1066 and all that is a quasi-satirical look at English history—-a Dummies’ Guide before there were Dummies’ Guides—in a short hand, breezy iteration. I haven’t read it, but I like the idea of it, and plan, one of these days, on picking it up. But if you’re a careful reader, you’ve noticed that the title of this post isn’t 1066 at all—it’s 1055.
1055? What the heck? Why, as we all know, Harald Hardrada and William the Bastard hadn’t even decided to tag team Harald Godwinson at that point!
Where did all these dang Vikings come from?
Now, I’ve always loved history, and as I get older and read more, I’m continually amazed, to my consternation, at the gaping holes in my knowledge. This is one of those good news/bad news situations, as its always a pleasure to read more history and find out new things. I think George Santayana said something about ignoring the lessons of history only means you’re going to repeat them. I think Karl Marx said something about history repeating, first as tragedy and then as farce. I think William Faulkner said something about the past not only not being over, but not even being the past. Didn’t they?
History does what again?
Recently, I’ve been reading more history, again. I read me some historical fiction, I do me some wiki-wanders. (If you want to think of the internet in a positive way, tell yourself it’s an electronic Library of Alexandria.) As a Westerner, as a child of the Anglo-Celtic migration, I tend to see history through the lens of my tribe. Isn’t that natural? I am a product of my time, yes, and of my place, yes, but I am also heir to the history of my peoples, my clan, my tribe, my line, going back to the beginning.
As a product of where and when and who I am from, I know, of course, about 1066. 1066 was a big year in the story of the British Isles, the year William the Conqueror, well, conquered England, the year of the Norman Invasion. 1066 was a pivot point for England, a paradigm shift, the substitution of a new mythology for the old mythology. (One, of course, of many such shifts—-history, she is always on the move, even if we don’t notice.) The Normans sailed over from France and seized England, and things were never the same. Of course, the Normans weren’t really French, or they were just barely French—they were the sons of Norsemen who had seized the coast of France and settled themselves there.
O Lord, deliver us from the fury of the Northmen!
As big a year as 1066 was, however, it wasn’t the only year in the 11th century that was a pretty big deal. 1055 was another very big year. You could make a good faith argument that 1055 was as important a year as 1066 was, maybe even bigger.
You see, in 1055 the Seljuk Turks seized the Caliphate of Baghdad.
This was big. This was important. This changed everything. The Seljuk Turks, you see, didn’t come from Turkey. The Seljuk Turks came out of Central Asia. Ah! Central Asia. The cauldron of nations. Central Asia, the heartland of the world. The geographical pivot of history. The Seljuk Turks, you see, were Tartars.
Or Tatars. But not ‘taters.
Someone give this man a bow!
The Tartars came out of Central Asia like a whirlwind, like a hurricane, like a storm. They came out of Central Asia like a thunderbolt. That’s pretty much what tribes from Central Asia did, for a long, long span of human history. The job description for a tribe from Central Asia could be summed up as “Go conquer those settled peoples, kill them, and take their stuff.” This is kind of like the job description for a tribe from Scandinavia, only with more horses and less ships.
The Seljuk Turks weren’t the first tribe to come howling out of the wilderness with fire and sword, we’ve got records of that happening pretty much as far back as we’ve got records. The Huns, anyone? The Scythians? Well, yes, but we’re talking about the Seljuks. Pushing West from the Oghuz Yabgu state—coincidentally centered around Lake Issyk-Kul —the Seljuk Turks took over Persia, and then captured Baghdad in 1055. At that time, the population of Baghdad was over one million souls—maybe twice that. Baghdad was huge, not merely in size, not merely in population, but in importance. It was the center of the Muslim world. The Islamic world, up to that point, had been pretty much an Arab affair.
And Toghrul Beg, leader of the Seljuks, grandson of the Seljuk himself, took it. Oh, he didn’t take it for himself, mind you. He “restored order and constitutional government” (to coin a phrase) on behalf of the Abbasid caliph. Then the Abbasid caliphate began to learn one of the old, old lessons about using barbarians to help you fight your enemies. The Romans, a few centuries earlier, had learned this lesson as well. The long and the short of it is this: the Abbasid caliphate became less Abbasid, and more Turkic, at about that time. Funny how that works.
The Seljuks took Baghdad, and took power, and then they all lived happily ever after. That’s how fairy tales end, right? Oh wait, I forgot, this isn’t a fairy tale, this is history. Because taking Baghdad was just the start. Once they had Baghdad, they started looking around for other sheep to shear, and they saw Constantinople. Although the Seljuks never succeeded in sacking Constantinople, they did trim down the edges of the Byzantine Empire pretty good, especially under Alp Arslan at the battle of Manzikert. And they didn’t live happily ever after, or at least not all of them did. Because just as the Seljuks had moved West and taken over, other tribes coming out of the cauldron of nations, the womb of nations, Central Asia, began to do the same thing.
You talkin’ to me, Frank?
The stories of those tribes, the Osmanli Turks, Temujin, Tamerlane, like the stories of the tribes before the Seljuks—-your Huns, your Alans, your Scythians—are stories for another time. But there is a reason these stories fascinate me, and a reason I write about them here at the Paleo Garden. All of these tribes that came out of Central Asia were pastoral nomads. Since agriculture includes the domestication and cultivation of animals, we can’t call these tribes truly “paleo,” but there’s now way to deny that they were primal as all get out. They were free range humans, they were wolves among dogs. They lived off of animals—-meat, milk, airag.
For a thousand years, the settled peoples of the world had no answer to the riddle posed by these nomads.
Check out Uncle Lew’s other columns in his series Wolves Among Dogs, here in The Paleo Garden. 
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