WI Early Mass Literacy

Yes, good luck getting the Turkmen population of the OE to understand anything Constantinople/Istanbul tells you in that language. I created an alagous type language for my own TL and that it spoken by the court, the officials and for record keeping purposes because of all the various languages spoken in Alt-Spain. The actual people themselves can read it after a fashion and the basics of Latin are taught in settlements of about 500 or more. It's only with the beginning of printing that literacy going to move beyond 50% having even the basics.

One thing I'm not clear on, when did Persian not become a prestige language in the OE?

I guess we are saying the same thing. I don't know Turkmen, but I'm pretty sure any Turkmen tribeman would have had trouble in understanding the persianized language usually spoken at court (where Serbian and Bulgarian were widespread though, due to Balkan recruitment of many courtmen of the imperial serviceO, plenty of arabic loanwords (the grammar was not very different I think). I suppose that every tribe or rural community had a somwhat cultivated shaykh able to speak the language of the powerful, or at least to understand it.
Persian was a prestige language for the Anatolian Turks from the very beginnings of the Rum Seljuk sultanate, since Seljuks, though being Turks, came in Anatolia from Persia and their court service was already literate in Persian. This cultural prestige never ended throughout the whole history of the OE, although I think the last century might had seen a relative decline in favor of Arabic and Western languages. AFAIK, the Persian cultural imprinting remained very strong in the non-Arab provinces of the OE as well as in Iraq (obviously) all the time.
Poets wrote verses in Persian even in the Western Balkans.
 
I guess we are saying the same thing. I don't know Turkmen, but I'm pretty sure any Turkmen tribeman would have had trouble in understanding the persianized language usually spoken at court (where Serbian and Bulgarian were widespread though, due to Balkan recruitment of many courtmen of the imperial serviceO, plenty of arabic loanwords (the grammar was not very different I think). I suppose that every tribe or rural community had a somwhat cultivated shaykh able to speak the language of the powerful, or at least to understand it.
Persian was a prestige language for the Anatolian Turks from the very beginnings of the Rum Seljuk sultanate, since Seljuks, though being Turks, came in Anatolia from Persia and their court service was already literate in Persian. This cultural prestige never ended throughout the whole history of the OE, although I think the last century might had seen a relative decline in favor of Arabic and Western languages. AFAIK, the Persian cultural imprinting remained very strong in the non-Arab provinces of the OE as well as in Iraq (obviously) all the time.
Poets wrote verses in Persian even in the Western Balkans.
Hmm, I was wondering since they of course became famous enemies so why would you continue to speak their language as a symbol of refinement? Yeah, my point is the average Turkmen (since for the Ottomans for much of that time "Turk" was a way of saying uncivilized bumpkin) is not going to understand them at all.
 
Hmm, I was wondering since they of course became famous enemies so why would you continue to speak their language as a symbol of refinement? Yeah, my point is the average Turkmen (since for the Ottomans for much of that time "Turk" was a way of saying uncivilized bumpkin) is not going to understand them at all.

Well, the Ottoman-Persian conflict had little nationalistic character, and none at all on the Ottoman side.
It was about power, religion and orthodoxy, conflicting imperialisms and the other usual stuff.
Nobody ever associated the Persian language specifically with the Safavid state, or even less, the Turkish and Arabic ones with the Ottoman State.
Safavids were maybe ethnically Turks as well (not that that mattered half a dirham at the time) and they power initially relied on Turkmen tribes. Their first stronghold was in Azerbaycan, not a majority Persian speaking area. IIRC, Shah Ismail himself was a good poet in both Turkish and Persian.
Think that Persian was the official, court and high culture language in most if not all the Muslim states of India, including the Mughal Empire, Afghanistan and Central Asia, and even in some parts of East Africa and Indonesia to a lesser extent.
Moreover, it was entrenched in Anatolia from far before the Safavids and the Ottomans. One of the foremost Persian poets is called Rumi because he lived in Rum, as the Muslims called Anatolia at the time.

For a closer example, Latin was still studied and practiced by protestants after Reformation, and Leibniz did not mind writing in French notwithstanding the long rivalry between the German HRE and France (he was committed against Louis XIV to some extent).
 
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