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6 The Knob and the Disk—The Factions’ Standards In addition to different-colored flags, the Faqari and Qasimi factions carried different sorts of javelins (Arabic s. mizråq). The origin myths transmitted by the Damurdashi group of chronicles, in fact, assert that these javelins, as opposed to the red and white flags, were the chief identifying characteristic of the two factions; it was from their javelins, the chroniclers tell us, that they recognized the factions in processions, such as the procession that accompanied a new Ottoman governor from the riverain port of Bulaq, where new governors typically disembarked after sailing up the Nile from Alexandria, up to Cairo’s citadel; and the procession that accompanied the pilgrimage caravan, with the Prophet’s symbolic litter, to the point of departure at Birkat al-Hajj.1 In other words, these javelins were the factions’ chief distinguishing features. It therefore makes sense to ask just what they were and what was distinctive about them. This chapter takes on this task while also extending the inquiry to the role of heraldic insignia in processions and the importance of processions themselves in shaping the factions’ identities. Why would anyone carry a javelin in a procession, unless he were going to participate in a javelin-throwing contest? Perhaps the grandees of Egypt did carry their javelins when riding out to the hippodrome for a hearty game of jirit, an equestrian contest that the Ottomans seem to have introduced to Egypt and that resembled a form of polo played with javelins in place of mallets and balls.2 But would they carry them out to meet the governor or see off the pilgrims? One rather suspects not. What they would carry were not javelins but long wooden staves that performed much the same function as flagstaffs, bearing symbols that were of particular importance to the group carrying them and thereby identifying that group. A javelin or lance 111 112 A Tale of Two Factions could indeed serve this purpose if it were used not as a sporting implement but as a ceremonial object. In any case, it was the standards attached to these lances or javelins that enabled the chroniclers to distinguish Faqaris from Qasimis. Standards in History Like flags, standards mounted on poles have a lengthy history as markers of particular military groupings. As in the case of flags, notwithstanding , the standards of medieval Central Asian nomads, above all the Mongols, and the polities they influenced are of most help in deciphering the Faqaris’ and Qasimis’ “javelins.” The Mongols carried a highly distinctive standard known as the tu¶, whose chief element was the “tails” of horse or, especially, yak hair that hung from it— symbols of the animals on which these nomads’ livelihoods and military prowess depended. Following Genghis Khan’s invasion of China in the twelfth century, the Mongols introduced the tu¶, featuring yak tails, to the Middle Kingdom while adopting the large, horizontal silk banners of previous Chinese dynasties. The tu¶ subsequently passed to Korea and Japan, which were both subject to Chinese cultural and political influences of varying intensity, depending on the period. Japanese tu¶s featured “tails” made of oiled paper.3 Among the Turco-Persian military patronage states that succeeded the Mongols in Iran, Central Asia, northern India, and Anatolia, the Ottomans are most notable for adopting and elaborating the tu¶. Ottoman tu¶s typically feature black or brown horsetails, as opposed to the Mongol yaktails, which were either left white or dyed a variety of colors. The number of Ottoman horsetails varied from one to three, depending on the rank of the commander whom the tu¶ preceded. Even more striking, however, is the Ottoman elaboration of the tip, or finial, of the staff from which the tu¶ hung. Whereas the Mongol finial takes the form of a trident—or, as Zdzislaw Zygulski terms it, a “hornshaped and spiked motif”4 —the typical Ottoman finial is a golden ball that truly “crowns” the horsetails and arguably competes with them for visual dominance (figure 6.1). And whereas the Mongol tu¶ was occasionally used as a staff for a banner, most famously in the case of Genghis Khan’s standard,5 the Ottoman tu¶ was seldom used in this manner but was instead carried alongside Ottoman banners. Other Turco-Persian polities appear to have chosen finials over horsetails or vice versa. The Ilkhanid rulers of Iran in the fourteenth century appear to have used black horsetail tu¶s at the top...

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