Resurrection: Ertugrul

A promotional image for the Turkish television series “Dirilis: Ertugrul.” Credit TRT 1 TV

We seem to be suckers for historical dramas, as long as they have plenty of sword swinging action. We started watching this one last night.

Diriliş: Ertuğrul is a Turkish historical adventure television series . . . The show is based on the history of the Muslim Oghuz Turks and takes place in the 13th century and centers around the life of Ertuğrul, the father of Osman I, who was the founder of the Ottoman Empire. - Wikipedia

The first episode was a bit slow getting started, but it quickly picked up steam. We ended up watching three episodes last night. Then we check to see how deep this rabbit hole goes and we find that Netflix has 180 episodes! (Wikipedia disagrees.) Most of the series we've watched have been more like a dozen episodes. This is truly phenomenal.

In some foreign sounding gibberish, presumably Turkish, with subtitles.

History

Salisbury Cathedral, reflections on the baptismal font
The cathedral in The Pillars of the Earth was modeled on Salisbury cathedral

I've started reading The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. It's not a great book, but it's a good story about building a cathedral in 12th century England. The story is painted in broad brush strokes. The hero is brave, strong and true, the princess is beautiful and the villain is despicable. In this way it is similar to Ertugrul, the Turkish soap opera we've been watching about a tribe of nomads in 13th century Turkey / Syria.

Today I figured out why I like these stories. It's because they include many of the details of everyday life back then. Most scholastic history is all about names and dates. 'So and so went to war against these other people and defeated them at the battle of the slimy swamp', which is all very well if you want to chronicle the power struggles that were going on at the time. But that shit is endless. There is always somebody picking a fight, and someone betraying his allies and somebody getting their ass kicked, but it doesn't really tell you very much about the how or why of something happening.

Now occasionally a small group of motivated, and presumably talented, warriors will score an unexpected victory, but more often it is a matter of training, tactics and superior weaponry. And those come from a society that is rich enough to spend time developing these things. And you get a rich society from free trade, free minds and the rule of law.

The Pillars of the Earth is more nuts and bolts, building a cathedral requires a great many craftsmen making things. The politics, so far, has all been of the local variety. Ertugrul is more like propaganda: the Muslims are good, the Templars are bad, but it does a good job of portraying life in a nomadic encampment, well at least life among the one-percent-ers.

Quote of the Day

Zazdin Han

We've started watching Season 4 of Resurrection: Ertugrul. In Episode 7 we have the evil (boo, hiss) Emir Sadettin Kopek reading from a book:

"The sultan's crown depends upon the vizier's pen.
If the ink runs dry, his rule will come to an end." - Seljuks' grand emir Nizamulmulk

The real-life Kopek may have been just as sleazy as the villain in this Netflix maxi-series, but he also managed to get some things built, like this caravanserai shown above.

Usury

Ertugrul expels the money lenders (Season 5, Episode 2, Mark 8:15) Netflix

Season 5 of Ertuğrul is up on Netflix. In episode 2 Ertuğrul brings the smack down on the money lenders operating in the town square. Okay, so the show is painting Ertuğrul as a devote Muslim. That's fine. But it got me to wondering about this whole usury thing.

A common theme running through many of these historical dramas we have been watching is the triumph of logical thought over people just throwing their weight around because they want to and no one is stopping them. This leads me to thinking that logical thinking is not all that prevalent. Planning ahead requires a certain amount of logical thinking, so the problem with usury is that the money lenders were able to plan ahead, but they were lending money to people who didn't, either because they couldn't, or had never been introduced to the concept. So they borrow money without considering the future impact the terms will have on them and they end up being impoverished.

So the problem wasn't that the money lenders were charging interest, the problem was they were lending money to people who were mentally unprepared to consider the consequences of their actions. Hard to imagine that people don't understand how loans operate, given that our modern world seems to be entirely financed by loans. But new people are coming into the world every day, and understanding how loans and interest work requires a certain amount of study. Once you have mastered it, it seems ridiculously simple, but getting to that point requires a certain amount of work. And even people who ought to know better sometimes get themselves into hot water by borrowing money to finance a purchase they can't really afford.

The Trial of Ural Bey

Kürsat Alniaçik as Ural Bey

We've been watching Season 3 of Diriliş: Ertuğrul (English: "Resurrection: Ertugrul") on Netflix. We're up around episode 30 or so and Ural Bey, the scheming, low down, lying dog is finally going to get his comeuppance. Or is he? His father dies just about as he is about to lose his head and due to -something-, the execution is postponed. Of course it is. If Ural dies now we will lose our favorite villain (boo! hiss!).

The trial is pretty decent for the 13th century in a Muslim country. We have a judge, evidence is presented and people on both sides of the dispute are allowed to have their say. From what we see in the trial, there is not enough to convict anybody, at least according to current crime show standards, but Ural is convicted anyway, which is a relief because we, who have been privy to all his clandestine meetings and nefarious scheming, know he is as guilty as sin.

The whole show, trial and all, reminds me of nothing so much as the clown show going on in in the U.S. Congress, i.e. the persecution of Trump by the Democrats.

The difference is we know Ural is guilty, because our hero, Ertuğrul, is on the side of truth, beauty and justice. That's why I watch Netflix instead of the news: the stories are one sided, clear as a bell and the truth is obvious.

Stabbing

Attack and capture of Belle Isle in 1761 by British forces*

I am reading The Knife Man by Wendy Moore, a book about John Hunter and the birth of modern surgery. After getting his fill of dissecting dead bodies in London, John decides he needs to start earning a living, so he joins the army as a surgeon just in time to embark on an expedition to capture Belle Isle.

While there he gets involved in all the usual army surgeon stuff of the 18th Century, i.e. hacking, slicing and stitching, to put it mildly. But being the kind of guy he is, he also makes some observations, one of which is that wounded soldiers are as often likely to heal without any treatment as they are if subjected to treatment by a surgeon. A case in point is a soldier "shot through and through the breast, recovered perfectly" (page 94).

Konya, Turkey, 1240 or thereabouts

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, deep into Season 4 of Ertugrul, one of the girls takes it upon herself to journey to Konya to stab one of the guys. We won't say who because spoilers. 

Concealed Stabber

Her weapon looks like a big ice pick, possibly because you aren't allowed to carry blades into the presence of Mr. Important (and an ice pick is easier to conceal?). She manages to stab him three times in the abdomen, twice from the back and once from the front. Tragically, in spite of these wounds, he manages to overpower and kill her. Unfortunately, he doesn't die.

Yes, it's a TV show where dozens of people are laid to waste in every episode, and primary characters recover from what appear to be fatal injuries, but still, I thought it showed a little thought by the people making the show. Stabbing someone with a knife blade would more likely have been fatal. Recovering from being stabbed by an ice pick is at least plausible.

I guess as long as you don't cut any major blood vessels, or impact the heart, any kind of injury isn't going to kill you. Of course, being as the body is riddled with major blood vessels, getting stabbed without hitting one of them is pure chance.

*Transcription of the text under the image:
R. Short del,                                                                                                                                                             J Smith sculp,

An exact Representation of the Attack made by the Britifh Fleet, under the Command of 

Adm.¹ Kepple the 8th, of April,1761 at Port Andre, on the Island of Belle Isle.

London,Printed for Rob.^t Sayer Print t;Mapseller,No.53 in Fleet Street.

Blood & Guts

Diriliş "Ertuğrul" - Atabey'in İdamdan Kurtarılış Sahnesi (8.Bölüm)
(Resurrection "Ertugrul" - Atabey's Restoration Stage (Section 8))
In every episode of Ertuğrul there is at least one big sword fight where a handful of brave Turkish warriors slaughter a couple of dozen bad guys. Both sides are using broadswords, so hacking and slashing are the order of the day. Occasionally someone will get stabbed, but it's pretty rare.

What gets shown on the screen is kind of interesting. Whenever a sword makes contact we see a splash of blood fly, but every time a wound appears on the screen, the area is blurred out. So flying blood is okay, but actual bloody injuries are not. About once a season some scumbag gets executed by decapitation, but once the head has been severed it gets the blurring treatment even when it gets impaled on a spike and paraded around.

Frequently someone ends up being held with a knife or sword to their throat. Given the close contact and how we never see any marks on the victim's throat, never mind that we have dozens of three foot long blades of steel flying through the air, we can surmise that the edges on these props are properly dull. There is also a good deal of sword blades crashing into each other when one combatant blocks another's blow.

In season 4 the evil Templars have started wearing chain mail which you might think would provide some protection against a blow from a sword, especially a blow from the edge. However, because our Turkish heroes are faithful Muslims, chain mail provides no protection. The Templars suffer the same kind of injuries as they did in the previous three seasons when they weren't wearing chain mail. The Turk's blades must be magical.

These guys also have bows and arrows. They get used occasionally, but rarely effectively. I suspect the reason is that people enjoy watching other people in action, and there isn't much action with bows and arrows. They create a more intellectual effect. Swinging broadswords are more visceral.

Troy - Beach Battle #Clip - Achilles [1080p HD Blu-Ray]
Four men armed with broadswords killing two dozen similarly armed men with suffering any injuries seems a bit far fetched. However, people arrive at the fight with varying levels of skill and training. It might be a bit like a squad of professional basketball players taking on an entire high school team.


La Ballade de Buster Scruggs 2018. (Extrait - Attaque des Indiens) VF
[Indians 1st Attack Scene "Dog Hole" | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) Netflix]
Then there is training and tactics. I'd never heard anything about Indian tactics in the American wild west until I saw this scene from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. So if you get a bunch of teenage boys, give 'em swords, fill them with religious fervor and send them out to kill a bunch of heathens, who just happen to be experienced professional killers, you might very well end up with a bunch of dead kids and the heathens will be untouched.

P.S. The video at the top is from season 1 and I totally recognized the younger of the two guys watching the fight from upstairs window. He's the Emir Al Aziz of Aleppo.

P.P.S. Yes, I realize I am indiscriminate in my use of the word 'heathen'. None of these guys have acknowledged me as the one true lord of the universe, so they are all heathens in my book.

Update March 2020 replaced the disappeared Buster Scruggs video clip with one that's been dubbed in French. Without understandable dialog, you are only getting about half the story. Sorry about that.

Science Fiction Now

US tests micro-drone swarms deployed from jets
Scripps News

US fighter jets launch a swarm of 100 of micro drones during a Perdix micro-UAV test. The last part of the video shows a drone swarm of Loctus drones during another test. - paraphrased from the YouTube blurb.

Polular Mechanics has the story.

Reminds of nothing so much as the scene from The Day the Earth Stood Still (the remake) when the micro-bugs devour Gort.


The day earth stood still (2008) scene | HD | Fun Clips
Fun Clips
So who was this Perdix guy that the drone was named after?

Perdix was a nephew and student of Daedalus in Greek mythology. Daedalus had a sister who placed her son, Perdix, under his charge to be taught the mechanical arts. He was an apt scholar and showed striking evidence of ingenuity. While walking on the seashore, he picked up the spine of a fish, or a serpent's jaw. Imitating it, he took a piece of iron and notched it on the edge, thus inventing the saw.  - paraphrased from Wikipedia

Watching Ertugrul can be intellectually challenging, if you want to work at it. First of all there are the badly mangled subtitles. Then there is the character's habits of speaking in poorly translated metaphors and / or proverbs. That can be entertaining. But there is also a lot of day-to-day activity going on in the background, like a couple of guys sawing a log. Did they even have saws back then? Wikipedia says saws have been around for at least four thousand years, which puts it back in the ancient era, which means that, yeah, for sure, Perdix invented the saw.

Update August 2018 replaced missing video. This one includes Spanish subtitles. 
Update June 2019 replaced missing video.

Update July 2026 replaced both missing videos.

Was there a chloroform equivalent in the 12th century?

Villain pouring a clear liquid on a rag just after the 31 minute mark of Episode 128

We were watching an episode of Ertugrul last night and the bad guys kidnap a woman by dosing her with what looked like chloroform. The show generally seems to be historically accurate, so I'm wondering if they could have had such a substance.

I'm posting this here because Quora doesn't allow long questions, but they do allow a link to provide context, so I'm providing context.

Old Town Road

Lil Nas X - Old Town Road (Official Movie) ft. Billy Ray Cyrus
Boogety boogety boogety. We've been watching Ertugrul on Netflix and in every episode we have men riding horses, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes in slow motion, but I don't think we've seen horses running flat out like they are in the beginning of this video. A couple of weeks ago we had horses running flat out in the Kentucky Derby. And you can still see horses running in races most every day, at least in places where they still have horse races. Don't think they run them in Portland anymore. And let's not forget the Compton Cowboys.

This video is about six kinds of goofball, but it's got horses, so it's cool.

Via The Unwanted Blog

Boney M. - Rasputin (Remix - Shuffle Dance)

Boney M. - Rasputin (Remix - Shuffle Dance)
I'm running a YouTube playlist in the background while I am playing solitaire and this tune comes on. It has some middle eastern sounds, and since we've been watching Ertugrul I find them enjoyable. So here we are. Dancing girls are a bonus. The tune is from 1979. I wasn't impressed with the original.

Sumeria

THIS is Why The Sumerians are NOT Taught in School - Sumerian Tablets - Lost Ancient Civilization
I am not too concerned about why Sumeria is given short shrift in schools. The powers-that-be have their own agenda and unless you have your own army, fighting that is going to be a losing battle. I am a little curious about history and I do wonder if there might have been an advanced civilization before the last ice age glaciated a large part of the Northern hemisphere.

We've been watching Ertugrul, which is set in the same area about a thousand years ago. The story is that nomadic tribes have been living the same type of life for hundreds, if not thousands, or years. They have traditions, which are basically rules for living that have been proven to be beneficial to the survival of the tribe. Some of their rules might seem foolish or even stupid in the glare of modern life, but you can bet there were very good reasons for those things back then. You just have to adjust your thinking to compensate for the situation.

North Korea

North Korea Missile Tests, so far this year

Seems like we've been hearing about North Korean missile tests forever. This website has got records that go back to 1984, which is 33 years ago. So North Korea has been doing this for a while, and they've launched a bunch of missiles. They used to be kind of a joke, their missiles blew up on the launch pad more often than not, and when they did get off the ground, they didn't go very far. In 1998 they launched one that went over Japan, and some people started paying attention.

North Korea, according to most of the rest of world, is seriously screwed up. But then I got to thinking.

We've been watching Ertugrul on Netflix, a soap opera about some 13th Century Turkish nomads (we're up to episode 30). The current story line has them migrating to some land that was granted them by the Emir Al Aziz of Aleppo. The Emir reneged on his promise, based on some rumors started by the evil Templars. So now our tribe is kind of in a jam. The Mongols pushing in from the East have forced them into country so barren that their livestock were starving to death. The Emir granted them a section of good land. It would be great except that it is between Aleppo and the Templars, so there is going be a constant state of conflict, but hey, they've got swords and they know how to use them. But now the Emir has revoked his grant and is threatening to exterminate the whole tribe if they don't pack up and move. Well, we just got here, we're not in the mood for moving, and you granted us this land, you can't be going back on your word, you lousy Indian giver.

In any case, they are prepared to fight the Emir's army, even though they are outnumbered ten to one. It may mean the death of their tribe, but at least they'll go down fighting.

Translate this viewpoint to North Korea and you can see how they could view themselves as the victims in the game of global domination. Okay, you would also need to be ignorant of the actual state of the world, but who are you going to believe? Western Imperialist Running Dog news services, or your faithful leader? And is it any different that what we have here? The news is like 99% garbage, and the 1% that might be of real concern is so fractured with competing spins it is really hard to tell what is true. Fortunately we have our own faithful leader. Which one is more trustworthy? Kim or Donald?

Missile website via Detroit Steve.

Aleppo

Aleppo in the 13th Century

We've been watching Resurrection: Ertugrul on Netflix. In episode 5 our hero pays a visit to Aleppo. It flashes on the screen for maybe a second just after the 17 minute mark. Is this the same Aleppo that has been getting hammered in the Syrian civil war? Why, yes it is. The place has expanded significantly since the 13th Century.

The ancient citadel with the modern city.