A TURKISH television series, ‘Resurrection: Ertugrul’ has taken our nation by storm. The series is being shown on PTV Home and Netflix with dubbing in Urdu and English subtitles. It has touched the heart and souls of Pakistanis — who are glued to their TV sets — like no other series.

‘Ertugrul’ has a strong storyline and narrates the events that helped a Muslim nation build one of the strongest empires of the world. The Ottoman Empire, created by Turkish tribes in Anatolia and Asia Minor grew to be one of the most powerful states in the world during the 15th and 16th centuries.

The Ottoman period spanned more than 600 years and came to an end at the end of World War One when it was replaced by the Turkish Republic and parts of its various provinces became independent successor states in southeastern Europe and the Middle East.

At its height, the empire consisted, in Europe, of the present-day countries like Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, the entire former Yugoslavia, Hungary, parts of Poland and Ukraine, including the Crimean peninsula, Georgia and Azerbaijan and in the Middle East the Arabian peninsula, Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.

The TV series is receiving a lot of criticism on the excuse that it is foreign content and has taken away prime time for our local productions, of which the less said the better.

The naysayers are also crying themselves hoarse that the Ottoman Empire has nothing to do with the shaping of the history of Muslims of the subcontinent. I personally feel that the series has far more positives than these laughable objections.

I am the mother of two, an 11-year-old girl and an eight- year old boy. I feel that the practical side of being a Muslim has been depicted beautifully. It is one series that one can watch with the whole family. Aspects like closeness to Allah, the narration of incidents of the prophets, respect for elders, Muslim brotherhood etc are all well presented.

One particular episode was a surprise for my children where in one scene Ertugrul apologises to his father for arriving late for dinner. How often do we tell our kids that it is not right to make food and people wait at the table? Everyone is learning as well as getting entertained from this series. Hats off to Turkey for creating a masterpiece!

Afifa Adeel

Lahore

Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2020