Chapter 312 Discerning the Sutra
Although Arslan never reveals his dislike for farming in his words, his delicate emotions are always revealed inadvertently.
You can be judged by a person's behavior, expression, and tone.
It is indeed a very interesting thing for such a person who does not really like farming, but he ends up being more like those of his fellow races who claim to be farmers.
Faced with the Gerris's problem, Arslan first glanced at the settlement not far away, and then at the sparse farmland.
Then, express your thoughts. "Is it really good to be a farmer?"
Geris understood a little, it was not disgust, but confusion.
Arslan's lack of goals for the future, whether it is grazing or farming, made him puzzled.
It was precisely this confusion and confusion that prompted him to come and follow him after he met Gerris after he heard Gerris telling the story.
In his eyes, Gerris was a wise man, whether he was a prophet or not.
The ability to have such confusion is enough to prove that Arslan is not a fool.
In fact, it is precisely because the more you know, the more you understand your ignorance, and will not rashly replace objective reality with all kinds of imaginary things.
Is farming necessarily progress?
This is true for human groups, because without farming, the upper limit of human population is destined to be stuck at a certain stage.
If you adopt a hunter-gathering lifestyle, you can't even find one person per square kilometer, and if you migrate nomadicly, you can find about two people.
Only when we come to the farming era, ten people can be found on every square kilometer of land, so that humans can move towards the earth as a powerful race.
But for individuals, is this really the case?
Homo Homo sapiens' body is not designed for farming. For humans, running on the wasteland and climbing trees are the preparations given in their genes.
Apes spent hundreds of thousands of years straightening their spine, but in just a few thousand years, they had to bend down to remove weeds, clean stones, carry water to water the ground...
For this reason, all parts of the human spine, knees, and body are forcibly worn.
Whether it is arthritis or lumbar protrusion, it suddenly appears together with the farming era, and hemorrhoids and hernia can also be added.
It's not only that, the settled life makes human beings no longer have to endure the wind and frost, and seem to have lived a life of plenty of food and clothing.
But in just one generation, human fertility will break the previous imagination.
In the settlement life, human reproduction opportunities increase, and the provision of grains makes milk no longer limit the nutritional intake of babies.
Even if breast milk is lacking, the body's immunity has decreased, and the dense population has led to a high incidence of infectious diseases, which has led to a high rate of infant mortality.
But the total population still ushered in an "explosion".
More population means more farmland, and more farmland means more crowded population.
The increase rate of population will inevitably exceed the increase rate of farmland. In the long run, without exception, the quality of human life in the farming era is reflected in a steady decline.
Before the rise of capital agriculture, all agricultural technological reforms promoted the outbreak of population and the decline in quality of life.
This is how people are. When they get more food through hard work, they will not make them richer, but will face more and more children...
However, this can change, Is it something that can be reversed?
When a tribe chooses farming and its population begins to soar, the other tribes can only choose to join or migrate.
In the local competition between nomadism and farming, there are always more wins and less losses. After all, horses bring extra advantages, but the living space is constantly being squeezed.
Nomadic life itself is part of the animal husbandry in the agricultural revolution.
Even so, if you lengthen the timeline, you will find that any nomads who come to the farming area have become farmers.
The farming areas are always extending to grasslands, deserts, and land that were originally considered uncultivable. Only land desertification can be curbed...
In the end, the old life is destined to be over.
This is the general trend of history, the general trend engraved in human genes.
What you win is a lifestyle and ethnic group, but what you lose is the specific individuals in it.
Of course, Arslan didn't think so much, but for him, it was actually very simple.
In the Sultanate of Rom, the Turkic tribes, as important military forces, generally enjoy various privileges and exempt large amounts of taxes.
After all, without the support of the tribe, the Roma Sultan could not fight against the Greeks on this land.
In fact, there is no evidence that the population in the Anatolia region undergoes a dramatic change in composition after the Battle of Manchikot in 1095.
Until later generations of Türkiye conducted genetic sequencing, it became increasingly proved that a large number of so-called Turks, whose ancestors were all Greek descent.
But once the tribes own farmland, they will need to pay a land tax. On this issue, the Turks are the same as the Greeks and Armenians.
The expansion of farmland will inevitably limit the action of the entire tribal people to participate in the military.
At that time, as Arslan said earlier: "It is no longer that they have the ability to plunder others, but that they are going to be plundered."
The word taxation , in Arslan's view, there is no difference between robbery.
It is nothing more than one that is uncontrollable, and the other is relatively controllable and long-term.
Whether it is the Greeks, Armenians, or Turks, as long as they are residents of the Roma Sultanate, every cent of the tax they pay will not bring them a better life.
It will only be exchanged for the ruling class and strengthen its repressive ability.
"As a lion, I am not refusing to live a farming life, but I am afraid of that future."
Farming means losing force, paying taxes, and losing freedom. , becoming a slave to the land means a pathetic future that ordinary people cannot predict.
"Then what if you change this country?"
If the taxes of the feudal lords were basically just to meet the lord's war and luxury goods needs, it was naturally meaningless.
But if a new country is established and taxes can be used for public construction, then that is the change.
Take Anatolia as an example, there are both grasslands and mountainous lands here, although most areas have natural water sources, such as rivers and springs.
The long-term war damage has led to a lack of mature irrigation systems in various regions.
The overall agricultural level is declining.
And when the Mongolian expedition to the West and then to the Ottoman era, it will only be more sad every day.
To curb such a general trend means that Anatolia must have a government that can handle various contradictions and is quite centralized.
Geris came here to sow such a seed. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, starting with what real settlement life was to let Arslan and his tribe adapt to.
Yusof's caravan brought many goods, some of which had been sold, but more were piled in Garys's store.
Apart from iron pots, needles, and hoes, seeds are actually goods sold.
In the past decade, due to relatively long peace, the Kingdom of Jerusalem has made rapid progress in all aspects under the guidance of Gerris.
The cultivation of crops is the key point.
After deliberate collection and planning by the Ministry of Agriculture, the kingdom has established a relatively simple seed bank and has begun long-term targeted cultivation.
In those seeds, in addition to the grain seeds, a large number of vegetables and fruits are also included.
Gerris took this small vegetable field opened by Arslan and planted various vegetables of beans, rhizomes and leaves.
Cheeppeas, broad beans, carrots, beets, lettuce, spinach...
Of course, garlic.
No mistakes, one poem, one post, one content, one in 6, one book, one bar, one read!
Many seeds are unheard of and unseen by Arslan.
The reason why Geris planted so many species is naturally not because he expected all seeds to bear fruit. He wanted to select the species with relative advantages from them, so that they could be suitable for promotion to the tribes of Arslan.
After resting for a while, they started the afternoon farm work. It was a persistent job to cultivate a vegetable field in this wilderness.
…
Geris's life in the Uktu department was very dull. He cultivated vegetable fields, ran shops, did some business from time to time, and occasionally went to find some elderly people to drink.
He completely integrated into it without realizing it, and many people no longer regarded it as an outsider, as if he had been here since the beginning.
And in an accident, after Gerris recited a passage from the Quran, the elders in the tribe were quite surprised.
Although the Uktu tribe was a Muslim and converted to Islam, the per capita cultural level of the Turks naturally could not be compared with the Arabs.
In other words, although the tribes on their side believed in Islam, they actually knew almost nothing about the Quran except for the pure truism with dialect accents and testimony.
Of course, as a Turkic tribe who cannot do without alcohol, their understanding of Islamic precepts is also questionable.
In their eyes, Christianity can be regarded as polytheistic religion. After all, whose monotheistic religion is dedicated to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at the same time...
During this chat, it couldn't help but spread.
In addition to the tent sewn with various leather cloth, Gerris and the elders of the tribe sat cross-legged on the grass, sucking some sweet water cup after cup.
There are milk wine brewed by the tribe themselves and the grain juice brought by Gerris. The overall condition is not high and suitable for chatting in dim times.
Ilham, the elder who stayed in this settlement, couldn't help but ask: "I heard that in this world, Allah not only gave us revelation through the prophet Muhammad, but also other prophets? Then they Is it true religion that you believe in?"
Geris naturally nodded in response to this, and he followed the words of Elder Ilham and said later.
"There are three religions in this world."
"Three?"
"One is a real religion, one is a distorted religion, and the other is a superstitious religion. . "
"What is the real religion? It refers to Islam?"
When mentioning this question, Gerris spread his hands and did not answer the following passage.
"The so-called true religion refers to Allah using the prophet as an intermediary to convey to people the religion that has not been changed or destroyed and has been passed down to today."
"What is that twisted religion?"
< br>"Although Allah often reveals the prophets to convey various knowledge to the world, in the inheritance, people always change their original intentions for their own reasons. This is a distorted religion."
"As for the so-called superstitious religion, it is a religion created by people themselves, which poisons human life and has nothing to do with the knowledge of Allah."
After hearing the difference between these three, Elder Ilham asked again again He said, "Does that real religion refer to Islam?"
This old man, who was almost fifty, was already a little drunk and asked again and again.
Geris, who is in his thirties, is not a big boy. In the face of the other party's repeated inquiries, he finally gave his own answer.
"The prophets orally wrote the contents of the scriptures, so who recorded them in words?"
"In the first place, when the prophets recited the scriptures, many believers recorded and recited them separately. , they each got some true meaning. "
" And when the third orthodox caliph Ottomanns, he began to compile and burn all the scriptures that recorded the words of the prophets outside him, from that The scriptures were not changed after this."
"Do you think the third orthodox caliph Ottoman must be right? You must know that caliph died in the 'rebellion'."
Many of the things that Gerris said were in this simple tribe. A story that people have never heard of.
People always like gossip, especially those who are out of reach.
Geris's secrets about the orthodox caliphate era were mentioned, and the elder Ilham couldn't help but be interested.
For example, before Gerris talked to him today, he never knew that the second caliph Omer was actually one of the early enemies of the Prophet.
It is also not known that the third caliph Ottoman died in rebellion.
When Gerris mentioned the Caliph Ottoman, the excessive appointment of his own family members led to political dissatisfaction among other forces.
After the successor Ali, as the son-in-law of the prophet, ended up in a bleak situation, he couldn't help but sneer at many historical records.
But he felt that what Gerris said might be true.
After all, those caliphs are all human beings. Since they are human beings, they will have love, hate, and conflicts, and their own conflicts of interest.
The poor will still compete for family property, and those real big men will only become more intense when they compete for inheritance.
Think from the perspective of others, put yourself in that position, and face various temptations, can you really continue the prophet's wishes?
You must know that it is not just the third caliph who died in assassination.
To be precise, in addition to the first caliph, there are three other orthodox caliphs, namely: Omer, Ottoman, and Ali.
They all died of violence!
(This chapter ends)