Ia 1139: Fill & Download for Free

Oh, it was a capitalist-pig conservative by the name of Peter Bartlett to whom I am ever indebted to awakening me to the beauty of libertarianism.“Wait!! Dennis!! Are you saying that libertarianism is conservative!! <gasp!> “Nope, you didn’t let me finish!It turns out, in a reflection of the win-win relationships that libertarianism fosters between men, Peter in turn owes his debt — of rejecting conservatism and becoming a libertarian — to little ole me, the long-haired, hippy, socialist, anti-war agitator that I was in those days! <1139>FrenemiesYou see, Peter was my boss in 1979. At work, we had grown to respect each other’s intellect, which for both of us was not an easy bar to pass. But when we started to debate each other, we were as politically different as Bernie and Newt.If you looked at just our policies, why, you’d see very little to ever suggest any eventual synthesis. But the thing was that we both excelled in a pretty highly analytical business, and we were both really good people — caring, considerate, giving — and so we couldn’t help but wonder, “If that guy’s so smart and so kind, why does he think the dumb and hurtful things he thinks!?”Eventually, Peter quit the company we were working for and started his own company, and the first employee he hired? My socialist ass! And I jumped at the chance to maybe revolutionize an industry with this brilliant man. <1029>The Opposite Policies, but Similar EthicsAnd so we moved into his spare bedroom, and bought a whole bunch of Apple II+s and Corvus drives, and tried to network these bad boys together, about ten years before such things could ever really be done.And we worked day and night, weekdays and weekends, vacations and holidays. And while we designed, coded, and business planned, we entertained ourselves bitching at each other’s political policies:“How can you think X?”“Well, you said Y, so if you think that’s true, how do you believe Z.”“You contradicted yourself!! You just said W three days ago!!”And slowly but surely, we left the area of policies where our differences were so starkly opposed, and started exploring philosophy — what human relationships to one another should be for us to be peaceful, free, and good men — and what that meant for the acceptable powers of our rulers. <0271>Owning Our BodiesI convinced him that if we were ever to be free men, we had to own our own bodies enough to be able to, for example, inhale substances, even if our rulers didn’t want such substances in our bodies — because our bodies were, after all, our bodies. <0931>And ole Peter, he didn’t like that there type of talk, because he loved the mind, and so he would have no truck with any substance abuse. But over time, he found that he was able less and less to justify anyone beating and caging neighbors in his name for what the neighbors were doing to their own bodies, if in fact his goal was to be a good man respecting his neighbors’ freedoms.Owning Our LaborsPeter for his part, convinced me that if were ever to be free and good men, that whatever we each created with our own bodies, no man should be able take away from us violently.Oh, I fought his idea hard!! You see, I had plans for the wealth of others. My perfect rulers would take this excess wealth from greedy capitalists and use it only for Good, helping the weak, the downtrodden, the poor, …But Peter helped me understand.First, I had to understand that there was a difference between justly acquired wealth and unjustly acquired wealth, because to justify my violently taking someone’s wealth, I had had to conflate creating wealth with stealing wealth. And it took some time for me to understand what wealth really was (a temporary store of the labors of one’s body <0568>} and then to understand what taking justly acquired wealth meant (a retroactive enslavement of that man’s body). <0187>And finally, I realized that I had to think long and hard about whether I really could ever be a good man if I enslaved an otherwise innocent, peaceful person just because he had been successful creating wealth and I wanted to steal the wealth his body created for what I rationalized to be good causes.<0976>Oh, I fought this idea hard, and I just wouldn’t let go, but in the end, I just couldn’t justify doing evil in the purported service of good. <0319>Owning Foreign WarsBut Peter fought just as hard about giving up on Pax Americana — sending American troops hither and yon to kill people he knew were mean and evil and murderous.It took me a long time to convince him, but what finally got to him was realizing that the first thing he’d have to do before sending troops overseas was to commit evil acts against innocent people here, people like myself. And what helped was that, at the time that we were arguing about his Pax Americana, we were also arguing about my coerced government social programs. He was rejecting as evil my policy of stealing from innocent, peaceful people to fund my war-against-poverty programs, yet, here he was suggesting stealing from innocent, peaceful people to fund his war-for-freedom agenda overseas.And as much as I’d point out the high need of the impoverished here in the US, he’d point out the high need of the enslaved overseas.Eventually, because the one thing neither of us wanted to do was to hurt innocent people, we both had to give up on doing-evil-for-good. <0955>Our AwakeningI remember the day in 1981. It had been over a year since we had converted his spare bedroom into a personal computer networking space. We were both editing parts of our business plan and I was feeling the need for a distraction, so I mentally went through our long list of prior policy differences.And I couldn’t find any remaining major disagreements! The hours ticked by, and all I was doing was work, and I could find no relief. <0565>I spun my chair towards Peter and in disgust asked, “So, that’s it? We don’t disagree on anything any more?”It took Peter a few days for him to come back and admit, “No, that’s it.” <0471>We Didn’t KnowNow, “libertarianism” was not a word that either of us had ever heard, nor had any of our acquaintances. So, it would take another year before we realized that we had — together — derived something called libertarianism. <0206>But our process had been very hard on both of us, and on the people who loved us <0404>. And I don’t recommend it. <1124> It is not for the faint of heart, or the impatient, or the shallow thinker. <0901> And I highly doubt it is possible without two partners who highly respect one another, and who share a soul commitment to logical consistency and to not committing evil. {<0782>Where’s Peter?But at the time, I didn’t realize what a rare man I had the honor to be working with. Somehow, I thought everyone shared these qualities and values.And so, after his company died, we went our separate ways. We stayed in touch via Christmas cards for at least a decade, but slowly, as these things happen, we lost touch.I for my part kept trying to find other partners like him, and kept being surprised that most men just did not have his capabilities. I hope he found someone equal to his intelligence and integrity. <1016>Over the past couple of decades, as I’ve shifted my focus to retrospective, I’ve tried to go back to find him. I want to thank him, or his descendants, in person, for being such a great man.And so, if you happen to know of someone named Peter Bartlett, who used to live in Chicago, but came from and returned to Davenport IA, send me a PM. I have something to share!! :)See Related:0975: How do you handle cognitive dissonance when you discover a prized belief is wrong?0339: How could a progressive become a libertarian?1139: What do you appreciate the most about the leftist ideology?1029: Why are libertarians more likely to be entrepreneurial?0271: How to introduce friends to political philosophy?0931: Why are libertarians so preoccupied with the legalization of drugs?0976: What gives me any right to own my property?0319: What causes humans to choose Good over Evil?0568: How is money different from wealth?0187: Should the justly rich be as condemned as the unjustly rich?0206: How did you become a libertarian?0955: Do libertarians believe in the Golden Rule?0565: Why did you as a liberal become libertarian?0782: Would you be willing to be friends with someone who had different political views than you?0404: How did my spouse react to me becoming a libertarian?0471: What principles underlie libertarianism?1124: The Best On-Line Libertarian Courses0901: Do libertarians overestimate the intelligence of people?1016: Do adults outgrow libertarianism?0388: Do you get depressed being an intellectual libertarian?<,→ Essays on <Becoming Libertarian> by Dennis→ Return to the <Table of Contents> for Dennis’ Libertarian Essays<, Dennis, RunBusiness, LibEthics, Becoming>

NOTE: This article was originally published in Encyclopedia IranicaA region of eastern Transcaucasia. It lay essentially within the great triangle of land, lowland in the east but rising to mountains in the west, formed by the junction of the Rivers Kur or Kura and Araxes or Aras. It was thus bounded on the north by Šervān; on the north west by Šakkī (Armenian Šak’e) and Kaxeti in eastern Georgia; on the south by Armenia and Azerbaijan province; and on the southeast by the Caspian coastal province of Mūqān or Mūgān. Arran’s situation between these two great rivers explains the name Bayn alnahrayn given to it by Islamic geographers.In pre-Islamic times, Arran formed the heart of the Iranian province of Caucasian Albania (to be distinguished of course from the Balkan Albania), which in fact embraced all eastern Transcaucasia, i.e. Arran here was a wider concept than that of post-Islamic Arran, and corresponded grosso-modo with the modern republic of Azerbaijan (since 1918).The Armenian term for this land was Alvank` or Raneak`, and the history of the region, from mythical times till the 10th century CE, is given by the Armenian historian Movsēs Dasxuranc’i (formerly referred to as Kalankatwac’i) [Footnote 1]. The Greeks knew the people as Albanoi, and the Georgians knew them as Rani, a form taken over in an arabized form for the early Islamic geographical term al-Rān (pronounced ar-Rān). Early Arrān seems to have displayed the famed linguistic complexity of the Caucasus as a whole. Strabo 9.4, cites Theophanes of Mytilene that Albania had at least 26 different languages or dialects, and the distinctive Albanian speech persisted into early Islamic times, since Armenian and Islamic sources alike stigmatize the tongue as cacophonous and barbarous, with Estakhri, p. 192, Ebn Hawqal, p. 349, tr. Kramers-Wiet, p. 342, and Moqaddasi, p. 378, recording that al-Rānīya was still spoken in the capital Barda’a or Barda’a in their time (4th/10th century). Hence Markwart, Erānsahr, p.117, was doubtless correct when he spoke of Albania/Arrān as being pre-eminently a non-IndoEuropean land; the Albanian tongue must have belonged to the Eastern Caucasian linguistic family, as is indicated by the recently-discovered table of the 52 characters of the Albanian alphabet, in which a few inscriptions have also been found by Soviet archaeologists [Footnote 2].Albania became Christianized at approximately the same time as was Armenia; Movses Dasxuranc’i places this event in the reign of King Urnayr in the mid-4thcentury, and states that St. Gregory, founder of the Armenian national church, was responsible for the monarch’s baptism. The Monophysite Albanian church remained separate from the Armenian one till the end of the 7th century, when the two were united under stimulus from the Arabs. Until well into medieval Islamic times, Muslims must have been only a minority in Arrān; Moqaddasī, p. 376, writing towards the end of the 4th/10th century, describes the Christians as still a majority in the towns of Qabala and Šabarān (near Quba). In the Byzantino-Sasanian wars, the Albanian kings sometimes had to supply contingents for the imperial Iranian army, and Urnayr participated with Shāpūr II in the siege of Āmed in 359, but more generally they combined with their fellow-Christian Armenian princes in resisting Persian expansion into Transcaucasia and Armenia, at times even paying tribute to the Byzantines.Towards the end of the 5thcentury, the ancient ruling dynasty of Albania seems to have died out, and in the later 6th century and at the time of the Arab invasions some decades after then, Albania was ruled by princes of the Mihrān family, who claimed descent from the Imperial Sasanians but were probably of Imperial Parthian origin. Their most famous representatives in the 7th century were Varaz-Grigor, his son Ĵuanšer (Persian Ĵavānšir) and Varaz-Trdat I (Persian Varāzdād). The military exploits of the latter two potentates in the period of the first Arab invasions of Armenia and Arrān figure prominently in the 2nd book of MOVSES Dasxuranc`I’s chronicle. These princes bore the Persian title of Arrānšāh (in certain of the Arabic sources corruptly written as Līrānšāh), Armenian Eranšahik` or Aranšahik`.During the time of the orthodox caliphs, and in particular during `Othman’s caliphate, such Arab commanders as Salman b. Rabi`a al-Bahell and Hab-b b. Maslama led raids into Armenia and Arrān, and in ca. 24/645 conquered the chief town of Arrān, Partaw (Arabic Barda’a, q.v.). Henceforth, Barda’a was always to be the bastion of Islam in these parts, though Muslim garrisons were placed in other urban centres such as Baylaqan, Šamkīr, and Qabala, and these were used as bases for raids northwards to Darband (q.v.) or Bab al-Abwab and the Khazar lands [Footnote 3]. Nevertheless, Arab control over these Caucasian marchlands was of necessity light and often uncertain, in the face of periodic invasions by such northern peoples as the Alans and Khazars. Arrān remained essentially a frontier province, left to its native princes, who were led by the Mihranids, [Footnote 4] on condition of the payment of tribute to the Muslim exchequer. In practice, the princes of Arrān in the time of Varaz-Trdat I (d. 705) paid tribute simultaneously to the Arabs, the Byzantines and the Khazars, according to Movses Dasxuranc’I,[Footnote 5] an indication of the confused state of affairs in eastern Transcaucasia,Since the people of Arrān remained substantially Christian, they were treated in Islamic law as āhl al-Dhemma, hence liable to the poll-tax or ĵezya. This was paid in coins with Islamic superscriptions, and under the Umayyads sporadically and under the `Abbasids regularly, dirhams were issued from a mint called “Arrān” (probably either Barda`a or Baylaqan), in the case of the `Abbasids, from 145/762 onwards, continuing into the 3rd/9th century [Footnote 6]. There was also in Arrān, as in the whole Caucasian region, much intermarriage between Christians and Muslims, and Movses Dasxuranc’i (2.32) inveighs against those Albanian nobles who polluted the race and their faith by marriages with the infidels.The Mihranids were extinguished through the assassination of Varaz-Trdat II by Nerseh P’ilippean in 207/822-23, and the Armenian prince of Šakkī to the north of Arrān, Sahl i Smbatean (Arabic, Sahl b. Sonbat), extended his power over Arrān. The province was in these years much disturbed due to effect from southern region, namely Āthropātekān or Āzarbāijān and the revolt of the Kkorramdinān lead by an Iranian freedom fighter Sardār (Warrior) Bābak, whose centre was at Badd just to the south of the Araxes, and it was Sahl who delivered up Bābak to the caliph al-Mo’tasem in 223/837-38. [Footnote 7] The middle years of this century saw an intensification, however, of the policies of Islamization under al-Motawakkil’s governor in Armenia Bōgā al-Kabīr, when various Armenian and Albanian local princes were deported to Baghdad and Samarra. But in 247/861-62 the caliph recognized as supreme prince in these regions the Bagratuni Ašot I (Arabic, Ašūt), who in 272/886 received the title of king.As `Abbasid control over the outlying parts of the caliphate decayed, so its authority in the Caucasian region weakened, allowing local Muslim military commanders and adventurers, like the Iranian Sajids (q.v.) of Āzārbaijan and then, in the 4th/10th century, the Daylami Mosaferids (q.v.); also called Sallarids or Kangarids to assume control in eastern Transcaucasia south of Šervan (which now had its own line of Šervānšāhs, the Arab Yazidis, based on the town of Šervān). The northern branch of the Mosaferids, a family originally from Tārom in Daylam (today Gilān), ruled in Arrān under Marzobān b. Mohammad b. Mosafer (330-46/941-57), followed by his son Ebrahim, extending momentarily as far north as Darband, but failing to maintain their position in Āzarbāijan and Arrān under pressure from the Rawwadids of Tabrīz. It was during the Mosaferids’ rule in Arrān that the Scandinavian Rūs mounted their celebrated raid up the Kur valley to Barda’a (332/943-4).The Islamic geographers of this period give descriptions of Arrān in general and of its towns (Barda’a, Baylaqan, Ganja and Šamkur or al-Motawakkeliya) in particular, describing their agricultural fertility and their importance for commerce across the Caucasus, despite their vulnerability to attacks from the Georgians and the Rus. The Hodud al-`ālam [Footnote 8], considers Āzārbaijan, Arrān, and Armenia as the pleasantest of all the Islamic lands. It is also interesting that Ebn Hawqal [Footnote 9] speaks of “the two Arrāns,” apparently meaning Arrān proper to the south of the Kur and also Šervān to its north. The native princes of Arrān were in the later 4th/10 th century and early 5th/11th century hard-pressed by the Kurdish Shaddadids established in Ganja from 360/970 onwards, who also captured the Armenian city of Dvin.It seems that certain of the princes of Arrān tried to preserve their position by marriage alliances with the Rawwadids. Also, after this time, when the Shaddadids were in full occupation of Arrān, the Persian poet Qatrān (q.v.), who flourished in the middle decades of the 5th/11th century and was the eulogist of various Muslim potentates of Āzarbāijān and Arrān, praises the Shaddadid Amir Fazlun b. Fazl II b. Abī-Aswar (46567/ 1073-75) for his descent on the maternal side from the Bagratunis, indicating further Muslim-Christian alliances [Footnote 10]. The last known native prince of Arrān from the old families mentioned by a continuator of Movses Dasxuranc’i (3.23) is the ruler Senek’erim of Yovhannēs son of Išxan, king of the Armenian province of Siwnik` or Sisakan [Footnote 11] in the last years of the 11th century [Footnote 12].The eastern Caucasus came under Saljuq control in the middle years of the 5th/11thcentury, and in ca. 468/1075-56 Ālp Arslān sent his commander `Emād’al-din Saboktagin as governor of Āzarbāijān and Arrān, displacing the last Shaddadids.From this period begins the increasing Turkicization of Arrān, under the Saljuqs and then under the line of Eldiguzid or Ildenizid Atabegs, who had to defend eastern Transcaucasia against the attacks of the resurgent Georgian kings.The influx of Oghuz and other Turkmens was accentuated by the Mongol invasions. Barda’a had never revived fully after the Rūs sacking, and is little mentioned in the sources. It seems to have been replaced as the capital of Arrān by Baylaqān, but this was in turn sacked by the Mongols en route for Šervān and Darband in spring 1221 [Footnote 13]; after this, Ganja (q. v.), the later Elizavetopol and now Kirovābād, rose to prominence, the southern part of Arrān now becoming known as Qarabāg (q. v.).The old name Arrān drops out of use, and the history and fortunes of the region now merge into those of Azerbaijan (q. v.).Bibliography:See also Sam’ani (Hyderabad), VI pp. 49-50 (a few `olama’ with the nesba “al-Ran!”); Yaqut (Beirut), 111, pp. 18-19; A. Manandian, Beitrage zue albanischen Geschichte, Leipzig, 1897. Markwart, Eransahr, pp. 116-19. Idem, Osteuropkische and ostasiatische Streifzuge, Leipzig, 1903, pp. 443 ff. Le Strange, Lands, pp. 176-79. J. Laurent, L’ArmMie entre Byzance et I’Islam, Paris, 1919. P. Schwarz, Iran, pp. 978ff., 1098-1100, 1139, 1144-45. V. Minorsky and Cl. Cahen, “Le recueil transcaucasien de Mas’ud b. Namdar (debut du VI’/XII` siecle),” JA, 1949, pp.93-142. Minorsky, “Caucasica. IV,” BSOAS 15, 1953, pp.504-29. Zeki Velidi Togan, “Arran,” in IA I, pp. 596-98.Footnotes:Footnote 1. Armenian text ed. M. Emin, Moscow, 1860, repr. Tiflis, 1912, annotated tr. C. J. F. Dowsett, The History of the Caucasian Albanians, London, 1961.Footnote 2. see V. Minorsky, A History of Sharvān and Darband in the 10th-11th Centuries, Cambridge, 1958, pp. 11-12; the present Udi language, surviving vestigially in Šakki, is considered to be a remnant of it.Footnote 3. see D. M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars, Princeton, 1954, pp. 46ff., and Minorsky, A History of Sharvan and Darband, pp. 17ff.Footnote 4. These last being accorded by the Arabs the title of Batrig or Patricius, cf. Ya’qubi, lI, p.562.Footnote 5. 3.12; in regard to the first two powers, probably as a result of the treaty of 685 between Justinian II and `Abd-al-Malik providing for the division between the two empires of the tribute of Armenia and Arran.Footnote 6. see E. von Zambaur, Die Munzprfgungen des Islams, zeitlich and ordich geordnet I, Wiesbaden, 1968, p. 39; coins were also minted with the name “Arran” under the I1-khanids in the first half of the 8th/ 14th centuryFootnote 7. see Minorsky, “Caucasica IV. 1. Sahl ibn-Sunbat of Shakki and Arran,” in BSOAS 15, 1953, pp.504-14.Footnote 8. tr. Minorsky pp. 142-45, commentary pp. 396-403Footnote 9. pp. 349, 356, tr. pp, 342, 348Footnote 10. see Minorsky, Hodud al-`clam, pp. 396-97, and idem, Studies in Caucasian History, London, 1953, chaps. i and iiFootnote 11. The mountainous region lying between Lake Sevan, later Turkish Gokce, and the Araxes, hence to the west of Arran, see Markwart, Eransahr, pp. 120-22, and Minorsky, op. cit., pp. 68-70.Footnote 12. According to Brosset, ca. 1080-1105.Footnote 13. Ĵovaynl, tr. Boyle, I, pp. 148-49.