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Post by discovering on Dec 9, 2013 7:55:48 GMT 3
What is the story behind the star and cresent on the turkish flag?
Also What does the bow and three arrows symbolize? I know the myths behind them but what is the history of it? the truth in the myth
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Dec 9, 2013 12:55:01 GMT 3
The first attested usage of the star and crescent in the Islamic world was at the Seljuk conquest of the city of Ani in eastern Anatolia in 1064. When the Seljuks captured the city from the Byzantines, they erected a crescent and star symbol on top of the church that was converted to a mosque following the conquest; no usage of this symbol is attested in the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates as far as I know. The crescent and star seem to be a pagan symbol used by pre-Islamic Turks. The Turks worshipped the celestial objects of the sun, the moon and stars as gods; the Western Gokturk rulers placed crescent-and-star and sun-and-star symbols on their coins (this could have been a Sassanid influence as Sassanid coins often had these symbols) and among the gods worshipped by the the Manichaeist Orkhon Uyghurs were Kün Tengri (Sun God) and Ay Tengri (Moon God), which could have been pre-Manichaeist Turkic gods rather than Iranic Manichaist practices, or a blend of the two.
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