A minor 13th-century character in Turkish history has taken centre stage in Dirilis:Ertugruland become a cult figure for millions of Muslims around the globe The film, funded by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and directed by Moustapha Akkad, told the story of Omar Mukhtar, the legendary Libyan and Senussi revolutionary who fought against Italian colonialism during the early 20th century.

1. How Ertugrul Resurrected
the Muslim Imagination
A minor 13th-century character in Turkish history has taken centre stage in
Dirilis:Ertugruland become a cult figure for millions of Muslims around the globe
The film, funded by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and directed by Moustapha Akkad,
told the story of Omar Mukhtar, the legendary Libyan and Senussi revolutionary who fought
against Italian colonialism during the early 20th century.
Figure 1 Ertugrul'semphasison fairnesstowards non-Muslimsinthe seriesappears to show what
Islamic rule

2. As the film made its way into cinemas around the world in 1981, resistance movements from
Palestine to Kashmir fawned over the words of the old man Mukhtar (played by Anthony
Quinn), a teacher turned rebel commander who faced up to fascist Italy at its peak.
“We have stood against you for 20 years. And with the help of God, we will stay with you,
till your end,” Mukhtar tells the Italians in the film.
Mukhtar and his band of several hundred Bedouin fighters on horseback, armed with rifles
and draped in a jalabiya confronted a modern Italian army armed with tanks and machine
guns that exercised immense cruelty on the North Africans, including separating families,
burning crops and fields, and building concentration camps that killed tens of thousands.
Mukhtar refused to respond in kind, adhering to an Islamic ethic of war that believed in
dignity, even towards enemies. In Italy itself the film was banned on release and was not
screened on TV until 2009.
Mukhtar, as a scholar, fighter and Sufi, fought in the mould of Imam Ali, the Prophet
Muhammad’s beloved cousin and the fourth caliph of Sunni Islam. Omar Mukhtar was
known as the "Lion of the Desert" for his bravery: the Prophet referred to Ali as Asadullah,
which means “the Lion of God” in Arabic.

3. In a review at the time in the New York Times, critic Drew Middleton described Lion of the
Desert, which co-starred Oliver Reed and John Gielgud, as lacking nuance and presenting the
Italians as harsher than they probably were.
Figure 2 Villification of Arabs and Muslims in western culture includes (from left) Executive Decision,
Homeland and Call of Duty
“The Italian campaign in Libya remains as an example of unbridled imperialism [but] some
moviegoers might wonder whether the film is a propaganda vehicle for the Arab cause.
[Akkad] is an Arab and as such his sympathies are with Mukhtar and his merry men.”
For those who didn’t find Lion of the Desert on their cinema screens, it eventually made its
way onto VHS tapes around the globe, bootlegged and screened to fighters resisting
occupations and protesters defying authoritarianism.
One Libyan, collaborating with the Italian state, urges Mukhtar to obey the invaders. “They
are the government of this country,” he pleads.
“No, "Mukhtar replies.”They take this land by day. But by God, we take it back by night."
“You cannot win this war,” the collaborator continues, “your blood against their metal.”

4. Hollywood and Muslims:
Lion of the Desert trampled upon the accepted civility of western modernity and was a
cinematic anomaly in its depiction of resistance to 20th-century colonialism. For Muslims
around the world, Omar Mukhtar was not just Libya’s hero, he was a symbol of pan-Arab
ideals, a Muslim hero, a dogged anti-imperialist who stood up to injustice, fighting boldly
and gracefully for 20 years.
“It is our duty to God to defend ourselves against those who have driven us out of our
homes,” Mukhtar says on screen.
The epic was released just as TV viewing increased globally, with the introduction and
explosion of video. However, the number of mainstream films or high-level productions that
dared to narrate the level of imperialist crimes against Muslim societies or venerated
Muslim leaders was few:
By the end of the 1980s the world was convulsed by the end of the Cold War. Hollywood
villains defaulted from Soviet hardmen to brown Muslim men with towels wrapped around
their heads: even the benign blockbuster Back to the Future (1985) depicted its throwaway
terrorists as Muslim and Arab (coincidentally, in this case, Libyan). It only got worse during
the late 1980s and 1990s with blockbuster offerings like Rambo III (1988), True Lies (1994)
and Executive Decision (1998) deepening the caricature.

5. Figure 3 In his lessons about leadership, Ibn Arabi repeatedly stresses the need to discern between bravery
and chauvinism
The only films at the time containing Muslim characters with redeeming qualities were
biographies of superstars, such as Malcolm X (1992) and Ali (2001): even then, these were
biopics of Americans whose religious identities were either incidental or underplayed.
Post 9/11 and the vitriol reached new depths in TV shows and video games such as 24,
Homeland and the Call of Duty franchise, as Muslims were made to lick the boots of a
spiteful and vengeful Western imagination.
Meanwhile, the Western-led invasions in the Middle East and Afghanistan only deepened,
leaving a trail of client-regimes and devastated Muslim majority nations across multiple
regions. The teenagers who once controlled virtual characters at the neighbourhood video-

6. game arcade were now operating US Airforce drones, hovering over Yemen, Pakistan and
Somalia to pick off Muslim lives.
On the big screen, as in real life, Omar Mukhtar was caught and paraded to his oppressors.
“We will never surrender. We win, or we die,” Mukthar tells the Italian general following his
arrest. “And don't think it stops there. You will have the next generation to fight; and after the
next, the next. As for me, I will live longer than my hangman.”On 16 September 1931,
Mukhtar was hanged in front of 20,000 people at a concentration camp in Suluq. Ertugrul: A
legend is resurrected
On 10 December 2014, a new television show, or "dizi" as they are called, aired for the first
time in Turkey on TRT 1.
Dirilis: Ertugrul (Resurrection: Ertugrul), created by Mehmet Bozdag, told the story of a
young warrior in 13th-century Anatolia who embarks on a mission to find a permanent home
for his Turkic tribe, known as the Kayi, who lived as nomads on the steppes of central Asia.
There, they seek shelter from the elements, navigate food shortages during harsh winters, and
battle marauding Christian Crusaders and Mongols.
At the time the so-called Islamic world, as it is now, was in disarray, with empires like the
Ayyubids and the Seljuks a shadow of their former selves. Ertugrul (played by Engin Altan

7. Duzyatan), son of Suleyman Shah, pursues a dream to unite Muslims and finally secure a
home for the Turkmen tribes.
To achieve this he moves westward towards Anatolia, the large peninsula which now forms
the bulk of modern-day Turkey. At this time, the Seljuk Empire, considered the hegemon of
the wider region between 1037 and 1194, had suffered from in-fighting and infiltration by
both Byzantium and the invading Mongols. And it is within the Seljuk sultanate of Rum,
which had seceded from the larger Seljuk empire in 1077, where much of the action of
Dirilis: Ertugrul takes place.
Ertugrul and his unit of elite warriors, known as Alps, battle the Templars, the Crusaders, the
Byzantines, and the Mongols, as well as several collaborators within their own camp and
traitors within Rum itself, all in a bid to carve out a home in Anatolia.
Soon, Ertugrul emerges as a key commander and begins to consolidate the Turkic tribes as
the sun begins to set on the Sultanate of Rum. His exploits, victories and inspiring leadership
eventually pave the way for the formation of a new empire. Ertugrul’s heir, after all, is
Osman - the eventual founder of the Ottoman Empire.
Dirilus: Ertugul ended in May 2019 after five seasons. Each season comprised 30 two-hour
episodes per season – overall, that’s about 150 films. On Netflix, where it was released

8. internationally, it has been edited to accommodate around 80 episodes of 40 minutes apiece,
per season.