From Kashmir to US: How Ertugrul resurrected the Muslim imagination

The smash-hit Turkish television series "Resurrection: Ertugrul" has seen a boom in popularity across the world with fans spanning from the Middle East to Africa after first being aired in 2014 on Turkey's state-run TRT channel.

The five-season-long historical epic has accrued a mass fan base in the Muslim world, particularly in South Asia and the Middle East, as well in South America and parts of southern Africa.

Dirilis: Ertugrul has been licensed for broadcast in 72 countries and translated into English, Russian, Spanish and Arabic. The statistics endorse the epitome of the show's success in the media industry.

"In Gaza, young and old Palestinians rattle off the names of their favorite characters and sing the notes of the show’s theme music. In Pakistan, couples mimic Turkic-styled weddings modeled on the marriage ceremonies from the show," Azad Essa writes.

The drama's immense popularity has gone beyond television screens, even inspiring parents to name their children after its famous characters.

A couple in Kashmir named their newborn son "Ertuğrul" after the titular character in the historical TV series, the father of the Ottoman Empire's founder.

In the U.S., two fans launched a podcast called "Beywatch" to analyze the show, in turn amassing a large following of their own.

"The show has revived Sogut, known as the first Ottoman capital, as a tourist magnet, and spawned a universe of memorabilia on the internet," the reporter added.

During a trial in New Zealand, Hamimah Tuyan, whose husband Zekeriya was one of 51 killed in the Christchurch mosque terror attacks, described her husband thus: “He was my imam, my bodyguard… my Ertugrul.”

Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan, who touted the TV series as a must-watch, said the show displayed Islamic values and carried more cultural and historical weight than "Hollywood and Bollywood" ahead of the debut of the Urdu version of Dirilis: Ertugrul.

Furthermore, the show has passed 10 million subscribers on its Urdu YouTube channel, said TRT World’s news channel director of digital strategy and content.

In neighboring India, Ertugrul proved a more popular search term than film and TV personality Shah Rukh Khan and even Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The series is woven around 13th century Anatolia and tells the story prior to the establishment of the Ottoman Empire. It illustrates the struggle of Ertugrul Ghazi, father of the empire's founder.