THE EYERANIANS

An ancient gold cup mysteriously acquired by an English scrap metal dealer is expected to fetch close to a million dollars at auction after languishing for years in a shoe box under its current owner’s bed.

Owner John Webber says his grandfather gave him the 5.5-inch (14-centimetre) high mug to play with when he was a child, back in 1945.

He assumed the golden cup, which is decorated with the heads of two women facing in opposite directions, their foreheads garlanded with two knotted snakes, was made from brass.

But he decided to get it valued when he was moving house last year and was told it was actually a rare piece of ancient Persian treasure, beaten out of a single sheet of gold hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus Christ.

Read more… 

I was just informed by the host of the Shahrbaraz blogsite (http://shahrbaraz.blogspot.com/) that a new movie has been produced which is based on the life of Temuchin/Temudgin (same as demirchi=blacksmith in Turkish). The movie Genghiz Khan.was produced in Russia last year (2007) and has been shown in festivals but it’s now scheduled for public release in US and Canada and other places this month (June 2008 and later).

The  movie has also received positive reviews in the New York Times newspaper:

http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/movies/06mong.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Here is more information about the movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416044/

Note the following excerpt of the movie:

the film paints a multidimensional portrait of the future conqueror, revealing him not as the evil brute of hoary stereotype, but as an inspiring, fearless and visionary leader.

Genghis Khan was certainly fearless and inspiring to his troops, but the term “visionary” is more difficult to fathom. In strictly military terms, Genghis Khan was indeed “visionary”, as well as in his ability to unite the Mongol tribes. Chinese, Iranian, Japanese, European, Islamic, etc. references are near-unanimous in reporting the Mongols as ruthless, barbaric, destructive and without mercy towards combatants and non-combatants alike. References often cite the Mongols and Genghis Khan as prone to killing, rape, pillaging and destruction. Their main motto before every invasion was “submit or die”. 

This raises the question of how Genghis Khan would be “visionary” in domains such as human rights, mercy, city-building or learning? Historical events portray a very different “vision” indeed. The teeming city of Neishabur (Nev-Shapur) with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants was simply razed to the ground by the Mongol invaders. Note a Japanese artistic portrayal that shows a Mongol invader tormenting the elderly, women and children in Japan:

Japanese tradition and historiography portrays the Mongols as not only ruthless but cruel and merciless towards civilians, namely the elderly, women and children. Similar descriptions are available from other nations that fell under the Mongol conquests

(Photo: The Nicheren Memorial statue at Hakata, as displayed in p.67 of Stephen Turnbull’s “Genghis Khan and the Mongol Conquests 1190-1400”, 2003).

The first attempt at re-writing the history of Genghis Khan was done by Leon Cahun, a romantic writer of the 19^th century.

Leon Cahun (1841-1900). His writings helped lay the basis of the pan-Turkist movement which persists to the present day.

Cahun’s 1896 book text “Introduction a l’Histoire de l’Asie, Turcs, et Mongols, des Origines a 1405 [History of the Turks and Mongols]”, glorified Turco-Mongol conquerors such as Tamerlane and Genghis Khan as “supermen” and as members of a “racial aristocracy” who were the major proponents of culture, arts and sciences in world civilization (see  Hostler, 1957, p.141). 

Leon Cahun however was evidently unaware of the primary historical sources; it is also unclear if he could read Persian sources related to the Mongol conquests nor was he aware of the aforementioned Japanese references.

Mainstream academia and international scholarship has never endorsed the romantic writings of Cahun as his assertions are fundamentally historically unsubstantiated. The only positive reference that can be found with the Mongols is after their conversion to Islam in Persia and in their adoption of Iranian culture during their sojourn – in this period one does indeed see a flowering of arts and architecture. But this only occurred due to the powerful cultural and linguistic influence of the Iranians who had been conquered by the Mongols. Cahun of course made no mention of this.

 Cahun’s works however, become the basis of the pan-Turk movements of the 19^th century. This is corroborated by pan-Turk activist, Ziya Gokalp (1876-1924), is on record for having stated that Cahun’s book was written “…as if to encourage the ideal of pan-Turkism” (Ostrorog (1927, p.56).  Technically speaking, Gokalp was correct.

Ziya Gokalp (1876-1924). Although a Kurd by birth (from Diyarbakr, Eastern Turkey), Ziya Gokalp was to become one of the major thinkers of pan-Turkism .

 
It would appear that this new movie of Genghis Khan is being partly steered by a combination of false romanticism, pan-Turkist ideology along with possible political motives. If true, then this would seriously compromise the movie’s educational (if not entertainment) value. Genghis Khan is indeed a great historical figure, however a movie about him would be most beneficial if all the aspects of his career were elucidated.