Was Arabic ever a significant language in Anatolia? I know Byzantine rule and Seljuk rule, but did it go Greek to Turkish without much in between?
Not to my knowledge, but they had an Arabic script up until Ataturk.
Was Arabic ever a significant language in Anatolia? I know Byzantine rule and Seljuk rule, but did it go Greek to Turkish without much in between?
Partly, and also Greek Christians. The Greco-Turkish War shafted a lot of Greek Christians living in those areas.Greek Muslims?
... something like 1.5 million Christians, not just Greeks, were forced out of Anatolia in 1922/23 because of the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations including, amusingly, Turkish speaking Orthodox Christians because "Greek" in this case was, quite literally, defined as being Orthodox Christians. Something like half a million Muslims out of Greece despite many of them speaking little to no Turkish. The net result of which was that in 1922/23 Orthodox Christianity all but went extinct in Turkey and Islam went all but extinct in Greece.
Probably not but that doesn't really matter all that much.
Sorta, kinda, not. The mere fact that a particular faith might put a lot of value in using a sarcal language that the layperson doesn't understand, e.g. Classical Arabic, Pali, Sanskrit, Latin, Church Slavonic, doesn't mean those laypersons are somehow ignorant or blaise about their faith. To the contrary, the sacralized use of language in particular religious context might be considered part and parcel of how one ought to follow that particular religion. An example, the Tisagion is used in the Serbian Orthodox Church but is in an old form of Greek. Does this mean that the Serbian faithful don't understand what it means and its purpose? Of course not, the Serbian Orthodox Church in Australia issues books that break down each and every single part of the service and its purpose. Most faiths, including Islam, have that sort of mediating presence be it in the form of formal books on religion written in the vernacular or the rather more simple expedient of someone e.g. a member of the Ulema explaining what the verse says before providing a short discussion of the verse peppered with some suitable anecdotes about the life of the Prophet or his Companions. It's very much a modern Protestant thing to imagine that core religious texts need to be in the vernacular to be understand. Most religious traditions are not big on that sort of thing.timtofly said:So they just have to recite some lines in a language they do not know, nor probably even understand what they are saying, and they are good Muslims, or they just have to pay a tax, and nothing else. They can still believe whatever as long as they pay the tax?
Plotinus said:it was quite possible to live a few miles from Alexandria and never visit it.
Sorta, kinda, not. The mere fact that a particular faith might put a lot of value in using a sarcal language that the layperson doesn't understand, e.g. Classical Arabic, Pali, Sanskrit, Latin, Church Slavonic, doesn't mean those laypersons are somehow ignorant or blaise about their faith. To the contrary, the sacralized use of language in particular religious context might be considered part and parcel of how one ought to follow that particular religion. An example, the Tisagion is used in the Serbian Orthodox Church but is in an old form of Greek. Does this mean that the Serbian faithful don't understand what it means and its purpose? Of course not, the Serbian Orthodox Church in Australia issues books that break down each and every single part of the service and its purpose. Most faiths, including Islam, have that sort of mediating presence be it in the form of formal books on religion written in the vernacular or the rather more simple expedient of someone e.g. a member of the Ulema explaining what the verse says before providing a short discussion of the verse peppered with some suitable anecdotes about the life of the Prophet or his Companions. It's very much a modern Protestant thing to imagine that core religious texts need to be in the vernacular to be understand. Most religious traditions are not big on that sort of thing.
I strongly disagree, peasants visited cities once a week to sell their agricultural goods on local markets.
There was no historical society where rural and urban communities existed in isolation from each other.
Plotinus said:Macarius the Great visited Alexandria only once or twice in his life, despite spending much of his life in the nearby desert, first as a niter smuggler and later as a hermit.
Certainly there was plenty of interaction between the city and the rural communities, but I didn't deny that; I said only that it was possible for an individual never to go from one to the other, perhaps much as there are supposedly people who have never left the Isle of Wight in their lives.