I.
We have little understanding or insight into cultures in existence hundred and fifty years ago, let alone into cities and societies as far back as the Byzantine Empire or the ancient Middle East. Understanding the experiences and the lived reality of an aristocrat, a commoner, or a story-teller from civilization’s early days requires a lot of imagination, intuition, and factual knowledge. It is by no means easy to understand — from our current physical environment and comfort levels — what a two-day journey or visiting the nearest city may have meant within the pre-modern context of dirt roads and wooden cartwheels. What was the extent of local interdependence with that level of relative immobility when compared with today’s standards? How much must people have relied on knowing the ins and outs of their own societies and on the social prestige associated with status within their known cultures? What was the value of tales, myths, and descriptions brought from faraway lands by travellers, caravans, slaves or people fleeing the Mongol, the Assyrian invasions or indeed the Crusaders? To what extent were the knowledge and the concepts of distant regions distorted in the process? How accurate were the descriptions and, hence, the impressions of foreign nations, personalities (such as Persians, Arabs, Alexander the Great, Samson, Goliath, Cyrus the Great)? How significant were objects such as pieces of jewellery, bronze hatchets, items of clothing from far away in forming those ideas and impressions? The huge gap between our access to information and of those days can barely be exaggerated!
It is quite possible that the aspect of reality that is most difficult to imagine is the huge gap between how much information is available in modern times compared to the age of the Christ or the pyramids. People must have coped with an enormous lack of access to up-to-date information outside the word spoken from person to person. Earlier ages of no electric light and, generally, electricity, the age before radio or television, or indeed before the printed text presented a different reality. These inventions and technological leaps provided accessibility of knowledge to human societies beyond what could be directly seen or told.
When imagining the ancient civilizations of the Middle East, however, our notions and understanding must deal with concepts even further back than the Crusades or the European Middle Ages.
Parts of what we do know about those early regions sometimes come very close to what was indeed factual, but in part only. Other ’truths’ or narratives, however, fall far, and have been handed down to us through the distortions in works of art, ancient texts or history mediated to modern times by classical, clerical, Muslim, or otherwise biased summaries.
One false notion, driven by the “needs” of social science, is the Marxist assumption that it was in the ancient states (such as Babylonia, Ancient Persia, or the Hittite Empire) where the bottom of society suffered the most historically. The assumption stems from the logic that early constructions demanded almost infinite manpower, and — as slavery was a known form of economic oppression by that time — the masses must have undertaken all the toils of projects like the zikkurats and the pharaoh’s tombs, while the aristocrats enjoyed endless benefits and leisure.
Even though some parts of the ancient world must have gone through episodes of such forced labour, these would have spread over a period of several hundred years, interspersed with periods of little state power (e.g. in Egypt), unstructured provincial routines, migration, famines, and population movements.
Slavery, as we know, also continued in most parts of the world (including East Asia, Africa, the Americas) well into modern times and into the 20th century. Invasions and forced migration (cf. Babylonian exile) were a common tool of powerful aggressors, and forced labour as well as household slavery would be supplied by the underdogs and by the defeated. It is baseless to assume that there were no free merchants, local elite, geographically remote communities that would go unaffected by large state powers for centuries, and that no other beneficiaries or middle class existed which was formed of veteran soldiers, scribes and clerics, and privileged tribal families.
Another ahistorical assumption is the thinking based on our modern experiences, arguing that early life must have been a permanent continuum of merciless effort and labour. The notion looks at how modern technology and amenities serve and protect the societies of today. In return, even today, we spend most of our waking hours earning those rewards and necessities (in short: full time work). Early life, therefore, must have demanded endlessly more strain and absolutely no rest. It is supposed and argued that all early tools, chores, products must have used up people’s all available time and strength. What this may disregard is how little average people actually used (clothes, utensils), how ineffective work was (weaving, tending to sheep, fetching water daily), and how seasonal and irregular several duties were (e.g. meat was only prepared after slaughter). In other words, work was less intensive and often less sporadic than today.
A proof of work’s seasonal nature is how celebrations and festivals were always an integral part of every society, meaning communities did have superfluous resources and time.
An example of low intensity labour — as both ancient sources and our modern knowledge of India and Africa tell us — is walking to a water source, which requires hours daily and is usually done by women or children. Such labour is demanding but they are by no means intense, stressful, or supervised. Another example is how goat and sheep herding has often been done by children and teenagers. Again several stories and observations attest to this (e.g. the discovery of the Qumran caves).
Our present ideas and generalisations of the ancient Middle East, therefore, require a lot more caution than seen in many history books, partly because of how little we know about its details. Many of the sources (scripts and artifacts) come from priests and the elites, and only present to us civilizational peaks and highlights (such as the Bible and the pyramids). They represent only a small segment of most people’s common experiences. Sources like clay tablets, the Bible, or Egyptian tomb chambers only indirectly inform us of the daily realities. Their descriptions are typically idealised or exaggerated. A lot of information on what must have been the ordinary individual’s regular day will come mainly from speculation and guesswork. In the next few paragraphs I will try to bring in some of those speculations. I will be using the caution described above, as well as the realisation that our retrospective view can only see little of the great civilisations would have been very little present in the life of the ordinary man from Upper Egypt (Sudan) or greater Israel (possibly Western Syria). Peasants and farmers may have had very little knowledge or no experience of these. I will also try to retrospectively project some practices and daily problems into the period, problems that our modern day perspectives do not take notice of, as they are not worth mentioning historically (a good example is fetching water, possibly taking up a quarter of most children’s lives in the period).
When comparing life in Europe or North America with the early Middle East, the difference in climate and temperature must be seen as a factor. While European winter seasons required resources and facilities such as firewood, coal, and well-built homes, this was clearly not the case in ancient Arabia or what is today’s southern Iraq, for example. With the winter season being moderately cold, little preparation or invested energy would have been needed to keep trade, markets, or armies active and engaged.
As for the scorching summer months, again, the nature of work and harvest in the Middle East is different from the yearly rhythms we take for granted in the northern hemisphere.
Staying out of the day’s sun, sparing one’s energy and water supplies would have had a way greater significance than in other climates. Desert life would therefore be much more characterised by human inactivity in summer months, whereas surviving the winter in colder regions must have meant a higher level of activity, in comparison.
Regarding slave labour, it is very likely that while some long periods of inhuman cruelty and suffering definitely existed and was sustained by oppressors, its proportions and magnitude did not generally reach what was recorded in the modern regimes of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, or communist China in Mao’s time. Ineffective organisation, corruption, low population densities must have meant a lot of idling, poor time management, and, in the case of household slavery, some level of bonding, intermarriage, and integration (see Joseph’s story).
While the historical realities of ancient times may have been somewhat superior to what short descriptions show us, other aspects — e.g. sanitation, labour and childbirth — were far worse.
Another such problem was definitely public safety.
With little or non-existent policing, bandits, outcasts, and men with no means must have posed an ever-present threat to women and children off the village outskirts, carrying household goods and utensils, to merchants and to people visiting relatives far away. Several regulations (Biblical, Mesopotamian as well as tribal from Africa) encoded consequences of various scenarios of such attacks, which show how those were a part of daily existence. Rape was sometimes dealt with non-judgementally, and communities embraced such relationships as long as marriage followed. Regarding general public safety, we know from several sources how city gates were locked for the night, and how lack of policing was solved with a general curfew. Traditional rural and village practices also show that the most effective public safety measure was, simply, constant bonding and physical closeness to members of the same family or ethnic group.
Communal proximity is further revealed to us when looking at structures of ancient and medieval cities. We know that in urban areas such as Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus, Istanbul, and Jerusalem, ethnicities and religions separated and lived with little acknowledgement of the others’ presence. Jewish, Christian, Armenian, and Muslim — Shi’ite and Sunni — quarters of ancient cities maintained their own institutions, traditions, places of worship and their entire cultures with rather little overlap.
Communities living side-by-side often spoke different languages and used different scripts or writing systems.
This practice of looking inward is evident, for example, in how little is known and mentioned of the others’ existence in each traditions’ respective literature. Christian sources barely mention Jewish rabbis of the Mishnaic period, while Jewish sources (the Talmud, the Mishna) make no or little mention of Christians and Jesus. Although we cannot definitely say that official writings and communication from prominent religious figures generally mirrored what actually happened in their streets, it is fair to assume that there was a significant level of isolation and non-interference between communities. It is also what immigrant communities from North Africa, Sudan, the Levante and Turkish regions tend to practice in Western cities. There is more reason to believe that this modern practice is a continuation of more ancient Middle Eastern norms rather than seeing it as breaking away from something which was their social norm historically.
Another important difference when trying to understand pre-modern and pre-state societies of the Middle East is the fact that, for many reasons, nomadic lifestyle was widespread and prominent in a vast number of rural areas and around cities, from Morocco in North East Africa, all the way to Iraq/Babylonia.
Herding animals (especially goats, cattle, and camels) was a safe and profitable way of accumulating wealth. They provided milk and meat supply, which, therefore, meant sure survival in events of drought, famine, and war. They were (see Biblical mentions) and are (see current Bedouin and North African nomadic societies) a certain display and evidence of wealth and social standing. Nomadic lifestyles and tending to herds must have created quite a different routine and work ethic from what European agricultures and early economies established. When trying to understand the clan elder of the Ghaza/Egyptian area, or the merchant in a market in Lebanon, we should not ignore that we use assumptions, and we tend to ’work with what we have’, i.e. our Western traditions. A child growing up on what we would today call a goat farm in Eastern Syria around the time of the Islamic Conquest will have an essentially different experience from someone growing up in a later, more modern period (e.g. 18th century Netherlands). It is therefore safe to carry the assumption that the life situations of these micro-communities had a significant impact on their appreciation and experience of art as well as on how their culture functioned.
II.
It is now best to move on to the next set of speculations: how and what kind of culture did the average person of the pre-colonial and pre-Ottoman era practise or consume outside Europe, and in the Middle East? (Colonisation and the formation of the Ottoman Empire is a fair cut-off point, as relatively modern systems of statehood and administration may be dated from the 16th-17th century.)
The changes emerging in those decades — book printing, the use of rifles, the reformation, overseas missionary campaigns, etc. — began to exert influence in regions such as Southeast Asia, Afghanistan, Egypt, the Levante, to mention a few, that had been in many ways unchanged since pre-history, or more recently since the Arab conquest.
Another statement to make is that by “culture” this article does not generally mean objects, buildings, or systems of production as it is generally — and fairly — understood. Although items such as utensils, tools for agriculture, administrative lists do indeed carry great cultural value, they were not generally created or perceived as that. In more ancient times too, on the other hand, artists, festivals, and participants did enjoy and produce something that was cultural by intention, and not economic or transactional. The cultural traditions carried by communities appealed to people’s sense of aesthetics and to their shared experience of historical identity, performance, and musical entertainment.
Contrary to what earlier interpretations of social history suggested, culture, in its deliberate sense, was regularly practised and consumed by members of the general community. Recurring festivals, religious/spiritual occasions (such as harvest, childbirth, death, or circumcision) provided opportunities for members of a clan or of a village community to experience and learn rituals, invocations, calls to prayer, and poetic recitations. I further wish to restrict what “culture” means, from decorative elements on clothes, buildings, and pottery to performing genres, those experience by a community at a given time. This is not because they are not a hugely expressive and lasting component of any civilisation but because this text is trying to approach culture from an understanding of what was jointly experienced by all. Expressions of a tradition experienced as a group (such as music and story-telling) will be closer to what could be grouped as “performative arts” in the Middle East.
In part I., I argued and described how ancient and pre-modern times did allow for regular times of celebration and festivity, despite the hardships and the toil of those lower in society.
Humans’ need for regular inspiration, drama, and spirituality can be seen indirectly in how modern, recorded culture has always created such opportunities.
Genres similar to comedy, popular dance, film, and pop music have existed throughout history, regardless of continent or ethnicity. Additionally, it has been clearly shown by ethnography how folklore and traditions have indeed been preserved and passed on through festivals and celebrations by story-tellers, travelling bards, shamans, and other early intellectuals. These special members of the local or larger community often carried the tribal history, narratives of mythical origin, and the entire “canon” of contemporary literature, before the age of general literacy or writing systems.
Thirdly, even instituationalised religions of the Middle East — namely Judaism, Christianity, Islam — admittedly relied on fixed oral incantations, preserved in human memory, for most of their important texts and teachings.
Up until the stabilisation of the Hebrew alphabet and the general availability of Arabic writing (and writing material), both Judaism and Islam passed on what believers used for legal, spiritual, and communal education using the spoken word. Other scriptures, such as the Talmud and the Sunna, were also largely based on the teachings and discussions of rabbis in Babylonia and Palestine (in the case of rabbinical Judaism, and of those between the Prophet Muhammad and his early peers in the case of Islam).
Despite the political, top-down expansion of these religions (as especially Christianity and Islam were imposed on populations by the Roman Empire and the Arab Conquest), it is again reasonable to assume that their teachings gave some real guidance to the average man, woman, or child. As anyone, early populations were also hungry to be given explanations to their pain and suffering, to life and death, to the rules and origins of the universe, and to questions of power, conquests, and humankind’s future. While before the Books’ Religions it was the local or regional story-teller / singer-musician who helped provide some answers to the tribes and clans of Sudan, Libya, Arabia or the Euphrates valley (to name a few); from the beginning of the Christian era, that “teacher” became the rabbi, the Christian priest, or the Muslim said or qadi.
To now return to the original issue of exploitation, suffering, and constant labour, it again seems reasonable that in the pre-modern, ancient society of the Middle East, the main challenges of daily life were not as much forced labour, conquests, and political oppression. More widespread must have been the reality of never-ending, low-intensity tasks towards self-sustenance and of long hours of boredom.
Families, including children, would have been engaged in the daily chores of fetching water, tending to goats, sheep, and cattle — as well as coping with the day’s heat — for a significant part of their day.
Walking, sitting, and waiting around were probably aspects of pre-modern life that we now find difficult to imagine or understand. From this circumstance of being under- rather than over-engaged, it follows that daily living was often spent singing, chanting, playing primitive instruments, reciting rhymes, stories and poetry; all simply out of a need to be entertained and to escape underengagement.
If we look at musical genres now considered traditional in the Middle East (or of the Indian subcontinent for that matter), it will strike the European that the common length of songs and instrumental pieces is between 8-60 minutes. This is in stark contrast to what western radio stations and singles have made listeners become used to: we find pop tracks over three minutes somewhat aimless and unconventional. We will also notice, that unlike in most European music, where a steady beat and a more or less compact bar-structure is the norm, in the musical traditions of several nomadic cultures (early Turkish, Turkic, and Bedouin) and in that of semi-nomadic ones (Sudan, Berber, and later Turkish) attention and a kind of suspense is maintained exactly by the lack of a bar-structure and of a beat one can dance to.
Most sung lines or musical phrases are followed by a few-second pause. These pauses cause the listener to wonder how the performer will continue and what the next line will communicate.
This same approach to recitation and dramatic musical suspense has been preserved and passed down in Quranic recitations and the incantations of the Bible’s Hebrew text. The waw-consecutive (time-transformative ‘and’) was most probably a dramatic tool for the invocation of the next Biblical line (often as ‘wayyomer’ - ויומר, ‘wayyikra’ - ויקרא, meaning ‘and he said’; ‘and he called’). The effect is that the musical piece / performance can be continued infinitely — exactly what the circumstances of the times called for.
We can almost sense and picture the effect and spirituality that this reflective, meditative musical-performative tool had on the listener in the Middle Eastern desert and semi-desert or the Turkic steppe. What also follows from the general practice of these performance styles is that musicality and the use of instruments for effect and accompaniment was an inseparable part of oral history, narrated myths, and hours - if not days - of memorised epic poetry. It taught those present the tales and deeds of their ancestors, mythical heroes, the power of gods and demons, and sang the not less delicate dynamics of courtship and romance. Such stories are attested in Turkish folklore, but also in Persian poetry (Shahnameh) and numerous books of the Bible (such as Genesis, Song of Songs, the Books of Esther / Daniel.
Let us look at some modern examples for orientation, and to help us imagine the distant past:
Setar solo by Kayhan Kalhor:
Naseer Shamma’s oud solo:
Muhlis Berberoǧlu’s inspirational saz performance: