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Heresson
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of frogs
Jun 2000
time: 06:32
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quote:
Originally posted by LDiCesare
What did they change?
Alexander's empire didn't last. He made a big impression but didn't change anything. His conquest didn't change much in comparison with a situation where the Persian empire would have fragmented all of itself, which was very likely in certain regions like Egypt or Greece (where several cities, recognized, on paper, the authority of the Persian king).
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I disagree with entire content of your post.
I think You're making things shallow while they're not.
In Alexander's case, as well as Mongols' one, You concentrate on the state-building, while there were more important things. it was not a matter of lasting of Alexander's state or not, it was a matter of cultural changes and spreading of Greek culture all over ME.
Without Alexander, there would be no Hellenistic age with its achievements. I'm no expert in this, but this would mean no great library of Alexandria - the creation of basis of literature comparative studies would at least movedaway, as well as many other achievements of that age.
Also cultural changes, such as introduction of goddyness of the ruler into the western culture could not occur. Greek wouldn't have became the language of cultural elites of all ME, the flow of culture would have been completely different. No-one knows how would the political history look later. Romans could never conquer Persia, and even if they would, Byzantium could not be formed etc
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As for the Christ, one could say there were many prophets, and another one or another religion could have spawned or imposed itself.
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Yes, some idiot could say that.
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Gengis Khan: What long terms effect did this guy's conquests have? The invasions of mongols in China caused trouble but mongols were assimilated more than anything else, so it didn't trouble China that much. What are the long terms difference between Gengis Khan and an epidemics of plague?
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Well, what happened there stopped Christian faith's expansion in the steppes of Asia, destroyed the khalifate in Baghdad and all the Muslim centers in Asia, resulted in great growth of power of Mamluks in Egypt which resulted in throwing the Christians out of ME etc
Of course, You can say that someone could do the same later, but it is the same probable that he wouldn't, or that He wouldn't manage to do it. Like - if Muslim expansion in Middle East started 30 years earlier or a couple years later, there would be no Muslims today.
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byproduct of technological development that was caused by education (Martin Luther)
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I'd say by Satan's inspiration.
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In 1492 the "West" was as advanced technologically as "the East" (the muslim states and China primarily
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When it comes to military. Turkey was about the right level, but Mamluks and Persians had problems adapting gunpowder
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and I find it amazin to think the two facts (the 'discovery of America) and Europes sudden dash to be unrelated.
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Not all European civs were colonial powers
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It's no coincidence that the Crusades resulted in the reintroduction of many Classical texts to Western Europe.
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First of all, Muslims got those texts from Byzantines.
Secondly, Outremer wasn't such important place of transmitting Muslim knowledge. I think Sicily and Spain were more important - and Sicily was in large part post-Byzantine.
Also, there was the IV crusade You know
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we use their numbers?
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Actually, the numbers are of Indian (by which I mean the India south to Afghanistan)
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While the Arabs were busy running Alexandria, the successor to Athens as the centre of world learning. Hmmm...
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Muslim times weren't quite the best times for Alexandria
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and were a major power for some two hundred years after that? [about Turks)
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It's not right to say they were a major power. they were a large state, but not a major power.
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Agathon
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Leafs 4TW!! - CPA
Dec 2002
time: 00:32
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quote:
Originally posted by Heresson
First of all, Muslims got those texts from Byzantines. |
They were freely available. If you mean got them by conquering most of the Byzantine Empire, then you are right. Same goes for the Romans. Sulla famously took all Aristotle's books back to Rome.
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Secondly, Outremer wasn't such important place of transmitting Muslim knowledge. I think Sicily and Spain were more important - and Sicily was in large part post-Byzantine.
Also, there was the IV crusade You know |
Blah blah...
It's a fact that for most of the period between the fall of the Western Empire and the Italian Renaissance, most classical learning was in the hands of the Islamic World. The greatest philosophers and mathematicians of the age were Islamic or (for example Maimonides) influenced by or active in the Muslim world.
The twelfth century renaissance is due in part to the rediscovery of Aristotle by the West. I know for a fact that the Arabs had the canonical texts since I've recently attended reading sessions in which some of Aristotle's texts are being reconstructed and the reconstruction takes place with one member of the group consulting the standard Arabic translation, because we know it was translated from manuscripts which are now lost.
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Actually, the numbers are of Indian (by which I mean the India south to Afghanistan) |
That doesn't change the fact of where we got them from.
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Muslim times weren't quite the best times for Alexandria |
That's not what I said. Alexandria was the centre of world learning up until the Islamic conquest, after which Baghdad became an important cultural centre.
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It's not right to say they were a major power. they were a large state, but not a major power. |
During the period from 1450-1920. You must be crazy. The Ottoman Empire was one of the major powers of WWI. It's not like they were minnows like NZ or Australia.
This thread smacks of ignorant people thinly trying to disguise their anti-Muslim prejudices by selectively ignoring history.
It's a fact. From about AD 650 to AD 1200 and probably further on, Western Europe was an uncivilized cultural backwater possessing fragments of Classical learning and unproductive of anything worthwhile until Aquinas. During this time Islam was arguably the major civilization on the planet. You can't change facts just because you don't like towel heads.
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:32
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quote:
Originally posted by Agathon
It advanced more rapidly than it did elsewhere. Weren't they the first to use cannon?
The Dark Ages were only dark in Western Europe if at all. |
The Chinese were the first to use cannon; but the Islamic world saw the first production of grenades. In the 1930s, Danish archaeologists unearthed in Hama, Syria, a grenade workshop dating from the 13th Century, which did much to explain the egg or pear shaped ceramic objects scattered over a swathe of the Middle and Near East and dating from before the 13th Century- they had 'glory' or the name of Allah inscribed or painted on them. The Arab trading networks passed knowledge of them through Iran and the oasis cities on the Silk Road and a sculpture in a Buddhist cave at Ta-tsu in Sichuan shows two demons, one wielding a handgun, the other a grenade with a burning fuse.
I think it's worth noting that the Arabs did not merely preserve the theoretical knowledge of the Greeks and the engineering skills of the Romans- in some instances they improved upon them. Of course, their access to trade with India and China was invaluable in this respect.
As regards the Church of Rome being favourable or antipathetic to learning and discovery, it could be both.
St Augustine wrote:
'Whatever knowledge man has acquired outside Holy Writ, if it be harmful, it is there condemned; if it be wholesome, it is there contained.'
Even though this outlook on experimentation and the acquisition of knowledge played a part in stunting the fostering of learning in parts of the West, many of the ablest thinkers and inventors were churchmen, as for a several centuries the church was the only pan-European organisation.
As for Western Europe being uncivilized or unproductive of anything worthwhile between the 7th and 13th centuries, I think you're overegging the pudding somewhat, but it certainly is instructive as an antidote to inflated notions of linear Western progression to realize that for nearly six centuries, Indian, Chinese and Islamic mathematics far outstripped Western European mathematics.
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~hi...-Khwarizmi.html
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~hi...haskara_II.html
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~hi...icians/Chu.html
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Heresson
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of frogs
Jun 2000
time: 06:32
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quote:
Originally posted by Agathon
They were freely available. If you mean got them by conquering most of the Byzantine Empire, then you are right. Same goes for the Romans. Sulla famously took all Aristotle's books back to Rome.
[quote]
And...?
The point was that Muslims were giving back to Christians what they earlier have learned from them - and, of course, also their own continuations of this work. But if not them, all this knowledge would have been available anyway through Byzantines.
[quote]
Blah blah...
It's a fact that for most of the period between the fall of the Western Empire and the Italian Renaissance, most classical learning was in the hands of the Islamic World. The greatest philosophers and mathematicians of the age were Islamic or (for example Maimonides) influenced by or active in the Muslim world.
The twelfth century renaissance is due in part to the rediscovery of Aristotle by the West. (...)
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Read carefully. I didn't argue THIS. I just wrote that it weren't crusades in Egypt or Syria that got Christians interested in Muslim knowledge. I questioned the time and place, not the process. Nothing more than that.
And in fact, by recalling Maimonides, You actually admit I'm right
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That doesn't change the fact of where we got them from.
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Of course. But there's a slight difference between inventing something and transmitting it further, isn't there.
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During the period from 1450-1920. You must be crazy. The Ottoman Empire was one of the major powers of WWI. It's not like they were minnows like NZ or Australia.
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Actually it depends on what do we mean by a major power. Ottomans were still a big state up to their fall,
but they were dependant on one or other European state when it comes to their safety and their progress. They had hardly any influence on what's happening in some their provinces like Egypt or Iraq. If not help of the West, they'd have been conquered by their vassal Muhammad Ali. Oh, c-mon. XVIII and XIX centuries weren't the times of Ottoman glory.
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This thread smacks of ignorant people thinly trying to disguise their anti-Muslim prejudices by selectively ignoring history.
[/quote[
And by people who don't read, or do not understand, somebody else's posts and then are acting rude.
[quote]
It's a fact. From about AD 650 to AD 1200 and probably further on, Western Europe was an uncivilized cultural backwater possessing fragments of Classical learning and unproductive of anything worthwhile until Aquinas. During this time Islam was arguably the major civilization on the planet. You can't change facts just because you don't like towel heads. |
I have a strange need of insulting You for acting this way, but let's put it this way; You're fighting against mills. I did not argue the things You've just written! You are so keen on defending the Muslim glory that You don't seem to notice no-one's attacking it.
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Cruddy
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quote:
Originally posted by Ned
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This simply goes back to why Europe and the US dominate. Technology is the reason. But that leads to the question of why Europe developed technoloyg so fast when no one else on the globe did -- even with the printing press, empires, trade and laws. |
No Ned. It's because we've lent the rest of the world billions, and wield the stick because we're the creditors and they are the debtors.
Debt repayments are 6 times higher than aid gifts (much of which IS military tech). Factor in the cash subsidies given to Western farmers, and it's easy to see why the rest of the world can't compete.
It's not technology, Ned. It's cash.
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Saras
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Vilnius, Lithuania
Apr 1999
time: 06:32
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quote:
Originally posted by BeBro
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'A reading from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20: Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals ... Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it."'
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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999
time: 21:32
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The geographical theory also does not work because it does not explain the complete collapse of civilization in Western Europe during the Dark Ages, and the rather backward civilization during the Middle Ages.
One can eliminate geography, the expansion of empires, trade, wealth, religion, classical knowledge, military competition and the printing press from the equation as well. Many societies throughout the ages had these but still did not advance technically at anything but a glacial pace.
However, where a patent system took root in such areas as in Germany (HRE) and England, and later the United States and Japan, technology advanced at a very brisk pace. It is technology that brought Europe (and later, the United States and Japan) their dominance of the world.
It is interesting that the civilization games that we play did not have to development of a patent system as critical. However, clearly patents are key to rapid technical advance.
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30-12-2003 05:20
Quite an example of the effects of isolation on populations...
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