درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This paper utilizes an approach that combines studies of Samanid period artifacts and textual accounts with modern genetic studies to explore the identity of the people who were involved in long distance trade from the far eastern regions of the Central Asia into Northern Europe. Although this study does not analyze the Samanid works, it reiterates and illustrates how important Iran/Persia was in the history of Europe as well as Central Asia. The information contained in the artifacts and texts gives us the evidence needed to understand the vast trade network and the people who were responsible for the movement of these goods, people and ideas. This study reconfirmed recent genetic studies that the people, collectively termed Rus or Vikings, were a mixture primarily of Scandinavians, Slavs, and Turks, with additional admixing with local populations. The importance of the Persian and Arabic sources addressing contact between the Rus and Eastern people has been thoroughly discussed by Thorir Jonsson Hraundal. In these texts, the Rus were referred to by different names including Majus, Northmanni, Urduman, Warank as well as by other names. One of his many observations is the unmistakable influence of Turkic culture on that of the Rus. This complex ancestry is supported by recent genetic studies and will be discussed in more detail below in light of archaeological evidence. Thus, the term Rus refers to a way of life rather than a homogenous ethnic or cultural group. However, this study refined the identity of the people responsible by observing a correlation between the distribution of the genetic haplogroup R1a sub-clade and the long-distance trade routes across Central Asia to Northern Europe, with the central focus in Eastern Europe. Despite the vast distance, the evidence indicates that there were cultural contacts between people with linked ancestry. The study is important because it begins to reveal the unexpected influence of Eastern cultures on those of Northern Europe.

The Turban helmet is a type of war helmet during the 14th to 16th centuries AD in Middle East countries. This type of helmet has become known by Western scholars by this name because of the special decorations that made it look like a turban as well as the visibility of the helmet from under the warriors’ turban. Based on the numerous documents remaining, one can say that the use of Turban helmets was popular in Middle East territories’ armies during the Middle Ages. Despite being widely used and in style for more than two centuries and among many west Asian countries, among all the remaining samples of this type of middle eastern helmet, only two distinct styles, the Turkoman and the Ottoman styles, have been examined and introduced. This can be due to a large number of remaining samples of these two being kept for years in the armouries of the Ottoman Empire. Apart from these two known styles, few studies have been done so far on investigating other possible types of turban helmets. The purpose of this research is to study the turban helmets that were popular among the armies of the Il-khanid, Jalayirid, Muzaffarid, Timurid, Turkoman, and Safavid that ruled respectively in the cultural Iran region, by relying on the remaining documents from the 14th to the 16th centuries, such as the collection of helmets and illustrated manuscripts. The results of this research reveal that the changes that occurred in the making of turban helmets during the 14th to the 16th centuries have led to the representation of four different types of helmets: Mongolian style, Timurid style, Turkoman style, and Qizilbash style.