Names of Anatolia
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This article describes the origins of the various names of Anatolia throughout history. Anatolia is the name of the peninsular landmass located between the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the upper Euphrates River.
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For more details on this topic, see Geography of Turkey.
This region falls nearly exclusively under the dominion of the modern Republic of Turkey. However, before the arrival of the Turkish people there, Anatolia had a long and chequered ethnic background, with each people contributing one or more autonyms, all of which appear in history.
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For more details on this topic, see History of Anatolia.
Often the populations of Anatolia assigned to it their own ethnonym or a name based on it. For example, Turkey is named after the Turkish people.
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For more details on this topic, see Name of Turkey.
However, there were other methods of deriving a names as well. This article traces the history of those names.
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[edit] Land of Hittites, Anatolia, Asia Minor and Byzantium
Before the the peninsula where most of the modern Turkish Republic is located became associated with the Turkish people, it was known by many names. These names reflect the history of the land being occupied by the Hattians, the Hittites (and other "indigenous" Anatolian peoples), Armenians, Caucasian peoples, pre-Hellenic Aegean peoples, Greek communities from the Homeric period till the Byzantine Era, several Persian empires and of course, different phases of the Roman Empire which ended with the fall of Byzantine Constantinople (1453).
[edit] Hattia
The oldest name for Anatolia, "Land of the Hatti" was found for the first time on Mesopotamic cuneiform tablets from the period of the Akkadian dynasty (2350-2150 BC). On those tablets Assyrian traders implored the help of the Akkadian king Sargon. This appellation continued to exist for about 1500 years till 630 BC, as stated in Assyrian chronicles.
[edit] Anatolia
The Greek name "Anatolia" means "the place of the rising sun". It is thus of the same meaning as the Latin names "Levant", "Orient" and the Arabic name "Mashraq". Of course Anatolia, Orient, Levant and Mashraq today designating different areas in the world. "Anatolia" can thus be understood to be "east to Classical Greek states" or "the Byzantine East".
[edit] Asia Minor
Asia Minor is a name used by the Romans for a province in Anatolia.
[edit] "Polin" and the Byzantine Empire
The name "Byzantium", before modern times, was only applied to the pre-Roman period Greek community located in modern day Istanbul. This name was replaced by "Constantinople" after the Roman general Constantine established it as the seat of his future empire. Therefore the name "Byzantium" was never applied contemporaneously to the Byzantine Empire, which always referred to itself as the "Basilleion Roumaion" (The Roman Reign). Contemporary Catholic Europeans tend to refer to it as "The Kingdom of the Greeks" or "New Rome". The name "Byzantium" is a neologism employed first by 19th Century French historians to distinguish this latter phase of the Roman Empire from its earlier phase which ended with the fall of Rome to the Visigoths in 475.
Anatolia was most often referred to as "Rome" by both Arabs and Turks during the Byzantine period. It is interesting to note that, Chinese historical literatures of this period often refer to the domain under Byzantium as either "Da Qin" (大秦) or "Fu Lin" (拂林). While "Da Qin" is of dubious etymology, and may refer to Western Rome, Byzantium and even Persia, "Fu Lin" is only applied to Byzantium. There is no doubt regarding the etymology of the name "Fu Lin", which is derived from the Greek "eis ten Polin" (In Constantinople), which later morphed into "Istanbul". "Polin" being used by the Tang Era Chinese both as the name of the imperial capital Constantinople and the entire imperial domain governed by it, perhaps reflects popular usage by Turks, Persians and Arabs of that time as well.
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For more details on this topic, see Byzantine Empire.
[edit] Turkic migration
[edit] Names of Turkish Anatolia
[edit] The land of Rum
Anatolia became a frontier opened for colonization by Turkic peoples of the Turkmen/Oghuz branch and other branches. Numerous Turkmen tribes, mainly migrating through Azerbaijan in the Caucasus, also through Iraq and Iran, settled the peninsula gradually from east to west.
The name "Turkey" as referring to Muslim Anatolia appeared much earlier in Christian, especially "Frankish" (Western Europeans of the Catholic faith) historical literatures than in Muslim ones. The Muslim Turks preferred to refer the land of Anatolia as Rum, implying a separation between the concepts of the "Christian State of Rome" (Byzantium) and the "Land of Rome" (Anatolia). As Byzantine Iconia (Konya) fell to the Seljuq viceroyalty of Anatolia and became the Muslim "Sultanate of Rum" under a Seljuq prince, more and more Anatolian Turks identified themselves as "Rumi", not the least the world famous, Khorasan-born Sufi poet Mevlana Celaleddin now known by this nom de plume, who lived in Konya for half of his life.
Anatolia as the land of "Rum", but not as an ethnically homogeneous country of Turks is a subject of academic curiosity. The Khorasan-born Celaleddin, no doubt of Persian-Turkish heritage, learned not only to speak the local Turkish dialect of Konya, but also the Cappadocian Greek language widely spoken (the majority of the subjects of the Sultanate of Rum could be speaking diverse languages other than Turkish) in Southwestern Anatolia back then.
In early Ming China, the land of Anatolia was still assumed to be a region contested by several states: Ottoman, Timurid, Akkoyunlu etc, rather than a unified Ottoman Caliphate. Things of Ottoman origin was thus identified as "from Rum" or in Chinese, "lu-mu" (鲁木). For example, the Ottoman-improved musket was reimported back to its place of origin, China, during the Yongle era and was called the "niao-chong/bird-bill cannon" (鸟铳). Contemporary historical notes comment that the niao-chong was "originated in Lu-mu", without making reference to whether it was the Ottomans or any other beyliks that improved the gun.
[edit] Turkia
It was only in the late Qing Era, that the name "Turkia" was reintroduced to China through Western writings. It is interesting to note that the first Chinese transliteration for "Turkia" was not the modern "Tu-er-qi", but the Tang era "Tu-jue", which denoted the Mongolian Steppes tribe of Turks, long predating the Turkish colonization of Anatolia. The Chinese reformist Kang Youwei wrote extensively on Ottoman issues, and named two of his major treatises "Journey to Tu-jue" (突厥游记) and "The Imperial Review on History of the Weakening of Tu-jue" (进呈突厥削弱记).
No doubt, West Europeans were the first to refer to the Land of Anatolia under the Ottomans as "Turkia". To them, the entire Ottoman sphere of influence was held under the sway of a barbarian horde of Turkic race and Islamic faith. In this sense, even loyal Wallachian and Phanariot princes and grandees, Muslim corsairs of Greek or Maghrebian origins, Janissary troops of Croat or Albanian birth and Western European converts into the Ottoman fold were "Turks".
However, to the Muslims themselves, the idea of lands of Anatolia, Iraq or Rumelia as "Turkia" was not even established before the Young Turks seized power from Sultan Abdulmecit in the late 1800s.
The Ottoman Turkish language, now academically referred to as "Osmanlica", was then indeed referred to as nothing but "Turki" or "Turkce", just like its close relative spoken by the Timurids, Chagatayids and Uzbeks. However, the vast Osmanlica or colloquial Turkish speaking subjects of the Ottoman Empire had a much weaker sense of common "Turkic" identity. First of all, Turkmen colonists who first entered Anatolia in the 1100s, having assimilated to the local cultures, social structures and gene pools of substratal indigenous populations, adopted entrenched "regional" or "localized" identities in a fashion analogous to the "Creolization" of European colonists in post-Columbian Americas. Secondly, the Ottomans being a beylik that first grew into prominence n the Rumelian (Balkan) Peninsula, naturally saw Anatolia, Caucasus and Iraq as no more "central" in the Ottoman Dar al-Islam than Rumelia. And Rumelia compared to Anatolia, has hardly ever been a land of majority Turkic population.
After the rather Byzantinizing or Balkanizing court culture of Sultan Bayezid, the Ottoman Caliphate continued to celebrate its Altaic nomad heritage. For example, the theory of the Ottoman dynasty as descended from the Turkmen tribe of Kayi migrating from Transoxonia during the Karakhanid period, became the official founding myth during the reign of Murad II, together with adaptation of Central Asian Turken Tamghas (tribal totems) as Sultanic emblems and the title of "Khan" to imply a continuity from the Genghisids to the Ottomans as head of all steppes peoples. The Ottoman Sultanate retained this title till the very last day of the empire in the 20th century.
However, the "Creolized" sedentary people under Ottoman rule of probable Turkmen descent and Ottoman subjects of diverse origins who adopted Turkish as their primary language were not to easily accept "Turk" as their ethnic identity. During the Ottoman era, the ethnonym "Turk" designated nomadic Turkmens much in the same way "Arab" designated "Bedouines" as opposed to Levantines and Egyptians. These Turkmens are to be called "Yoruks" and Iraqi Turkmens in modern times, who have preserved distinctive Turkmen clans and social organizations. Most Turkish-speaking Ottoman subjects, by absorbing or being absorbed by indigenous substrates, had lost much of what defined the "Turkmen".
In Ottoman Anatolia and Rumelia also lived communities of Greek Orthodox, Armenian Christian, Assyrian Christian and Sephardic Jewish faiths. Many of these communities adopted the colloquial Turkish language of their majority Muslim neighbors, and some of them were even from the very start Turkish speaking, being descended from Turkmens who converted to a non-Muslim faith. The ethnic identity "Turk" were not at all proper to these non-Muslims, until the secularization of the Turkish Republic by Ataturk and the calls of emancipation of non-Muslim communities to facilitate their assimilation into a modern secular "Turkish" nation.
[edit] The Millet
The crumbling of an ethnically and religiously plural Ottoman Caliphate appeared to begin with the rigorous display of ethnic awareness by non-Muslim communities in Rumelia. Nations of the Orthodox Christian faith(s): Greeks, Serbians, Montenegrins, Bulgarians, Macedonians, became fully independent politically as well as culturally, under the encouragement by European Enlightenment ideals.
The national awakening of the Balkans made Anatolia, Caucasus, Iraq, Levant and Arabia extremely volatile. Throughout most part of the empire, loyalty to the Ottoman Sunni Muslim Caliphate was taken for granted of the Greek, Serbian, Assyrian, Armenian churches and the Sephardic Jews. Nor had the Sunni Levantine Arabs, Bedouines and Kurds any doubt that the Ottoman Caliph and the Askeriya elite he represented, were the leaders of their communities. The only element of dubious loyalty issue were the Shiites: Alevi "Kizilbash" (Red Cap Turkmens) who had strong leaning toward Shiite Persia. But the secession of the entire Balkan changed all that. Now the Caliph had to reconsider what defined loyalty to the Ottoman state. This was during the reign of Sultans Abdulhamit and Abdulmejit. Many mock "congresses" were convened with delegates representing loyal Ottoman Armenian, Arab, Kurkish and Turkish subjects, in order to discuss the a common "Ottoman" identity constructed on modern nationalist mode rather than along sectarian lines. But at the same time, these late Ottoman autocratic rulers also desired to play the role of Sunni Muslim Caliph to all the world's Sunni Muslims. Thus, an "Ottoman identity" during this time was obscured by the ambiguity as to what it meant to be loyal to the Ottoman Caliph, whether it was a religious affiliation or a modern secular nationalist one. Also, parochial, communal and partisan interests slowly pushed the multi-faith, multi-ethnic cooperation under "common Ottoman identity" into bitter bickering among linguistic and religious communities still part of the empire. This sow the seed not only for the later conflict between Muslim Turks and Christian Armenians, but also those among Sunni Muslim Turks, Kurds and Arabs. Indeed, divisions and mutual hostilities like these were unthinkable during earlier times of the empire, when every religious community, or "millet", had a proper place in the Islamic social system, and when Sunni Kurds, Turks and Arabs were part of the same "millet", rather than separate communities.
[edit] Republican era
The name "Türkiye" was officially adopted as the name of the new republican regime in 1921 in the first constitution prepared by the Turkish parliament. It was confirmed in the constitution of 1924 that was ratified following the official proclamation of the Republic on October 29, 1923.
- See also: History of the Republic of Turkey
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