the ‘outside’ other 43
point of view as they were totally dependent on unwritten oral law and
tradition as passed on by the clan and the fathers of the tribe. Indeed,
it was the clan rather than the nuclear family that was the heart of their
social system. Everything was subordinate to the clan and everything
was learned from and regulated by traditional law which infl uenced
behavioristic models and patterns rather than moral norms justifi ed
in written laws, as was common for the sedentary civilizations. Th is,
beyond any doubt, was another otherness recorded by the nomads
when they compared themselves with the other cultures (Persian, Byz-
antine, Chinese, and Arabic). As a matter of fact, that was why among
the nomads charisma, especially demonstrated on the battle fi eld, had
a modeling signifi cance—it was the only dignifi ed behavior-model that
had to be followed by everybody. For that reason, quite oft en nomadic
rulers of the highest rank stood at the head of their armies, something
that was relatively rare in the medieval period amongst Byzantines,
Arabs, or Chinese. Th is striking diff erence both in military strategies
and rules of lifestyle and activity was usually interpreted by the nomads
as cowardice and a lack of dignity in the rulers of the sedentary world
(i.e., it was again non-freedom, because the cowardly person was not
regarded as free).
Th erefore, the nomads also had their clichés about what the free-
dom meant and how to practice it and these clichés were the ones to
defi ne the image of the Other. Th eir own freedom was considered a
movement of the community in-the-space or, in other words, an ema-
nation of the moving body of the collective/community,^95 and not an
individual and rationalized freedom-from-the-collective body. Th at is
why it comes as no surprise that no great philosopher was born among
the steppe nomads. Th eir “love/friendship of wisdom” and freedom
did not bear the characteristics of the abstract quest and refl ection, but
had the marks of the natural and the utilitarian. For that reason, apart
from being freedom-in-the-nature, it was also freedom-of-the-collec-
tive and was marked by incompletion, but this was exactly how it was
accepted by them as real freedom.
Within the nomadic communities the otherness was also part of the
moral virtues. Th e nomads thought of themselves as men of honor and
men of “the given word”, as men that respect the treaties concluded
(^95) Th e phrase is taken from, Gachev 1995, 127. In my opinion, as regards the
nomads’ notion of ‘Motherland’, Gachev’s phrase is not convincing enough.