2024/12/02 by Evrim Binbaş · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Families in Therapy and Culture #Islamic Thought and Society Studies #Turkish Literature and Culture
paper · pdf · doi:10.1515/9783111382876-003
openalex publication_date 2024/12/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
It is well known among historians of the Ottoman Empire that an important component of Ottoman political discourse was the genealogical fiction connecting the Ottoman dynasty with a mythical figure called Oghuz Khan. In this genealogical fiction, the figure of Oghuz Khan connected the Ottoman dynasty with Japheth, son of Noah, hence locating the dynasty in the ranks of those ‘Japhetic lineages’ that represented the nomadic northern peoples in the Islamic mythology. The prominence of the Japhetic lineage in the sixteenth century was often explained as a manifestation of the Ottomans’ dire need to legitimize their authority in the eyes of their subjects. However, what is less known is that there was actually another genealogical fiction that replaced the ancestral figure of Oghuz Khan with Esau, son of Isaac, hence giving the Ottoman dynasty a ‘prophetic lineage’. This paper attempts to explain why there were two parallel genealogies in the Ottoman political discourse and discusses how Ottoman genealogists used visual strategies to depict this genealogical duality.