The Danishmendname epic
Conceptualization of ‘sacred’ in the scope of the ‘holy war’
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19489130 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nadezhda Ye Tikhonova (St Petersburg University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 65-79 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-15 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Written Monuments of the Orient (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2410-0145 |
| Publisher | Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences (PUBLISHER • RU) |
| DOI | 10.55512/wmo697800 |
| OpenAlex | W7128918113 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 9 |
The large Turkic epic Danishmendname, which tells us a story about the conquests of Danishmendid dynasty in Asia Minor in the 11th c., retained its popularity in the Ottoman empire up until its collapse. At the same time, current public discourses in modern Turkey reveal the new wave of popularity of warrior epics about the legendary Turkic conquerors. Despite the Danishmendname has been fruitful topic of research, by and large, there are generally comprehensive historical, literary and linguistic commentaries to the manuscripts and its published facsimiles. Recent studies on the topic, though, address the Danishmendname in a broader context of Late Medieval frontier epics as an informed source for cultural and political environment of that milieu. Following this latter approach, we assume that Danishmendname constitutes an excellent case study for investigation of cultural memory of Muslim conquests in Asia Minor for several reasons. This epic not only records multiple layers of complex Muslim-Christian interactions in Anatolia, including the accounts of the First Crusade, but also could shed light on the way the lay people, who transmitted the lore, assigned meaning to the world in which they lived. This world, being very unstable with its flexible identities and no tangible allegiances, was imagined as a ‘house of war’ (dār al-ḥarb), where any means of Islamization were tolerable. So, the Muslim conquerors build/ rebuild mosques in newly captured cities, demolish and desacralize the Christian places of worship (so do their Christian counterparts with the mosques), and even perform a miracle to convince ‘infidels’ to convert to Islam. Similar supernatural deeds of Christian monks, however, are perceived as a sorcery, thus, being desacralized. Given the context, the category of ‘sacred’ becomes observable wherever group identities are challenged and put at stake. Thus, by means of discourse analysis, this paper explores how this certain category was manifested both spatially and spiritually in the scope of the ‘holy war’, which is in the center of the plot
Conceptualization · Islamization · Muslim world · Paganism · Politics · Popularity · Roman Empire · Byzantine Studies and History · Eurasian Exchange Networks · Medieval History and Crusades
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |