www.museumpeace.com/17/1715p.htm

1999.07.20

(chronosomatically) Contemplating the Navel

1 b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w

nomad
1 : a member of a people that has no fixed residence but wanders from place to place usu. seasonably and within a well-defined territory for the purpose of securing its supply of food either by gathering of plants and hunting of animals, by using suitable grounds for quick crops, or esp. by finding grazing lands and water for its herds

navigate
1 a : to go from one place to another by water : SAIL 2 : to direct one's course through any medium

The circumstances surrounding the rise of the Portuguese and the Turks prescribe a dualistic set of oppositions. 'East versus West' and 'land versus sea' are two obvious rifts, yet the most significant difference stems from the Turk's traditional mode of migration versus the new mode of migration used by the Portuguese. As descendants of the Osman tribe of nomads, the Ottoman Turks were, in fact, the last nomadic people to spread over land on a continental scale. The movement of the Turks was in sharp contrast to that of the Portuguese, who, as navigators, eventually diffused their influence around the entire globe, and, ironically, the Turks themselves underwent a transition from nomadic shepherd to sedentary ruler once their empire became established. In simplest terms, the territorial spread of the Ottoman Turks marked the end of humanity's ambulatory migrations, while the fruitful explorations of the Portuguese ushered in humanity's navigational migrations.

...the earliest Ottomans were pastoral nomads...however,...the ruling Ottomans changed from nomadic shepherds to the sedentary rulers of a vast bureaucratic enterprise.
Rudi Paul Linder, Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), p. 1-2.

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