Turkified (e.g. late Mamluks were Circassian, but spoke Cuman and then Anatolian)
Reality may be more complicated though. Even now the line between the Sunni and the Shia may be really blurry. Back then it was even more so. Many Sufi orders, including those that constituted the core of the Ottoman Empire didn't seem to be the orthodox Sunni at all
What is now Iran was largely governed by the Aq Qoyunlu Turcoman and Sunni polity. They quarrelled with the Ottomans, and tried to establish the anti-Ottoman alliance with Venice and the Golden Horde. Still, Sunni
It seems that the Safavids were initially a Sufi and Sunni order, residing in what is now Azerbaijan. But at some point they turned to the Twelver Shiism. In the late 15th Safavid Sheiks rallied the Turcoman tribes and led them to war against their Sunni overlords
Around 1500 Ismail of the Safavid led the Qizilbashi Turcoman tribes to the conquest first of Greater Azerbaijan and then of entire Iran. Iran used to be predominantly Sunni back then. But Ismail forcibly converted it to Shiism (which his own family had only recently adopted)
He immediately got into a war with two Sunni states: the Ottomans to the West and Uzbeks (& also Turkmen tribes, etc) to the East. That was predictable. Sunni Aq Qoyunlu rulers before him fought with the Ottomans, too. But now the war escalated into the existential conflict
Two arch-rivals, the Ottoman Sultan Selim and the Safavid Shah Ismail both pursued nearly genocidal policies. But these cleansings were not ethnic, they were religious. Shia Turcomans were massacred in the Ottoman Empire, Sunni (often Persians) in the Safavid Empire
Painting the Ottoman-Safavid fight as the Turko-Iranian war is madness. Out of two states it was the Ottoman Empire that was more Persianate. Selim wrote poems in Persian, while Ismail - on Azeri. It would be more accurate to paint the Early Safavid Empire as Azeri than Persian
What is important is that
1. The Safavid Empire was locked between the Sunni enemies in the Ottoman Empire and in Central Asia 2. The war quickly spiralled into the existential conflict with both sides soon refusing to view each other as Muslims
At some point at the late 16th c. the Ottomans started the mass enslavement of the Safavid subjects during their expeditions to Iran. Safavids retaliated. Very soon the wars of Safavids both with their Western and Eastern neighbours involved the mass enslavement
That explains why Persians comprised the largest demographic group among early modern Central Asian slaves. By 1600 nobody viewed the Shia Safavid subjects as their fellow Muslims anymore. Turkmens would just laugh in the face of the captives if they tried to use this argument
Now let's at this map again. On the one hand, position of the Safavid Empire looks kinda bad. It is trapped between two existential enemies on the West on to the East. On the other hand, position of the Central Asia may look even worse. It lost its direct contact with Levant
Hypothesis
The Safavid rise circa 1500 largely stopped the Turkic migration from the Inner Asia to the West. Due to the Safavid rise, the Ottoman Empire wouldn't have such an unrestricted supply of new settlers from Turkestan as before. So the Ottoman Empire would have few Turks
Being itself a product of the Turkic migration from the Inner Asia westward, the Ottoman Empire was cut off from the inflow of new Oghuz Turks even before it reached its apogee of power. This may be reason why it had so few Turks and lost its Inner Asian character so quickly
What I find interesting is that this confessionalization of Islamdom happened nearly simultaneously with the confessionalization of Christendom. Shia-Sufi and the Catholic-Protestant split happened almost exactly at the same time. The end of thread
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What I am saying is that "capitalist reforms" are a buzzword devoid of any actual meaning, and a buzzword that obfuscated rather than explains. Specifically, it is fusing radically different policies taken under the radically different circumstances (and timing!) into one - purely for ideological purposes
It can be argued, for example, that starting from the 1980s, China has undertaken massive socialist reforms, specifically in infrastructure, and in basic (mother) industries, such as steel, petrochemical and chemical and, of course, power
The primary weakness of this argument is that being true, historically speaking, it is just false in the context of American politics where the “communism” label has been so over-used (and misapplied) that it lost all of its former power:
“We want X”
“No, that is communism”
“We want communism”
Basically, when you use a label like “communism” as a deus ex machina winning you every argument, you simultaneously re-define its meaning. And when you use it to beat off every popular socio economic demand (e.g. universal healthcare), you re-define communism as a synthesis of all the popular socio economic demands
Historical communism = forced industrial development in a poor, predominantly agrarian country, funded through expropriation of the peasantry
(With the most disastrous economic and humanitarian consequences)
Many are trying to explain his success with some accidental factors such as his “personal charisma”, Cuomo's weakness etc
Still, I think there may be some fundamental factors here. A longue durée shift, and a very profound one
1. Public outrage does not work anymore
If you look at Zohran, he is calm, constructive, and rarely raises his voice. I think one thing that Mamdani - but almost no one else in the American political space is getting - is that the public is getting tired of the outrage
Outrage, anger, righteous indignation have all been the primary drivers of American politics for quite a while
For a while, this tactics worked
Indeed, when everyone around is polite, and soft (and insincere), freaking out was a smart thing to do. It could help you get noticed
People don’t really understand causal links. We pretend we do (“X results in Y”). But we actually don’t. Most explanations (= descriptions of causal structures) are fake.
There may be no connection between X and Y at all. The cause is just misattributed.
Or, perhaps, X does indeed result in Y. but only under a certain (and unknown!) set of conditions that remains totally and utterly opaque to us. So, X->Y is only a part of the equation
And so on
I like to think of a hypothetical Stone Age farmer who started farming, and it worked amazingly, and his entire community adopted his lifestyle, and many generations followed it and prospered and multiplied, until all suddenly wiped out in a new ice age
1. Normative Islamophobia that used to define the public discourse being the most acceptable form of racial & ethnic bigotry in the West, is receding. It is not so much dying as rather - failing to replicate. It is not that the old people change their views as that the young do not absorb their prejudice any longer.
In fact, I incline to think it has been failing to replicate for a while, it is just that we have not been paying attention
Again, the change of vibe does not happen at once. The Muslim scare may still find (some) audience among the more rigid elderly, who are not going to change their views. But for the youth, it is starting to sound as archaic as the Catholic scare of know nothings
Out of date
2. What is particularly interesting regarding Mamdani's victory, is his support base. It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that its core is comprised of the young (and predominantly white) middle classes, with a nearly equal representation of men and women
What does Musk vs Trump affair teach us about the general patterns of human history? Well, first of all it shows that the ancient historians were right. They grasped something about nature of politics that our contemporaries simply can’t.
Let me give you an example. The Arab conquest of Spain
According to a popular medieval/early modern interpretation, its primary cause was the lust of Visigoth king Roderic. Aroused by the beautiful daughter of his vassal and ally, count Julian, he took advantage of her
Disgruntled, humiliated Julian allied himself with the Arabs and opens them the gates of Spain.
Entire kingdom lost, all because the head of state caused a personal injury to someone important.