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What is Sartism?

Technically, the term «Sart» was applied to a settled Muslim ethnicity in Central Asia. I write more on this in the Appendixes. But for our purposes I will be using the second meaning of this term referring to representatives of any Settled Civilization. The Eurasian Nomads, particularly Kazakhs, used the term «Sart» to distinguish any «settled peoples living of agriculture and commerce trade».

In today’s Kazakhstan, the terms Sart and Sartism are often used unofficially as a generic term to describe all of the non-nomadic, settled nations of the world, including the Europeans, Russians, Chinese, Persians, Islamic World, and etc. Basically, all of the neighboring nations of the nomads of the Great Eurasian Steppe, and sometimes even wider, including the Americas and Australia.

From here onwards I will be referring to Settled Civilization as «Sartic Civilization» with abbreviation «SC».

The intellectuals in post-nomadic nations, such as Kazakhs, Kyrgyzs, Mongols, Bashkirs, Turkmens, and etc., often love to discuss the «binary duality» of the Nomadic-Sartic relationships, the differences in our psychology and economy, mentality, and etc. The Nomads and Sarts viewed as two sides of coin, two opposite civilizational systems that conflict one another and could never be brought to one.

To be completely honest, the EN used term «Sart» derogatively, because they didn’t respect this way of life. The Kazakhs, Kyrgyzs, Karakalpaks, and other nomads despised the Sartic lifestyle. From the nomadic perspective, living in such way was a disgrace for human spirit: instead of roaming free in the open Steppes entrusting your life to the strength of your horse, your own sword, your wits, and the Gods; the Sartic peoples would voluntarily lock themselves into four walls, subject themselves to strict and unnatural hierarchies, being choked to half-death by forceful taxation, worked hard into early deaths, were brainwashed by their political and religious leaders, cheated at every possible occasion, separated into classes and castes, and etc.

The EN preferred to live free and dangerously, than to have a sense of false security in exchange for human liberties. The nomads were generous and often didn’t know the price of their wealth. The Sarts knew perfectly all market prices for goods and foods, because his livelihood depended on it, but nomads simply knew that they had herds of cattle that they could trade for anything they needed.

For the most part the nomads never knew any money, preferring natural exchange of goods in mutual payments. They simply didn’t see any value in money, often using valuable Sartic coins for decorations or as material for jewelry. Sometimes the nomads would buy expensive textiles and take them apart threat by threat, simply because they loved the colors and they wanted to make ropes of these threats.

The Sarts, of course, paid a similar respect to the nomads, considering them to be rude, uncivilized, and dangerous. The two civilizations couldn’t be more different, but they needed each other for trade and joint military campaigns. Often the SC nations would invite or simply hire the nomads into their military forces to fight against their SC neighbors. This was a good deal, because for a good price the SC nation would receive a fully-equipped and excellently-trained first-class cavalry, instead of trying to build their own. And in other times only the nomads could provide the SC nations with their numerous durable steppe horses, vast herds of sheep, and strong steppe camels.

Of course, too often the nomads raided their Sartic neighbors, and every so often the EN even conquered them and include them into their colossal, vast empires that sometimes stretched from Korea to Europe. Usually when it happened the SC nations didn’t have strong and swift enough army to protect their lands, and would routinely fall before the Steppe conquerors. The nomads would often sack the entire cities and whole countries, but usually they would simply crash the SC ruling and military class, and install their own.

Of course, such conquests hid the invisible danger for all of the Steppe conquerors. The danger was, to put it simply, of «going soft» after living long time in the Sartic nations, eating their tender foods, enjoying their softer climate and cozy lifestyles, getting used to their diverse leisure and pleasures, bedding their women and fathering children with them who will get spoiled. In a few generations, the thick nomadic blood got so watered down with the thinner SC blood that there was nothing left of a once powerful dynasty. Then the next wave of fresh Steppe nomads would come and deposit the rotten nest and take their place, just to get corrupted and erode in the same way.

The EN realized the dangers of this process. Many conquerors preferred to keep their nomadic lifestyle, continuing to roam around in their mobile yurt cities around the captured cities. Sometimes the entire nomadic states or even empires got split because the most traditional part of the nomads didn’t want to be in the same nation with the Sarts. For instance, this is how the two modern Central Asian nations got formed: the Kazakhs and the Uzbeks. They used to be in one semi-nomadic state, called the State of the Nomadic Uzbeks. But then they split into two separate states: the one that preferred to mix with the Sarts and settle became the modern day Uzbeks, and the one that preferred to stay nomadic became the today’s Kazakhs.

The Sarts of Eurasia always viewed the EN as an uncontrollable, wild, alien, strange, deadly, and often even as a punishing force of nature. On the opposite side, the nomads considered their Great Steppe to be locked into a ring of Sartic nations (Sartic Civilization Ring, SC Ring) that threatened to choke them and take away their precious free lifestyle.

Sometimes the Sartic world produced own conquerors, and they invaded the Great Steppe, subjugating the nomads into their SC empires. The Persian Achaemenids and Alexander the Great both invaded the nomadic realm and caused major disruption, some Chinese dynasties made successful advancements deep into nomadic territories; the non-nomadic Central Asian empires often stroke at nomads, and turned them into their vassals.

Therefore, both the Nomadic and Sartic civilizations had love and hate relationships for thousands of years, while also mutually enriching and feeding each other via the inevitable cultural and technological exchange.

Sartism vs Nomadism

As I described in previous chapter, the nomadic society was complex, vibrant, and well-established. It had a conceptual framework, integral system, social fabric, economic basis, political construct, culture, communication, and conscious self-awareness. It represented the alternative model of civilization.

Unfortunately, the Eurasian Nomads were universally considered «barbarian», wild beasty peoples without rule of law and human rights. The SC collective genetic memory holds an image of endless hordes of stocky horse riders with Mongoloid faces, wearing animal furs, shooting rains of arrows, wielding curved sabers, screaming madly and destroying anything they see.

It is hard to blame the SC nations, because for millennia this is exactly what they saw every time they encountered the EN. They never knew about the delicate, intricate inner life of the nomadic society, because it was hidden from the SC eyes in the vast plains of Eurasia. And by the time the Sartic explorers have finally had a chance to visit the Great Steppe in Modern Age and see the nomadic life, it was already too late: the wrong image was already cast in concrete, and the nomadic society was collapsing, allowing only a glimpse at its prior greatness.

Even in the Sartic academic circles of Modern Era there is still an incorrect point of view of the Eurasian Nomads. There is no official recognition of the Eurasian Nomadic Civilization. The EN still remain proverbial «bad guys of history» who never got a chance to be called «a civilization».

This negative perception happened only because the EN didn’t meet some of the definitions of «civilized» in the Europe-centric, China-centric, or Islam-centric SC (I will call it Sartic-Centrism). But in reality the EN had all the features of a full-bodied civilization, simply in a different configuration, as shown in a table below.

As we can see from the table, the EN world had the same features as the Sartic civilizations of the past. The main difference is that the Sartic Civilization always preferred to rely on complex systems and institutions at the expense of individual freedoms, while the ENC relied more on personalities and individuals, their reason and common sense, and had simplified systems and institutions.

The main qualities of a Sartic person, to this day, are his successes, wealth, social status, possessions, estates, and etc. For an EN person the main qualities were his or her honor, honesty, skills, personal aptitudes, and humanness. The last one is kind of hard to imagine in a tough Steppe warrior, but in reality this is probably the main quality in a nomadic person from the nomadic perspective. The Kazakh word of humanness is adamgershilik, and it is still valued most of all.

For three millennia this form of civilization gave the Eurasian Nomads advantage over their overwhelming SC Rim neighbors, allowing them not only withstand the enormous pressure, but even actively invade and dictate their will to their civilizational adversaries.

Nomads as the sanitarians of the Nature

If you would’ve asked a regular representative of any SC nation today what they think of the Eurasian Nomads, sadly the majority most likely wouldn’t say anything at all, as they’ve never even heard of it. Those few who know the word, would probably remember «bloody» Attila the Hun and murderous Genghis-Khan and the large hordes of cruel, brutal, genocidal invaders. Basically, the nomads are seen by most as unhuman, destructive force of nature, similar to hurricanes or other natural disasters.