Monday, May 17, 2010
The cresent Moon
Star and crescent
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A star (or stars) and crescent featuring in some combination form the basis of symbols widely found across the ancient world, with examples attested from the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East to Central Asia and India.[1] Today it is most widely recognized as a symbol of Islam, or theMuslim community.
[edit]Early attestations
The star and crescent appear in combination in finds from in and around ancient Israel. It has been associated with the Moabites (14th or early 13th century B.C – 6th century B.C.[2]), as the symbol or symbols appear on what are thought to be Moabite name seals.[3] Crescents appearing together with a star or stars are a common feature of Sumerian iconography, the crescent usually being associated with the moon god Sin and the star (often identified as Venus) with Ishtar. However, in this context, there is a third element often seen, that being the sun disk of Shamash. Academic discussion of a star or stars together with crescents in Sumerian representations does not always clearly indicate if they appear in isolation (the "star and crescent" as such) or as part of a triad of symbols, "the three celestial emblems, the sun disk of Samas, the crescent of Sin, and the star of Istar"[4] or "the crescent of Sin (the moon god), the star of Ishtar and the ray of Shamash"[5]. Nevertheless, later use of the star and crescent by the Parthians, and other Iranian dynasties is often traced to earlier use in Mesopotamia. As one scholar observed, "[t]he Parthian king Mithradates I conquered Mesopotamia around 147 B.C., and Susa in about 140 B.C. A later Parthian king, Orodes II (58-38 B.C.), issued coins at Susa and elsewhere which display a star and crescent on the obverse. The succeeding ruler, Phraates IV (38-3/2 B.C.), minted coins showing either a star alone or a star with crescent moon. In representing the star and crescent on their coins the Parthians thus adopted traditional symbols used in Mesopotamia and Elam more than two millennia before their own arrival in those parts."[6] Along these lines, some scholars maintain that later use of the symbol arose from Babylonian mythology in which the juxtaposition of Sin (moon god, father of time) and Shamash (supreme ruling sun god, judge of heaven and earth) was a metaphor for the cosmic powers given to the Babylonian king to rule.[7]
[edit]Iran, Mithra and Mithradates
The star and crescent was also the emblem of Mithradates VI Eupator. "His royal emblem, an eight rayed star and the crescent moon, represented the dynasty's patron gods, Zeus Stratios, or Ahuramazda, and Men Pharmacou, a Persian form of the native moon goddess."[8]Other scholars have suggested that the star and crescent are more directly related to the cult of the god Mithra. Ustinova associates the star and crescent motif attested in a number of finds in the Bosporan Kingdom (which date from the 5th century B.C. to the 1st century A.D.) with the cult of Mithras, and indicates the star and the crescent together constituted the emblem of Pontus and its kings, asserting that it was introduced to the Bosporus by Mithradates and his successors, where it is attested on coins, locally produced jewelry and other objects. She suggests that this emblem indicates "the possibility of an earlier association of the Pontic dynasty with the cult of mounted Mithra. Mithra in fact must have been one of the most venerated gods of the Pontic Kingdom, since its rulers bore the theomorphic name of Mithradates […] although direct evidence for this cult is rather meager."[9] McGing also notes the association of the star and crescent with Mithradates VI, discussing it's appearance on his coins, and its survival in the coins of the Bosporan Kingdom where "[t]he star and crescent appear on Pontic royal coins from the time of Mithradates III and seem to have had oriental significance as a dynastic badge of the Mithridatic family, or the arms of the country of Pontus."[10]
As a Turkish scholar has observed:
"The significance of the star and crescent on royal coins has also been frequently debated. Many scholars have identified the star and the crescent as royal symbols of the Pontic kingdom. Their appearance on every royal issue suggests they were indeed important symbols, and the connection of this symbol to the royal family is definite. The nature of it, however, is still uncertain. Kleiner believed they were symbols of an indigenous god and had their origins in Persia. He associated the star and crescent with the god Men and saw them as representations of night and day (the star may be considered the sun here). Ritter, on the other hand, suggested that the star and crescent symbols derived from Perseus, just as the star symbol of the Macedonians did. […] Ma and Mithras are two other deities with whom the star and crescent symbol are associated. Olshausen believed that the star and crescent could be related to a syncretism of Pontic and Iranian iconography: the crescent for Men and the star for Ahura Mazda. Recently, Summerer has convincingly suggested that Men alone was the inspiration for the symbol on the royal coins of the Pontic kingdom."[11]
A combined star and crescent motif is commonly found on later coins minted by the Sassanids.[12]This has led some researchers to suggest that Muslims adopted the symbol in the context of its use by Sassanian rulers. After describing the crowns of a number of Sassanid kings, which featured a crescent, sphere and crescent, or star and crescent, H. Ayatollahi remarks, "Sasani coins remained in circulation in Moslem countries up to the end of the first century [Hijra]. This detailed description of Sasani crowns was presented because the motifs mentioned, particularly the crescent and star gradually changed into Islamic symbols and have often appeared in the decorative patterns of various periods of Islamic art." This author asserts that "The flags of many Islamic countries bear crescents and stars and are proof of this Sasani innovation.".[13]
[edit]Hellenistic and Roman
By the late Hellenistic or early Roman period, the star and crescent motif had been associated to some degree with Byzantium. For example, some Byzantine coins of the 1st century B.C. and later show the head of Artemis with bow and quiver, and feature a crescent with what appears to be a six-rayed star on the reverse. According to accounts which vary in some of the details, in 340 B.C. the Byzantines and their allies the Athenians were under siege by the troops of Philip of Macedon. On a particularly dark and wet night Philip attempted a surprise attack but was thwarted by the appearance of a bright light in the sky. This light is occasionally described by subsequent interpreters as a meteor, sometimes as the moon, and some accounts also mention the barking of dogs. However, the original accounts mention only a light in the sky, without specifying the moon.[14] To commemorate the event the Byzantines erected a statue of Artemis (or Hecate) lampadephoros(light-bearer or bringer). This story survived in the works Hesychius of Miletus, who in all probability lived in the time of Justinian I. His works survive only in fragments preserved in Photius and the tenth century lexicographer Suidas. The tale is also related by Stephanus of Byzantium, and Eustathius.
Devotion to Hecate was especially favored by the Byzantines for her aid in having protected them from the incursions of Philip of Macedon. Her symbols were the crescent and star, and the walls of her city were her provenance.[15]
It is unclear how the symbol of a particular goddess (one of many[16]) would have been transferred to the city itself. If the Byzantines adopted the crescent and star as a symbol of their city after the events of the mid 4th Century BC, one is forced to wonder why they waited several hundred years before putting the symbol on only some of their coins. It is worth noting in this context that at roughly the time that the star and crescent appear on Byzantine coins "Byzantium and Chalcedon may also have come under the protectorate of Mithridates, if it is correct to identify his portrait on coins of those cities."[17]
Later, under the Romans, cities in the empire often continued to issue their own coinage. "Of the many themes that were used on local coinage, celestial and astral symbols often appeared, mostly stars or crescent moons."[18] The wide variety of these issues, and the varying explanations for the significance of the star and crescent on Roman coinage precludes their discussion here. It is, however, apparent that by the time of the Romans, coins featuring a star or crescent in some combination were not at all rare.
The widespread use of a star and crescent on coins (which are one of the best sources of evidence for iconography in the ancient world) is perhaps unsurprising given the often clear visibility of the moon and stars in the night sky; the astrological significance assigned toconjunctions; the association of celestial bodies with the gods of various pantheons; the association of justification for rule with divine mandate, and; the role that coins played in spreading the propaganda of specific rulers in their dominions and abroad.
[edit]Central Asia
The star and crescent motif appears on a Gokturk coin of the second Turkic Kaghanate, from the first half of the 8th century AD found at Chach (Tashkent oasis). This suggests that the symbol was in use among the Turks (or at least known to them from Iranian and Sogdian examples) long before their arrival in Anatolia.[19]
[edit]Byzantine and Ottoman
The theory that the Ottomans simply adopted a star and crescent symbol from the Byzantines after their conquest of Constantinople is commonly advanced. However, this is difficult to conclusively establish. After the emergence of the Byzantine Empire and the rise of Constantinople as an imperial city, symbols interpreted as a 'star and crescent' appear rather infrequently on Byzantine coins.
Moreover, the question is what the symbol of Constantinople was at the time it was captured by the Turks. And an inspection of the coins issued by the Christian rulers of that city during the thousand years and more it was in their hands, will reveal to the enquirer that though the crescent with a cross within its horns appears occasionally upon the coins of the Emperors of the East, and in one or two instances we see a cross of four equal arms with each extremity piercing a crescent, it is doubtful if a single example of the so-called "star and crescent" symbol can be found upon them."[20]
However, coins are not the only source of evidence, and the star and crescent symbol was in use in the Morea prior to the Ottoman conquest in a context which makes it certain the symbol had nothing to do with Islam or Ottomans. "The earliest church in the Morea to include a saint holding a shield marked by the crescent and star may be St. John Chrysostom, which has been dated on the basis of style to ca. 1300 [...]"[21]
By 1453, when Constantinople was incorporated into the growing Ottoman Empire, the symbols most commonly associated with the city were the Byzantine imperial eagle and the cross. It is worth noting that after the fall of Constantinople, Ivan IIIintroduced the two-headed Byzantine eagle (not a crescent or star and crescent) into the Russian state insignia in an attempt to identify his house with the fallen empire.[22] It is known that pagan practices and imagery were increasingly discouraged and eventually outlawed in the Byzantine Empire (notably by Theodosius I),[23] particularly after Julian the Apostate failed in an attempt to reintroduce paganism.[24] However, explicitly pagan symbols did occasionally continue to appear in an official context.[25]
In any case, the idea that the Ottomans simply took a Byzantine symbol for themselves after conquering Constantinople is widespread, and appears most often in publications dating from the second half of the 19th century through the first quarter of the 20th. One illustrative example among many is a study published by William Ridgeway in 1908. Therein he claimed, "when we come to examine the history of the crescent as a badge of Muhammadanism, we are confronted by the fact that it was not employed by the Arabs or any of the first peoples who embraced the faith of the prophet". He makes such a statement despite the fact that the symbol was common in ancient Mesopotamia (which was one of the first regions conquered and converted by early Muslims) and was much used by the Sassanid Persians who began to converten masse with the conquest of Persia within just 12 years of the prophet Muhammad's death. Nevertheless, he goes on to confidently assert.
"The truth is that the crescent was not identified with Islam until after the appearance of the Osmanli Turks, whilst on the other hand there is the clearest evidence that in the time of the Crusades, and long before, the crescent and star were a regular badge of Byzantium and the Byzantine Emperors, some of whom placed it on their coins."[26]
Turkish scholars tend to be skeptical of the idea that the symbol was taken over by the Ottomans from the Byzantines. A passage written byMehmet Fuat Köprülü is illustrative:
It is clear, however, that, whatever the origin, the crescent was used by Turkish states in various regions of Asia, and there is absolutely no reason to claim that it passed to the Ottomans from Byzantium.[27]
Historically, in accounting for the crescent and star symbol, Ottomans sometimes referred to a legendary dream of the eponymous founder of the Ottoman house, Osman I, in which he is reported to have seen a moon rising from the breast of a Muslim judge whose daughter he sought to marry. "When full, it descended into his own breast. Then from his loins there sprang a tree, which as it grew came to cover the whole world with the shadow of its green and beautiful branches." Beneath it Osman saw the world spread out before him, surmounted by the crescent.[28]The absence of any mention of a star in this dream does, however, seem to make it a rather unlikely explanation for the specific star andcrescent symbol.
A perhaps more balanced view is offered by Franz Babinger.
It seems possible, though not certain, that after the conquest Mehmed took over the crescent and star as an emblem of sovereignty from the Byzantines. The half-moon alone on a blood red flag, allegedly conferred on the Janissaries by Emir Orhan, was much older, as is demonstrated by numerous references to it dating from before 1453. But since these flags lack the star, which along with the half-moon is to be found on Sassanid and Byzantine municipal coins, it may be regarded as an innovation of Mehmed. It seems certain that in the interior of Asia tribes of Turkish nomads had been using the half-moon alone as an emblem for some time past, but it is equally certain that crescent and star together are attested only for a much later period. There is good reason to believe that old Turkish and Byzantine traditions were combined in the emblem of Ottoman and, much later, present-day Republican Turkish sovereignty.[29]
It is certainly possible there was some cultural continuity between the pre and post-conquest populations. The Ottoman noble house should be distinguished from the population of the empire and of Byzantium itself, which was certainly mixed.
Was there, then, anything of the past that survived in Ottoman Istanbul and which would preserve memories and the culture of the past? First, it would seem that the sultan's policy of repeopling the city included provision for the return of a portion of the original population: those who had fled the city prior to the siege, as well as those who had gone into hiding in Galatia, and finally, those of the Constantinopolitans who had been taken prisoner in the final capture but who had been allowed to return either as a result of ransoming themselves or of being allowed to work toward the paying off of the ransom. These constituted the original Greek population that was allowed to return to Constantinople. They were given houses in the city and, along with Muslim and other Christian immigrants whom the sultan brought from all over the empire, constituted the original population of Ottoman Istanbul. Thus there was en element of demographic continuity, though its proportion to the total population of the new city was of course considerably diminished.[30]
[edit]Contemporary use
A number of Muslim-majority nations, such as Algeria, Tunisia, Comoros, Mauritania, Malaysia, Pakistan, Maldives, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan,Turkmenistan and non-sovereign nations such as East Turkestan use it on their national flag, inspired by the flag of Turkey officially adopted in 1844.
The predominantly Sunni Muslim ethnic Bosniaks use a similar flag, but because their native country Bosnia and Herzegovina is also homeland to two other constituent peoples, Serbs and Croats, the flag is not the official flag of the country.
[edit]Unicode
In Unicode, the "star and crescent" symbol is U+262A. (☪)
[edit]Flags depicting star and crescent
Main article: Gallery of flags with crescents
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[edit]Emblems depicting star and crescent
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[edit]Fraternities and sororities depicting star and crescent
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