Talk:Culture of the Ottoman Empire

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Why all these new headings containing nothing but a stub-mark? It doesn't really make the article look better. /The Phoenix 18:58, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Persian and Arab 2 Intro 3 A step back 4 Editing

[edit] Persian and Arab

Added Persian and Arab cultures.Khosrow II 23:04, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

The Ottoman Empire was more culturally Iranian and Arabic than anything else! The religious language of the empire was Arabic, and the cultural language was Persian. The script of the Ottomans was Arabic, and ofcourse, the religion was Islam. The Ottoman sultans wrote their poems in Persian. The overwhelming majority of the words in the Ottoman Turkish language consisted Arabic and Persian words. Today, no Turk can pick up an Ottoman text and read it without knowing the Arabic script, the Arabic language, and the Persian language. The historical revisionism has to end, you cannot change history just so you can feel more "European".Khosrow II 17:25, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

It's main problem is "Persian for culture language" thought, It's totaly wrong, Arabic script used because of Islam and Quran, Persian used as literature and science language. Ottoman empire was theocratic Islamic state and these two languages were very important for all Islamic world. You can see many of Persian and Arabic words in Malay language, Indonesian too today. Turkish taken more words than other langauges from Farsi because of geographically status. As I said, I'm not nationalist, not Pan-Turkist, even I think using "European" for modern peoples is very incorrect. I'm Atheist but first of all I'm humanist, all people and all nations are respectable for me. Meantime my user name isn't ZaparoDJik :)Zaparojdik 21:49, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Then you have no reason to take out the fact that the Ottoman Empire was full of Arabic and Persian culture.Khosrow II 18:54, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

That's ridiculous. Ottoman has never been a mixture of Arab and Farsi culture, you use "fully". There were some relationship between Ottoman Turks and Arabs & Persians because of religion All Islamic world was relationship between Arabs and Persians, like Ocenian country Indonesia. You live in dreamland with your pan-Iranist friends but we won't let you put POV edits here. There were about 48 nations in Ottoman. Their culture was, Islamic culture under Turkish traditions. Zaparojdik 22:33, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Can you read Ottoman Turkish? No. Let history decide what is fact and what is fiction, not your POV.Khosrow II 19:46, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm mostly understand Ottoman Turkish but can't use as well as I understand, politic language of Turkish is very near to Ottoman Turkish. Zaparojdik 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Intro

Look, nobody is denying Persian influence, but you have to understand that this refers to the culture of the Ottoman Empire and not the culture of ottoman court.. Half the empire were non-muslims, so I fail to see why we cant include Byzantine culture? My current edit avoids this list and narrows down everything to two categories that all of them fall under: Byzantine and Islamic.. Persian culture was one of the main cultures of Islamic culture.. I really dont understand how some people find this offensive, seriously guys, I am trying to find a middle way so that there wont be revert wars. Feel free to tell me why you think that the current edit is not correct.. Baristarim 11:07, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

What exactly is "Byzantine culture"?--Tekleni 11:08, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

cultures of the/that lived under the Byzantine Empire: Greek, Roman, Armenian, Jewish etc.. Baristarim 11:13, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think so. There was no really significant number of Armenians in the Byzantine Empire, when it (i.e. Constantinople) fell to the Turks, and Byzantine omits the Balkan Slavs (i.e. Bulgarians). I think using Byzantine as a blanket term for all non-Muslim people in the Ottoman Empire is a mistake.--Tekleni 11:25, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I can see your point, but I dont understand where the Balkan Slav culture comes into play.. This is the first time I am hearing of Bulgarian influence.. We should mention the two-three major ones.. Armenians didn't have a major impact, not like Persian, Byzantine or Arabic in any case.. I mean Jewish culture had more influence than the Balkans or Bulgarians: even in modern Turkish of today, the words used to refer to four out of the twelve months come directly from Hebrew.. I mean, is the influence of bulgarian culture as great as the others? So Byzantine, referring a particular type of Greek culture (Greek+Roman+Christian of that era) covers extremely accurately that culture, and Islamic culture covers both Arabic and Persian.. All I am saying is that, if we start listing, that could be a slippery slope.. Baristarim 11:56, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Whatever, however, I do think that Jewish should be listed separately (I think there were more Jews in Muslim lands, where they faced less persecution than in Christian lands).--Tekleni 12:02, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Could be.. I will have to see how that can be done, the intro seems ok for now, I will try to see if it could be phrased differently.. Baristarim 19:42, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A step back

Just a sincere question: why is everyone spending so much time quibbling over one sentence in the introduction section rather than making an effort on the rest of the article, which currently contains next to nothing? One would think that people's energies would be better concentrated there. —Saposcat 11:34, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Is this the first time you are running into a similar dispute? :))) Baristarim 11:56, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

 :) Not at all, of course. But I am as completely baffled by this kind of dispute every time I see it arise as I was the first time I ever saw it. So it goes. —Saposcat 12:00, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

there are close to 200,000 manuscripts and letters in Persian from the Ottoman empire that have not yet been even catalogued. I think if one does a fair comparison, probably the amount of Turkish work is less than the amount of Persian and Arabic work till the 18th century. But perhaps it is sufficient to mention that the term Turk in the Ottoman era was considered an insult and only after Ataturk came to power, it took a different meaning. The Ottomans themselves thus did not consider themselves Turk, but their primary identity was Ottoman and the primary language was Ottoman Turkish which is incomprehensible for Turks of today due to its large Arabic and Persian vocabulary. So the Persian and Arabic influence should be mentioned. --alidoostzadeh 20:48, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree, actually. But I still think efforts would be better spent on actually making the article itself actually worth reading (which it currently isn't) than on using the introduction as a battleground of ideas. (We would also do well not to make unequivocal claims that "the term 'Turk' in the Ottoman era was considered an insult", and remember that, in poetry at least, there were—albeit only on occasion—movements like the 16th-century تركى بسيط (Türkî-i Basîṭ) and poets like نديم (Nedîm), who pursued to differing extents a more "Turkish" agenda ... with admittedly little success). Cheers. —Saposcat 21:51, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Ali, I think you are failing to see the diff between ottoman court and ottoman empire.. Half the population of the empire was non-muslim. As I said above, even in modern Turkish of today, the words used to refer to four out of the twelve months come directly from Hebrew.. So please remember that as well.. I never said that there was no Persian influence, so please contextualise, the older version ended up simply as a list. I tried to put them into two categories, Byzantine and Islamic, that cover all that was mentioned.. Just because a country's name wasn't mentioned, there is no reason to get in arms up about it; no Greek has yet complained as to why I replaced Greek with Byzantine, in the same way I fail to understand why the replacement of Arabic and Persian with Islamic is causing such a fuss.. Why do u think that was wrong? Baristarim 23:58, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

It is true that the court and empire are not the same but you are forgetting the fact the court has a great influence on the culture of the whole empire. Also it was not just the court which supported Arabic and Persian languages. For example there was several Sufi orders like Naghshbandi, Qadiri, Mowlaviyah and etc. who had tremendous influence on the cultural life plus the Bektashti order for example which celebrates Nowruz. If I recall, I read somewhere the majority of traditional music instruments in Turkish have Persian and then Arabic names and also many of the Muqam's as well. I think the Ottoman empire was a good example of a multi-ethnic empire, but its prevalent Islamic culture was influenced greatly by Arabic and Persian traditions. In other words, it seems that during the Ottoman empire, Arabic and Turkish and Persian were not seen as foreign to each other but part of a coherent Islamic culture. I think the current version is fine. --alidoostzadeh 19:04, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing

The jewelry section in particular needs a good edit. I started, but then realized it would need to be rephrase. Seeing as I know almost nothing about the topic, could someone knowledgeable edit it? Karm Locke 02:11, 16 November 2006 (UTC)