Tūrān (Persian: توران) is the ancient
Iranian name[1]
for Central Asia, literally meaning "the land of the Tur". As described below, the original
Turanians are the Tuirya Iranian people[2][3][4] of the Avesta age. According to Shahnameh's account, at least 1500 years later after the Avesta, the nomadic tribes who inhabited these lands,
were ruled by Tūr who was the emperor Fereydun's elder son. In modern discourse, now
obsolete, it was primarily an ideological term designating Turkic, Mongolic, Dravidian languages and Ugric languages and people more or less indiscriminately, implying a common ancestry and common culture
of the various ethnicities in question (see Turanian). The association with Turkic
cultures is also primarily based on the Shahnameh's account[5]. Tur/Turaj(Tuzh in Middle Persian)[6] is the son of emperor Fereydun and is the ancestors.
Turan in literature
Avesta
The oldest existing mention of Turanian is in the Farvardin Yashts of the young Avesta, which is dated by linguists to have
been composed somewhere approximately 2500 years ago. [7].
The Avesta contains the names of various tribal groups who lived in proximity to each other. According to Prof. Gherado
Gnloli:’’Iranian tribes that also keep on recurring in the Yasht, Airyas, Tuiryas, Sairimas, Sainus and Dahis’’. [8]. In the hymns of the Avesta,
the adjective Tūrya is attached to various enemies of Zoroastrism like Fraŋrasyan
(Shahnameh: Afrāsīāb). The word occurs only once in the Gathas, but 20 times in the later parts
of the Avesta. Apparently there is no ethnic difference between the Tūrya and the Ārya in the Avesta, both having Iranian names and being related genealogically.
The Turanians or Tuiryas as they were called in Avesta play a more important role in the Avesta than in the Sairimas, Sainus
and Dahis. Zoroaster himself hailed from the Airya people but he also preached his message to other neighboring tribes. [9][10].
According to Prof. Mary Boyce, in the Farvardin Yasht "In it (verses 143-144) are praised
the fravashis of righteous men and women not only among the Aryas (as the “Avestan” people called themselves), but also among the
Turiyas, Sairimas, Sainus and Dahis; and the personal names, like those of the people, all seem Iranian character". [11]. Hostility between Tuirya and Airya is indicated also in the
Farvardtn Yast (vv. 37-8), where the Fravashis of the Just are said to have provided support in battle against the Danus, who
appear to be a clan of the Tura people. [12]. Thus in the
Avesta, some of the Tuiryas believed in the message of Zoroaster while others rejected the religion.
Similar to the ancient homeland of Zoroaster, the precise geography and location of Turan is unknown. [13]. In post-Avestan traditions they were thought to inhabit the region north
of the Oxus, the river separating them from the Iranians. Their presence accompanied by incessant wars with the Iranians, helped
to define the latter as a distinct nation, proud of their land and ready to spill their blood in its defense.[14]. The common names of Turanians in Avesta including Frarasyan[15], Aghraethra[16],Biderafsh[17],
Arjaspa[18] Namkhwast[19] have been studied by Professor. Mayrhofer in his comprehensive book on Avesta
etymology titled: ‘’ Iranisches Personennamenbuch, I: Die altiranischen Namen. Faszikel l, Die Avestischen Namen’’.[20]
Late Sassanid and early Islamic era
The continuation of nomadic invasions on the north-eastern borders in historical times kept the memory of the Turanians alive.
[21] . After the 6th century, when the Turks, who had
been pushed westward by other tribes, became neighbours of Iran and were identified with the Turanians. [22][23]. The identification of the Turanians with the Turks is a late development, possibly made in the
early 7th century, the Turks having first come into contact with the Iranians only in the 6th century. [24]
According to C.E. Boseworth[25]:
| “ |
In early Islamic times Persians tended to identify all the lands to the northeast of
Khorasan and lying beyond the Oxus with the region of Turan, which in the Shahnama of Ferdowsi is regarded as the land allotted
to Fereydun's son Tur. The denizens of Turan were held to include the Turks, in the first four centuries of Islam essentially
those nomadizing beyond the Jaxartes, and behind them the Chinese (see Kowalski; Minorsky, “Turan”). Turan thus became both an
ethnic and a geographical term, but always containing ambiguities and contradictions, arising from the fact that all through
Islamic times the lands immediately beyond the Oxus and along its lower reaches were the homes not of Turks but of Iranian
peoples, such as the Sogdians and Khwarezmians. |
” |
The equivalence of Turk for Turanians is common in the Islamic era. The Shahnameh or the book of kings which compiled the Iranian
mythical heritage uses the two terms equivalently. Other authors including Tabari, Hakim Iranshah and many other texts follow
like. A notable exception is the Abl-Hasan Ali ibn Masudi , an Arab historian who writes: ‘’The birth of Afrasiyab was in the
land of Turks and the error that historians and non-historians have made about him being a Turk is due to this reason” [26],. By 10th century, the myth of Afrasiyab was adopted by the
Qarakhanid dynasty[27]. In the Safavid era, following the
common geographical convention of the Shanmahe, the domain of the Uzbek empire who were in conflict with the Safavids were
referred to as Turan. Some linguists normally derive the word from the Indo-Iranian root *tura- "strong, quick". Others
link it to old Iranian *tor "dark, black", related to the New Persian tār(ik), Pashto tor (thor), and
possibly English dark. In this case, it's a reference to the "dark civilization" of Central Asian nomads in contrast to
the "illuminated" Zoroastrian civilization of the settled Ārya.
According to Mohammad Taghi Bahar's work Sabk
Shenaasi, the name Turan derives from the Avestan "Tau-Raodan" which means "Further on the River" where the "River"
is to be considered Amu Darya. In the same document he mentions the word Turk is from Middle Persian "Turuk" which means "Warrior" or
"Horseman".
Shahnameh
In the Persian epic Shahnameh, the term Tūrān ("land of the Tūrya" like
Ērān, Īrān = "land of the Ārya") refers to the inhabitants of eastern-Iranian border,
referring to the Kushan Empire, pointing to a time when those areas where inhabited by
mostly Iranian nomadic tribes such as Scythians, Xionites,
and Hephthalites.
According to the foundation myth given in the Shahnameh, King Firēdūn (= Avestan Θraētaona)
had three sons, Salm, Tūr and Ēraj, among whom he divided the world: Asia Minor was given to
Salm, Kushan (including India) to Tūr and Iran to Ēraj. The older brothers killed the younger brother, but he was revenged by his
grand-son, and the Iranians became the rulers of the world. However, the war continued for generations.
Turan in modern literature
Geography
Since early 20th century, the word Turan was borrowed by the western languages as a general word for Central Asia. Accordingly, the phrase Turan Plain or Turan
Depression is a geographical term referring to a part of Central Asia.
Linguistics
-
Main article: Ural Altaic languages
The term Turanian was formerly used by European (especially German, Hungarian and Slovak) ethnologists,
linguists and Romantics to designate populations
speaking non-Indo-European, non-Semitic and non-Hamitic languages. [28] and specially speakers of Altaic, Uralic and Dravidian languages[3]. Marx Muller classified the Turanian language family into different sub-branches. The Northern or Ural-Altaic
division branch compromised Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, Samoyedic, and Finnic. The Southern branch consisted of Dravidian
languages like Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, and other Dravidian languages. The languages of the Caucasus were classified as the scattered languages of the Turanian
family. Muller also began to muse whether Chinese belonged to the Northern branch
or Southern branch.[29]
The main relationship between Dravidian, Uralic, and Altaic languages were considered typological. According to Encyclopedia
Britannica: Language families, as conceived in the historical study of languages, should not be confused with the quite
separate classifications of languages by reference to their sharing certain predominant features of grammatical
structure.[30]. Today languages are classified based
on the method of comparative linguistics rather than their typological features. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Max's
Muller proposal efforts were most successful in the case of the Semites, whose affinities are easy to demonstrate, and
probably least successful in the case of the Turanian peoples, whose early origins are hypothetical[31]. Today the linguistic usage of the word Turanian is not used in the
scholarly community to denote classification of language families. The relationship between Uralic and Altaic, whose speakers
were also designated as Turanian people in 19th century European literature is also uncertain.[32]
Anthropology
Modern DNA research has given a new insight into the concept of the Turan idea, at least insofar as it relates to Northern
Eurasian populations, especially Finno-Ugric, Baltic, Altaic, and Northeast Siberian
peoples. According to the DNA research of Tambets, Willems and Karaferet[33] at least 70% of Finnish, 49% of Sami, 53% of Udmurt, 35% of Latvian,
41% of Lithuanian, 20% of Eastern Evenk, 80% of
Yakut, 47% of Buryat, 40% of Chukchi and some 60% of western Inuit a.k.a Eskimo males carry the so-called N3 haploid in their Y-chromosome
DNA.
Ideology
In European discourse, the words Turan and Turanian designate a certain mentality, i.e. the nomadic contrast of the urbanized agricultural civilizations. This usage is probably in accordance with the Zoroastrian concept of the
Tūrya, which is not primarily a linguistic or ethnic designation, but rather a name of the infidels that oppose the
civilization based on the preaching of Zoroaster.
Combined with physical anthropology, the concept of the Turanian mentality has a clear racist potential. Thus, the scholar
J.W. Clackson described the Turanid or Turanian race in the following words:[34]
| “ |
The Turanian is the impersonation of material power. He is the merely muscular man at
his maximum of collective development. He is not inherently a savage, but he is radically a barbarian. He does not live from hand
to mouth, like a beast, but neither has he in full measure the moral and intellectual endowments of the true man. He can labour
and he can accumulate, but he cannot think and aspire like a Caucasian. Of the two grand elements of superior human life, he is
more deficient in the sentiments than in the faculties. And of the latter, he is better provided with those which conduce to the
acquisition of knowledge than the origination of ideas. |
” |
Politics
In the declining days of the Ottoman Empire, the word Turanian was adopted by
some Turkish nationalists to express a pan-Turkic ideology, also called Turanism. Presently,
Turanism forms an important aspect of the ideology of the Turkish Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), whose
members are also known as Grey Wolves.
In recent times, the word Turanian is sometimes used to express a pan-Altaic nationalism (theoretically including
Manchus and Mongols in addition to Turks - and potentially Japanese and Koreans), though no political organization seems to have adopted such an ambitious platform.
Fiction
The name "Turan" also appears in the fictional geography of the Conan the Barbarian
stories.
The Turanic Raiders from the real time strategy game Homeworld may be a reference to the
Turan.
Names
Turandot or Turandokht is a female name in Iran and it
means "Turan's Daughter" in Persian. Turan is also a common name in the
Middle East including in Iran and Turkey. Turanshah (Shah of Turan) is also the name of the brother of Saladin.
Turaj who is ancient Iranian myths was the ancestor of Turanians is also a popular name. The name Turan according to Iranian
myths derives from the homeland of Turaj. The Pahlavi pronunciation of Turaj is Tuzh according to Dehkhoda. Similarly, Iraj which
is also a popular name, is the brother of Turaj in the Shahnameh.
See also
References
- ^ Emeri “van” Donzel, Islamic Reference Desk, Brill Academic Publishers,
1994. pg 461. Actual Quote: Iranian term applied to region lying to the northeast of Iran and ultimately indicating very
vaguely the country of the Turkic peoples.
- ^ Edward A Allworth,Central Asia: A Historical Overview,Duke
University Press, 1994. pp 86.
- ^ I. M. Diakonoff, The Paths of History, Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp
100 : Turan was one of the nomadic Iranian tribes mentioned in the Avesta. However, in Firdousi’s poem, and in the later
Iranian tradition generally, the term Turan is perceived as denoting ‘lands inhabited by Turkic speaking tribes
- ^ According to Prof. Gherado Gnloli:’’Iranian tribes that also keep on
recurring in the Yasht, Airyas, Tuiryas, Sairimas, Sainus and Dahis’’. G. Gnoli, Zoroaster's time and homeland, Naples 1980
- ^ http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/f/firdausi/f52ek/part8.html Firdawsi, "The Epic of
Kings", translated by Helen Zimmern, eBooks@Adelaide 2004]
- ^ Dehkhoda dictionary: Turaj
- ^ Prods Oktor Skjærvø, “Avestan Quotations in Old Persian?” in S. Shaked and
A. Netzer, eds., Irano-Judaica IV, Jerusalem,1999, pp. 1-64
- ^ G. Gnoli, Zoroaster's time and homeland, Naples 1980
- ^ M. Boyce, History of Zoroastrianism. 3V. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991.
(Handbuch Der Orientalistik/B. Spuler).
- ^ G. Gnoli, Zoroaster's time and homeland, Naples 1980
- ^ M. Boyce, History of Zoroastrianism. 3V. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991.
(Handbuch Der Orientalistik/B. Spuler)., pg 250
- ^ G. Gnoli, Zoroaster's time and homeland, Naples 1980, pg 107
- ^ G. Gnoli, Zoroaster's time and homeland, Naples 1980, pg 99-130
- ^ Ehsan Yarshater, "Iranian National History," in The Cambridge History of
Iran 3(1)(1983), 408-409
- ^ Encyclopædia Iranica, "Afrasiyab", E.
Yarshater
- ^ Encyclopedia Iranica, “Agrerat”, Dj.
Khaleghi-Motlagh
- ^ Encyclopedia Iranica, “Bidarafsh”, Ahmad
Tafazzoli
- ^ Encyclopedia Iranica,[ http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v2f4/v2f4a064.html “Arjasp”, A. Tafazzoli
- ^ Encyclopedia Iranica,“Bidarafsh”, A.
Tafazzoli
- ^ M. Mayrhofer, ‘’Die avestischen Namen’’,IPNB I/1(Vienna 1977).
- ^ Ehsan Yarshater, "Iranian National History," in The Cambridge History of
Iran 3(1)(1983), 408-409
- ^ Ehsan Yarshater, "Iranian National History," in The Cambridge History of
Iran 3(1)(1983), 408-409
- ^ R. Frye, The Heritage of Persia: The pre-Islamic History of One of the
World's Great Civilizations, World Publishing Company, New York, 1963. pg 41
- ^ Encyclopedia Iranica, "Afrasiyab", E. Yarshater
- ^ Encyclopædia Iranica, "CENTRAL ASIA: The Islamic
period up to the mongols", C. Edmund Bosworth
- ^ Abi al-Ḥasan Ali ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Ali al-Masudi, Muruj al-dhahab
wa-maadin al-jawhar , Beirut, Lebanon : Dar al-Marifah, 2005
- ^ Encyclopædia Iranica, "Afrasiyab", E.
Yarshater
- ^ Abel Hovelacque, The Science of Language: Linguistics, Philology,
Etymology , pg 144, [1]
- ^ George “van” Driem, Handbuch Der Orientalistik, Brill Academic
Publishers, 2001. pp 335-336. [2]
- ^ "language." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica
Online. 27 Apr. 2007 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-27199>.
- ^ religions, classification of." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007.
Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
- ^ "Ural-Altaic languages." Encyclopedia Britannica. 2007
- ^ Tambets et al. American Journal of Human Genetics, April 2004
- ^ "The Iran and Turan", Anthropological Review 6:22 (1868), p.
286
External links
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