Turko-Persian tradition

The composite Turko-Persian tradition refers to a distinctive culture that arose in the 9th and 10th centuries (AD) in Khorasan and Transoxiana (present-day, Iran, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, minor parts of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan). It was Persianate in that it was centered on a lettered tradition of Iranian origin and it was Turkic insofar as it was founded by and for many generations patronized by rulers of Turkic heredity. In subsequent centuries, the Turko-Persian culture would be carried on further by the conquering peoples to neighbouring regions, eventually becoming the predominant culture of the ruling and elite classes of West Asia (Middle East), Central Asia and South Asia (Indian Subcontinent).

Turko-Persian tradition was a variant of Islamic culture. It was Islamic in that Islamic notions of virtue, permanence, and excellence infused discourse about public issues as well as the religious affairs of the Muslims, who were the presiding elite.

After the Arab Muslim conquest of Persia, Middle Persian, the language of Sassanids, continued in wide use well into the second Islamic century (eighth century) as a medium of administration in the eastern lands of the Caliphate. Despite Arabization of public affairs, the peoples retained much of their pre-Islamic outlook and way of life, adjusted to fit the demands of the Islamic religion. Towards the end of the first Islamic century, population began resenting the cost of sustaining the Arab Caliphs, the Umayyads - who become oppressive and corrupt, and in the second Islamic century (eighth century AD), a generally Persian-led uprising - led by the Iranian national hero Abu Muslim Khorasani - brought another Arab clan, the Abbasids, to the Caliphal throne. Under the Abbasids, the Persianate customs of their Barmakid viziers became the style of the ruling elite. Politically, the Abbasids soon started losing their control, causing two major and lasting consequences. First, the Abbasid Caliph al-Mutasim (833-842) greatly increased the presence of Turkic mercenaries and Mamluk slaves in the Caliphate, and they eventually displaced Arabs and Persians from the military, and therefore from the political hegemony, starting an era of Turko-Persian symbiosis. Second, the governors in Khurasan, Tahirids, were factually independent; then the Saffarids from Sistan freed the eastern lands, but were replaced by independent Samanids, although they showed perfunctory deference to the Caliph. Separation of the eastern lands from Caliphate was expressed in a distinctive Persianate culture that became a dominant culture in West, Central and South Asia, and the source of innovations elsewhere in the Islamic world. This culture would persist, at least in the modified form of the Ottoman Empire, into the twentieth century. The Persianate culture was marked by the use of the new Persian language as a medium of administration and literature, by the rise of Persianized Turks to military control, by new political importance of non-Arab ulama, and by development of ethnically composite Islamic society.

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