Especially the customary chronological framework for Muhammad’s life appears to have been worked out by later transmitters and collectors such as Ibn Isḥāq, rather than being traceable to the earliest layer of Islamic traditions about Muhammad. Muhammad is traditionally said to have been born in 570 in Mecca and to have died in 632 in Medina, where he had been forced to emigrate to with his adherents in 622. Who is Oghuz Khan? For example, before Muhammad’s emigration to Medina he is said to have received an oath of allegiance by twelve inhabitants of the city, an obvious parallel to the Twelve Apostles, and during the digging of a defensive trench around Medina Muhammad is said to have miraculously sated all the workers from a handful of dates, recalling Jesus’ feeding of the multitude. Most of the biographical information that the Islamic tradition preserves about Muhammad thus occurs outside the Qurʾān, in the so-called sīrah (Arabic: “biography”) literature. Furthermore, in the long run, the region, over which he ruled, is to this day one of the centers of the Chinese Muslims (the Hui). This panel examines four aspects of the interaction between Mongol dynastic figures and various markers of Islamic culture and identity to show how both were transformed in the long process of rapprochement between a strongly rooted, if heterogenous, cultural formation and a new ruling elite. By examining the rhetorical and ideological exchange between Shaykh Uvays and Qara Yusuf, this paper offers a discussion of how the memory of the Mongols became an enduring part of the Perso-Islamic political landscape. [6], Last edited on 25 September 2020, at 15:43, Bangladesh National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Krum, https://books.google.com/books?id=Cq99HbGpIWsC&pg=PA159, "England Genealogy Resources & Parish Registers", "শাকিব খান আমার সন্তানের বাবা: অপু বিশ্বাস", "অপু ইসলাম কি আবার অপু বিশ্বাস হয়ে যাবেন? Instead, the connection rested upon a quite broader formulation of the Ilkhanid ulus as a geo-ideological concept, which could be distinct from the Chinggisid family, provided it was in the hands of a ruler who could uphold the political and religious traditions of the Ilkhanate. Moreover, some of the narratives in question are patently adaptations of biblical motifs designed to present Muhammad as equal or superior to earlier prophetic figures such as Moses and Jesus. I further examine what role, if any, the concurrent conversion of Ghazan Khan, ruler of the Mongol state in Iran (the Ilkhanate), played in Ananda's Islamization and how Ananda’s new religious identity affected his chances of gaining the Yuan throne after the death of the Yuan Emperor Temür Oljeitu in 1307. Muhammad, Prophet of Islam and proclaimer of the Qur’an. In the 8th century, they formed a tribal confederation conventionally named the Oghuz Yabgu State in central Asia. These questions will be addressed on the basis of a close reading of Chinese and Persian sources as well as on archaeological studies. Most such information thus comes from the sīrah (“biography”) literature, consisting of accounts of his life by various writers dating mainly from the 8th and 9th centuries. The principle of aniconism (opposition to the use of icons or religious idols) was an early feature of Islam, though under some historical dynasties or in some regions the prohibition was only partially or selectively enforced—e.g., under the ʿAbbāsid dynasty (750–1258) it applied only to public buildings. The letter interestingly echoes another conversion narrative in the histories of the Ilkhanid vizier Rashid al-Din and the court poet Banakati that too situates the Mongols’ conversion within a broader Islamic cyclical salvation history.

Who told you Oghuz Khan was a Muslim ? I suggest that this conversion account originated in efforts to appropriate amir Nawruz’s charisma as a “Mahdi like” reformer after his execution, in order to resolve the Ilkhan’s own crisis of legitimacy. The legend of Oghuz Khan is one of a number of different origin narratives that circulated among the Turkic peoples of Central Asia. Each such report is normally introduced by a list of names tracing it through various intermediaries back to its ultimate source, which in many cases is an eyewitness—for example, the Prophet’s wife ʿĀʾishah. [5] It is the surname of over 108,674 British Asians, making it the 12th most common surname in the United Kingdom. However, according to the sources, in 1295 Ananda embraced Islam influenced by his Turkestani wet nurse among others. It highlights the influence of the pre-Mongol Muslim community as well as the forced and voluntary migrations of Muslims during the United Mongol Empire period on the Hexi region. For instance, unlike many earlier Western accounts, no attempt will be made to remove supernatural elements from the narrative in the interest of transforming it into an account that appears plausible by modern historiographical standards. He was a tengrist. I argue that the letter is structured similarly to anti-‘Abbasid moral apocalypses, with the Mamluks filling the role of the apocalyptic tyrants and Ghazan the anticipated restorer of justice, or, Mahdi, in the cycle of prophetic revelation, corruption and renewal. He undertook his miraculous Night Journey (Isrāʾ) from Mecca to Jerusalem, where he prayed with Moses, Jesus, and other prophets.

Those reports are not consistent, however, and some include miraculous elements or stories obviously adapted from the Bible. Certain tensions with the Islamic narrative of the Prophet’s life remain, however. Certain verses assume that Muhammad and his followers dwell at a settlement called al-madīnah (“the town”) or Yathrib (e.g., 33:13, 60) after having previously been ousted by their unbelieving foes, presumably from the Meccan sanctuary (e.g., 2:191). Byzantine sources call the Oghuz the Uzes (Οὐ̑ζοι, Ouzoi). Ananda's conversion allegedly led to the conversion to Islam of about 150,000 soldiers, the majority of his troops.

The first pair of papers brings new perspectives to the conversion to Islam by two members of the Chinggisid family in the year 1295. The letter blames the Mamluks’ tyranny for the recent decay arguing that, in response, God had ordained the miraculous conversion of Chinggis Khan’s descendants, who are given the task of restoring justice, fighting polytheists and commanding right. The Oghuz, Oguz or Ghuzz Turks were a western Turkic people who spoke the Oghuz languages from the Common branch of Turkic language family. In the case of the account in Rashid al-Din’s and Banakati’s histories, I focus on the role of the “kingmaker” amir Nawruz as a herald of Ghazan’s revivalist role in an Islamic salvation narrative. Born in Mecca about 570 CE, Muhammad married a wealthy widow, Khadījah, in 595. For instance, a Syriac chronicle dating from about 640 mentions a battle between the Romans and “the Arabs of Muhammad,” and an Armenian history composed about 660 describes Muhammad as a merchant who preached to the Arabs and thereby triggered the Islamic conquests. Such evidence provides sufficient confirmation of the historical existence of an Arab prophet by the name of Muhammad. Prince Ananda 阿难答 (d. 1307), Qubilai Khan's grandson, ruled the Anxi province and headed the Yuan garrison in the Hexi region (modern Gansu and Ningxia). This is not to suggest that there was necessarily an element of deliberate fabrication at work, at least at the level of a compiler like Ibn Isḥāq, who was clearly not inventing stories from scratch. At the same time, the nature of the sources is not such as to inspire confidence that we possess historically certain knowledge about the Prophet’s life that is as detailed as many earlier scholars tended to assume.

The paper continues by tracing later transitions in the image of Ghazan, from a “reviver king” and Mahdi to a new type of centennial religious renewers, a “Mujaddid-king.” The study argues that the two alternative conversion accounts alongside with the later “mythization” of the figure of Ghazan indicate a broader move, not only towards a providential interpretation of Mongol rule as a realization of a divine plan to “renew” Islam, but also towards the cultivation of the image of the Ilkhans as domesticated “Stranger Kings,” a concept formed by Marshall Sahlins, who enjoy both opposing and complementary binary forms of authority and legitimacy, namely, indigenous and foreign, internal and external, or in this case, Islamic and Mongol. Greatest Chanyu(king) of Xiongnu Empire. Home | About | Membership | Journal | Conferences | Privacy Policy | Terms and Conditions | Refund Policy, From Convert to Mahdi: Ghazan Khan’s Alternative Conversion Narratives, Conversion to Islam in Mongol-ruled Hexi (China): The Life and Times of Prince Ananda, Rashīd al-Dīn’s History of Oghuz as a Gloss on the Mongol Past, The ‘Ilkhanid Legacy’ and the Re-imagining of Dynastic Rulership under the Jalayirids and Qara Quyunlu. Get kids back-to-school ready with Expedition: Learn! Ibn Isḥāq’s original book was not his own composition but rather a compilation of autonomous reports about specific events that took place during the life of Muhammad and also prior to it, which Ibn Isḥāq arranged into what he deemed to be their correct chronological order and to which he added his own comments. Here, Ghazan converts to Islam upon hearing from the amir Nawruz that he will be the prophesized “reviver king,” who will restore utopian justice and rejuvenate Islam. Moreover, a number of rudimentary details about Muhammad are confirmed by non-Islamic sources dating from the first decades after Muhammad’s traditional date of death. These stories, later known as the “Oghuznāma,” provide an etiology for the tribes of Oghuz Turks that occupied the western Eurasian steppe and that, under the leadership of the Saljuqs, had entered the Middle East two centuries before the Mongols.

Arguably the single most important work in the genre is Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq’s (died 767–768) Kitāb al-maghāzī (“Book of [the Prophet’s] Military Expeditions”). Finally, “The ‘Ilkhanid legacy’ and the re-imagining of dynastic rulership” flips the scales, making the Mongol legacy the “source” from which later dynasties drew for cultural and political legitimacy. One of these histories is the earliest extant lengthy prose elaboration of the cycle of legends concerning Oghuz Khan and his descendents. Tradition holds that when Muhammad had his first vision, he fled from the cave in terror. He concluded a truce with Mecca in 628 but later forced it to submit. The Qurʾān provides very few concrete details regarding Muhammad’s life. Author of. The name Oghuz is a Common Turkic word for "tribe". Karl Jahn went so far as to see in Rashīd al-Dīn’s work the first attempt at a unified history of the Turkic peoples. The text states that since the age of the Prophet whenever degeneration appears in Muslim religion and law, God brings forth an individual from among the powerful to strengthen Islam and rebuke the people. | বাংলাদেশ প্রতিদিন", "অপু বিশ্বাসের ভিন্ন সুর! Get exclusive access to content from our 1768 First Edition with your subscription. Rashīd al-Dīn’s version of the Oghuznāma has been recognized as the source for later Turcoman tribal identifications and, for this reason, has been extensively studied as an important document in the formation of western Turkic social organization. The paper starts by considering each account separately.

He was born in Mecca as a member of the ruling Hashim clan of the tribe of Quraysh.