Poland and Iran - Sarmatia and Sarmartism - a remarkable but largely forgotten historical connection
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The profound, historic, arguably fanciful relationship between Poland and Iran should be re-examined at this appalling time.
Despite the common modern criticism of Sarmatism and its ideology, the anthropological truth of the descent does not alter the long-lasting influence on Poles and Poland. This war has put me mind of the once, now rarely referred to, predominant modern myth of Polish origins being Sarmatia.
Most extraordinary and notable to my mind, during the various tragic and misguided Middle Eastern wars involving the West, it was observed and noted with admiration that Polish soldiers had a particularly co-operative, tolerant and fertile cross-cultural understanding and negotiation skills with Muslim peoples and their military. Did their insight possess echoes of Sarmatia, shadows on the wall ?
Where is Sarmatia and what are the characteristics of Sarmartism? According to the Geography by Ptolemy, Sarmatia was considered to be territory of Poland, Lithuania, and Tartary and consisted of Asian and European parts divided by the Don River. As a geographical term, Sarmatia was always indistinct, but stable. The presumed ancestors of the szlachta, the Sarmatians, were a confederacy of predominantly Iranian tribes living north of the Black Sea. In the 5th century BC Herodotus wrote that these tribes were descendants of the Scythians and Amazons. The Sarmatians were infiltrated by the Goths and others in the 2nd century AD, and may have had some strong and direct links to Poland.
The legend of Polish descent from Sarmatians stuck and grew until most of those within the Commonwealth, and many abroad, believed that many Polish nobles were descendants of the Sarmatians (Sauromates). The eighteenth century Irish statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke, believed Poland could have been on the moon, a barren country pulverised by war rather than meteorites. 'A country in the moon' as he once observed, the title of my literary travel book on the country.
The collective European memory of Poland has been systematically erased by wave upon wave of invaders and occupiers. But by 1582 the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth stretched from Poznań in the West almost to Smolensk in the East and included Kiev and vast tracts of the Wild Plains of the Ukraine as well as most of what are now known as the Baltic States to the north. It was the largest and one of the most powerful realms of early modern in Europe, although the idea of the ‘nation state’ was rather different from that which we hold today. The history of Poland and its fluctuating borders is one of the most complex in Europe. Geography has always worked against the country’s fortunes and the psychology of its people.
Until the twentieth century the vibrant colours of the Orient lived in a uniquely symbiotic relationship with the grey melancholy of the Romantic north in the immense tracts of land between the borders of Western Europe and Asia patronisingly referred to in the West as the ‘Eastern Marches’. The Roman legions had failed to subjugate this vast geographical area. The notion of Sarmatism, an ever-present perfume that lingers over Polish history into the present, deserves closer examination. In sixteenth century Poland alongside what was a common European aesthetic pursuit of the ideals of ancient Rome and Greece, the extraordinary and contradictory racial notion of Sarmartism came to rule the minds of the Polish nobility or szlachta[1].
This exclusive, mythomaniacal, ferociously extravagant and xenophobic concept grew from the stubborn but rather illogical belief that the Poles were descended from the Sarmatians, an aristocratic warrior caste related to the Scythians with origins in Iran. Next to nothing was known of their culture and way of life apart from their passion for the horse, their legendary women warriors and their love of magnificent gold and jewelled ornament. Historically the nomadic Sarmatians from the Pontic steppe had moved into south-eastern Europe in the fourth century BC and settled between the Vistula and the Dnieper rivers. In their slow migration westwards they occupied variable expanses of what is now considered Central and Eastern Europe. The Ossetians of the Caucasus are their only living representatives.
Herodotus described the origin of the Sarmatians (Sarmatae or Sauromatae) as the fearless progeny of young Scythian men and Amazon women. This picturesque and largely invented genealogical, cultural and militaristic heritage advantageously distinguished the szlachta from what they felt were the less attractive and inferior Slavic roots of the peasantry. Geographically they could feel justified in looking to the east to expand. At all events their mercurial and volatile temperament suited an imagined descent from wild nomadic horsemen and warrior women.
Over time the Sarmatian style developed into a fully fledged ideology of noble ‘golden freedom’ which completely permeated szlachta thought. However self-serving arrogance caused a neglect of politics and gave rise to an exhibitionist philosophy of grandiose feasting and opulent Ottoman, Persian or Tatar display. Polish embassies became famous throughout Europe. The populace of Moscow or Rome thrilled to hundreds of sumptuously caparisoned horses dyed cornelian and white with ostrich plumes and silver breast-plates. They gaped at running Janissaries and camels draped in feathers burdened with the magnate’s travelling library. Horses were deliberately shod with loose golden shoes that flew across the cobbles into the astounded crowd.
Unlike their English counterparts much szlachta wealth was not invested in business but worn on the person in the form of caps of fur and pearls, żupans of crimson damask, kontusz lined with silk and decorated with studs of gold set with precious stones[2]. Ornamental buttons of cornelian, jasper, chaldecony and agate from the Saxon mines, rubies, sapphires, garnets, and turquoises were sewn to the cloth to match the hilts of their Hungarian or Turkish sabres. The assistance of at least one servant was required to tie the long, broad silk sash in cloth of gold or silver known as the ‘Słuck belt’, decorated with delicate floral patterns. They shaved their heads in a type of ‘pudding-basin’ style occasionally leaving a long pony-tail dangling from the crown of a shaven skull. Despite fighting Turk and Tatar, these defenders of the faith, the ‘bulwark of Christendom’, perversely adopted the enemy’s spectacular oriental costume and dazzling military accoutrements to the point where confusion of combatants sometimes reigned on the battlefield.
As a class the szlachta preserved their power and moderated their distrust of royalty by contriving to elect their king, a unique phenomenon in Europe. The establishment of the notorious liberum veto in the Sejm (Parliament) during the seventeenth century gave an envoy the right to block any present legislation. ‘Nie pozwalam!’ (‘I do not permit!’)[3]. The controversial and inflammatory liberum veto developed over time into an idée fixe and was increasingly abused by self-interested poorer szlachta. The notion of this ‘golden freedom’ had catastrophic results on the stability of the Commonwealth. The notion ‘leads many to conclude the Poles had parted with their senses.’[4] The great diversity of cultures and religions that lay within the realm was accepted as an established fact but the szlachta were riding the country to death like a recalcitrant mare. Foreign powers manipulated their pawns to exercise this veto in the Sejm (Parliament). Politics and wealth were controlled by the most powerful families who flew at each others throats given any opportunity. A sense of compromise has never been uppermost in the Polish psyche.
By 1718 Russia offered the Commonwealth ‘friendly co-operation’. The first tentacles of domination that would finally suffocate the nation and violate Central-Eastern Europe for the next two hundred and seventy years began their insidious work. By the mid eighteenth century the power of the Commonwealth had degenerated to the point of its becoming the most chaotic and backward state in Europe. Through the continued use of the notorious liberum veto it had become the laughing stock of efficient European governments. The country was ruled and then lost by the elected Saxon King Augustus III, who squandered his resources patronising the arts in the creation of an opulent, magnificent but ultimately ruinous court at Dresden, a regent ‘obese, indolent and virtually incapable of thought’ according to the Polish historian Adam Zamoysky.
The decadence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the first half of the eighteenth century is personified by Karol Radziwiłł a wealthy and eccentric member of ‘the murky and stagnant pond that was the world of the szlachta’ [5]. He was known to everyone as ‘My Dear’, his favourite form of address to all those he met. ‘I live like a Radziwiłł - the king can do what he likes.’ [6] In a drunken stupor he was liable to impulsively shoot any dinner guest he considered disagreeable ‘like a dog’. His father, the Hetman of Lithuania, was similarly mercurial but laudably followed his own violence by tearful repentance before the Virgin in his private chapel. Besides attacking guests Karol’s other favourite armed activity was shooting ‘flying Bison’. His servants catapulted these huge creatures into the air from massive launchers hidden in the primeval forest surrounding his castle. Karol would take careful aim and fire. He was considered a crack shot and unfailingly brought down his quarry
By 1795 Poland had been swept off the map, a victim of colonisation and lack of political vigilance, partitioned by Prussia, Russia and Austria, transformed into merely a state of mind. Thomas Carlyle described the country at that time as having ‘ripened’ into a ‘beautifully phosphorescent rot-heap’.[7] While England became a great power the influence of Poland was extinguished. Before my sojourn I knew next to nothing of this fascinating, tragic and complex history. Accurate perception of the culture has been distorted by the most recent scale of barbarism against its people.
At least since the eighteenth century Poles have considered themselves predominantly Western and Christian in cultural outlook although this was not always the case through Polish history. Echoes of Roman Byzantium remain. The result is their psychology often appears stranded in a world located somewhere between East and West. The ‘agreed memory’ of the country among young Europeans has understandably shrivelled as history studies become increasingly neglected in schools. The focus is almost exclusively on the murderous legacy of the Second World War and of forests soaked in blood.
The Palace of Wilanów (Villa Nuova), one of the most important Polish historical survivals, distils the essence of the martial Sarmatian spirit and opulent taste of the seventeenth century. Tiring of his noisy city castle King John III Sobieski initiated the building of this château de plaisance or country residence towards the end of the seventeenth century. The grand façade and spacious entrance court give it the appearance of a large Italian Baroque villa set within an elegant formal garden. Sobieski imported gifted Italian, French and Dutch sculptors, painters and stuccoists for his extensive decorative scheme. He set up a royal atelier which became the first Academy of Painting in Poland. The Italian formal gardens were laid out in baroque style with fountains, summer houses, statues and a grotto supplemented with orchards of apple, cherry, pear, plum, peach and apricot.
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| Jan III Sobieski (1629-1696) in Sarmatian Costume |
His bedroom is supremely masculine, the walls decorated with armour, crossed sabres and shields nailed to tapetries, his bed embellished with Persian and Turkish embroidered silks that were his spoils from the Battle of Vienna. By his death in 1696 the palace had become a fulsome tribute to his Sarmatian glory celebrating Polish military victories particularly over the Turks at Chocim (1621) and Vienna (1683). Sobieski’s grand-daughter, Maria Klementyna Sobieska, was fabulously wealthy and married ‘The Old Pretender’, Prince James Francis Stuart of Scotland in Montefiascone in Italy in 1719. They were recognised by Pope Clement XI as the Catholic King and Queen of England and provided with a palace in Rome and a villa in the compagna near Albano. She died a young woman of thirty-three and was buried with great ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The career of their famous son, Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’), shows much of the military élan and romance carried in his part Polish blood.[8]
The palace was extended over subsequent centuries by aristocratic families reflecting more feminine and refined decorative tastes. For much of the eighteenth century Wilanów was owned by three wealthy and powerful women – grandmother Elżbieta, mother Zofia Czartoryska and daughter Izabela Lubomirska – all connoisseurs and resolute patrons of the arts. On a balustrade in the gardens four statues symbolise à la Rousseau the four stages of love: Fear, Kiss, Indifference, and Quarrel.
The property was pillaged by the Russians during Tadeusz Kościuszko’s 1794 insurrection and a horrified Izabela passed it to her daughter Aleksandra wife of the outstanding collector and scholar Stanisław Kosta Potocki. A magnificent equestrian portrait of him by Jacques-Louis David lies within the palace walls. In a significant programme of decoration, Potocki returned the palace to its Sarmatian roots, founded an outstanding art gallery, magnificent library and laid out an English landscape park. The Nazis finally stripped the palace, in the words of the fatuously euphemistic Heinrich Himmler, of ‘all objects of artistic, cultural and historic value……..whose security and appropriate treatment lies in the German interest.’[9
The gallery contains a remarkable collection of Polish Sarmatian portraits and a unique collection of ‘coffin portraits’, a particularly Polish baroque genre. During the funeral ceremony a plain, almost expressionless painted portrait of the deceased was nailed to the coffin and interred with it in the grave or hung with heraldic devices in the church.
The nearby Vistula river is a slow, solemn tide flowing towards the ‘Sarmatian Ocean’ as the Baltic Sea was anciently known. The inscription Cracovia Totius Poloniae Urbs Celerrima (Kraków, the most glorious town in all of Poland) was etched in 1619 by Matthaus Merian on an engraved panorama of the city known as the Amsterdam Print.
In ‘the noblest and most famous city of Sarmatia’ the kings of Poland were crowned and interred in the cathedral up to the early seventeenth century when the capital was transferred for convenience to Warsaw. Prosperous Kraków lay on an important trade route from the Baltic for merchants carrying precious amber along the Amber Road to southern Europe and from the west to Rus and on to fabled Byzantium. In 963 a wooden fort was built on the Wawel Hill and an imposing chapel was later to become the monumental cathedral. A fortified town developed on the banks of the Vistula beneath the citadel, often sacked by the Tartar golden horde in the thirteenth century.
Imperial Russia and colonized Poland both had close historical connections with the Muslim world. European Christianity defended and indeed defined itself in constant wars against the Turks and Tatars, culminating in 1683 in the defeat of the Grand Vizier, Kara Mustafa, who was pursuing a Jihad or Holy War on the siege plains outside Vienna. The principal actor in this final Crusader battle was the Polish King Jan Sobieski III, the ultimate Sarmatian, born during a raging thunderstorm and Tatar raid. Fluent in half a dozen languages, richly dressed in furs and silks, silver half-moon heels to his Turkish boots and a jewelled scimitar, voluminous moustache and hair worn in the curious Sarmatian pudding basin style, he was in appearance the archetypal Polish Oriental. He had married Marie-Casimire de la Grange d’Arquien, brought as a child to Poland by the French Queen Marie-Louise. ‘Marysieńka’ as she is popularly known in Poland, was a formidable woman and they lived a passionate life when together and apart. On campaign before the battle of Vienna among descriptions of ‘characters’ and military matters, he wrote in one of his many long notoriously explicit love letters to her ‘I kiss you, embracing with my whole heart and soul all the beauties of you sweetest body.’
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| The Polish Winged Cavalry |
His legendary yet anachronistic, fabulously caparisoned heavy ‘winged cavalry’ known as the Husaria, were considered the finest horsemen in Europe. This spectacular force, who exerted an impressive psychological dominance over the enemy far in excess of their actual power, were derived from Serbian and Hungarian origins. Their steel armour was polished like silver and edged with brass shining like gold. Mascarons representing the Numean lion slaughtered by Hercules adorned their shoulders and engraved images of the Virgin Mary protected their breastplates. Officers rode in karacena or scale armour riveted with brass rosettes, the pattern revived from the ancient Roman lorica plumata seen in the bas-reliefs of Sarmatian warriors on Trajan’s column in Rome.
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| Trajan's Column, Rome |
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| Detail of karcena armour on Trajan's Column, Rome |
Leopard skins lined with crimson satin were thrown over their backs, paws held in golden clasps. Eagle feathers set in wooden frames covered with red velvet arched above the rider’s head attached to the back-plates of their armour or to Circassian saddles of embroidered velvet and precious stones.
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| Karacena (scale) armour |
Conventional cavalry were understandably terrified at the appearance of these predatory beasts. The development of firepower and artillery gradually reduced their effectiveness as a fighting force against the marauding seventeenth century Swedish forces of Gustavus Adolphus, however they remained effective against Turk and Tatar until being reduced to a purely ceremonial role in the eighteenth century.
This magnificent force, ‘the bravest cavalry the Sun ever beheld’ , lance-pennants fluttering, jewelled pistols and sabres glittering, swept down from the Kahlenberg Heights through the dark Vienna Woods upon a hundred thousand Turkish tents and the green banner of the Prophet. So spectacular was this charge that other parties engaged in the conflict allegedly stopped fighting to watch it.
No sooner
does a hussar lower his lance
Than a Turk
is impaled on its spike
Which not
only disorders, but terrifies the foe,
That blow
which cannot be defended against or deflected…….
Oft
transfixing two persons at a time,
Others flee
in eager haste from such a sight,
Like flies in a frenzy.
Characteristically, after the swift defeat of the Pashas, Sobieski dispatched the Vizier’s jeweled stirrups by fast courier to his French queen and the Prophet’s banner to the Pope but failed to press home his political advantage after looting the fabulous Oriental ostentation.
Beaming ahead rapidly to more modern times, Sarmatian and Turkish influences in the decorative arts,in dress and decoration persisted. Curiously for me considering this background, the chivalry of Christianity supplanted the Muslim faith. This persisted through the eighteenth century with a mixture of French and Oriental/Turkish costume, manners (removing shoes at the entrance to your dwelling) and style. This superb piece of theatrical costuming provided an extraordinarily exotic, operatic, Polish display.
I was reminded of a remark, so appropriate in the political panorama unrolling before us today. It was uttered by a rather controversial English political figure, Enoch Powell. He remarked "Nations as much as individuals, live largely in their imagination'.
Even in the early nineteenth century, the Sarmatian effect on Polish culture remained. At times in Chopin's Nocturnes, the perfumes of Sarmatia delicately descend over us in a sensitive, almost feminine cloud. Oriental musical modulations unmistakably enter the sound frame and adventurous harmonic modulations in the Mazurkas.
By August 1980, the Polish economy had fallen into a parlous state, the socialist rulers lacked self-confidence and Poles simmered under oppression and a bankrupt ideology. The powerful voice of the Gdańsk shipyards rose in protest at the sacking of a woman crane driver. This strike galvanized the mustachioed Sarmatian figure of Lech Wałęsa to famously scramble over the tall gates of No: 2 entrance into the Lenin Shipyard. He leaped up beside the manager on the platform and shouted:
‘Remember me? I gave ten years work to this yard! You sacked me four years ago!’
In uncompromising Sarmatian fashion, Wałęsa injected a burst of energy into the faltering strike and transformed it into an occupation.
Later astonishing shadows of the myth, in striking cosmetic haircuts, dissolve into our present. But more extraordinarily and notable to my mind, during the various tragic and misguided Middle Eastern wars involving the West, it was observed and noted with admiration that Polish soldiers had a particularly co-operative, tolerant and fertile cross-cultural understanding with Muslim peoples and the military. Was this insight possessed the echoes of Sarmatia, shadows on the cave wall ?
[1] Szlachta is a Polish term difficult of
clear definition but in simplified terms may be considered as the Nobility or
Noble Estate. Joseph Conrad translated it as the ‘Equestrian Order’ in a letter
to John Galsworthy in 1907. This culturally, economically and religiously
diversified group were characterised by definite traditions, obligations,
privileges and laws. Large by Western
European standards, they made up some 10% of the population and identified
themselves with the country itself. Some were fabulously wealthy, some
comfortably off while others were landless and poor but all considered
themselves as absolute equals. They enjoyed many privileges, were not obliged
to pay taxes and were exempt from import and export duties. All were
tremendously aware of their distinctive noble status. Despite being expected to
defend the country as their duty, many betrayed lamentable self-serving
behaviour when
[2] The
żupan was a long gown worn below the
knee made of a decorative, sometimes richly patterned fabric such as silk, worn
only by Polish nobleman usually under a garment called a kontusz. Padded versions were worn under armour. The kontusz was a long coat-like garment
also worn below the knee in soft wool or fabric heavier than that of the żupan and lined with silk or fur with slit
sleeves that could be thrown over the shoulders in summer. They were normally in
a contrasting colour or pattern to the żupan
underneath and were generously
cut with pleats to allow freedom for riding or walking. This uniquely Polish
combination was worn from the mid seventeenth century to the early nineteenth
century.
[3] No legislation in the Polish Parliament (Sejm) could be passed without complete unanimity,
a potent symbol of incipient insanity that was derided throughout
[4] The
[5]
[6]
Quoted in The
[7] History of Frederick II of
[8] The attraction
[9]
Document dated
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