REFRAMING THE CALIPHATE
There used to be, possibly still are, a standard question for history undergraduates which posits that ‘all history is contemporary history, discuss.’
Far from the static collection of what the German historian Ranke called ‘the facts,’ history has always been seen through the prism of the present. Nobody writing of the Russian Revolution today, for example, would write in the same vein as say sixty, or even thirty years ago. Hindsight always provides a distorted perspective. We forget that what is now the past was once the future. The dangers inherent in this are obvious, leading to an ahistorical approach to the past. As AJP Taylor once reflected “History is not another name for the past, as many people imply, it is the name for stories about the past.”
To further complicate things the requirements of ideology and ‘national prestige’ are constantly shaping and reshaping the historical ‘record.’ Moreover, as Orwell reflects in 1984 ‘he who controls the present controls the past,’ thus Trotsky’s role in the events of 1917 and the subsequent civil war were, after 1933, written out of the Soviet historical narrative by Stalin. Whilst within current Turkish historiography the Armenian genocide simply never happened.
This, of course, does not mean that there is no such thing as objective facts, things that have happened, happened whether the likes of David Irving said they happened or not. History can be a game practised by ideological card sharps. Consequently what is required of us is constant vigilance, watching out for sleights of hand, the three card trick with historical reality. One such attempt at the moment is the deliberate and concerted attempt by Islamicist propagandists to present the Ottoman Caliphate as a multiculturatural nirvana.
I first witnessed this on a BBC News 24 debate[1] as an Islamicist apologist, Dr Nazreen of Hizb ut-Tahrir presenting the caliphate in just these terms. Her claims went completely unchallenged. This benign and rosy view is now constantly peddled by Islamicist apologists and in contrast with the Crusades and Christian barbarism of the middle ages.
Now I know little about the operation of the Caliphate in the Middle East but I do know something of its operation in The Balkans, in particular, Bulgaria, which experienced 500 years of occupation by the Islamic Caliphate.
During these enlightened times Bulgarians :-
‘…were relegated to second-class citizenship, in their own country The place allotted to the Bulgarian people in the Ottoman feudal political system entitled it to no legal, religious, national, even biological rights as Bulgarian Christians. They had all been reduced to the category of the so-called rayah (meaning 'a flock', attributed to the non-Muslim subjects of the empire). The peasants who represented the better half of the Bulgarian population were dispossessed of their land. According to the Ottoman feudal system which remained effective until 1834, all of it belonged to the central power in the person of the Turkish Sultan. The Bulgarians were allowed to cultivate only some plots. Groups of rural Christian families, varying in number, were put under an obligation to give part of their income to representatives of the Muslim military, administrative and religious upper crust, as well as to fulfil various state duties. The number of the families liable to that payment was determined according to their position in the Ottoman state, military and religious hierarchy. The establishment of that kind of intercourse in agriculture - the fundamental pillar of the economy at that time, clearly led to the total loss of motivation for any real farming or and production improvements both among the peasants and the fief holders. The complex and incredibly burdensome tax system forced the farmers to produce as much as needed for their families subsistence. …………….A single Muslim's testimony was more than enough to confute the evidence of dozens of Christian witnesses. The Bulgarians were not entitled to build churches, set up their offices or even to wearing bright colours. Of the numerous taxes (about 80 in number) the so-called 'fresh blood tax' (a levy of Christian youths) was particularly heavy and humiliating. At regular intervals, the authorities had the healthiest male- children taken away from their parents, sent to the capital, converted to Islam and then trained in combat skills. Raised and trained in the spirit of Islamic the young men were conscripted in the so-called Janissary corps..’ ‘[2]‘
With the slow disintegration of the Ottoman Empire the Ottoman Turks reacted with savagery to Bulgarian attempts to liberate themselves. Indeed for the first, and one suspects the only time Bulgaria became an issue in British politics, -Gladstone re-launching his career by leading the campaign to highlight the Turkish atrocities. Whole villages were slaughtered, in one case herded into a church that was then set on fire. Prior to the Wars of the 20th century, these represented the greatest crimes against humanity committed in Europe in the modern era.
Now given the history of the British Empire, not least the record of the slave trade, I am not arguing for the superiority of the historical record of Western Europe. Moreover, there were instances of enlightened policy in Ottoman Europe, not least the welcoming of Sephardi Jews escaping antisemitic persecution in the west. However when continually having the crusades thrust at you, as if this somehow represented a contemporary political phenomenon it is important to have an accurate record of Muslim hegemony in South Eastern Europe under the Caliphate.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0E06f7_A_o&feature=related
[2] Translated from the book "Bulgaria Illustrated History" by Maria Nikolotva- Bulgarian text by Bojidar Dimitrov, PhD.- Published by BORIANA Publishing House, Sofia, Bulgaria
Far from the static collection of what the German historian Ranke called ‘the facts,’ history has always been seen through the prism of the present. Nobody writing of the Russian Revolution today, for example, would write in the same vein as say sixty, or even thirty years ago. Hindsight always provides a distorted perspective. We forget that what is now the past was once the future. The dangers inherent in this are obvious, leading to an ahistorical approach to the past. As AJP Taylor once reflected “History is not another name for the past, as many people imply, it is the name for stories about the past.”
To further complicate things the requirements of ideology and ‘national prestige’ are constantly shaping and reshaping the historical ‘record.’ Moreover, as Orwell reflects in 1984 ‘he who controls the present controls the past,’ thus Trotsky’s role in the events of 1917 and the subsequent civil war were, after 1933, written out of the Soviet historical narrative by Stalin. Whilst within current Turkish historiography the Armenian genocide simply never happened.
This, of course, does not mean that there is no such thing as objective facts, things that have happened, happened whether the likes of David Irving said they happened or not. History can be a game practised by ideological card sharps. Consequently what is required of us is constant vigilance, watching out for sleights of hand, the three card trick with historical reality. One such attempt at the moment is the deliberate and concerted attempt by Islamicist propagandists to present the Ottoman Caliphate as a multiculturatural nirvana.
I first witnessed this on a BBC News 24 debate[1] as an Islamicist apologist, Dr Nazreen of Hizb ut-Tahrir presenting the caliphate in just these terms. Her claims went completely unchallenged. This benign and rosy view is now constantly peddled by Islamicist apologists and in contrast with the Crusades and Christian barbarism of the middle ages.
Now I know little about the operation of the Caliphate in the Middle East but I do know something of its operation in The Balkans, in particular, Bulgaria, which experienced 500 years of occupation by the Islamic Caliphate.
During these enlightened times Bulgarians :-
‘…were relegated to second-class citizenship, in their own country The place allotted to the Bulgarian people in the Ottoman feudal political system entitled it to no legal, religious, national, even biological rights as Bulgarian Christians. They had all been reduced to the category of the so-called rayah (meaning 'a flock', attributed to the non-Muslim subjects of the empire). The peasants who represented the better half of the Bulgarian population were dispossessed of their land. According to the Ottoman feudal system which remained effective until 1834, all of it belonged to the central power in the person of the Turkish Sultan. The Bulgarians were allowed to cultivate only some plots. Groups of rural Christian families, varying in number, were put under an obligation to give part of their income to representatives of the Muslim military, administrative and religious upper crust, as well as to fulfil various state duties. The number of the families liable to that payment was determined according to their position in the Ottoman state, military and religious hierarchy. The establishment of that kind of intercourse in agriculture - the fundamental pillar of the economy at that time, clearly led to the total loss of motivation for any real farming or and production improvements both among the peasants and the fief holders. The complex and incredibly burdensome tax system forced the farmers to produce as much as needed for their families subsistence. …………….A single Muslim's testimony was more than enough to confute the evidence of dozens of Christian witnesses. The Bulgarians were not entitled to build churches, set up their offices or even to wearing bright colours. Of the numerous taxes (about 80 in number) the so-called 'fresh blood tax' (a levy of Christian youths) was particularly heavy and humiliating. At regular intervals, the authorities had the healthiest male- children taken away from their parents, sent to the capital, converted to Islam and then trained in combat skills. Raised and trained in the spirit of Islamic the young men were conscripted in the so-called Janissary corps..’ ‘[2]‘
With the slow disintegration of the Ottoman Empire the Ottoman Turks reacted with savagery to Bulgarian attempts to liberate themselves. Indeed for the first, and one suspects the only time Bulgaria became an issue in British politics, -Gladstone re-launching his career by leading the campaign to highlight the Turkish atrocities. Whole villages were slaughtered, in one case herded into a church that was then set on fire. Prior to the Wars of the 20th century, these represented the greatest crimes against humanity committed in Europe in the modern era.
Now given the history of the British Empire, not least the record of the slave trade, I am not arguing for the superiority of the historical record of Western Europe. Moreover, there were instances of enlightened policy in Ottoman Europe, not least the welcoming of Sephardi Jews escaping antisemitic persecution in the west. However when continually having the crusades thrust at you, as if this somehow represented a contemporary political phenomenon it is important to have an accurate record of Muslim hegemony in South Eastern Europe under the Caliphate.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0E06f7_A_o&feature=related
[2] Translated from the book "Bulgaria Illustrated History" by Maria Nikolotva- Bulgarian text by Bojidar Dimitrov, PhD.- Published by BORIANA Publishing House, Sofia, Bulgaria
