TURKOMANS BETWEEN TWO EMPIRES: THE ... - Bilkent University

having in someway of another a common consciousness and common feeling. The result
of intimate association, psychologically, is a certain fusion of individualities in a
common whole, so that one’s very self, for many purposes at least, is the common life
and purpose of the group. 151 As Ong has well put in a summary statement “the spoken
word forms human being into close-knit groups.” 152 Actually, as will be evaluated in the
next part, the very nature of cognitive and intellectual process and psycho-dynamics of
orality compel sociality, while inhibiting introspective solitary activities and throwing
the psyche back on itself.
2.2. THE EVOLUTION OF THE STATE IN THE MIDDLE EAST: FROM
TRIBAL CHIEFTANCY TO BUREAUCRATIC EMPIRE
In the Middle East, Iran, and Anatolia, states were usually founded by nomads and
governed by sedentary bureaucrats. 153 Ibh Khaldun classified civilizations as either
desert (Bedouin) civilizations found in outlying regions and mountains, in hamlets (near)
pastures in waste regions, and on the fringes of sandy deserts; or the sedentary
civilization as found in cities, villages, towns, and small communities that were
protected and fortified by walls. 154 The history of the Middle East seems to be the
history of the interaction between these two types of civilizations. Today Ibn Khaldun’s
viewpoint is still valued and shared by many scholars. Ernest Gellner, for example,
151 E. H. Cooley, Social Organization, New York, 1909, p. 23.
152 Ong, p. 74: Jack Goody also indicates the role of intimate face-to-face association and co-operation in
fostering group feeling. See Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990 (first published 1977), pp. 15-16.
153 For an overview of the nature of the states and the role of tribes in constructing or destructing states in
the Middle East see Philips S. Khoury and Joseph Kostiner, eds., Tribes and State formation in the Middle
East, California University Press, London, I.B. Tauris, Berkeley, 1991.
154 Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah. An Introduction to History, trs., Franz Rosenthal, abridged and edited
by N. J. Dawood, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1967, pp. 141-42.
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