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Post by Temüjin on Oct 30, 2008 0:05:40 GMT 3
There are chapters focusing on the late Ghaznavids giving essential details of the early Seljuks. mmh, i'm rather itnerested in early Ghaznavids... also, i only find very expensive copies...  |
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Post by keaganjoelbrewer on Oct 30, 2008 0:49:14 GMT 3
Wow... Otto Maenchen Helfen for $5?! Where did you get that from??? I will order one myself if they're that cheap!  Re: the book The Turks in World History, I grabbed a copy today from my library to take a look. I read the introduction. It seems to be nicely written, and mostly good content. But I did notice what Ihsan has warned about above, that the writer seems not to know anything about Turkish history before about 600A.D., which is a big shame because the books seems otherwise interesting. I think if you keep in mind this failing, it could still prove to be a valuable introduction to Turkish history. Also, he uses as a source that Peter Golden article that Ihsan recommended earlier. As for the C.E. Bosworth book The Ghaznavids I would grab it if your budget permits. I have this book sitting on my shelf for the holidays. I haven't read that one specifically but I have read other works of Bosworth and can wholeheartedly recommend him as one of the masters of the field of Central Asian history. And I'm glad I surprise you Ihsan haha ;D ;D. That book was awesome. You get a good article about the Seljuks, and then you get to read about the academics pregnant doging. There is no other book like that in the world. Very cool! hahaha ;D ;D I would like to mention also as an introductory book David Morgan's The Mongols. I know you didn't ask specifically about the Mongols, but this is the book I used as an introduction to things and it is absolutely wonderful. Easy to read, interestingly written, great summary of the scholarship and all in about 300 pages. For an introduction to the Mongols, in my opinion this book has it all. |
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Post by Temüjin on Oct 30, 2008 1:23:46 GMT 3
As for the C.E. Bosworth book The Ghaznavids I would grab it if your budget permits. I have this book sitting on my shelf for the holidays. I haven't read that one specifically but I have read other works of Bosworth and can wholeheartedly recommend him as one of the masters of the field of Central Asian history. well, i'm more or less only interested in Ghaznavid military, particularly that of Mahmud of Ghazni and his campaigns. |
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Post by arnewise12 on Oct 30, 2008 1:56:41 GMT 3
I got the book world of huns for 5 dollars, but it was a used one and not new , u can check it out on amazon.com
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Post by keaganjoelbrewer on Oct 30, 2008 5:00:08 GMT 3
I have a question for Ihsan or Altar. What did Kafesoglu say about Old Turkic religion that was wrong?
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Post by ALTAR on Oct 30, 2008 11:19:32 GMT 3
I have a question for Ihsan or Altar. What did Kafesoglu say about Old Turkic religion that was wrong? İhsan explained it before. But I do it again . Kafesoğlu claimed and wrote that Old Ancient Turk Religion was nearly same with Islam(not only one God belief, traditions, practices, rituels) ;D . So that Turks accepted Islam easily without fighting according to Kafesoğlu. Because of his conservative and religious ideology, he used these false statements nearly on all of his works. |
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Oct 30, 2008 15:32:28 GMT 3
Basicly, he takes the elements of the Old Turkic religion (things like the God, natural spirits, ancestral cult, etc) as separate and different religions, claiming that the main religion was monotheist Tengrism, thus he says that the pre-Islamic Turks were almost Muslims ;D However, Jean-Paul Roux's views are more accurate and scientific, as he points out the fact that all these different cults formed one religion, which he names Old Religion of Turks and Mongols.
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Post by ALTAR on Oct 30, 2008 23:51:13 GMT 3
Some books again.
Leon Cahun "Introduction to Asian History: Turks and Mongols"
Laszlo Rasonyi "Turkishness in the History"
Lev Nikolayeviç Gumilev, "Ancient Turks"
L. Ligeti "Turk Lands in the History"
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Oct 31, 2008 2:39:06 GMT 3
Even though Gumilëv was an important scholar, his book about the Celestial Turks / Gök Türks / Tūjué 突厥 (what he calls "Ancient Turks") has many inaccurasies.
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Post by Azadan Januspar on Oct 31, 2008 3:03:27 GMT 3
There's also the book by Dr.Pashino name of "Itinerary of Turkestan" giving some details of the early 19th century some cities and lifestyles in Central Asia.
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Post by keaganjoelbrewer on Oct 31, 2008 4:21:54 GMT 3
Thank you for the explanation Altar and Ihsan.
Re: Gumiliev, I would not recommend his works. He wrote a book on Prester John that is basically a big rant about Central Asian history. It is VERY disorganised and doesn't really have anything to do with the topic he was supposed to be talking about. Steer clear. Knowing a lot of things is not all that is required of a historian, you also need to be able to present it coherently; Gumilev seems not to know how to do this part.
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Post by jhangora on Nov 9, 2008 9:34:28 GMT 3
Thanx a lot.Lots of useful recommendations in this thread.Any book about early history of the Turks or the Gok Turk empire?
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Post by ALTAR on Nov 9, 2008 9:41:58 GMT 3
Gokturk Empire - Rene Giraud
Empire of the Steppes - Rene Grousset
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Nov 10, 2008 22:35:27 GMT 3
In Turkish, there are two professors who wrote books on this empire: Ahmet Taşağıl ( Gök-Türkler I in 1995, Gök-Türkler II in 1999 and Göktürkler III in 2004) and Saadettin Gömeç ( Köktürk Tarihi in 1997). Prof. Taşağıl uses Chinese sources on a great extent and even give translations of some never-translated-before Chinese texts concerning this empire, but what I noticed is that he did some mistakes while translating. Besides, he does little comparison between Chinese sources and Turkic inscriptions. He also doesn't care much about the original forms of Turkic, Iranic, etc names written in Chinese sources, and the worst thing is that he never gives Chinese characters while writing names in Chinese (he just uses Latin transcriptions, which have no eaning without the characters). One more thing is that he doesn't focus on the cultural history of this empire, he just wrote about chronological political history (but that's still something). Nonetheless, his books are still the best written in Turkish. Prof. Gömeç doesn't even know Chinese, he has absolutely no idea about the structure of this language, which sometimes directs him to very wrong assumptions. His writings are also heavily influenced from his Pan-Turkish ideology, which makes his work not very objective at all. And the thing is that, I told all these to him in person, he just said he doesn't need to kow Chinese because all the sources have been translated (which is absolutely false, there are still many Chinese sources that haven't been translated into any Western language, yet alone into Turkish). His positive point is that he knows Russian an extensively uses Russian researchs, but I also realised that he makes mistakes even when writing Russian names and words with the Latin alphabet ;D Maybe he doesn't know Russian that well, huh?  But nonetheless, his book has more footnotes, which makes it easier to understand the period and other peoples of Central Asia. There is also another professor, Osman Fikri Sertkaya, who wrote many articles about this empire and in 1995, collected them under a book titled Göktürk Tarihinin Meseleleri, but the articles mostly deal with lingual matters. Recently, in 2004, the Tujue (T'u-chüeh) 突厥 chapter of Jiu Tangshu (Chiu T'ang-shu) 舊唐書 has been extensively translated to Turkish and published by İsenbike Togan; a very important work, I must say. Anyway... One of the best monographies about the Türk Empire was Édouard Chavannes' Documents Sur Les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) Occidentaux printed in 1903, which gives translations of Chinese sources and studies the Western Türk Qaġanate and all the regions under their control. Even though the book is more than a century old, it's still a valid work and I don't think anyone can write a book much better than this. 55 years later, Liu Maocai (Liu Mao-ts'ai, Liu Mau-tsai) 劉茂才 wrote a similar book about the Eastern Türk Qaġanate ( Die Chinesischen Nachrichten Zur Geschichte Der Ost-Türken (T'u-küe), 1958), and even though the book is very important for scholars who don't know Chinese, it contains many errors, mostly because the author was not very amiliar with Turkic history and culture. As our dear Yabghu Altar pointed out, René Giraud also wrote a book about the Second Türk Qaġanate (682-744) titled L'Empire de Turc Celestes. Apart from him, Denis Sinor has written many interesting articles on the culture of the Türks in English, but they haven't been collected in a book, so you have to dig a lot in order to find them. A chapter of Peter Benjamin Golden's book about Turkic peoples also deals with this empire, so it would be useful for you. Similarly, René Grousset and Jean-Paul Roux also deal with this empire in some chapters in their books, but they aren't very detailed, more like for beginners. Apart from these, some Russian scholars have published dozens of articles and books about this empire, but they rarely get translated to Turkish or other Western languages |
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Post by keaganjoelbrewer on Nov 12, 2008 4:21:28 GMT 3
Last night I read an article called "The Historical Role of the Turk Empire" by Denis Sinor. It seems like a good introduction to the Gok Turk empire, so when I have the time I will type it up here for everyone to read (I'm in the middle of exam period right now  ). Make sure you remind me, because I will probably forget... |
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But nonetheless, his book has more footnotes, which makes it easier to understand the period and other peoples of Central Asia. There is also another professor, Osman Fikri Sertkaya, who wrote many articles about this empire and in 1995, collected them under a book titled Göktürk Tarihinin Meseleleri, but the articles mostly deal with lingual matters. Recently, in 2004, the Tujue (T'u-chüeh) 突厥 chapter of Jiu Tangshu (Chiu T'ang-shu) 舊唐書 has been extensively translated to Turkish and published by İsenbike Togan; a very important work, I must say.
).