Dr. Murat Özveri

Globalization made the world smaller. There is more interaction between people of different nations and cultures, undoubtedly more than ever. This way, exceptional local cultural values of all kind have found their way to be known by people all over the world.

Turkish traditional archery, on the other hand, has been known by archery enthusiast all over the world much earlier, especially when it was known by the Anglo-Saxon world in the late 19th century and by Americans in the early 20th century. That the English language was spread worldwide due to the British colonization and the rise of the USA, and later became the lingua franca of our time, played a major role in the introduction of Asian archery traditions to the whole world.

Turkish archery had its very first impact on the English-speaking world when Mahmoud Effendi, the secretary of the Ottoman embassy in London, was invited to Toxophilite Society and showed his amazing skill in flight archery there. It was the late 18th century when eye witnesses reported an amazing 480 yards (439 m) shot that was way further than the maximum that the longbowmen had achieved until then. He said that his bow was not conditioned and he is not a proficient archer, especially compared to his sultan. It wasn’t exaggerated. Selim III, who was a brilliant flight archer and had had a record over 1000 gez (660m).[1]

The interest of the western world increased with Joachim Hein’s work on linguistics which was a summary of the 19th century Ottoman treatise “Telhis-i Resâi’lü’r Rumât by Mustafa Kâni bey, who was the kahvecibaşı (lit. “head of coffeemakers”, in fact the protocol manager of the Palace) of Sultan Mahmud !!, the nephew of Selim III. Later, Dr. Paul Klopsteg, a physicist and an archer, wrote his famous book “Turkish Archery and the Composite Bow” which was based on Joachim Hein’s work. In the foreword Klopsteg said that he was aware of Mustafa Kâni’s work and admitted that he wasn’t brave and patient enough to learn Turkish to read the original. Most of the experts think that Klopsteg corrected some mistakes Heim had made, thanks to his familiarity to archery. However, there are some misunderstandings for sure, as can be seen in some of the translations.[2]No doubt that Klopsteg did an excellent job. He introduced a unique and “alien” archery culture to the rest of the world.

In martial arts the terminology is also evolved together with the equipment and technique, very much influenced by the cultural changes that a given nation undergoes. Terms give not only clues about the details in the art but help keep the spirit, complete the whole picture for the practitioner. Maybe as a part of this concept enthusiasts and followers of many traditional martial arts learn the original terms instead of replacing them with words from their languages. In some cases, a term may not be translated to another language by saving the depth of the meaning. Thereıore it would be more acceptable to teach the original terms when teaching the technique and the concept of a martial art. A good example from Karate is “kata” which literally means “form” but has a much deeper meaning referring to the point of view of Japanese people in doing anything. “Mae geri” can easily be replaced by “front kick” but “form” is a bit too insufficient to give the meaning of “kata”.

Apart from whether it is a necessity or just a way to enhance the mental/intellectual aspect of learning an art, the correct pronunciation is also something to take into consideration. Far Eastern nations’ different alphabets have been a problem for the western scholars in their attempts of transcription as well transliterating. The main and initial problem was – and is – that “sounds” in a language may not even exist in another one. Naturally, there may be sounds that are vocalized by native sepakers may not even be audible for foreign ears, or brains, if you want. This very first step of transliteration should be eliminated before the attempts of finding the proper letters which presumably help the foreigners pronounce a given word correctly. Let me give an example to English-speaking readers. The sound of “th” in English, the “t” pronounced with the tongue between your teeth, doesn’t exist in Turkish. As a result of this many who started new learning English prounounce “thank” like “tank” without being aware of the completely different meaning. Same for the sound spelled with “z” in German language. It sounds like “ts” which differentiates “time” (zeit) from “since” (seit) but cannot be distinguished by a beginner.

The second step is finding the proper letters of letter combinations to spell those “sounds”. Here there is another problem to overcome: even nations who use the same alphabet do not use the same letters for the same sound! Not surprising to see different spellings of many Chinese words in English martial art or in history literature. Tai Chi Chuan is spelled also as Taijiquan, Wing Chun as Wing Tsun. Transliteration and transcription of a text to Latin alphabet is called romanization. Pinjin is a method used to romanize texts written in Chinese Mandarine by China, Singapore, Taiwan and the United Nations and is generally accepted today. Another method called Wade-Giles, suggested earlier in the mid-19th is outdated but many terms’ spellings remained the way they had been transliterated before.

Same is valid in transliterations within the same alphabet. Nations who are writing and reading with Latin Alphabet have different correspondences for a given sound. The sound “sh” may be “s” or “sch” in German, “ş” in Turkish. “s” in Hungarian while “s” would be spelled as “ss”, “s” and “sz” in these languages respectively. In many Slavic languages there are variations of “ch” which are spelled with “c” with different diacritical marks and so is the case in Turkish (like ç, ş, ü, ö, ğ) and in Hungarian.

There is a combination of considerations in spelling Turkish archery terms in a proper way so that they can be vocalized in a correct way for English-speaking readers. These considerations can be summarized as follows:

1-Turks adopted Islam in the 8th-10th centuries and short after they also adopted Arabic letters. Despite an early encounter of early Muslim Arabs and Turks, like the Talas Battle (751) at which they allied and fought Chinese, Islam was introduced and spread by the Iranian mystics, almost 200 years after Arabs defeated Sassanids in 642 and Islamized the Persian land. Persians had adopted Arabic letters too but they added new letters that corresponded the sounds of the Persian language that were missing [3]in the Arabic language. So, Turks adopted the Persian alphabet. This alphabet has been used until 1928 and replaced by the Latin alphabet as part of the reforms in the young Turkish Republic.

2-It was Atatürk, the founder of Republic, who led the process of adopting and spreading the new alphabet; founded also “Turkish Language Association” (TDK) to guarantee further work on vocabulary as well as on rules of grammar and orthography. In the 1000 years in which Turks have been a part of the Islamic block they adopted numerous vocabulary from the Persian and Arabic languages. Many of them changed or were modified according to the needs of Turkish phonetics. Some sounds in Arabic language have been changed in a given word, and not surprising that there was no standard in this transition. For example, two boy’s names Fâdıl and Fâzıl are two different names among Turks because of that “dz” (the letter is called “dat”) sound in the Arabic language. Turks hear and can vocalize it either as a “d” or as “z” although both are spelled the same: فاضل in Ottoman period. The same flaw can be seen in the “Turkish” word “Ramazan” (one of the months in Arabic lunar calendar) that is spelled as “Ramadan” by the rest of the world[4].

3-Ottoman Turks spelled the words by following the orthographic rules of the language that a given word had been harvested from. No need to say that even writing a text in a decent way required to be highly familiar with the grammar and vocabulary of three languages, i.e. Turkish, Persian and Arabic. That literacy had been restricted among a limited number of scholars all over the empire was a problem that the founders of the republic were aware of and intended to eliminate. Switching to Latin alphabet was a good solution but it had its flaws too. The spelling of vocabulary from Persian and Arabic was a problem which was solved by involving some diacritical marks, but unfortunately they were removed in late 1970s. Turkish Language Association didn’t do its job well, as many Turkish scholars agree. Later the diacriticals came back.

4-Despite the use of these diacritical marks, spelling of many of such words were incorrect. That some Latin letters that had not been included in the new Turkish alphabet, such as q and x, was also blaimed for the inadequate transliteration of some words. It is worth saying that romanization of Arabic texts was and is another issue, a challenge for scholars in Oriental Studies and Linguistics. Here there are different standards too and many diacritical marks as well as punctuations.

Speaking specifically about terms of Turkish traditional archery I would say that all these terms were “Turkified” as for their pronunciations and spellings. They have been and are being pronounced in a different way. Since the main purpose of this article is suggesting transliterations for Turkish traditional archery terms I am going to emphasize the pronunciation and try to help the English-speaking practitioners and enthusiasts vocalize the terms as we, Turks did and still do.

Recently we realized a long-term plan with the Koppedrayers, a couple which I have known in person for almost two decades. Jaap Koppedrayer, a renowned bowyer and experienced archer and his wife Kay invited me to their bamboo farm in Atlanta, USA for a 2-day-long Turkish traditional archery clinic. Kay is a PhD in religious studies, taught in university for decades until she is retired. She wrote numerous books and articles about various aspects of traditional archery. Jaap is still making traditional bows of different types, specialized mainly in making Japanese bows. In their farm they are organizing workshops of different Asian archery traditions, such as Chinese and Japanese, and this year Turkish archery was in too.

I taught for two whole days, followed an intensive program I had meticulously prepared. It contained almost all the aspects of Tirendâz training curriculum on which I had been working since 2008. With almost a dozen participants from all over the US we not only shared knowledge and shot together but also spent some time chatting and drinking. It was one of the evenings that we were calmly sitting in Koppedrayer’s living room with our drinks in the hand, I mentioned my observation about mispronunciation of Turkish archery terms and my opinion about it, as you already read above.

Other than Kay there was Nicholas Freer, a reenactor and a knowledgeable archer who already had had a lot of familiarity with Turkish archery, and was kind enough to ask me whether I needed anything to use in teaching. So, he took many Turkish archery-related items and tools some of which could not be brought by me from Istanbul, such as traditional Ottoman archery target, puta. It was a good opportunity to have two native speakers with whom I could work on the transliteration of the Turkish traditional archery terms which had been included in this 2-day-long clinic. Despite the long day behind we meticulously worked on spelling the terms that I repeatedly and slowly pronounced and they spelled. Both Kay and Nicholas wrote what they heard on a piece of paper individually and we compared them. Not surprising that different suggestions came out in spelling of some terms.The reasons may vary and I think there are two main reasons. One of them is the lack of orthographic standardization in English that is being policed more or less in some other languages. Secondly, there are some Turkish sounds which do not exist in English. My American friends may have not even heard them as they sound to me. Two dramatic examples are the sounds that we spell with an “ı” and “ğ” (they hear “ı” like “u”). Our “ü”, “ö” are also challenging but can be picked up by native English speakers who know French or German. They listened to my pronunciations patiently, kindly contemplated and discussed about the most accurate version of their suggested spellings,and at the end, I noted all onto the pages that my teaching program was printed on. I am grateful for what they did!

The terms for which we suggest the transliterations below are of course not all the terms but they are the essential ones that a Turkish archery practitioner would encounter sooner or later. The terms are listed below with their spellings in modern Turkish and with their suggested transliterations. Please also keep in mind that these transliterations are based on what my American friends “heard” and spelled. Differences in local accents in the USA or British accent may cause divergencies in suggested spellings. Undoubtedly further studies and attempts are needed and it requires bringing native English-speaking enthusiasts together with native Turkish archers (who are able to pronounce some of the old terms correctly).

Dictionary

Kepaaze: Weaker bows that were used by beginners in daily pulling exercise to acquire the motor memory for pulling a bow properly. Kepaaze bows are not meant to shoot arrows. Because of the Arabic letter “dat” it is also spelled as “kepâde” therefore may be vocalized as “kepaade”.

Nimkesh: A Persian term meaning “half drawer” referring to archers who do not pull the bowstring as far as it should be. It was considered to be a major mistake.

Torba: Turkish term meaning “bag” which specifically was a bag filled with sawdust and cotton seed and stopped arrows shot from a very short distance. This exercise helps the trainee to acquire the motor memory for ahooting a bow, learn to control the initial oscillation of the arrow.

Darb: Darb means “strike” or “hit” in Arabic and refers to the practice and art of piercing hard or fragile objects with the bow and arrow.The same “dat” letter causes that the variation “zarb” is seen eventually.

Dyuguil: The nocking point of the arrow on a bow’s string. It was made by wrapping a thread on the central serving where the arrow should be placed.

Mondal: The handlock in thumbdraw. The word is used for clothes pegs today. It is a spesific way to hold the bowstring whereas the main job is done by the thumb while other fingers are closed in various configurations to reinforce the hold.

Hatrah: It is a snappy movement of the bow at the moment of release, which is the natural outcome of twisting and pushing the bowgrip in a certain way.

Ferke: A term adopted from Arabic meaning “to seperate”, a term used for the release of the string. Technically, it refers to all what the drawing hand and arm are doing prior to, during and right after the release.

Beelak seeparry, seepar: An archery gear used by flight archers to draw an arrow beyond the grip safely. It is a plate with a groove on and bound to the wrist of the bowhand with a leather strap.The term is a very nice example of an “eclectic imperial language”. Seepar, commonly spelled in English as separ too, is a Persian word meaning “shield” and beelak (bilek) is a Turkish word for “wrist”. What makes the term so fascinating is the possessive suffix –i (here –y for transliteration purposes) at the end of the word beelak, which is based on Turkish grammar.

Eitch kabzadan atush: It is safer to have an arrow that is a bit longer than the draw length of the archer. But in Turkish archery the arrow was drawn far back until the tip of the arrow reached the rear edge of the bow’s grip. Eitch (iç) means “inner” and the term literally means “shooting from the inner edge of grip”.

Kabza garrysinden atush: It is safer to have an arrow that has a longer length than the archer’s draw length. But Turks drew not only to the very rear edge of the bow’s grip but they also exceeded it further back. Being a very dangerous technique, because even little flaws may cause the arrow hit the grip or the archer’s hand, it was reportedly performed by only the very best archers and preferred in flight shooting.

Ee-ra-tee-yen: It litearly means “dummy sleeve”, perhaps referring to a sort of guard for the forearm. It had not been mentioned before Kâtip Abdullah Efendi’s 17th century treatises. Thumbdraw eliminated the forearm slap but shooting with beelakseeparry requires modifications in grip and release.

Meleeckler otourushu: Sitting with crossed legs was the official sitting position in the medieval Islamic word. Meleek (melîk) means “the one owning the property” and refers to the ruler of the state, the sultan in this case. Many Ottoman sultans were depicted seated in this position and sometimes with bow and arrow in their hands. Old archery treatises describe shooting from this position (meleecklerotourushundanatush).

Chang-e baaz:Being a Persian term meaning “falcon talon” it refers to a high-wrist grip that helps the archer draw the arrow further back.

Majra or nawek: Two terms are synonyms, adopted from the Arabic and the Persian languages, respectively. It is a tube-like gear with a horizontal cross-section of “C” that allows the archer to draw very short arrows long and shoot them from their very same draw length.

 

Thanks to Rita Somogyi for her meticulous work on editing the text.

 

1. Sultan Selim III shot at 1012 gez (668 m) in 1792. It was also the very first shot on this shooting lane (menzîl). Due to contemporary inclinations and sensibility nobody alse shot on this very lane later.

2. A good example is the translation of siper (as now spelled in Turkish) which is originally a Persian word meaning “shield”. Klopsteg preferred the word “arrowguide” which does refer neither to its etymological root nor to the rationale of its use. This tool that consists of a plate with a grove on and bound to the wrist of the bowhand was used to draw an arrow back beyond the bow (hence “the arrowguide”) but its main purpose was protecting the wrist and hand from the arrow. The whole name, “bileksiperi” (as now spelled in Turkish) literally means “shield of/for wrist” and clearly refers to its rationale. In fact, Ottoman treatises also mention that the arrow could be drawn beyond the grip but it was too dangerous and was done by only the best archers.

3. There are similar institutions in France (Académie Française) and in Spain (Real Academia Española) which police French and Spanish, respectively while English is an unpoliced language.

4. Ramadan is the month in which Muslims fast everyday, also a common boy’s name in Turkey.