Re: question - Turco-Japanese (a thought experiment for the group here)

Quoting Rodlox <Rodlox@...>:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: L-Soft list server at Brown University (1.8d)
> <LISTSERV@...>
> To: Rodlox Babnol <Rodlox@...>
> Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2004 11:54 PM
> Subject: Rejected posting to
>
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
> > To: <CONLANG@...>
> > Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2004 10:50 PM
> > Subject: Re: question - Turco-Japanese (a thought experiment for the group
> > here)
> >
> > > You might have hit on something here. I don't think the Turks had any
> much
> > > aversion to killing fellow Muslims - one of the reasons medieval Islamic
> > rulers
> > > liked Turkish slave-soldiers was supposedly that they were less prone to
> > such
> > > inhibitions than Arabs and Persians - but while it will have been very
> > easy to
> > > be assimilated by culturally superior Muslim Persians in Iran and Arabs
> in
> > > Iraq/Syria/Egypt, the religious devide will have made it hard to be
> > assimilated
> > > by Christian Greeks and Armenians in Anatolia.
> >
> >  um, the Turks became the rulers of Egypt (via those slave-soldiers - the
> > Mamluks)...and, culture and law was, at least in part, assimilated from
> the
> > Byzantines and Armenians (etc), in part thanks to marriage between the
> Turks
> > and their predecessors.
I do not understand what you are getting at. Are you saying you disagree with my
interpretation?

The culture of the Anatolian Turks was influenced by the previous inhabitants',
sure, but the point is it was so to a much lesser degree than in Egypt, where
the Turks were basically entirely assimilated - Egypt is still an
overwhelmingly Arab country, despite centuries of Turkic rule -, and Persia,
where Iranian-speakers still outnumber Turkic-speakers, and makes up the
culturally dominant part of of the population to boot. My suggestion is that
the lack of a religious divide made assimilation easier in the later places.

                                                       Andreas

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