Huge sword - Persia or Caucasus

Rivkin · 22nd December 2005, 05:30 AM

and I concur with Ariel

.

The problem I always had with understanding Qajars is that on one side Qajars are from Azerbajan and they are turkoman. After 1820 they started to follow extremely pro-modern and somewhat anti-religious route, which included modernization of the army and later, imitation of russian military (which ended up with iranian "cossack" regiments). Azerbajan historical museum has an impressive collection of locally made gorz-maces, "revival" helmets and shields.

The problem with me (and it's probably that I don't know iranian history that well) that pre-islamic pan-persian nationalism a-la Pahlavi have always been anti-azeri in nature (they were declared to be turkish-speaking northern persians), at the same time there is nothing panturanistic or even turkophilic about Qajar period weapons (even those made in Azerbajan). Was turkish nationalism so dead there that people considered persian culture their only choise for nationalistic expression ? Or was it symbol of a reunited countries, after almost a century of internal strife ?

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22nd December 2005, 05:30 AM	#9
Rivkin Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 655	and I concur with Ariel . The problem I always had with understanding Qajars is that on one side Qajars are from Azerbajan and they are turkoman. After 1820 they started to follow extremely pro-modern and somewhat anti-religious route, which included modernization of the army and later, imitation of russian military (which ended up with iranian "cossack" regiments). Azerbajan historical museum has an impressive collection of locally made gorz-maces, "revival" helmets and shields. The problem with me (and it's probably that I don't know iranian history that well) that pre-islamic pan-persian nationalism a-la Pahlavi have always been anti-azeri in nature (they were declared to be turkish-speaking northern persians), at the same time there is nothing panturanistic or even turkophilic about Qajar period weapons (even those made in Azerbajan). Was turkish nationalism so dead there that people considered persian culture their only choise for nationalistic expression ? Or was it symbol of a reunited countries, after almost a century of internal strife ?