Ottoman Cosmic Framework Expansion

WHAT DO WE BELIEVE? And why?

I learned something new while researching for this course – according to Wiki, the Japanese language is not descended from the Chinese language, although one of its written forms is. While I was teaching in Chinese universities, my linguistic colleagues all told me that the Japanese people AND the Japanese language originated in China.

Are they wrong? Is Wiki wrong? Or is ‘wrong’ perhaps the wrong word to use here?

What is in it for the Chinese researchers to prove conclusively that Japanese came from their territory and their language and their genetic base?

What is in it for the Japanese researchers to prove conclusively that they emerged indigenously?

When does academics become a proof text for what we believe is or wish to be real,

instead of an investigation into what was real in a certain context at a specific time?

As Bertrand Russell once said, ‘I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.’

HOW DO i SEE PAST my OWN PERSPECTIVE?

Friar Thomas arrives in Toronto from Toledo and says ‘Canadians are the same as Americans’. A year after he told me ‘the subway incident’…..Canadians sure are different from Americans!

HOW DO WE PERCEIVE?

What impacts us enabling us to form a sense of continuity in the world?

Erich Fromm Ye Shall Be As Gods history of the idea of God/history: alienated from initial

personal experience > explanation to others in language > group idea organized > ideology

What is the meaning of meaning? Think of it as form/package and content.

The image impacts us more strongly than the later word,

but the later word brings up the initial emotion and is thus linked to it: bridge, dragon

Metaphors emerge from pictorial cosmic framework and become a linguistic framework.

One culture’s metaphor ‘falls flat’ in another, so how do you transmit the meaning?

Can you relay the meaning through using another idiom / story / metaphor?

How do we ‘connect the dots’ to interpret and give meaning to our lives?

Said: “Perhaps this is not the age of the clash of civilizations but of definitions.”

Dialogue focuses on LISTENING – responsible to attend to awareness of the other

Self-identification focuses on CLARITY – responsible to attend to one’s own awareness

Ottoman Cosmic Framework Expansion

Before adopting Islam after the Abbasid victory at Talas in 751,the Turkic peoples practiced a variety of shamanism. After this battle, many of the various Turkic tribes—including the Oghuz Turks, who were the ancestors of both the Seljuks and the Ottomans—gradually converted to Islam, and brought the religion with them to Anatolia [northern Turkey] in the 11th century.

During his reign, Osman I extended the frontiers of Turkish settlement to the edge of the Byzantine Empire. In this period, the government used the legal entity known as the millet system, under which religious and ethnic minorities managed their own affairs with great independence from central control.

Under the millet system, non-Muslim people were considered subjects of the Empire, but were not subject to the Muslim faith or Muslim law. The Orthodox millet, for instance, was still officially legally subject to Justinian's Code, which had been in effect in the Byzantine Empire for 900 years. Also, as the largest group of non-Muslim subjects (or zimmi) of the Islamic Ottoman state, the Orthodox millet was granted a number of special privileges in the fields of politics and commerce, and had to pay higher taxes than Muslim subjects.

After taking Constantinople, Mehmed met with the Orthodox patriarch, Gennadios and worked out an arrangement in which the Orthodox Church, in exchange for being able to maintain its autonomy and land, accepted Ottoman authority. Because of bad relations between the latter Byzantine Empire and the states of western Europe, the majority of the Orthodox population accepted Ottoman rule as preferable to Venetian rule.

The Ottoman Empire was, in principle, tolerant towards Christians and Jews (the "Ahl Al-Kitab", or "People of the Book", according to the Qur'an) but not towards the polytheists, according to the Sharia law. Such tolerance was subject to a non-Muslim tax, the Jizya.

In accordance with the Muslim dhimmi system, Christians were guaranteed limited freedoms (such as the right to worship), but were treated as second-class citizens. Similar millet s were established for the Ottoman Jewish community, who were under the authority of the Haham Başı or Ottoman Chief Rabbi; the Armenian Orthodox community, who were under the authority of a head bishop; and a number of other religious communities as well. Christians and Jews were not considered equals to Muslims: testimony against Muslims by Christians and Jews was inadmissible in courts of law. They were forbidden to carry weapons or ride atop horses, their houses could not overlook those of Muslims, and their religious practices would have to defer to those of Muslims. The system commonly known as devşirme ("blood tax") was effectively used in the Ottoman Empire for centuries: in this system a certain number Christian boys, mainly from the Balkans and Anatolia, were periodically conscripted before they reached adolescence and were brought up as Muslims. These selected boys were trained either in the arts of statecraft or in the military to form the ruling class and the elite fighting force, Janissaries, of the empire.

In 1514, Sultan Selim I, nicknamed “the Grim” because of his cruelty, ordered the massacre of 40,000 Anatolian Shi'ites, whom he considered heretics, reportedly proclaiming that "the killing of one Shiite had as much otherworldly reward as killing 70 Christians." This was a very unusual incident perpetuated not with an ideological basis but on a personal psychotic basis. The state's relationship with the Greek Orthodox Church was largely peaceful, and recurrent oppressive measures taken against the Greek church were a deviation from the norm. The church largely left alone but under close control and scrutiny until the Greek War of Independence of 1821–1829 and, later in the 19th century, the rise of the Ottoman constitutional monarchy, which was driven to some extent by nationalistic currents.

The Ottoman legal system accepted the religious law over its subjects. The Empire was organized around a system of local jurisprudence. Legal administration was part of a larger scheme of balancing central and local authority. Ottoman power revolved crucially around the administration of the rights to land, which gave a space for the local authority to develop the needs of the local millet. The jurisdictional complexity of the Ottoman Empire was aimed to permit the integration of culturally and religiously different groups. The Ottoman system had three court systems: one for Muslims, one for non-Muslims, involving appointed Jews and Christians ruling over their respective religious communities, and the "trade court".

Mahmud II started the modernization of Turkey with the Edict of Tanzimat, implemented by his son in 1839, bringing in European-style clothing, uniforms, weapons, architecture, education, legislation, banking, institutional organization, agricultural and industrial innovations, new technologies in transport and communications, and land reform.

The Christian millets gained privileges, such as in the Armenian National Constitution of 1863. This Divan-approved form of the Code of Regulations consisted of 150 articles drafted by the Armenian intelligentsia. Another institution was the Armenian National Assembly. The Christian population of the empire, owing to their higher educational levels, started to pull ahead of the Muslim majority, leading to much resentment on the part of the latter. In 1861, there were 571 primary and 94 secondary schools for Ottoman Christians with 140,000 students in total, a figure that vastly exceeded the number of Muslim children in school at the same time, who were further hindered by the amount of time spent learning Arabic and Islamic theology. In turn, the higher educational levels of the Christians allowed them to play a large role in the economy.

The reformist period peaked with the Constitution, called the Kanûn-ı Esâsî ("Basic Law"), written by members of the Young Ottomans. It established the freedom of belief and equality of all citizens before the law. Primarily educated in western universities, the Young Ottomans believed that a constitutional monarchy would give an answer to the Empire's growing social unrest. Through a military coup in 1876, they forced the Sultan to abdicate in favour of Murad V. However, Murad was mentally ill and was deposed within a few months. Abdülhamid II (1876–1909), was invited to assume power on condition that he would declare a constitutional monarch. The parliament survived for only two years before the sultan abolished the representative body.

The rise of nationalism swept through many countries during the 19th century, and it affected the Empire. A burgeoning national consciousness, with a growing sense of ethnic nationalism, made nationalistic thought one of the most significant Western ideas imported to the Empire, then forced to deal with nationalism both within and beyond its borders. The number of revolutionary political parties rose dramatically. Uprisings in the Empire had many far-reaching consequences during the 19th century and determined much of Ottoman policy during the early 20th century.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14