All 'dem Saracens are the same!!!

I second that.

Did you see the movie (or read the book), House of Sand and Fog? In the movie version Ben Kingsley played an ex-Iranian Air Force officer who had fled Khomeini's revolution and was living a diminished American dream while retaining his pride and keeping up appearances of affluence. During an argument, his wife (played by the stunning Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo) screams at the Kingsley character in contemptuous rage, "You want me to live like an Arab (she pronounced it Aaraab)?" It was a telling moment.

That brings me to the descriptive word, "Brownz" that Razib, you like to use. Is there the same problem there? Although I understand that within the US, it makes sense.

the persian attitude toward arabs can be found in the shahnameh as far back as the 10th century. the distaste toward the bedouin of the desert is deep seated in persian culture, which is fundamentally sedentary or urban.

That brings me to the descriptive word, "Brownz" that Razib, you like to use. Is there the same problem there?

sure. but the term 'brownz' applies to the deracinated and synthetic second generation, not to the culturally 'authentic' first generations. people like me, who will leave the brown community through outmarriage, or those who are insulated into a specific identity (e.g., ismaili gujaratis, or kashmiri pandits) are marginal, the central group i am talking of are brown american kids who are generating a pan-brown identity without regional specificity but racial distinction from the surrounding culture.

The nomads in the Shahnameh: the contrast is "Turan / Iran", I think, and the Turanians are Turks.

When Ibn Battutah (a Berber writing in Arabic) spoke of Arabs they were always bandits or riffraff. Educated Arabs had very mixed feelings about nomadic Arabs, who were sometimes noble savages and sometimes predatory scum. Supposedly "Arab" only became an identification in the XIXc. Before then people would identify them by clan, city, or sect, or just as Muslims, but not by race /language group.

This is the second (or the third) time I have seen John Emerson use the intriguing name Turan. Intriguing, because until now, I had not seen this usage in the English language. I have however seen it used in Bengali. Not in formal historical texts but in poetry and in children's fables. Iran-Turan were always used in tandem, meant to indicate faraway, exotic lands of bearded men, beautiful veiled women and magical djinns. It was clear to me where Iran was, but I never had quite figured out the location of Turan.

So, it is Turkey? One learns something new everyday - especially when you read blogs where the author and the readers are experts in scientific and cultural esoterica!

turan. in some translations it is stated as "iran and non-iran," non-iran being the lands beyond the the boundaries of the persian empire to the northeats.

WRT "the only Muslim Creationists I know are those weird Turkish groups", is that based on a very narrow-scope definition of 'Creationist'?

I've certainly been in many an online debate and a few meatspace discussions with Muslims whose beliefs I would class as 'creationist'... Certainly belief in special creation seems pretty common in Islam - the 'fatwah and counselling' section of Al-Jazeera's 'IslamOnline'website, for example, leads with evolution: '[The view that] man was a monkey and he evolved ... is not correct, and the evidence for that is that Allaah has described in the Qur'aan the stages of the creation of Adam.').

PS that's IslamOnline.com, not IslamOnline.net - though I'm a bit puzzled by the relationship between the two (they are very different sites yet both seem to be linked to al-Jazeera...).

Ruchira, the Turks originated in the NE of Eurasia. There's still one Turkish people (the Yakut) in far NE Siberia. It is probable but not certain that the first Turks in recorded history were the Hsiung-nu on the NW border of China and in Mongolia ca 300 BC.

The peoples of Mongolia and the steppe were moving toward the civilized world continuously from 700 BC to 1300 AD. First Scythians, then Turks, then Mongols.

Turkey was Greek up until ?800 AD?. Anatolia is the latest area of Turkish settlement.

Persia has had a very complex symbiotic love-hate relationship with the steppe peoples, sometimes ruled by them, often infiltrated and raided by them. In turn the Turks have been heavily Persianized, rather as the Romans were Hellenized.

"Turan" means the steppe, which after ?~200 AD? was nostly Turkish.

outeast, yeah, i know, the only thing i meant is that the professional creationist literature in muslim countries tends to be produced by a particular turkish outfit.

John,
I think the Scythians did not originate in NE Asia and move West, rather were Iranic speakers from near the Caspian who moved East. Long before the Turks the Steppe was mostly Iranic speaking...

Pconroy, I misspoke. You're right.

The way I look at it, the steppe way of life an war originated among Scythians about 700 BC and continued for two millenia. The steppe was much more fluid and frequently stirred than any sedentary area, and questions of ethnicity have to be handle much differently. Large confederations were almost always polyglot, and there was a lot of intermarriage and bilingualism.

I think that ethnicity and language group are very poor analytic tools for the steppe. Geographical location and scope, historical period, and relations to the sedentary world tell you infinitely more than a linguistic or ethnic description could.

John,
I agree wholeheartedly with your last comment, as I think the people of the Steppe are basically the same over the last few thousand years, but different cultures/languages have washed over this area repeatedly.
So that when the Tocharians and Scythians - Indo-European (Tocharian, Iranic etc) linguistically - expanded Eastward, they absorbed aboriginal Central Asians - who may have been Uralic (Turkic etc) speakers - but when the Huns, Mongols and Turks expanded Westward, they re-absorbed all the previous groups.
In terms of polyglot confederations, we have to remember the "Huns" who marauded in Europe and fought the Romans and Gauls, were composed of Huns, Avars, Sarmatians/Alans and Ostrogoths - who were respectively, Mongolic, Turkic, Iranic and Germanic speakers...

I should add that the Russian/Cossack expansion Eastward, was just another episode of this eternal Steppe cycle... and possibly we will have a Chinese expansion Westward into the Steppe, in the future, as the next episode...

I'd say the cycle is over. The military advantage of cavalry was the key factor, and that's gone.