The composite Turko-Persian, Turco-Persian,Robert L. Canfield, Turko-Persia in historical perspective, Cambridge University Press, 1991 or Turco-Iranian () is the distinctive culture that arose in the 9th and 10th centuries AD in Khorasan and Transoxiana (present-day Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and minor parts of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan). According to the modern historian Robert L. Canfield, the Turco-Persian tradition was Persianate in that it was centered on a lettered tradition of Iranian origin; it was Turkic insofar as it was for many generations patronized by Turkic rulers; and it was "Islamicate" in that Islamic notions of virtue, permanence, and excellence infused discourse about public issues as well as the religious affairs of the Muslims, who were the presiding elite."
In subsequent centuries, the Turco-Persian culture was carried on further by conquering peoples, mainly the two key Turkic groups Oghuz and Karluk tribes, to neighbouring regions, eventually becoming the predominant culture of the ruling and elite classes of South Asia (where it evolved into Indo-Persian tradition), Central Asia and the Tarim Basin, as well as large parts of West Asia.
Origins Turkic-Persian tradition was a variant of Islamic culture. Islamic notions of virtue, permanence, and excellence permeated discussions on public issues and the religious affairs of the presiding Muslim elite.
After the Muslim conquest of Persia, Middle Persian, the language of Sassanids, continued in wide use well into the second Islamic century (eighth century) as a medium of administration in the eastern lands of the Caliphate.
Politically, the Abbasids soon started losing their control, causing two major lasting consequences. First, the Abbasid Caliph al-Mutasim (833–842) greatly increased the presence of Turkic mercenaries and Mamluk slaves in the Caliphate, and they eventually displaced Arabs and Persians from the military, and therefore from the political hegemony, starting an era of Turco-Persian symbiosis.Bernard Lewis, "The Middle East", 1995, p. 87
Second, the governors in Khurasan, Tahirids, were factually independent; then the Saffarids from Sistan freed the eastern lands, but were replaced by independent Samanids, although they showed perfunctory deference to the Caliph.
Language
Middle Persian was a lingua franca of the region before the Islamic invasion, but afterwards Arabic became a preferred medium of literary expression.
In the ninth century a new Persian language emerged as the idiom of administration and literature. Tahirids and Saffarids continued using Persian as an informal language, although for them Arabic was the "only proper language for recording anything worthwhile, from poetry to science",Frye, R.N. 1975. The Golden Age of Persia: The Arabs in the East. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1921 but the Samanids made Persian a language of learning and formal discourse. The language that appeared in the ninth and tenth centuries was a new form of Persian, based on the Middle Persian of pre-Islamic times.The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca, ed. Nile Green, (University of California Press, 2019), 10.
The Samanids began recording their court affairs in Persian, and they used it as the main public idiom. The earliest great poetry in New Persian was written for the Samanid court. Samanids encouraged translation of religious works from Persian into Arabic. Even the learned authorities of Islam, the ulama, began using the Persian lingua franca in public, although they still used Arabic as a medium of scholarship. The crowning literary achievement in the early New Persian language, the Book of Kings of Ferdowsi, presented to the court of Mahmud of Ghazni (998–1030), was more than a literary achievement; it was a kind of Iranian nationalistic memoir, Ferdowsi galvanized Persian nationalistic sentiments by invoking pre-Islamic Persian heroic imagery. Ferdowsi enshrined in literary form the most treasured stories of popular folk-memory.
Before the Ghaznavids broke away, the Samanid rulership was internally falling to its Turkic servants. The Samanids had their own guard of Turkic Mamluk mercenaries (the ghilman), who were headed by a chamberlain, and a Persian and Arabic speaking bureaucracy, headed by a Persian vizier. The army was largely composed of mostly Turkic Mamluks. By the latter part of the tenth century, Samanid rulers gave the command of their army to Turkic generals.
These generals eventually had effective control over all Samanid affairs. The rise of Turks in Samanid times brought a loss of Samanid southern territories to one of their Mamluks, who were governing on their behalf. Mahmud of Ghazni ruled over southeastern extremities of Samanid territories from the city of Ghazni. Turkic political ascendancy in the Samanid period in the tenth and eleventh centuries resulted in the fall of Samanid ruling institution to its Turkic generals; and in a rise of Turkic pastoralists in the countryside.
The Ghaznavids (989–1149) founded an empire which became the most powerful in the east since the Abbasid Caliphs at their peak, and their capital at Ghazni became second only to Baghdad in cultural elegance. It attracted many scholars and artists of the Islamic world. Turkic ascendance to power in the Samanid court brought Turks as the main patrons of Persianate culture, and as they subjugated Western and Southern Asia, they brought along this culture.
The Kara-Khanid Khanate (999–1140) at that time were gaining pre-eminence over the countryside. The Kara-Khanids were pastoralists of noble Turkic backgrounds, and they cherished their Turkic ways. As they gained strength they fostered development of a new Turkic literature which was entirely based on the Persian literature that had arisen earlier.
Historical outline Early Turkic-Iranian interactions Peter B. Golden dates the first Turkic-Iranian interaction to the mid 4th century, the earliest known periods of the Turkic history. The origins of the First Turkic Khaganate is associated with Iranian elements. The Sogdian influence on the state was considerable. The Sogdians, international merchants of long standing with numerous trading colonies along the silk route, needed the military power of the Turks. Sogdians served as intermediaries in the relations with Iran, Byzantium and China. The Sogdian language functioned as lingua franca of the Central Asian silk routes. The Uyghur Khaganate that succeeded the Turkic Empire was even more closesly associated with Sogdian elements. After the fall of the Uyghur nomadic state, many Turkic peoples moved to Turkestan, then a predominantly Iranian and Tokharian region, which became increasingly Turkicized.
Beginning of the Turco-Persian symbiosis
In Samanid times began the growth of the public influence of the ulama, the learned scholars of Islam. Ulama grew in prominence as the Samanids gave special support to Sunnism, in contrast with their Shiite neighbors, the Buyids. They enjoyed strong position in the city of Bukhara, and it grew under the Samanids' successors Kara-Khanid Khanate. Kara-Khanids established a dominance of ulama in the cities, and the network of recognized Islamic authorities became an alternative social instrument for the maintenance of public order. In the Kara-Khanid Khanate formed an ethnically and dogmatically diverse society. The eastern lands of the Caliphate were ethnically and religiously very diverse. Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians were numerous, and also several minority Islamic sects had considerable following. These diverse peoples found refuge in the cities. Bukhara and Samarkand swelled and formed ethnic and sectarian neighborhoods, most of them surrounded by walls, each with its own markets, caravansaraies, and public squares. The religious authorities of these non-Muslim communities became their spokesmen, just as the ulama were for the Muslim community, they also began overseeing internal communal affairs. Thus, alongside the rise of the ulama, there was a corresponding rise in the political importance of the religious leaders of other doctrinal communities.
The ruling institution was dominated by Turks from various tribes, some highly urbanized and Persianized, while others remained rural and distinctly Turkic. It was managed by bureaucrats and ulama who used both Persian and Arabic. Its literati participated in the high cultural traditions of both the Arabic and Persian worlds within the broader Islamicate society. This composite culture was the beginning of the Turko-Persian variant of Islamicate culture. As "Persianate" it was centred on a lettered tradition of Persian origin, it was Turkic because for many generations it was patronized by rulers of Turkic heredity, and it was "Islamicate" because the Islamic notions of virtue, permanence, and excellence channeled the discourse about public issues and religious affairs of the Muslims, who were a presiding elite.Hodgson, Marshall G. S. 1974. The Venture of Islam. 3 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press The combination of these elements in the Islamic society had a strong impact on the religion, because Islam was disengaged from its Arabic background and Bedouin traditions and became a far richer, more adaptable, and universal culture.Frye, R.N. 1965. Bukhara, the Medieval Achievement. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, vii The appearance of New Persian, ascendancy of Turks to power in place of the Persian Samanids, rise of the non-Arabic ulama in the cities, and development of ethnically and confessionally complex urban society marked an emergence of a new Turco-Persian Islamic culture. As the Turco-Persian Islamic culture was exported into the wider region of Western and Southern Asia, the transformation became increasingly evident.
The early stages of Turco-Persian cultural synthesis in the Islamic world are marked by cultural, social and political tensions and competition among Turks, Persians, and Arabs, despite the egalitarianism of Islamic doctrine. The complex ideas around non-Arabs in the Muslim worldRoy P. Mottahedeh. The Shu'ubiyah Controversy and the Social History of Early Islamic Iran. International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2. (Apr., 1976), pp. 161-182Najwa Al-Qattan. Dhimmis in the Muslim Court: Legal Autonomy and Religious Discrimination. International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol. 31, No. 3. (Aug., 1999), pp. 429-444 lead to debates and changing attitudes that can be seen in numerous Arabic, Persian and Turkic writings before the Mongol expansion.Nathan Light, "Turkic Literature and the Politics of Culture in Islamic World", Ch.3 in Slippery Paths: the performance and canonization of Turkic literature and Uyghur muqam song in Islam and modernity, Thesis (Ph.D.), Indiana University, 1998.