Ecopolitical Conflicts in the First Period of Islam

When we look at the political and economic conditions in the time of our Prophet, we see that there were first Roman and then Byzantine states in the West, and Persians in the East, but why is it that the Turks and the states they established and their relations with the Byzantines and the Sassanids are not mentioned much? This is the question I'm looking for an answer to! For example, we know that in 576 the Kök-Gök Turks came as far as the Caspian-Aral and the Crimea, threatened the Eastern Romans, and that another Turkic tribe, the Avars, contacted Justin I (565-578). It should be remembered that the Avars, who lived through a golden age under the rule of Mrs. Kagan, seized the old Turkish-Hun homelands, in this sense Ata Illig (Attila) was the real heir, and that the Byzantines fought the Persians with their support.

It should also be remembered here that the Khazars played a major role in the history of Eastern Europe and established an orderly state, and that between the 7th and 10th centuries they were the first Turkish tribe and khanate to provide political stability in the Caucasus, in the north of the Black Sea, in the Itil, in Ozi, in Çolma (Kama) and in the area extending to Kyiv.

The Gök Turks are on a par with the Sassanids and Byzantines

It should also be noted that the Khazars, who formed the most extreme wing of the Kök-Gök Turk Khaganate in the west, and the Western Kök-Gök Turk Khagan, helped Byzantium against the Sassanids with their will. Between 350 and 558, the Gök Turks, who eliminated West Turkestan, Afghanistan, and the Akhuns, a state consisting mainly of the War-Hun branch of the Huns, thus rose to a position equivalent to the Sassanids and Byzantines, the global powers of the period.

It is known that during the period of tension between the Persians/Persians and the Turks in the 6th century, during the time of the IV Hormuz (or Ordmuz)11, who was called Türk-zade because he was the son of Khosrow Anushirvan born of a Turkish wife, the Turks intervened in the internal affairs of Iran. What needs to be noted here is that the Persians, as they did not stick to any treaty made before, and still created obstacles for the Turks in East-West trade.

Sassanids' Efforts to Control the Maveraünnehir Silk Road and the Gök Türk Operation

The leader of the Kök-Gök Turks, Istemi Yagbu (556), who tried to have good relations with the Sassanids through marriage, experienced tension with the Sassanids because of the Sogdians. They invaded Yemen, blocked the way for the Byzantine ships to India, significantly seized the trade of the Maveraünnehir silk road, significantly reduced the taxes that the Turks received from the passage of Chinese silk through the Sogdians, and increased the market value of their own silk.

After the state gained its independence in 552, when his elder brother Bumin received the title of "First Khagan", he had the envoys sent by Istemi, who was "yabgu", under the administration of the western wing killed by fraud Continuing the military operation in the west, Istemi Kagan, who reached his borders to the Caspian Sea, tried the southern way when he saw that there would be problems in the sale of silk as well as other mines, but decided to fight the Sassanids over the troubles seen here,  for this, he wanted to make an agreement with Byzantium.

The merchant, who had known from time immemorial that the Sassanids and Byzantium were not on good terms, decided to send a delegation for the Byzantine-Gok-Turk alliance on the advice of the Sogdians. Thus, the Sassanids could be in a difficult situation. In 567, the Sogdian merchant/envoy Maniakh sent a delegation to the Byzantine capital through the Caucasus, north of the Caspian Sea.  This is the first delegation sent to the West, that is, to Byzantium. (567) The delegation was headed by Maniakh of Sogdi.

To sum up, the Sogdians, who have an important place in the trade of the region, were protected and protected because of the importance they gave to trade as long as they fulfilled their duties towards the state as stated in the monument of Bilge Kaan and Tonyukuk. The same situation continued during the Uyghur period. They were employed both in trade and in foreign affairs due to their multilingualism.

Istemi Yabgu's u policy was successful, and the Byzantine-Sassanid wars (571) began. The Sky Turks continued to advance westwards, and so they began. In the meantime, they reached the west as far as the Kuban River basin and Azerbaijan in the north of the Caucasus. The Turks strictly followed their treaties with Byzantium; They put pressure on the Sassanids. The Byzantines, on the other hand, did not comply with the treaty and moreover, they established friendship with the Avars who fled from the Gök Turks and gave them lands to settle in.

The point I would like to draw attention to here is that it will be difficult to follow the intellectual and religious developments of that period without paying attention to the eco-political conflicts of the period. In Byzantium, for example, the Nestorian and Monophysist Christian sects were vehemently opposed to the Orthodox faith that ruled the country. The Sassanid region had become a battlefield where Faith, Judaism, and Christianity all engaged in the struggle against the official Mazdek religion. The one who protected the Sassanids from the Mazdek rebellion (486) was the White Hun Turkish state, with whom they constantly clashed.

Eco-Political Conflicts and Religiousness

Why the Prophet wanted Constantinople to be taken should be considered in the context of the economic-political conflicts of the period and the Umayyads' understanding of the importance of the religious element in their efforts to reach Constantinople through the Maveraünnehri, Khorasan and the Caucasus should be emphasized. As a matter of fact, you know that Maslama b. 'Abd'il-Malik, one of the famous commanders of the Umayyads, the brother of Caliph Walid I (705-715), besieged Constantinople as the commander of the Arab army in 717-718.

We can say that Mesleme's campaign in the Caucasus, far from looking for capuls in a mountainous and poor area, developed policies to make the polytheists and especially the nomads know that they convert much more easily than Christians and Jews. For this reason, it is possible that Mesleme hopes to Islamize the people of Jebel in the Caucasus by defeating them in the bidet and to open the way to the Bosphorus coasts along the Black Sea through the Caucasus in the face of the difficulty of the short road through the Taurus.

It should not be forgotten that the rulers of the Caspian State, which was very successful from a commercial point of view, provided a religiously tolerant environment, that there were those who belonged to Christianity and Judaism, the Kök Tengri faith, that their legal status was protected, and that the condition of the Khwarazm, whom they asked for help against Russian oppression, had an effect on their acceptance of Islam.

It should also be remembered that after the economic and political pressures of the Khazars in the conversion of the Bulgarian Turks to Islam, Il-teber was taken after the embassy delegation sent by the Abbasid caliph and his circle officially converted to Islam.

If we return to the Khazars, the Arabs achieved their most important success in the region with the words "The Armenian and the governor of Azerbaijan, Marwan b. They obtained it through Muhammad's campaign in 737. On this occasion, the Khazar Khagan was forced to ask for peace and was asked to accept Islam. After the obligatory acceptance, the "Muslimness" of the Khazar Khagan did not last long and he returned to his former religion immediately after the Arabs withdrew.

The reason for the adoption of Judaism as the official state religion; It was that the Khazar Khaganate was not only an independent state, but also an indication of its equality between the Byzantine and the Muslim Arab Caliphate, which was a Christian state.

That is why we first read pre-Islamic Turkish History to understand our day. In the words of Ahmet Taşağıl, "Why do Tuvali, who lives in the Sayan Mountains in the south of Sibria, and a Turk living in the Anatolian Mountains speak a similar language? Why are the place names in the God Mountains similar to the place names in Turkey? The answers to all these questions are hidden in the Pre-Islamic Turkish History. Because Pre-Islamic Turkish History encompasses the entire early history of all communities of Turkic origin, especially the Republic of Turkey."

Then, in the context of the messages brought by the Prophet Muhammad, we are looking for the possibility of re-patriating Philosophy in Anatolia by centering on Farabi's vision of the "School of Truth", the founding philosopher of the Mashshai teaching. For this reason, we examine the ancient Turkish beliefs before Islam (kamlık, Gök-Kök Tanrı, and the cult of ancestors), paying attention to the political, social and economic conditions of the period in which Ahmed Yesevi was raised, and examining the formation period of the doctrine of "Oneness of Being", in which he reconciled the predominance of Arabic and Persian as a scientific language and reconciled the pre-Islamic (believer) and post-Islamic (Muslim) attitudes and expressed them in a new language. Then we examine Ibn Arabi's Akbar conception and then its relationship with the systematized Vahdet-i Vucud, and then Yunus Emre's views.

Bibliography:

Ahmet Taşağıl, Kök Tengri'nin Çocukları, Pre-Islamic Turkish History in the Eurasian Steppes, (Istanbul: Bilge Kültür Sanat Yayınevi, 5th Edition 2015),

Saadettin Yağmur Gömeç, "Khazars in the History of T Ürk", İsmail Aka Armağanı, edit.: Musa Şamil Yüksel, (Ankara: Türk Kültürü Araştırma Enstitüsü Yayını, 2017),

a.mlf, "Avarlar ve Avar Sorunu in the History of T ürk", IV International Turkology Congress, 13-14 May 2011, (Turkestan: Ahmet Yesevi University Press, 2011),

Mualla Satellite Yücel, "9. From the 13th century, Yüzyıl'a Hazar, Bulgar, Pecheneg, Uz, Berendi, Karakalpaklı, Kuman, (Istanbul: Eastern Library 2020)