Leather books from Turkey: more thoughts

Further to my earlier post on the phenomenon of a constant stream of 'Golden Brownies' (GBs) emerging in Turkey, I note that yet another "Torah" (curious that almost all of these fake manuscripts are from religious minorities in that region) has been trumpeted in the Turkish press (Daily Sabah, 'Turkish police nab 3 suspects trying to sell ancient Torah for $1.25M', 25 March 2020; Hurriyet Daily News, 'Gendarmerie seizes historical Torah in Turkey’s Mus', undated). Not only is the object not even remotely a Torah (the first five books of Moses typically in scroll form), it is so obviously a modern piece of tat that a mere moggy can spot it as farcical.

Pages from another so-called "Torah", announced by the Daily Sabah in 2018 ...

Of particular concern is that the spurious imagery and concocted provenances of these GBs have been eagerly picked up by far-right conspiracy websites (such as The European Union Times) and heralded as confirmation that "Judaism is Satanism". Dr Sam Hardy has provided some interesting insights into the situation (Conflict Antiquities, 2 April 2020). (A link to the EU Times rant is included under Dr Hardy's blog post.)

I had initially assumed that the Satanic and Illuminati symbolism in these fake Turkish/Syrian manuscripts merely reflected the 'Jewish conspiracy' mythology endemic in that part of the world and accepted as fact by their ignorant non-Jewish authors. And thus, almost incidental to the main goal of making money from selling them.

However, I am now beginning to see that symbolism not as merely incidental but as at least one of the prime motivations for their manufacture in the first place - to present these supposedly ancient manuscripts as proof that the mythology is true.

Perhaps even more worrying than the fact that the GBs are being produced is the thought that the Turkish police and media are happily complicit in validating and publicising them. I have an uneasy feeling that their widespread publicity in that country is not so much a way of praising the police force.

Have any of these insanely-priced GBs ever actually been sold at all or were they intended to serve another purpose? It's strangely convenient that their purported "sellers" are constantly being caught, it's strangely unnatural that they are seldom found with anything else of remotely comparable value, and I sense a possibility that the whole operation may have been deliberately engineered as a sickening political tool - a devious way of covertly promulgating antisemitic propaganda in broad daylight. Any other artefacts supposedly "recovered" with the GBs would be merely 'smoke and mirrors'.

What better way to ensure support for an authoritarian regime than to stimulate mass fear of a 'hidden enemy'? It matters nothing that a few scholars recognise the fakery; the target is the general public and neither Turkey nor Syria will be the first country to fall for that fear tactic and endorse a tyrant.

Is apparently busting the illegal antiquities trade in Turkey really only a front for performing something far more sinister? Just a thought ...

Leather books from Turkey

I see that yet another dubious artefact has been seized from 'smugglers' in Turkey ('Hebrew manuscript recovered from smugglers in central Turkey', Daily Sabah, 12 March 2019). Turkish authorities love to publicise their leading role in 'recovering' truckloads of antiquities supposedly stolen from war-torn Syria - but there's a slight hitch. Pretty much all of the 'recovered' objects proudly displayed in their photos appear to be tourist-grade fakes (just one example).

The latest seizure is no exception. Lots of these peculiar leather books (aptly dubbed 'Golden Brownies') have been turning up over the past few years (none from reliable sources). Despite the self-congratulatory smugness of the Turkish police at having brilliantly cracked a Syrian smuggling ring, most scholars regard these garish items as no more than modern fake tat aimed at gullible buyers.

What's more, it seems quite likely that they are being produced in Turkey itself rather than in Syria - so actually not 'smuggled' at all. One has to wonder whether the part in the suspects' statement about the object having been "stolen from a museum [unnamed] in Syria" was naively believed by the suspects themselves or conveniently inserted by those who pressured them into signing it. After all, what self-respecting museum would curate such rubbish?

Paul Barford has compiled a list of the characteristics of these 'Golden Brownies' and his note of their sources suggests that most of them appear to be originating from western Anatolia (and quite possibly manufactured there or transported from a centre further east).

It would seem that far from helping to thwart the looting of Syria's cultural heritage, all the Turkish authorities have really done is expose a thriving fake industry in their own country.

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UPDATE: A more sinister dimension?

Antiquarian book sale - Beverly Hills style

This prayer book is being auctioned by Ambiance Arts and Antiques, a flashy shop in Beverly Hills, on eBay. Although the book is undoubtedly valuable, both the sales pitch and the venue caused some amusement. It seems to be Beverly Hills at its finest. The price of $3,500,000 may seem a trifle steep. But we are advised that the book is not only "unique", it's also "rare" as well!

(I do wish people would realise that the word "unique" means 'the only one of its kind' - which makes the tautologous word "rare" a bit of a superfluous understatement.)

The description falls somewhat short of what might be expected of a normal dealer in antiquarian books but note the warning: "QUALIFIED BUYERS ONLY". In order to qualify, perhaps any potential customer must first prove: a) that he has more money than the entire economy of Switzerland and b) that he has had a full frontal lobotomy.

Although the "last page of this book shows the date", the seller seems to have trouble understanding it. The Persian year 1123 equates to 1744 in the Gregorian calendar and the Islamic year 1123 equates to 1711 in the Gregorian calendar, neither of which is "circa 1706".

The book boasts a "beautiful gold hard cover". That sounds extremely impressive but I suspect it actually means the binding is gilt morocco, which is not quite the same thing. And "70 pages" presumably means 70 leaves (in bibliographic collation a page is only one side of a leaf). And I'm guessing the baby phrases "hand writer" and "hand writing" are pitched at a semi-literate clientele who might have difficulty with the adult words "calligrapher" and "manuscript".

Curiously for an item offered for such a large sum of money, there is not the slightest hint of its condition (whether the binding is loose, whether any leaves are missing, torn, dog-eared, etc.) or, apart from its original owner, of its provenance (later inscriptions, library stamps, auction records, ALR check, etc.). A comment on Daum glassware offered by the same seller suggests an attitude to condition may be somewhat cavalier and a publicised spate of book thefts from libraries in the Middle East and elsewhere indicates that a mention of provenance would be wise. I'm not entirely sure that the generous offer of free postage offsets concerns that the seller states "NO RETURN" in big red letters.

Sadly, if "Sultan Hussain Safavi [...] used it every day for praying and keeping himself out of sickness and trouble", it didn't work very well. Eleven of his twelve sons were slaughtered and his dynasty was nearing its end when he was himself beheaded. Perhaps a bad omen ...

Out of the fire and into the frying pan?

In a post bizarrely entitled "Better Burned then Smuggled?" (I suspect the word he is looking for is "than", not "then"), Peter Tompa has slammed "UNESCO and the Iraqi cultural bureaucracy" for complaining that rare Iraqi manuscripts have been stolen from libraries in Mosul and smuggled into Turkey. He naively seems to think that stealing the manuscripts was a good thing as they will now be safe.

I rather doubt that either UNESCO or Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage would want the manuscripts to be endangered by immediately returning them to a location under threat and let's be clear: the act of looters stealing them was unlikely to be an altruistic rescue operation. They are probably being smuggled into Turkey to be sold on the black market, where they are very likely to be broken up (disbound and covers discarded) both to avoid detection and because flogging individual leaves fetches a higher price than the whole. If Tompa innocently believes the rare manuscripts will remain intact - or that even bits of them will ever see Iraq again - he doesn't know the darker side of the antiquarian book trade very well.

The manuscripts have escaped the vague risk of being burned into the near certainty of being mutilated beyond recognition. Are the authorities really wrong to be concerned?

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A priceless comment below the post also caught my attention. An English detectorist uses the occasion to have a go at Paul Barford ...

"With people being slaughtered on an industrial scale in Syria thousands made homeless refugees, and with increasingly savage and vile atrocities reported on every news bulletin, what does Barford see as the pressing issue to complain about in Syria? Antiquities."

In his frenzy to attack the archaeologist, the detectorist appears to have missed the title of Paul's blog: "Portable ANTIQUITY Collecting ..." Just a wild guess ... and I may be going out on a limb here ... but perhaps the blog is likely to be about antiquities? Dunno, just a thought ...

De Sade manuscript flogged and exposed

Donna Yates has whipped up an arousing post about a manuscript pumped out in 1785 by the Marquis de Sade, "The 120 Days of Sodom". The once tightly bound scroll has spent the last three decades tantalisingly shackled in Swiss exile while courts writhed in torment over its future but it has now been flogged to a French collector after lashing out a rumoured €7 million. There are breathless murmurs that the thrilled collector intends to expose the scroll in a private museum before manhandling it once more and humping it over to the Bibliothèque Nationale. After being tortured so long by the foreign captivity of their national treasure, the French are undoubtedly gasping a sigh of relief at its final release and ecstatic at its return. Its unveiling at the Paris library promises to be an explosive climax.

(And yes, I will tip my hat to anyone who can cram any more childish innuendos into a single paragraph!)