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CENTRAL ASIAN DRAGON ASSOCIATION
"Heart of the Silk Road"
The Great Ashina Turkic Confederacy of Central Eurasia
Ashina Grey She-Wolf clan, an ancient Eurasian Turkic confederacy of royal and holy tribes to which my patrilineal genetic seed belongs......
Originally the slaves and vassals of various proto-Turkic nations like the Rouran, the Ashina confederacy was also known as the First Turk Dynasty and had a divine status in the original Shamanistic - Tengrist belief scheme of the Turkic peoples, who worshiped Tengri - the supreme, the great blue sky,under which they lived on the vast Eurasian steppe. (The first Turkic political entity was known as "Göktürk" meaning "celestial" or "blue sky" Turks. The Ashina Khans first became the Khaqans (also spelt Kagan/Khagan/Qaghan - meaning "khan of khans") of the two vast Eurasian Göktürk empires; and of the 500 or so clans that composed this vast Eurasian tribal confederacy, some later became the rulers of the enigmatic Khazars - converting to Judaism, and are believed to be responsible largely for the origins of what are now known as the Ashkenazi Jewry of Eastern Europe.
Then there were several famous Ashina generals and historical military figures associated with the Chinese empire and its various territories. The last ruling Chinese dynasty, the Manchus, were also of Ashina ("Aisin") origins, and over in Khorasan, they dominated Bactria for a good two centuries after the Huns. Those from among the Ashina who converted to Islam usually took the Islamic holy family name of "Sayyed" or Syed, as was the case with my ancestors. A very famous Muslim Ashina example is that of Abu Ja'afar Ashinas, who was among the last to bear this name, and who was a key commander of the Caliph of Baghdad's army, and also his governor of Egypt. He was a Turkoman from the former Khazar territory around the Caspian Sea, and was bought by the Arabs as a slave - thereby in keeping with that other trait Turks are historically known for: rising from slavery to authority. Several more links and leads regarding lost Ashina lineages all over Eurasia are being uncovered by the day, aided mainly by revolutionary genetic research, and the rapid breakthroughs it is achieving.
The legend regarding the origins of the holy Ashina steppe aristocracy says that their mother was a grey wolf - hence the baying wolf in the picture; and the Sun represents Khorasan, the vast Turco-Persian area of Central Asia from where my ancestor came...
(c)2011, Arif Akundzada, All Rights Reserved CADA
This is my symbol picturing the legacy of the Ashina Grey She-Wolf clan, an ancient confederacy of royal tribes of divine status whose power once spanned all of Eurasia, and still does in many ways - and who were the ruling class and dynasty of the First Turks (Gök or "Celestial" Turks) from the 6th Century AD. My patrilineal genetic seed is traceable to them......they spread out over all of Eurasia with the initial Turkic expansion from the Altai-Mongol region, being absorbed into the multitude of Turkic nations that subsequently sprang from the First Turks. Among these were the Khazar Turks of Europe (who later converted to Judaism). But the Ashina clan also held the ancient Central Asian regions of Transoxania, Bactria and Sogdiana - areas that were collectively known as Khorasan and later additionally as Turkestan - for a good two centuries, thus controlling the lucrative Silk Route from Sicily to Kaifeng in China......
So this picture you see is not only an emblem representing me and my origins, but more importantly, my political outlook.
The natural political order that existed in the whole Central Asian and Indian Subcontinental region for the past 2000 years was also Khorasani, i.e centered on the Khorasan region. That is, till 1747 - when the so-called "modern" state of Afghanistan was created, and then ten years later the British achieved their first territorial conquest in India at Plassey in Bengal. Both these developments sabotaged the natural and longstanding order of things in this extremely crucial center of the world and its history - and are directly responsible for all the chaos and instability we see here now, 250 years later........the formation of the Afghan Durrani empire (leading to the Afghanistan of today), followed by the subsequent accession to power of the Sikh Maharaja Ranjeet Singh - and then finally, the rise of the British Raj in India, which in the end led to the "independent" unnatural entities of Pakistan and India......all these were a chain of events from 1747 to the present which did no good at all to the world as a whole, or to this region and its peoples.....and the negative ill-effects of which caused the unholy, terminal mess we now see engulfing this entire region in particular, and the world at large.......
The only positive thing that one can say has happened in this region during the last 250 years was the Russian takeover of Khorasan-Turkestan - which modernised it. --Arif Akhundzada
So this picture you see is not only an emblem representing me and my origins, but more importantly, my political outlook.
The natural political order that existed in the whole Central Asian and Indian Subcontinental region for the past 2000 years was also Khorasani, i.e centered on the Khorasan region. That is, till 1747 - when the so-called "modern" state of Afghanistan was created, and then ten years later the British achieved their first territorial conquest in India at Plassey in Bengal. Both these developments sabotaged the natural and longstanding order of things in this extremely crucial center of the world and its history - and are directly responsible for all the chaos and instability we see here now, 250 years later........the formation of the Afghan Durrani empire (leading to the Afghanistan of today), followed by the subsequent accession to power of the Sikh Maharaja Ranjeet Singh - and then finally, the rise of the British Raj in India, which in the end led to the "independent" unnatural entities of Pakistan and India......all these were a chain of events from 1747 to the present which did no good at all to the world as a whole, or to this region and its peoples.....and the negative ill-effects of which caused the unholy, terminal mess we now see engulfing this entire region in particular, and the world at large.......
The only positive thing that one can say has happened in this region during the last 250 years was the Russian takeover of Khorasan-Turkestan - which modernised it. --Arif Akhundzada
The Medieval Silk Road extended from Sicily to Samarkand, the Hunza Valley, and on to Kaifeng, China.
The Gökturk Ashina controlled the Central Asian portion of the Silk Route from the 6th to 8th Centuries AD.
The Gökturk Ashina controlled the Central Asian portion of the Silk Route from the 6th to 8th Centuries AD.
Excerpt: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Ashina
Ashina (Chinese: 阿史那, Modern Chinese: (Pinyin): āshǐnà, (Wade-Giles): a-shih-na, Middle Chinese: (Guangyun) , Asen, Asena, etc.) was a tribe and the ruling dynasty of the ancient Turks who rose to prominence in the mid-6th century when their leader, Bumin Khan, revolted against the Rouran. The two main branches of the family, one descended from Bumin and the other from his brother Istemi, ruled over the eastern and western parts of the Göktürk empire, respectively.
The recent re-reading of the Bugut inscription, the oldest inscription of the Ashina dynasty, written in Sogdian, by a Japanese team of philologists has proven that the name, known only with the Chinese transcription of Ashina, was in fact Ashinas. It is in fact known in later Arabic sources under this form.
According to the New Book of Tang, the Ashina were related to the northern tribes of the Xiongnu. As early as the 7th century, four theories about their mythical origins were recorded by the Book of Zhou, Book of Sui and Youyang Zazu:
The record of Turks in Zhoushu (written in the first half of 7th century) describes the usage of gold in Turks around mid-5th century: (The Turks) inlaid gold sculpture of wolf head on their flag; their military men were called Fuli, that is, wolf in Chinese; It is because they are descendant of the wolf, and naming so is for not forgetting their ancestors.
The name Ashina first appeared in the Chinese records of the 6th century, and prior to that no other sources had related their history at all. The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia infers that between the years 265 and 460 the Ashina had been part of various late Xiongnu confederations. About 460 they were subjugated by the Rouran, who ousted them from Xinjiang into the Altay Mountains, where the Ashina gradually emerged as the leaders of the early Turkic confederation, known as the Göktürks. By the 550s, Bumin Khan felt strong enough to throw off the yoke of the Rouran domination and established the Göktürk Empire, which flourished until the 630s and from 680s until 740s. The Orkhon Valley was the centre of the Ashina power.
After the collapse of the Göktürk empire under pressure from the resurgent Uyghurs, branches of the Ashina clan moved westward to Europe, where they became the kaghans of the Khazars and possibly other nomadic peoples with Turkic roots. According to Marquart, the Ashina clan constituted a noble caste throughout the steppes. Similarly, the Bashkir historian and Turkolog Zeki Validi Togan described them as a "desert aristocracy" that provided rulers for a number of Eurasian nomadic empires. Accounts of the Göktürk and Khazar khaganates suggest that the Ashina clan was accorded sacred, perhaps quasi-divine status in the shamanic religion practiced by the steppe nomads of the first millennium CE. Note, that in 12-13 centuries the Mongolian tribe Chonos, (Tribe of Wolf) was supposed to be sacred - for example, when Jamuha took 70 Chonos-prisoners, he killed them by boiling without bloodshed.
Ashina (Chinese: 阿史那, Modern Chinese: (Pinyin): āshǐnà, (Wade-Giles): a-shih-na, Middle Chinese: (Guangyun) , Asen, Asena, etc.) was a tribe and the ruling dynasty of the ancient Turks who rose to prominence in the mid-6th century when their leader, Bumin Khan, revolted against the Rouran. The two main branches of the family, one descended from Bumin and the other from his brother Istemi, ruled over the eastern and western parts of the Göktürk empire, respectively.
The recent re-reading of the Bugut inscription, the oldest inscription of the Ashina dynasty, written in Sogdian, by a Japanese team of philologists has proven that the name, known only with the Chinese transcription of Ashina, was in fact Ashinas. It is in fact known in later Arabic sources under this form.
According to the New Book of Tang, the Ashina were related to the northern tribes of the Xiongnu. As early as the 7th century, four theories about their mythical origins were recorded by the Book of Zhou, Book of Sui and Youyang Zazu:
- Ashina was one of ten sons born to a grey she-wolf (see Asena) in the north of Gaochang.
- The ancestor of the Ashina was a man from the Suo nation, north of Xiongnu, whose mother was a wolf, and a season goddess.
- The Ashina were mixture stocks from the Pingliang commandery of eastern Gansu.
- The Ashina descended from a skilled archer named Shemo, who had once fallen in love with a sea goddess west of Ashide cave.
The record of Turks in Zhoushu (written in the first half of 7th century) describes the usage of gold in Turks around mid-5th century: (The Turks) inlaid gold sculpture of wolf head on their flag; their military men were called Fuli, that is, wolf in Chinese; It is because they are descendant of the wolf, and naming so is for not forgetting their ancestors.
The name Ashina first appeared in the Chinese records of the 6th century, and prior to that no other sources had related their history at all. The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia infers that between the years 265 and 460 the Ashina had been part of various late Xiongnu confederations. About 460 they were subjugated by the Rouran, who ousted them from Xinjiang into the Altay Mountains, where the Ashina gradually emerged as the leaders of the early Turkic confederation, known as the Göktürks. By the 550s, Bumin Khan felt strong enough to throw off the yoke of the Rouran domination and established the Göktürk Empire, which flourished until the 630s and from 680s until 740s. The Orkhon Valley was the centre of the Ashina power.
After the collapse of the Göktürk empire under pressure from the resurgent Uyghurs, branches of the Ashina clan moved westward to Europe, where they became the kaghans of the Khazars and possibly other nomadic peoples with Turkic roots. According to Marquart, the Ashina clan constituted a noble caste throughout the steppes. Similarly, the Bashkir historian and Turkolog Zeki Validi Togan described them as a "desert aristocracy" that provided rulers for a number of Eurasian nomadic empires. Accounts of the Göktürk and Khazar khaganates suggest that the Ashina clan was accorded sacred, perhaps quasi-divine status in the shamanic religion practiced by the steppe nomads of the first millennium CE. Note, that in 12-13 centuries the Mongolian tribe Chonos, (Tribe of Wolf) was supposed to be sacred - for example, when Jamuha took 70 Chonos-prisoners, he killed them by boiling without bloodshed.
All Ashinas are not Khazars, but all Khazar royals are Ashina. The earlier line of Q descent Royal Ashina are Gok Turk, followed later by Khazar Royal Ashina.
The term/name "Khan" is now virtually redundant in all Turkic cultures - but survives to this day in Pashtun culture as a name and a feudal title. It was brought here by the Hepthalite Huns, the third and last - Turkic - component in Pashtun ethnogenesis.
The Ashina Khazars are further down in the Q1b chain of descent, and it is hoped that more such bloodlines and linkages are now in the process of being discovered. The Dragon Court will thus be greatly expanded and remodeled, if all goes well.
The term/name "Khan" is now virtually redundant in all Turkic cultures - but survives to this day in Pashtun culture as a name and a feudal title. It was brought here by the Hepthalite Huns, the third and last - Turkic - component in Pashtun ethnogenesis.
The Ashina Khazars are further down in the Q1b chain of descent, and it is hoped that more such bloodlines and linkages are now in the process of being discovered. The Dragon Court will thus be greatly expanded and remodeled, if all goes well.
"Ashina" is derived from the Saka word for "Blue" which is "Asheen", since it referred to the Blue Turks, who were thus called because of the "Sky" connotation - as they were "Celestial" or holy, Turks......the word "Sheen/Shin" is still the Pashto word for blue.....so, the Ashina, it appears, have more than one Pashtun link. Note - "shin/sheen = blue"
Pashto uses a single term "shin" for both blue and green, this reference also makes mention of that fact:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language#Pashto
The Sakas (and Kushans - both of them Scythian) form the second main layer in Pashtun ethnogenesis, after the first which was part Indo-Aryan and part Indo-Iranian...whereas the first seems to have laid the foundation of the Pashtun hill-dwelling "Karlani" tribes who till very recently did not use the appelation "Afghan" for themselves - the later, Scythian infusions seem to have created the "Sarabani" Pashtun tribes that now live in the plains and fertile areas, and who very proudly answer to the term "Afghan".....and it is also among these plain dwellers that the third and last main Pashtun ethnogenetic infusion, that of the Hepthalites, found its place also - establishing therein the Turkic feudal tenure characterised by "Khans" that has now come to signify mainstream Pashtun social culture......
The Hepthalite/Epthalite (White) Huns form the third and last main component in the ethnogenesis of Pashtun (Afghan) society:
Hephthalites are among the ancestors of modern-day Pashtuns. According to the academic Yu. V. Gankovsky,
“[The Pashtuns began as a] union of largely East-Iranian tribes which became the initial ethnic stratum of the Pashtun ethnogenesis, dates from the middle of the first millennium CE and is connected with the dissolution of the Epthalite (White Huns) confederacy. [...] Of the contribution of the Epthalites (White Huns) to the ethnogenesis of the Pashtuns we find evidence in the ethnonym of the largest of the Pashtun tribe unions, the Abdali (Durrani after 1747) associated with the ethnic name of the Epthalites — Abdal. The Siah-posh, the Kafirs (Nuristanis) of the Hindu Kush, called all Pashtuns by a general name of Abdal still at the beginning of the 19th century.[Gankovsky, Yu. V., et al. A History of Afghanistan, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982, pg 382] ”
Some Hephthalite tribes also participated in the formation of Johals, as well as Turkmens and Uzbeks.
The Roof of the World
Till very recently, the main focus of Dragon Ashina research was
concentrated mostly upon the Khazar aspect and extension of this great
and massive Eurasian continental Turkic spiritual heritage...genetics
was employed, and not only did newer discoveries help this research
along, but - as in my own case - it also contributed to the discovery
and highlighting of new Y-DNA haplogroups and clades, which revealed the
existence of hitherto forgotten Ashina lineages......Focusing wholly on the Khazars with regard to the Ashina legacy - as some are doing, no doubt with ulterior motives in mind - would be very unfair..... and only be looking at a very small part of the Ashina picture: the majority of the Ashinas converted to Islam and remained behind in Central Asia - getting absorbed as elite clans into all the prominent Turkic nationalities such as the Karluks, Uyghurs and Ottomans, among many others......that sprang from the great Göktürk entity which had one border with Poland and the other with the Sea of Japan........which the Ashina ruled. Even many of the Khazar Ashina got converted to Islam, as Khazaria included not only European areas like the ukraine and Russia, but also consisted of the entire modern Azerbaijan and vast swathes of Turkmenistan too. The Ashina legacy is in fact more Asian than European; this is because upon reaching Europe, they underwent many transformations - first as Khazar, then Jew......subsequently becoming part of the European milieu. But that is not the case with Asia: here they may have disappeared in name, but they still remain Turks and Khorasanis as they were originally, and the latest cutting edge genetic research can uncover their "signature" therein. That is not to say, however, that the Ashina legacy, reconstituted, can not play a unifying role in modern Eurasia, Its magnificent total Eurasian past qualifies it for that. But the reality of its present context and proper placement must be kept in mind when considering its new reconstituted status with its new representative personages and dynasties.......
Turk and other historians have noted, that the Ashina Turkic "desert aristocracy" of Eurasia, which owed its social exaltation to its spiritual role, and which later became the ruling noble class of the major early Turkic empires (Khanates) namely of the Göktürks and the Khazars, consisted of no less than 500 separate lineages. Not only were these nomadic pastoral empires huge Eurasian supra-continental entities, but the resultant Turkic dispersal after their inevitable breakup, ensured that the Ashina elite heritage, though royal and exclusive - ended up in many diverse nooks and crannies of Eurasia.
Even in Khazaria, where the Ashina were the Khazar Khans and Begs - the evidence was so completely erased by history that the existing contemporaneous accounts of its history could only be matched and traced to the existing evidence on the ground through the breakthroughs offered by the extremely young and revolutionary science of anthropogenealogy.....I think that is only fitting, in regard to our Dragon concept - so ancient and yet so very new too!
The origin of the Ashina is believed by reputable scholarship, to have arisen in the present Altai Mountain area of South Central Siberia (and on the borders of Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia) from ancient proto-Turkic and Scythian tribes that formed the basis for the proto-Turkic Huns. They were comprised of a great many other Indo-Iranian elements known variously (by their ancient Chinese names) as the Xiongnu, the Yueh Chi, and Tocharians.
Then the major Hunnish confederacy of the Hepthalites (or White Huns) took shape from these influences - which in turn contributed to significant elements of ethnicities that are still around, like the Pashtuns - ethnicities which have intrigued modern historians and politicians alike, for despite being the backward tribes that they are, none of the mightiest of the world's powers, to date, has yet managed to conquer or subdue them: neither Imperial Britain, then both Imperial and Soviet Russia....and now the USA and the NATO alliance. In fact, it is the Afghans that have humbled all these powers and rubbed their noses in the dirt. Why? Why are they so superhuman. We shall soon find out: the Dragon mysteries provide the spiritual answer!
So the Ashina went on, besides the Khazars, to constitute the ruling classes of many other historically noteworthy Turkic and Turkish empires and political entities. While their Khazar counterparts converted to Judaism, the great majority of the Ashina descendants were to get converted to Islam: Ashinas formed the basis of the later Ghuzz (Oghuzz) Turks that replaced the extinct Göktürk and Khazar entities; among these were the first Turkic Muslim dynasty, the Seljuks, under whom the Turkic occupation of Anatolia was completed.
These Seljuks later expanded their dominions down into Persia and Afghan territories, and ruled in India also. Derived from them was the Turkic world power of the middle ages that became the Muslim Caliphate and ruled a vast empire in this capacity right uptil 1922 - the Ottoman Turkish Clan and Royal House, known by its actual name of Usmanli. The Ottomans were wary of discussing their Ashina roots, but only because they wanted to appear more majestic than their forebears.....note the religious kingship aspect, even in this regard!
The Ottomans were kings, but also heads of the Muslim Church! Amongst the rest of the Oghuzz Turks, the Ashina went on to become absorbed into and form the basis of other Turkic ruling and noble houses, that then went on further to become rulers of other lands and switch to other cultures. These are now known mostly by the relatively modern Turkmen label; and among this assortment of major Turkmen (or Turcoman) royal houses like the Safari, Qajar and Zend were also included the Afshar Turkmen.
The Afshars formed an imperial dynasty that ruled Iran.....and it was with the armies of the founder Nadir Shah of this great Persian Turkic dynasty, one from among many such that rose to singular greatness - that my Turkmen ancestor, also an Afshar from the same clan as the Emperor - but with Ashina genes - reached India 270 years ago.
My ancestor was again from a clan of the religious nobility - this theme an Ashina "constant" and in keeping with their divine status! - that had assumed the Islamic religious noble title of "Syed" upon conversion to Islam, and that label had then stuck. It was when I wanted to really determine that I was a Syed that I had my genetic test done, which led to the subsequent discovery of my Ashina genetics! Deep down in my bones, I felt a revulsion for my supposed "Syed" legacy, and felt that I belonged to something more exalted and magnificent. An inner voice urged me on and on, and it was this inner bidding that set me upon the path to discover the truth about my real background and self.
Regarding my own Ashina origins, genetic evidence clearly states that it is of much more primal and ancestral stock, and is therefore "senior" in status to the Khazarian Ashina as far as the lineage's family tree is concerned: it concerns an Ashina element that did move from its original Altai base, but stayed within the bounds of Central Asia during the original Göktürk Turkic expansion, or even earlier during the White Hun/Xiongnu period.
This is evident from the fact that my Haplogroup is Q1b* (or clade Q-L275), while the clade that is thought to be associated with the Ashkenazi Jewish men who are descended from Khazar Turkic converts is clearly Q1b1a (clade Q L245) - which is two places down the Y-DNA Q tree and Ashina lineage than my own DNA....this therefore reveals not only the exciting diversity the Ashina clan's widely dispersed seed underwent, but also reveals the basis of the foundations of our revolutionary and explosive concept of Dragon spirituality!
Turk and other historians have noted, that the Ashina Turkic "desert aristocracy" of Eurasia, which owed its social exaltation to its spiritual role, and which later became the ruling noble class of the major early Turkic empires (Khanates) namely of the Göktürks and the Khazars, consisted of no less than 500 separate lineages. Not only were these nomadic pastoral empires huge Eurasian supra-continental entities, but the resultant Turkic dispersal after their inevitable breakup, ensured that the Ashina elite heritage, though royal and exclusive - ended up in many diverse nooks and crannies of Eurasia.
Even in Khazaria, where the Ashina were the Khazar Khans and Begs - the evidence was so completely erased by history that the existing contemporaneous accounts of its history could only be matched and traced to the existing evidence on the ground through the breakthroughs offered by the extremely young and revolutionary science of anthropogenealogy.....I think that is only fitting, in regard to our Dragon concept - so ancient and yet so very new too!
The origin of the Ashina is believed by reputable scholarship, to have arisen in the present Altai Mountain area of South Central Siberia (and on the borders of Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia) from ancient proto-Turkic and Scythian tribes that formed the basis for the proto-Turkic Huns. They were comprised of a great many other Indo-Iranian elements known variously (by their ancient Chinese names) as the Xiongnu, the Yueh Chi, and Tocharians.
Then the major Hunnish confederacy of the Hepthalites (or White Huns) took shape from these influences - which in turn contributed to significant elements of ethnicities that are still around, like the Pashtuns - ethnicities which have intrigued modern historians and politicians alike, for despite being the backward tribes that they are, none of the mightiest of the world's powers, to date, has yet managed to conquer or subdue them: neither Imperial Britain, then both Imperial and Soviet Russia....and now the USA and the NATO alliance. In fact, it is the Afghans that have humbled all these powers and rubbed their noses in the dirt. Why? Why are they so superhuman. We shall soon find out: the Dragon mysteries provide the spiritual answer!
So the Ashina went on, besides the Khazars, to constitute the ruling classes of many other historically noteworthy Turkic and Turkish empires and political entities. While their Khazar counterparts converted to Judaism, the great majority of the Ashina descendants were to get converted to Islam: Ashinas formed the basis of the later Ghuzz (Oghuzz) Turks that replaced the extinct Göktürk and Khazar entities; among these were the first Turkic Muslim dynasty, the Seljuks, under whom the Turkic occupation of Anatolia was completed.
These Seljuks later expanded their dominions down into Persia and Afghan territories, and ruled in India also. Derived from them was the Turkic world power of the middle ages that became the Muslim Caliphate and ruled a vast empire in this capacity right uptil 1922 - the Ottoman Turkish Clan and Royal House, known by its actual name of Usmanli. The Ottomans were wary of discussing their Ashina roots, but only because they wanted to appear more majestic than their forebears.....note the religious kingship aspect, even in this regard!
The Ottomans were kings, but also heads of the Muslim Church! Amongst the rest of the Oghuzz Turks, the Ashina went on to become absorbed into and form the basis of other Turkic ruling and noble houses, that then went on further to become rulers of other lands and switch to other cultures. These are now known mostly by the relatively modern Turkmen label; and among this assortment of major Turkmen (or Turcoman) royal houses like the Safari, Qajar and Zend were also included the Afshar Turkmen.
The Afshars formed an imperial dynasty that ruled Iran.....and it was with the armies of the founder Nadir Shah of this great Persian Turkic dynasty, one from among many such that rose to singular greatness - that my Turkmen ancestor, also an Afshar from the same clan as the Emperor - but with Ashina genes - reached India 270 years ago.
My ancestor was again from a clan of the religious nobility - this theme an Ashina "constant" and in keeping with their divine status! - that had assumed the Islamic religious noble title of "Syed" upon conversion to Islam, and that label had then stuck. It was when I wanted to really determine that I was a Syed that I had my genetic test done, which led to the subsequent discovery of my Ashina genetics! Deep down in my bones, I felt a revulsion for my supposed "Syed" legacy, and felt that I belonged to something more exalted and magnificent. An inner voice urged me on and on, and it was this inner bidding that set me upon the path to discover the truth about my real background and self.
Regarding my own Ashina origins, genetic evidence clearly states that it is of much more primal and ancestral stock, and is therefore "senior" in status to the Khazarian Ashina as far as the lineage's family tree is concerned: it concerns an Ashina element that did move from its original Altai base, but stayed within the bounds of Central Asia during the original Göktürk Turkic expansion, or even earlier during the White Hun/Xiongnu period.
This is evident from the fact that my Haplogroup is Q1b* (or clade Q-L275), while the clade that is thought to be associated with the Ashkenazi Jewish men who are descended from Khazar Turkic converts is clearly Q1b1a (clade Q L245) - which is two places down the Y-DNA Q tree and Ashina lineage than my own DNA....this therefore reveals not only the exciting diversity the Ashina clan's widely dispersed seed underwent, but also reveals the basis of the foundations of our revolutionary and explosive concept of Dragon spirituality!
Afshar Dynasty
This is about the Afshar Emperor of Persia, Nader Shah (this is personally relevant to me [Arif], because my ancestor migrated here [Pakistan] with his armies).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nader_Shah
3) This is about the Afshar tribe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afshar_tribe
4) This is about the dynasty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afsharid_dynasty
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nader_Shah
3) This is about the Afshar tribe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afshar_tribe
4) This is about the dynasty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afsharid_dynasty
Family Shrine of Healer-Saint Ancestor
"My ancestor was a Khorasani Turk from the present day region of Turkestan which includes the famous historical cities of Merv, Bukhara (where Marco Polo lived for three years) and Samarkand.......and migrated to the Indian subcontinent as a child with his parents, about 260 years ago. His father was a minor commander in the Persian armies of the Khorasani Turk Emperor of Persia, Nader Shah Afshar. My ancestor's name wasKamil Shah, and he became a disciple at a famous
Muslim shrine in Lahore (then India, now Pakistan), but after a few years left that place and migrated to a village Shabqadar then in Afghanistan and now in Pakistani territory and about 25 miles from the present day Pakistan-
Afghan border. This area is inhabited by the Mohmand Afghan/Pashtun tribe on both sides of the border. Our family still lives there, and owns vast tracts of land, and has a respected religious status. Our features have a strong, but
handsome Tartar appearance.
When my ancestor Kamil Shah came here, he was regarded as a saint, and the Mohmand tribe's chief not only gave him his daughter in marriage, but also bestowed upon him about 5000 acres of fertile land. He was also regarded as being of "royal blood", and one of his sons also went to Turkey to serve in the Ottoman Sultan's Army. Kamil Shah spoke both Uzbeki and Dari Persian, and afterwards learned Pashto the Afghan language. We now speak only Pashto. Kamil Shah was subsequently renamed "Akhund Zafar" by the people of his area, meaning "victorious scholar". Our family is called "Akhundzada" as being descendants of an "Akhund", which is Persian for religious scholar.
The surname Akhundzada is basically Persian, but is found all over the Turkic-Persian Central Asian/Turkestani and Iranian worlds - from Turkey to Afghanistan and even onwards to Qashghar in present day China. Persian and Turkic cultural influences are nowadays largely inseparable, especially in Central Asia. Most of the other Akhundzada families in Pashtun society are also Turkic in origin. Of course, it is the fashion for them to claim "Quresh" Arab ancestry to boost their Islamic image, but that is as valid as a Khazar being "racially" Jewish. My Y-DNA test has beyond doubt disproved this myth; that is why I had it done. Akhundzada family also played a shamanic type of role by healing people, driving away "possessing spirits" in people, making spells and cures - of course, it had an overall Islamic colouration
to it, but that is only because of Islam being the the prevailing culture...the original wisdom that lies beneath those layers is far much older than Islam.....”
Regarding the meaning of my family name, it is a social aristocratic caste name of religious connotation here in Pashtun society and is similarly a family name elsewhere in Central Asia. This name is actually from the Transcaspian and Khorasani region, and has an Iranian background. In Azerbaijan, for instance, it is spelled as "Akhundzade" (or Ahundzade in Turkish) and it has the same spelling in Iran. The Russianised version is Akhundov.
Akhundzada is actually Khorasani counterpart of the term "Khoja", which Muslims in the Balkan region - such as Bosnians and Albanians use; like the name of the Albanian communist leader Enver Hoja (spelled Hoxha)......this name is also found among other Eurasian Muslims such as in Turkey and those in the Russian Federation. Khoja is actually derived from the Arabic term "Khwaja", meaning mystic; the Arabic terms Khwaja, Ghaus and Wali (or Vali as in the Russian Tatar name Valikhan) all mean the same thing: master, teacher, adept, mystic. The equivalent Persian term is "Pir"- also used all over Central and South Asia like those above. All these terms have concurrent usage in these societies...... Akhund is the Khorasani equivalent of them; and "zada" is the Persian suffix denoting "son", as much as the Slavic "vich" or "vic" or "ic" or Germanic/Nordic "son, sson", or "sohn" in any name.-- Arif Akhundzada
Muslim shrine in Lahore (then India, now Pakistan), but after a few years left that place and migrated to a village Shabqadar then in Afghanistan and now in Pakistani territory and about 25 miles from the present day Pakistan-
Afghan border. This area is inhabited by the Mohmand Afghan/Pashtun tribe on both sides of the border. Our family still lives there, and owns vast tracts of land, and has a respected religious status. Our features have a strong, but
handsome Tartar appearance.
When my ancestor Kamil Shah came here, he was regarded as a saint, and the Mohmand tribe's chief not only gave him his daughter in marriage, but also bestowed upon him about 5000 acres of fertile land. He was also regarded as being of "royal blood", and one of his sons also went to Turkey to serve in the Ottoman Sultan's Army. Kamil Shah spoke both Uzbeki and Dari Persian, and afterwards learned Pashto the Afghan language. We now speak only Pashto. Kamil Shah was subsequently renamed "Akhund Zafar" by the people of his area, meaning "victorious scholar". Our family is called "Akhundzada" as being descendants of an "Akhund", which is Persian for religious scholar.
The surname Akhundzada is basically Persian, but is found all over the Turkic-Persian Central Asian/Turkestani and Iranian worlds - from Turkey to Afghanistan and even onwards to Qashghar in present day China. Persian and Turkic cultural influences are nowadays largely inseparable, especially in Central Asia. Most of the other Akhundzada families in Pashtun society are also Turkic in origin. Of course, it is the fashion for them to claim "Quresh" Arab ancestry to boost their Islamic image, but that is as valid as a Khazar being "racially" Jewish. My Y-DNA test has beyond doubt disproved this myth; that is why I had it done. Akhundzada family also played a shamanic type of role by healing people, driving away "possessing spirits" in people, making spells and cures - of course, it had an overall Islamic colouration
to it, but that is only because of Islam being the the prevailing culture...the original wisdom that lies beneath those layers is far much older than Islam.....”
Regarding the meaning of my family name, it is a social aristocratic caste name of religious connotation here in Pashtun society and is similarly a family name elsewhere in Central Asia. This name is actually from the Transcaspian and Khorasani region, and has an Iranian background. In Azerbaijan, for instance, it is spelled as "Akhundzade" (or Ahundzade in Turkish) and it has the same spelling in Iran. The Russianised version is Akhundov.
Akhundzada is actually Khorasani counterpart of the term "Khoja", which Muslims in the Balkan region - such as Bosnians and Albanians use; like the name of the Albanian communist leader Enver Hoja (spelled Hoxha)......this name is also found among other Eurasian Muslims such as in Turkey and those in the Russian Federation. Khoja is actually derived from the Arabic term "Khwaja", meaning mystic; the Arabic terms Khwaja, Ghaus and Wali (or Vali as in the Russian Tatar name Valikhan) all mean the same thing: master, teacher, adept, mystic. The equivalent Persian term is "Pir"- also used all over Central and South Asia like those above. All these terms have concurrent usage in these societies...... Akhund is the Khorasani equivalent of them; and "zada" is the Persian suffix denoting "son", as much as the Slavic "vich" or "vic" or "ic" or Germanic/Nordic "son, sson", or "sohn" in any name.-- Arif Akhundzada
Living Dragon History - House Akhundzada
Ambassador Arif Akhundzada
PASHTUN Akhundzada Dragon Family Line
'Arif' Means 'Gnostic'
Arif (Arabic: عارف; also spelled Ariff or Arief) is a common male given name in various Muslim countries, such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Turkey.
In Sufi philosophy the term was used by Sufi authors like Abu Abd al–Rahman al–Sulami to mean "a gnostic, mystic; a seeker of marifa", similar in meaning to the terms salik, zahid or faqir.
In his work "Waystations of the Gnostics" (Maqamat al–‘arifin), Ibn Sina defines several stages along a mystical path, where the ‘arif occupies an intermediate stage. Mahmud Shabistari remarks that the true ‘arif sees the inward light of the divine being everywhere.
Tayyibi author al–Khattab b. al–Hasan, delineating the difference between ordinary knowledge (‘ilm) and ma‘rifa, explains that every ‘arif is a knower, but not every knower is an ‘arif. Some Twelver Shi'a authors like Rajab Bursi define an ‘arif as a believer whose love and knowledge (ma‘rifa) of the imams draw him nearer to spiritual perfection.
Aristocratic ("Dragon") socialism, in Eurasian Global form - in which nature's hierarchy is recognised and order respected...which has a divine basis as well as profane....but power must not be abused: "To him who is able - but with justice...."
We have many Dragon strands meeting up, but ours is one family, and a global one - and that is how I would like it to remain, whatever position I occupy in it. If people use the Dragon concept to promote cultism, favouritism and factionalism, then that relates to abuse, temporal ambitions and not spirituality....and what will the difference be between us and the rest of those who seek power, then? That is why I discourage or warn against such tendencies when I sense them clearly.
This linking of the Dragon evidence to the story of the Pashtuns is a dramatic discovery, with vast political, cultural and social implications - as Afghanistan and Afghans are the world's No.1 Problem now. Why? They are Dragon material!!! It is also a step further to our Dragon dream of global unity! I think that is even more important than the mere presence of Dragon aristocracies in Europe, as in the Pashtun case we deal with whole populations and tribes, not just upper classes. This could be the universal spiritual breakthrough we are all looking for.....
Our troubled society is about to implode, people are fed up, the old politicians are thoroughly discredited and corrupt - and people are desperately searching for something new.....and as you know, this area is and always has been a key geo-strategic point of the globe......it has always been a sort of key to the world - whether that was in the time of the ancient Scythians, or the Hun era, that of the Mongols, or the Anglo-Russian Great Game chronicled by Rudyard Kipling - or now, in the era of the New World Order.....in all of those, Central Asia is featured crucially - and the "Af-Pak" region is regarded as the heart of Asia.
The Ashina Khazars are further down in the Q1b chain of descent, and it is hoped that more such bloodlines and linkages are now in the process of being discovered. The Dragon Court will thus be greatly expanded and remodeled, if all goes well.
Traditional Pashtun genealogy is more legend than anything else, but may hide a few nuggets and gems. Pashtuns also have a strongly rooted "Jewish origin" tradition - saying that they are from amongst the Lost Tribes, but I personally believe that may be a collective subconscious memory of Khazar links. Khazars were (converted) Jews, but were Turks, and were related to the Turkic element in Pashtuns....and just as they were forgotten by history, so were they forgotten here - where tradition is 95% oral and handed down by word of mouth....and is largely illiterate in heritage.
Of tribes mentioned in this article, the "Karlanis" are the most aboriginal of the Pashtun tribal classification; they date to the original Indo-Iranian Pashtun bedrock layer, generated when Cyrus the Great annexed what is now Afghan territory into his Persian Empire in 550 BC. Similarly, the other Afghan tribal formations date to later Scythian strata about 500 years after the original.
The term/name "Khan" is now virtually redundant in all Turkic cultures - but survives to this day in Pashtun culture as a name and a feudal title. It was brought here by the Hepthalite Huns, the third and last - Turkic - component in Pashtun ethnogenesis.
Pashtun ethnogenesis contains ALL the Dragon racial ingredients: Indo-Iranian ("Aryan"), Scythian and Hunnish.
The best book on Pashtuns in English is "The Pathans"- wriiten in 1956 by Sir Olaf Caroe, the last British Imperial Governor of Pashtun territories in India. It still has no match. Sir Olaf was my Pashtun grandfather's friend in the 1930s, and had visited our village several times. He was an excellent speaker of Pashto, and styled himself as an "honorary Pashtun".
The grey she-wolf mother was said to be the symbol of the Ashina Royal Turks, an ancient Eurasian "desert aristocracy" and wellspring for most of continental Eurasia's ruling and noble families; they have left potent genetic signatures, and my descent therefrom is genetically proved....
PASHTUN Akhundzada Dragon Family Line
'Arif' Means 'Gnostic'
Arif (Arabic: عارف; also spelled Ariff or Arief) is a common male given name in various Muslim countries, such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Turkey.
In Sufi philosophy the term was used by Sufi authors like Abu Abd al–Rahman al–Sulami to mean "a gnostic, mystic; a seeker of marifa", similar in meaning to the terms salik, zahid or faqir.
In his work "Waystations of the Gnostics" (Maqamat al–‘arifin), Ibn Sina defines several stages along a mystical path, where the ‘arif occupies an intermediate stage. Mahmud Shabistari remarks that the true ‘arif sees the inward light of the divine being everywhere.
Tayyibi author al–Khattab b. al–Hasan, delineating the difference between ordinary knowledge (‘ilm) and ma‘rifa, explains that every ‘arif is a knower, but not every knower is an ‘arif. Some Twelver Shi'a authors like Rajab Bursi define an ‘arif as a believer whose love and knowledge (ma‘rifa) of the imams draw him nearer to spiritual perfection.
Aristocratic ("Dragon") socialism, in Eurasian Global form - in which nature's hierarchy is recognised and order respected...which has a divine basis as well as profane....but power must not be abused: "To him who is able - but with justice...."
We have many Dragon strands meeting up, but ours is one family, and a global one - and that is how I would like it to remain, whatever position I occupy in it. If people use the Dragon concept to promote cultism, favouritism and factionalism, then that relates to abuse, temporal ambitions and not spirituality....and what will the difference be between us and the rest of those who seek power, then? That is why I discourage or warn against such tendencies when I sense them clearly.
This linking of the Dragon evidence to the story of the Pashtuns is a dramatic discovery, with vast political, cultural and social implications - as Afghanistan and Afghans are the world's No.1 Problem now. Why? They are Dragon material!!! It is also a step further to our Dragon dream of global unity! I think that is even more important than the mere presence of Dragon aristocracies in Europe, as in the Pashtun case we deal with whole populations and tribes, not just upper classes. This could be the universal spiritual breakthrough we are all looking for.....
Our troubled society is about to implode, people are fed up, the old politicians are thoroughly discredited and corrupt - and people are desperately searching for something new.....and as you know, this area is and always has been a key geo-strategic point of the globe......it has always been a sort of key to the world - whether that was in the time of the ancient Scythians, or the Hun era, that of the Mongols, or the Anglo-Russian Great Game chronicled by Rudyard Kipling - or now, in the era of the New World Order.....in all of those, Central Asia is featured crucially - and the "Af-Pak" region is regarded as the heart of Asia.
The Ashina Khazars are further down in the Q1b chain of descent, and it is hoped that more such bloodlines and linkages are now in the process of being discovered. The Dragon Court will thus be greatly expanded and remodeled, if all goes well.
Traditional Pashtun genealogy is more legend than anything else, but may hide a few nuggets and gems. Pashtuns also have a strongly rooted "Jewish origin" tradition - saying that they are from amongst the Lost Tribes, but I personally believe that may be a collective subconscious memory of Khazar links. Khazars were (converted) Jews, but were Turks, and were related to the Turkic element in Pashtuns....and just as they were forgotten by history, so were they forgotten here - where tradition is 95% oral and handed down by word of mouth....and is largely illiterate in heritage.
Of tribes mentioned in this article, the "Karlanis" are the most aboriginal of the Pashtun tribal classification; they date to the original Indo-Iranian Pashtun bedrock layer, generated when Cyrus the Great annexed what is now Afghan territory into his Persian Empire in 550 BC. Similarly, the other Afghan tribal formations date to later Scythian strata about 500 years after the original.
The term/name "Khan" is now virtually redundant in all Turkic cultures - but survives to this day in Pashtun culture as a name and a feudal title. It was brought here by the Hepthalite Huns, the third and last - Turkic - component in Pashtun ethnogenesis.
Pashtun ethnogenesis contains ALL the Dragon racial ingredients: Indo-Iranian ("Aryan"), Scythian and Hunnish.
The best book on Pashtuns in English is "The Pathans"- wriiten in 1956 by Sir Olaf Caroe, the last British Imperial Governor of Pashtun territories in India. It still has no match. Sir Olaf was my Pashtun grandfather's friend in the 1930s, and had visited our village several times. He was an excellent speaker of Pashto, and styled himself as an "honorary Pashtun".
The grey she-wolf mother was said to be the symbol of the Ashina Royal Turks, an ancient Eurasian "desert aristocracy" and wellspring for most of continental Eurasia's ruling and noble families; they have left potent genetic signatures, and my descent therefrom is genetically proved....
I am "Eurasian" in the strict sense of the word, and have equally mastered both of the dichotomies that constitute my whole! That is what Fate intended me for...I am an exponent of the Dragon philosophy, and hence the nature of the status I have in it.
The Autosome is the term given to one's own genome (or "gene" in simple lingo). It is as individual as one's fingerprints are. Providence/The Great Architect can throw anything from your millions of diverse ancestors - from anywhere up your tree - into your individual makeup, when creating you......at the 20 generational level for instance, each of us has 1,048,576 ancestors.....and populations move and mingle too. The Y-Chromosome and its Haplogroup and autosomal analysis are two very different things. Let me illustrate by my own example: My own genome has been analysed as containing the following ethnic material:
MY AUTOSOMAL ANALYSIS
1 - by FTDNA:
Continent (Subcontinent) = Europe (Western European - Orcadian); South Asia (Central Asian - not specified); Population Percentages: Orcadian = 52.85% (±0.00%), Central Asian = 47.15% (±0.01%)
References:
1) Western European:
Basque
French
Orcadian (Orkney Islands)
Spanish
2) South Asian:
Central Asian:
Hazara
Tu
Uygur
Xibe
NOTES:
Only one's autosomal DNA results from the Family Finder microarray chip are used. The Population Finder tool does not use Mitochondrial DNA (mtdna), X-chromosome DNA, or Y-chromosome DNA results. Autosomal DNA is DNA that from a non-sex chromosome. Humans have 22 pairs of autosomal chromosomes and a pair of sex chromosomes.
============================================================
2 - MY HARAPPA PROJECT AUTOSOMAL ANALYSIS (initial admixture results). These are a bit more detailed and better defined:
European = 51%
S. Asian (Indo-Aryan)* = 22%
S.W. Asian (Indo-Iranian)* = 19%
Onge (Australoid-Dravidian) = 5%
Siberian (Turkic) = 2%
E. Asian (Mongolic) = 1%
W. African, E. African, San/Pygmy, Papuan, Native American = All 0%.
[HRP Administrator's remarks: HRP0180 is our first Pashtun even if he's only half-Pathan (the other half being English). I have heard grumblings on the net about the HGDP Pathans not being representative of the Pashtun tribes. If we use the HGDP Pathans and 1000genomes British averages to estimate HRP0180's recent ancestry, we get 45.5% Pashtun and 54.5% British. So it seems that the HGDP Pathan samples are reasonable for at least this individual.]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
* Both these constitute the two basic Pashtun Population indices (with the other three also to be found in varying quantities); but 3.5% of my S.W. Asian component has been supplied by my mother. Therefore the proportions 54.5% British and 45.5% Pashtun – even if they are not shown as that in the split analysis above.
http://www.harappadna.org/http://www.harappadna.org/2011/10/admixture-ref3-k11-hrp0171-hrp0180/
The Autosome is the term given to one's own genome (or "gene" in simple lingo). It is as individual as one's fingerprints are. Providence/The Great Architect can throw anything from your millions of diverse ancestors - from anywhere up your tree - into your individual makeup, when creating you......at the 20 generational level for instance, each of us has 1,048,576 ancestors.....and populations move and mingle too. The Y-Chromosome and its Haplogroup and autosomal analysis are two very different things. Let me illustrate by my own example: My own genome has been analysed as containing the following ethnic material:
MY AUTOSOMAL ANALYSIS
1 - by FTDNA:
Continent (Subcontinent) = Europe (Western European - Orcadian); South Asia (Central Asian - not specified); Population Percentages: Orcadian = 52.85% (±0.00%), Central Asian = 47.15% (±0.01%)
References:
1) Western European:
Basque
French
Orcadian (Orkney Islands)
Spanish
2) South Asian:
Central Asian:
Hazara
Tu
Uygur
Xibe
NOTES:
Only one's autosomal DNA results from the Family Finder microarray chip are used. The Population Finder tool does not use Mitochondrial DNA (mtdna), X-chromosome DNA, or Y-chromosome DNA results. Autosomal DNA is DNA that from a non-sex chromosome. Humans have 22 pairs of autosomal chromosomes and a pair of sex chromosomes.
============================================================
2 - MY HARAPPA PROJECT AUTOSOMAL ANALYSIS (initial admixture results). These are a bit more detailed and better defined:
European = 51%
S. Asian (Indo-Aryan)* = 22%
S.W. Asian (Indo-Iranian)* = 19%
Onge (Australoid-Dravidian) = 5%
Siberian (Turkic) = 2%
E. Asian (Mongolic) = 1%
W. African, E. African, San/Pygmy, Papuan, Native American = All 0%.
[HRP Administrator's remarks: HRP0180 is our first Pashtun even if he's only half-Pathan (the other half being English). I have heard grumblings on the net about the HGDP Pathans not being representative of the Pashtun tribes. If we use the HGDP Pathans and 1000genomes British averages to estimate HRP0180's recent ancestry, we get 45.5% Pashtun and 54.5% British. So it seems that the HGDP Pathan samples are reasonable for at least this individual.]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
* Both these constitute the two basic Pashtun Population indices (with the other three also to be found in varying quantities); but 3.5% of my S.W. Asian component has been supplied by my mother. Therefore the proportions 54.5% British and 45.5% Pashtun – even if they are not shown as that in the split analysis above.
http://www.harappadna.org/http://www.harappadna.org/2011/10/admixture-ref3-k11-hrp0171-hrp0180/
I have been analysed as being 54.5% British and 45.5% Pashtun. (Perhaps the emphasis on me leaning more towards my beloved mother is reflected in the fact that I have a Cancer Ascendant and three personal planets in that sign too)......But my half-Pashtun and half-English reality is beautifully expressed in the above autosomal analysis. The two populations with the asterisks are deemed by experts to be the two main Pashtun/Afghan population markers: Indo-Aryan and Indo-Iranian. So I have 51% European and 41% Pashtun in me, although the Onge and Turco-Mongol components are regular parts of the Pashtun "soup" too, in varying quantities.... It should be noted here also, that 3.5% of my Indo-Iranian "material" was contributed to me via my mother, so that makes my "European stuff" 54.5% not 51% as shown in the analytical breakup. But still, the above defines me exactly as I would be: as "a Pashtun, of Ashina extraction, with an English mother" - when taken together with my Y-Haplogroup Q1b*! The Ashina Y-Chromosome, which traces the Paternal Bloodline...is, in my case -- confined to that teensy Siberian 2% part of my total makeup! So I personally am more British and Pashtun than I am Turco-Mongol, yet my "brand label", with regard to my paternal family line, is still technically and scientifically -- Ashina! Regarding Dragon genes.well, my Ashina Bloodline is restricted to that 2%, but that in no way diminishes its significance, nor its potency...and as my 51% European part is Orcadian (Scottish) - and Orcadians are descended from the mighty Picts, that explains itself; the 41% Pashtun component in me is the joint legacy of the legendary Sakas, Yuezhi/Kushans and Tocharian Scythians...that too is self-explanatory...and my brand label is still Ashina! THIS is how genetics works! -- Arif Hasan Akhundzada
An Update on Akhund Zafar Baba's History.....
By Arif Hasan Akhundzada
(Monday, October 31, 2011)
Another version regarding the history of my ancestor was related to me by an elder of our family, Abdul Wadud lala - who is educated and knowledgeable in these matters - and at 81, is one of the surviving repositories of such now obscure family historical information. I would regard his narration as being more accurate than the village "legends" of the peasant populace of the area regarding our family's origins.
According to this, a certain Haji Qasim Ali Khan Alkozai - an Abdali of the Panjpao sept - was the Durrani feudatory (jagirdar) of the Shabqadar-Doaba region during the reign of Ahmad Shah Durrani (1747-1773). His estate's headquarters was in our ancestral village Panjpao which he named after his tribe, just as the adjoining Qasim Baba graveyard derives its name from the fact that he lies buried there, as is also my ancestor Akhund Zafar Baba.
Haji Qasim had expressed his inability to continue in his role as jagirdar and wanted to retire. He therefore requested the Durrani governor at Peshawar to replace him. The governor in turn asked the key Mohmand tribal notable of the area and Durrani ally - Zain Khan, the Khan of Lalpura - to suggest a man suitable for being the new jagirdar of this region. The Khan sent along his young son-in-law, an Afshar Turk by the name of Mir Kamil Shah, whose father was a commander in Nader Shah Afshar's army - and who at that time was residing in Mohmand country in Ningrahar. After Nader Shah was assasinated, many Afshars remained behind, married and settled in the new Afghan state established by Ahmad Shah Abdali - also a key general of Nader Shah. The Khan of Lalpura was also a former ally of Nader Shah, as he was of his Afghan successor, Ahmad Shah Abdali.......
My ancestor Mir Kamil Shah was also known as Akhund Zafar - as he was a pious man, being a disciple of Lahore's main Afghan saint Syed Ali Hajwairi (Hazrat Data Ganj Bakhsh) - whose shrine he visited, and where he was initiated into sainthood. This saint had pre-deceased my ancestor by about 600 years.
The jagir of Akhund Zafar Baba later diminished with the passage of time, and the waning of Saddozai (Durrani) power.....and also, as the family increased in size and shifted places within the region due to various reasons over the intervening 270 years - and the Mohmand tribes regained control over large swathes of this land.......
MY FATHER Shamsur Rahman Khan (1930-1998) - former civil engineer, Government of Pakistan - is pictured here, at age 47.
Ethnohistorical and genetic survey of four Central Anatolian settlementsby Gokcumen, Omer, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2008, 204 pages; AAT 3328565
Abstract (Summary)This study investigates the genetic diversity and ethnohistory of four Central Anatolian settlements from a local perspective to better understand the complex population history of Anatolia. The objectives of this project are to (1) document the biological and cultural diversity in contemporary settlements in the Yuksekyer region, (2) describe the population history of the Yuksekyer settlements within an ethnohistorical context, and (3) contextualize the findings of broader studies, which address major population events, such as the Neolithic expansion and the Turkic invasion, from a local perspective. To accomplish these goals, ethnohistorical fieldwork was conducted using interviews and questionnaires to obtain genealogical information about participants and record the local histories of these settlements, including their cultural and social affinities with each other. During this process, biological samples were also collected from the Yuksekyer inhabitants for genetic analysis. These samples were screened for mtDNA, Y-chromosome, and autosomal polymorphisms, and the resulting data analyzed with statistic and phylogenetic methods to define the biological affinities of Central Anatolian populations, and reconstruct the migration history of the region. The ethnohistorical information obtained through fieldwork facilitated a more thorough historical and cultural understanding of genetic variation in Turkey than has been achieved in previous studies. Furthermore, by working at the local level, it was possible to distinguish patterns of diversity resulting from long-term inhabitation versus those arising from recent immigration into the region.
The results of this study revealed that in the village level, the paternal genetic diversity was strongly structured among settlements due to patrilocality. In contrast, maternal genetic diversity is distributed more homogenously. The signatures of Turkic invasion, the Caucasus origins of a particular settlement and recent migrations were all evident in different settlements within Yuksekyer. On the national level, a reassessment of previous genetic studies of Turkish populations indicated that these studies suffer from major sampling bias. Overall, this study emphasizes the value of ethnohistorically contextualized sampling with a multi-allelic genetic analysis to obtain a more complex understanding of the study populations and better delineate the patterns of genetic history in Anatolia.
Abstract (Summary)This study investigates the genetic diversity and ethnohistory of four Central Anatolian settlements from a local perspective to better understand the complex population history of Anatolia. The objectives of this project are to (1) document the biological and cultural diversity in contemporary settlements in the Yuksekyer region, (2) describe the population history of the Yuksekyer settlements within an ethnohistorical context, and (3) contextualize the findings of broader studies, which address major population events, such as the Neolithic expansion and the Turkic invasion, from a local perspective. To accomplish these goals, ethnohistorical fieldwork was conducted using interviews and questionnaires to obtain genealogical information about participants and record the local histories of these settlements, including their cultural and social affinities with each other. During this process, biological samples were also collected from the Yuksekyer inhabitants for genetic analysis. These samples were screened for mtDNA, Y-chromosome, and autosomal polymorphisms, and the resulting data analyzed with statistic and phylogenetic methods to define the biological affinities of Central Anatolian populations, and reconstruct the migration history of the region. The ethnohistorical information obtained through fieldwork facilitated a more thorough historical and cultural understanding of genetic variation in Turkey than has been achieved in previous studies. Furthermore, by working at the local level, it was possible to distinguish patterns of diversity resulting from long-term inhabitation versus those arising from recent immigration into the region.
The results of this study revealed that in the village level, the paternal genetic diversity was strongly structured among settlements due to patrilocality. In contrast, maternal genetic diversity is distributed more homogenously. The signatures of Turkic invasion, the Caucasus origins of a particular settlement and recent migrations were all evident in different settlements within Yuksekyer. On the national level, a reassessment of previous genetic studies of Turkish populations indicated that these studies suffer from major sampling bias. Overall, this study emphasizes the value of ethnohistorically contextualized sampling with a multi-allelic genetic analysis to obtain a more complex understanding of the study populations and better delineate the patterns of genetic history in Anatolia.
The certificate issued to me by Familytree DNA (FTDNA) - a genetic testing company, which shows my Y-DNA Haplogroup (Q1b*, or Q-L275). This is the latest certificate, as haplogroup designations are prone to change, being moved around and updated by constant new discoveries as the global database expands. Genetic genealogy is a very young science indeed, albeit among the most revolutionary in uncovering history that could not have been accessed otherwise.
AFGHAN ARISTOCRATIC DEFINITIONS & DENOMINATIONS: Afghan/Pashtun aristocracy is divided into two main sections: one is of
the "blue-blooded" Khans or Lords, comparable to the Earls, Barons and
Dukes in England; these are tribal chiefs.....the Yusufzai are a famous
example......
The other section is of the "religious nobility", to which I belong: compare these to medieval Europe's Bishops, Archbishops and Abbotts, who held large landed estates, and yet performed basically religious roles......and as was the case in Europe, so it is here: the religious families often have more appeal and power in this society, as people are afraid of their powers like curses and spells. In Afghan society, these classes are known as Syeds (who claim descent from Mohammad's family through his daughter), Qureshis (of Arab pedigree, but a step lower since they belong to Mohammad's Quresh tribe, and not his immediate family as Syeds claim to be), Pirs, Mians, Sahibzadas, Pirzadas, and Akhundzadas - who may or may not be Syeds or Qureshis....
The title "Khan" is among the very early of the Turkic titles, and probably precedes them in origin, as it appears to have been a Hunnish title - who in turn, obtained it from their Avar overlords, according to Sir Olaf Caroe. It certainly then had its full life of use throughout Pan-Turkic society and culture, as can be seen even in its most famous exponent Gengis Khan's name. But this title is now virtually extinct in that form, save for the fact that it still lives on in full force in just one society and that is the Iranian Pashtun (Afghan) culture, where it is used both as a feudal title, and as a personal name suffix - and where it was brought at the very beginning of its career by one of its earliest "owners", the Hepthalite Huns. Pashtun society is located in an area of the world, that has seen countless Turkic incursions and invasions in the 1500 years or so since the first major irruption by the White Huns....each of these has left its own marks; but some are more prominent than the others, and others are negligible or have been absorbed by yet others.
But of all the Turkic titles, chiefly Khan and Beg - only Khan dominates in this manner among Pashtuns; another Turkic aristocratic title, that was brought to this (Indian subcontinental) region here mainly by the later Muslim Turkic Moghul Dynasty - is "Beg".....this is a version of the famous Turkish "Bey". Beg can now be found among Indian Muslims of Moghul origin, but never among Pashtuns - who, by the way, had utter contempt and disdain for the Moghuls when they ruled these parts from 300-500 years ago. But it is interesting to note however, that the female version of "Beg", which is "Begum", is now universally used in Indian Muslim culture to denote a married lady of high social ranking; it is therefore used in polite speech as a form of address while referring to any lady - just as the term "Dame" may be used in Britain. Afghans who speak Persian, prefer the female version of "Khan", which is "Khanum"in this role. Another version of this word is "Khatoon", which has also graced the names of many aristocratic Mongol and Persian ladies........
VILLAGE LEGEND REGARDING MY ANCESTOR
My ancestor, from whom I derive my family name - was also a (Muslim) saint; his actual name was Syed Kamil Shah, but after he became recognised in his saintly vocation, the people styled him "Akhund Zafar", meaning "victorious saint". "Akhund" is a Persian term for scholar, saint, mystic....perhaps in the same way that the scholarly Venerable Bede, the famous Saxon saint was......"zada" means "son of" in Persian, and is a common Central Asian surname suffix in the Persian milieu....it is equivalent to the "son" in the English surnames "Stevenson" or "Simpson"....
The story of my ancestor is quite interesting. His parents emigrated to Lahore - in what was then India, and now Pakistan - from the ancient city of Merv (Marawa) in present day Turkmenistan; they were Afshar Turks, who came to India with the conquering armies of Nadir Shah Afshar, the Persian emperor, who was also an Afshar Turkmen, as his name shows. My ancestor's antecedents styled themselves as "Syeds" (descendants of Mohammed via his daughter Fatima); in those days, it was the kind of thing to do for social-climber families and "wannabes" - and it was precisely to verify this that I had my Y-DNA tested in 2004....the result: yes, they were pulling the wool, and were not Syeds but Turkic... Anyway, they needn't have bothered, because I regard their actual Ashina origins as being of far more consequence than the Syed legacy, which is otherwise ten-a-penny in the whole Central and Southern Asian region....! My reasoning is, that my ancestor's family was probably from a long line of Ashina-Oghuz Turkic shamans, which was religiously prominent, and who, after converting to Islam - later claimed the Islamic elitist "Syed" label, as was the case with so many others in those days....
Anyway back to my ancestor's own tale: His parents came here in the early 1740s with Kamil, who was a babe-in-arms then. They "donated" him as a "khadim" (seneschal) - as was and still is the custom among all social classes - to serve in the upkeep of the shrine of the great Lahori sufi saint Syed Ali Hajveiry, who was also an Afghan, and had flourished around the eleventh century AD.
After the boy grew, Hajveiry (popularly known as "Daataa") came to him in a dream, and told him that he was of saintly lineage, and that he should prove it by passing an initiatory test. This test was that he convey a pot of clover on his head in three days and three nights - on foot, with divine assistance - to the city of Peshawar in the North, some 300 miles away. This, it is said, was done.....and Daataa again appeared in a dream, and told him to get a she-camel, mount it, and keep riding till the camel itself stopped and sat down. He was to make his home there, and serve Islam there on his (Daataa's) behalf...
So the boy, barely into his teens - did just this....and the camel is said to have come all the way Northwest, to where our present village of Shabqadar is, in what was then Afghanistan - and the domain of the Mohmand Pashtun tribe, whose Khans were based at the Mohmand capital of Lalpura, now inside present day Afghanistan. As Kamil dismounted, the suspicious tribesmen wanted to know who he was; and when he told them, they spirited him away to their Khan....now, as saintly figures were - and still are feared and venerated in this society, the Khan immediately gave him his daughter in marriage, and gifted him a feudal estate of 3000 acres of land....a lot of which our clan still possesses, and conferred on him the title of a Khan of the Mohmand tribe; this was in addition to his being a saint. If you compare the medieval Abbotts and Archbishops of feudal Europe, then the Akhundzadas are not much different from that. But there are many such Akhundzada families in Afghanistan, some rich, some not that well-off, who are not related to us genetically, but are similarly "sons of saints" and pious men...... just as England is full of "Abbott" and "Bishop" surnames too! A lot of them could, and can be Dragons...
That was how we began....my ancestor's "job" used to be to solemnise marriages; to teach the Quran and Arabic and Persian languages; to write poetry; to cast healing "mantras" and spells, often intoned from the Quran - and "puffing" them onto people; to make amulets and talismans to heal and ward off evil, ill-luck and illness - all for a fee in cash or kind, or for free as he pleased; and deal in herbs and poultices; but all Sufi saints have "specialties", and his was to cure possession; it is said he called the entity out, and then tied it to the foot of his bed at night; the entity thereafter used to do his bidding.....now, it is said that the "spirits" are tied in a similar manner to his grave....people come from far and wide, and rub the soil from his grave on their bodies, claiming it heals them....and it seems to, too.
My ancestor Akhund Zafar Baba was said to teach the Quran and mysticism not only to humans, but also hold Quranic "classes" for Jinns....eyewittness accounts, passed down in the family from 250 years ago, relate how he would be sitting cross-legged on a raised wooden couch in the middle of his mosque's courtyard at high noon, expounding on themes and subjects......whereas in the fields around the mosque, nothing unusual would be visible, save for the fact that the atmosphere would be charged and tense - and the air above the ground would shimmer as if it were giving off heatwaves like a hot desert floor appears in a mirage....even in the dead of winter. During such "sessions", nobody would dare set foot near where Akhund Zafar was lecturing his invisible "brood". These Jinns were said to acknowledge him as their teacher - and obeyed all his commands and wishes, but he never used them wrongly against anybody.
The other social duty expected of an Akhundzada family was to maintain a free public kitchen, where the hungry of the village could have free meals. This kitchen was run everyday, morning and evening, using the proceeds and products from the family land. But this practice also had its wider feudal ramifications too, as an old Afghan adage says that "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach....." This meant that the Akhundzada clan could muster a sizeable body of men who were obliged to fight or work for them or their allies if the need arose, because they ate of the Akhundzadas' free repast......The method of greeting an Akhundzada was to kiss his hand, or the hem of his long Afghan tunic..
My ancestor Akhund Zafar also became famous when, in 1761 Afghanistan's founder king Ahmad Shah Abdali passed through our village with his army, on his way to invade India, and sought the boy saint's blessings and advice when told about him.
Clans like ours are known as "Astanadars" (Persian for "grave owners") - because the grave of their saintly ancestor was the source of their social prestige and income; however, since the era of British rule, my own family took the modern education that the British offered them, and became doctors, engineers, army officers, high ranking civil servants and politicians....gradually, the rest of the clan also followed. Today, they have all but renounced their original social role and legacy for "modern sophistication" and lifestyles. However, a family from the clan still maintains the shrine of Akhund Zafar, and gets quite a sizeable income from casting spells and making amulets - mainly for the rural population and peasantry who still fervently believe in such things. My father himself was a senior civil engineer in the government, but he still had his amulets made and spells done for him!
The other section is of the "religious nobility", to which I belong: compare these to medieval Europe's Bishops, Archbishops and Abbotts, who held large landed estates, and yet performed basically religious roles......and as was the case in Europe, so it is here: the religious families often have more appeal and power in this society, as people are afraid of their powers like curses and spells. In Afghan society, these classes are known as Syeds (who claim descent from Mohammad's family through his daughter), Qureshis (of Arab pedigree, but a step lower since they belong to Mohammad's Quresh tribe, and not his immediate family as Syeds claim to be), Pirs, Mians, Sahibzadas, Pirzadas, and Akhundzadas - who may or may not be Syeds or Qureshis....
The title "Khan" is among the very early of the Turkic titles, and probably precedes them in origin, as it appears to have been a Hunnish title - who in turn, obtained it from their Avar overlords, according to Sir Olaf Caroe. It certainly then had its full life of use throughout Pan-Turkic society and culture, as can be seen even in its most famous exponent Gengis Khan's name. But this title is now virtually extinct in that form, save for the fact that it still lives on in full force in just one society and that is the Iranian Pashtun (Afghan) culture, where it is used both as a feudal title, and as a personal name suffix - and where it was brought at the very beginning of its career by one of its earliest "owners", the Hepthalite Huns. Pashtun society is located in an area of the world, that has seen countless Turkic incursions and invasions in the 1500 years or so since the first major irruption by the White Huns....each of these has left its own marks; but some are more prominent than the others, and others are negligible or have been absorbed by yet others.
But of all the Turkic titles, chiefly Khan and Beg - only Khan dominates in this manner among Pashtuns; another Turkic aristocratic title, that was brought to this (Indian subcontinental) region here mainly by the later Muslim Turkic Moghul Dynasty - is "Beg".....this is a version of the famous Turkish "Bey". Beg can now be found among Indian Muslims of Moghul origin, but never among Pashtuns - who, by the way, had utter contempt and disdain for the Moghuls when they ruled these parts from 300-500 years ago. But it is interesting to note however, that the female version of "Beg", which is "Begum", is now universally used in Indian Muslim culture to denote a married lady of high social ranking; it is therefore used in polite speech as a form of address while referring to any lady - just as the term "Dame" may be used in Britain. Afghans who speak Persian, prefer the female version of "Khan", which is "Khanum"in this role. Another version of this word is "Khatoon", which has also graced the names of many aristocratic Mongol and Persian ladies........
VILLAGE LEGEND REGARDING MY ANCESTOR
My ancestor, from whom I derive my family name - was also a (Muslim) saint; his actual name was Syed Kamil Shah, but after he became recognised in his saintly vocation, the people styled him "Akhund Zafar", meaning "victorious saint". "Akhund" is a Persian term for scholar, saint, mystic....perhaps in the same way that the scholarly Venerable Bede, the famous Saxon saint was......"zada" means "son of" in Persian, and is a common Central Asian surname suffix in the Persian milieu....it is equivalent to the "son" in the English surnames "Stevenson" or "Simpson"....
The story of my ancestor is quite interesting. His parents emigrated to Lahore - in what was then India, and now Pakistan - from the ancient city of Merv (Marawa) in present day Turkmenistan; they were Afshar Turks, who came to India with the conquering armies of Nadir Shah Afshar, the Persian emperor, who was also an Afshar Turkmen, as his name shows. My ancestor's antecedents styled themselves as "Syeds" (descendants of Mohammed via his daughter Fatima); in those days, it was the kind of thing to do for social-climber families and "wannabes" - and it was precisely to verify this that I had my Y-DNA tested in 2004....the result: yes, they were pulling the wool, and were not Syeds but Turkic... Anyway, they needn't have bothered, because I regard their actual Ashina origins as being of far more consequence than the Syed legacy, which is otherwise ten-a-penny in the whole Central and Southern Asian region....! My reasoning is, that my ancestor's family was probably from a long line of Ashina-Oghuz Turkic shamans, which was religiously prominent, and who, after converting to Islam - later claimed the Islamic elitist "Syed" label, as was the case with so many others in those days....
Anyway back to my ancestor's own tale: His parents came here in the early 1740s with Kamil, who was a babe-in-arms then. They "donated" him as a "khadim" (seneschal) - as was and still is the custom among all social classes - to serve in the upkeep of the shrine of the great Lahori sufi saint Syed Ali Hajveiry, who was also an Afghan, and had flourished around the eleventh century AD.
After the boy grew, Hajveiry (popularly known as "Daataa") came to him in a dream, and told him that he was of saintly lineage, and that he should prove it by passing an initiatory test. This test was that he convey a pot of clover on his head in three days and three nights - on foot, with divine assistance - to the city of Peshawar in the North, some 300 miles away. This, it is said, was done.....and Daataa again appeared in a dream, and told him to get a she-camel, mount it, and keep riding till the camel itself stopped and sat down. He was to make his home there, and serve Islam there on his (Daataa's) behalf...
So the boy, barely into his teens - did just this....and the camel is said to have come all the way Northwest, to where our present village of Shabqadar is, in what was then Afghanistan - and the domain of the Mohmand Pashtun tribe, whose Khans were based at the Mohmand capital of Lalpura, now inside present day Afghanistan. As Kamil dismounted, the suspicious tribesmen wanted to know who he was; and when he told them, they spirited him away to their Khan....now, as saintly figures were - and still are feared and venerated in this society, the Khan immediately gave him his daughter in marriage, and gifted him a feudal estate of 3000 acres of land....a lot of which our clan still possesses, and conferred on him the title of a Khan of the Mohmand tribe; this was in addition to his being a saint. If you compare the medieval Abbotts and Archbishops of feudal Europe, then the Akhundzadas are not much different from that. But there are many such Akhundzada families in Afghanistan, some rich, some not that well-off, who are not related to us genetically, but are similarly "sons of saints" and pious men...... just as England is full of "Abbott" and "Bishop" surnames too! A lot of them could, and can be Dragons...
That was how we began....my ancestor's "job" used to be to solemnise marriages; to teach the Quran and Arabic and Persian languages; to write poetry; to cast healing "mantras" and spells, often intoned from the Quran - and "puffing" them onto people; to make amulets and talismans to heal and ward off evil, ill-luck and illness - all for a fee in cash or kind, or for free as he pleased; and deal in herbs and poultices; but all Sufi saints have "specialties", and his was to cure possession; it is said he called the entity out, and then tied it to the foot of his bed at night; the entity thereafter used to do his bidding.....now, it is said that the "spirits" are tied in a similar manner to his grave....people come from far and wide, and rub the soil from his grave on their bodies, claiming it heals them....and it seems to, too.
My ancestor Akhund Zafar Baba was said to teach the Quran and mysticism not only to humans, but also hold Quranic "classes" for Jinns....eyewittness accounts, passed down in the family from 250 years ago, relate how he would be sitting cross-legged on a raised wooden couch in the middle of his mosque's courtyard at high noon, expounding on themes and subjects......whereas in the fields around the mosque, nothing unusual would be visible, save for the fact that the atmosphere would be charged and tense - and the air above the ground would shimmer as if it were giving off heatwaves like a hot desert floor appears in a mirage....even in the dead of winter. During such "sessions", nobody would dare set foot near where Akhund Zafar was lecturing his invisible "brood". These Jinns were said to acknowledge him as their teacher - and obeyed all his commands and wishes, but he never used them wrongly against anybody.
The other social duty expected of an Akhundzada family was to maintain a free public kitchen, where the hungry of the village could have free meals. This kitchen was run everyday, morning and evening, using the proceeds and products from the family land. But this practice also had its wider feudal ramifications too, as an old Afghan adage says that "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach....." This meant that the Akhundzada clan could muster a sizeable body of men who were obliged to fight or work for them or their allies if the need arose, because they ate of the Akhundzadas' free repast......The method of greeting an Akhundzada was to kiss his hand, or the hem of his long Afghan tunic..
My ancestor Akhund Zafar also became famous when, in 1761 Afghanistan's founder king Ahmad Shah Abdali passed through our village with his army, on his way to invade India, and sought the boy saint's blessings and advice when told about him.
Clans like ours are known as "Astanadars" (Persian for "grave owners") - because the grave of their saintly ancestor was the source of their social prestige and income; however, since the era of British rule, my own family took the modern education that the British offered them, and became doctors, engineers, army officers, high ranking civil servants and politicians....gradually, the rest of the clan also followed. Today, they have all but renounced their original social role and legacy for "modern sophistication" and lifestyles. However, a family from the clan still maintains the shrine of Akhund Zafar, and gets quite a sizeable income from casting spells and making amulets - mainly for the rural population and peasantry who still fervently believe in such things. My father himself was a senior civil engineer in the government, but he still had his amulets made and spells done for him!
After the collapse of the Göktürk empire under pressure from the resurgent Uyghurs, branches of the Ashina clan moved westward to Europe, where they became the kaghans of the Khazars and possibly other nomadic peoples with Turkic roots. According to Marquart, the Ashina clan constituted a noble caste throughout the steppes. Similarly, the Bashkir historian and Turkolog Zeki Validi Togan described them as a "desert aristocracy" that provided rulers for a number of Eurasian nomadic empires. Accounts of the Göktürk and Khazar khaganates suggest that the Ashina clan was accorded sacred, perhaps quasi-divine status in the shamanic religion practiced by the steppe nomads of the first millennium CE.
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All Rights Reserved for Original Multimedia, Graphic & Written Content.
For Educational Purposes Only.
If you mirror parts of this site, please include the Author credit and URL link to this site.
Materials mirrored here under "Fair Use" for Educational Purposes Only.