History /
Sarmatism in Poland [119]
The title of this merged thread,
Turks says that Sarmatism wasn`t Polish but Turkish thing, misrepresents the content of the article it references.
At that time, along with the Poles and Lithuanians, the Commonwealth was also inhabited by Ruthenians, Germans, Jews, Italians, Greeks, and Scots as well as Armenians, Tatars, Hungarians, and Walachians. Each of these nations contributed to the creation of a rich, exotic, multifaceted Polish civilization, known as "Sarmatism."
muftah.org/islams-long-lasting-influence-polish-culture/#.VUjsfpNs1-w
There is absolutely nothing controversial in acknowledging oriental influences on the martial, sartorial, and culinary fashions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth because they are obvious. The reasons that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth orientalized parts of her culture are numerous. Some of these reasons were pragmatic I.E. Turkish, Tartar and Magyar influenced cavalry tactics won battles, but many cultural appropriations were done out of aesthetic concerns. There is an interesting story behind the adoption of these aesthetic concerns.
Tacitus'
Germania, lost since late antiquity and discovered in Hersfeld Abbey in 1425, ascribes the rule of the area, that would later comprise the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, to the Sarmatians. The
szlachta wholeheartedly took up the Sarmatian label for themselves. They conjectured that their ancestors must have come from the East, conquered the area, and subsequently adopted the Slavic and Baltic languages of their subjects. They had the example of the Slavic speaking, but originally Turkic, Bulgars for the plausibility of this belief. The
szlachta mistakenly believed that the Sarmatians were a Turkic people (they were actually Iranic) and so they began adopting some Turkish styles to celebrate their supposed heredity. Sarmatism allowed the diverse
szlachta to believe in a distant common origin for themselves, and to create a style of living unifying them in the present.
Despite, the possibly misleading, title of the article,
Islam's Long Lasting Influence Polish Culture, this style had very little to do with the religious precepts of Islam and a lot to do with the aesthetics of certain oriental peoples who had adopted Islam. Another originally oriental people, the Magyars, had at least as much influence on Sarmatism as the Turks and Tartars. The
szlachta saw the Hungarian nobility as their closest peers because they had embraced Christianity like themselves.
