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Everyone knows that an excessively hot climate makes you womanly 
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Nov 1, 2018 22:05
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:They let ladies leave the house sometimes! What corrupt decadence! #NonWesternValues
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Nov 1, 2018 22:14
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Looks like we're getting a sequel to Gladiator. There are so few alternate history movies out there!
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Nov 1, 2018 23:54
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Finally, the naval battles of the Colisseum
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Nov 2, 2018 00:01
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I thought Roman women had a fair amount of autonomy and it was the Greeks who kept them locked up.
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Nov 2, 2018 01:31
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Relative to most Greek cities, yeah, Roman women had a lot of freedom. In practice they seem to have been somewhat freer than the law would suggest, women being literal property legally and all. But there were wealthy independent women owning land and businesses and whatnot, and the state of women generally improved after the republic. The Etruscans seem to have had a fairly modern/enlightened view of women. Being less misogynistic than the Athenians isn't saying much.
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Nov 2, 2018 01:36
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OctaviusBeaver posted:I thought Roman women had a fair amount of autonomy and it was the Greeks who kept them locked up. That's what I was making reference to.
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Nov 2, 2018 01:42
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OctaviusBeaver posted:I thought Roman women had a fair amount of autonomy and it was the Greeks who kept them locked up. The Greeks were also pretty varied themselves.
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Nov 2, 2018 03:00
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Where would the king of a major polis be during a hoplite battle?
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Nov 2, 2018 03:28
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When did Egypt go from being the extremely wealthy and productive province it was under the Roman/Byzantine empire to not being that important? I feel like I read somewhere that the irrigation systems needed to make the Nile valley productive broke down at some point and after that it wasn't as valuable. Was it still a breadbasket for the Ottoman empire for instance?
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Nov 2, 2018 05:04
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OctaviusBeaver posted:When did Egypt go from being the extremely wealthy and productive province it was under the Roman/Byzantine empire to not being that important? I feel like I read somewhere that the irrigation systems needed to make the Nile valley productive broke down at some point and after that it wasn't as valuable. Was it still a breadbasket for the Ottoman empire for instance? Egypt only lost its status as a major food producer in the 19th century, with the intentional encouragement of switching to cash crops for export. But it had ceased to have the sort of vital importance as a food exporter over the course of the middle ages. Part of that is from how Egypt's population was growing fairly continuously up to about the 1600s so a lot of it simply needed to stay where it was to feed people. Still by the early 19th century the population of Egypt was back down around the levels it had been in 1 AD, a lot of people had moved elsewhere in the empire.
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Nov 2, 2018 05:27
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On Tom Holland, I'm having a kind of chuddish vibe with my substitute teacher in advanced religion. We're watching Islam: The Hidden Truth in our Islam Basics repetitions course for some reason, and it seems kind of.. irrelevant.. to hear some authors theories that muslim conquerors weren't in fact muslim. How is the film and theory regarded in academic circles? Tias fucked around with this message at 10:52 on Nov 2, 2018 |
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Nov 2, 2018 10:33
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The early Muslims were just Nestorians in disguise
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Nov 2, 2018 10:46
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WoodrowSkillson posted:i thought that things like goatees were specifically thought of as effete, in addition to any other stereotypes they cooked up yeah lots of gay people have beards
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Nov 2, 2018 11:17
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Tias posted:We're watching Islam: The Hidden Truth in our Islam Basics repetitions course for some reason, and it seems kind of.. irrelevant.. to hear some authors theories that muslim conquerors weren't in fact muslim. How is the film and theory regarded in academic circles? Like who, and what religion were they?
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Nov 2, 2018 11:44
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:They let ladies leave the house sometimes! What corrupt decadence! I bet they had sex without women too, for pleasure. Which is the gayest thing ever.
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Nov 2, 2018 11:50
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Epicurius posted:Like who, and what religion were they? Well, I don't know. I just thought my temp was really big on complaining about JIYZA DHIMMIS and wanted to show us a movie about how islam wasn't conceived before the 7-800s in a basic Islam repetition course set off some red flags. Said temp has also written a book on the crusades which reviews say is sort of chuddy, I've learned since.
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Nov 2, 2018 12:06
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Tias posted:Well, I don't know. I just thought my temp was really big on complaining about JIYZA DHIMMIS and wanted to show us a movie about how islam wasn't conceived before the 7-800s in a basic Islam repetition course set off some red flags. Said temp has also written a book on the crusades which reviews say is sort of chuddy, I've learned since. I mean, near as I can tell from googling the movie is that its some sort of Muslim apologetics financed by Saudi Arabia? But I've never actually seen it, so I dont know what it claims. But by 700, Muslim armies had already taken over Persia and Egypt, and were taking big bites out of the rest of North Africa. What was the crusade book?
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Nov 2, 2018 13:04
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It claims that since no non-muslim sources mention the arabs taking Jerusalem talking about Mohammed, they clearly were jews or christians, thus neatly robbing Islam of any credit for the muslim expansion. It also claims that Islam was invented in Syria somewhere and not Mecca (on account of Mohammed adressing herders and olive farmers). Doesn't really seem like Saudi talking points, but who knows what the hell they're up to these days. It's called Korstogene, Jesper Rosenløv and Michael Pihl. I doubt it's been translated into English.
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Nov 2, 2018 13:11
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And unfortunately, my lack of Danish literacy comes back to bite me again. From what I understand, the book is kind of a revisionist take on the Crusades, with the basis thesis that they should be seen as an expression of authentic Christian piety, brought about by rapid Muslim military conquest and that the Muslim control of the Holy Land was seen as an existential crisis by Europeans. Additionally, from what I understand, he and his coauthor claim that a lot of current Crusades scholarship goes out of it's way to make the crusaders look as bad as possible and the Muslims as good as possible....so it focuses on the horrors of the Crusader sack of Jerusalem, without considering how common the sacking of defeated cities was in medieval warfare. And Saladin gets portrayed as a kind of model of gallantry, and a lot of the stuff he did, like the killing and enslaving of prisoners, gets ignored or downplayed. ETA: as to the claim in the film, given that the surrender of Jerusalem was to Caliph Umar himself, that the treaty guaranteed the safety and free worship of Christians so long as they paid jizya, and that Umar celebrated the victory by having a mosque built in Jerusalem, the idea that the city wasn't taken by Muslims seems...unlikely. Epicurius fucked around with this message at 13:54 on Nov 2, 2018 |
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Nov 2, 2018 13:47
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Tias posted:Well, I don't know. I just thought my temp was really big on complaining about JIYZA DHIMMIS and wanted to show us a movie about how islam wasn't conceived before the 7-800s in a basic Islam repetition course set off some red flags. Said temp has also written a book on the crusades which reviews say is sort of chuddy, I've learned since. I think I've heard a little about this. From what I recall the issue is that the definition of Islam was much more protean in this period than a generation or two later. A lot of the Arabs involved in the early campaigns were also very newly converted with many probably less committed to the new religion than interested in the prospect for loot. A comparison to early christian theological issues is relevant, with questions like the extent to which Islam was a different religion from Christianity or Judaism still being matters for debate just like early Christians grappled with similar issues. In particular I recall there's dispute over the extent to which Caliph Muawiyah I of the Umayyad dynasty bought into the religion, although some of this is due to Shia feeling salty towards him due to his role in the death of Ali.
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Nov 2, 2018 16:44
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the JJ posted:The Greeks were also pretty varied themselves. More so than 'the Romans', probably. People have a tendency to conflate 'the Greeks' with 'Athens' because that's the literature that's come down to us, but that's a mistake. The Athenians were absolutely scandalised by how free and easy a life Spartan women had, for instance.
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Nov 2, 2018 16:53
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There’s more to Muawiyah than just sectarian bias. Muawiyah had actively resisted Muhammad until he took Mecca and was thus much later to the party than the previous caliphs, all of whom were muhajirun (ie they fled with Muhammad to Medina precisely to avoid trouble with guys like Muawiyah and his father). He was also governor of Syria who had a lot of experience with Christians/Romans and their social system, which made him suspiciously nonpuritan. Even so, a lot of the trashing of his reputation as a Muslim comes from Abbasid sources who had a vested interest in representing the Umayyads as a bunch of irreligious scoundrels.
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Nov 2, 2018 17:12
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As an aside, in Norway we have a yearly event named after Saladin: https://translate.google.com/transl...e%2F&edit-text=
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Nov 2, 2018 17:55
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Finally finished reading the thread from start to finish over a few months. Great thread, thank you everyone, I have even picked up a few of the books that get good reviews here. On the subject of books, can anyone recommend a good book on the crusades that is more focused on the personalities and military action then the religious side of it? Particular interested in the first crusade. Also any good books on Egyptian or Indian history? Once again I seem to enjoy stuff that is more focused on individuals then religious/political movements. Once again thanks to everyone who contributes to this thread!
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Nov 2, 2018 21:48
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From my knowledge of the Crusades, it like most things had a complex genesis and the leaders organizers had different motivations. From what I have had, I think the Crusades seem to me at least a political reaction related to the destabilization of the Middle East by the Seljuk Turks, breaking the at the time century(ish) duopoly of power in the region between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Fatamids. While the Seljuks beat all the other powers down, they were internally divided into a bunch of semi-autonomous rulers and the nominal rulers were more concerned in the eastern parts of their Empire. When Alexios asked for help in recovering territory due to a lack of manpower, the Crusaders came along with a mix of motivations. Some just being pious, some wanting money, some wanting fame and others wanting land. Alexios kinda managed to keep them following his plan of recovering Anatolia, but then after Dorylion and then Antioch the Crusaders realized how relatively weak the opposition was in the region for them to carve out their own territory.
Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Nov 2, 2018 |
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Nov 2, 2018 22:09
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I wouldn't say there were no adventurers but I think the "land and money" hypothesis is overplayed. Crusading was insanely expensive and dangerous. Plenty of Crusaders had to sell property or borrow money. Godfrey de Bouillon sold all of Verdun to finance his part. Robert Curthose basically pawned Normandy to his brother to get cash. Lesser nobility would sell or pawn smaller pieces of land to their neighbors or the church and lots of them ended up getting foreclosed. When Pope Alexander called for Christians to help drive the Muslims out of Spain in the 1060s the response was small. If there was a huge glut of people ready to go Crusading for money then why wouldn't more have showed up for that? The Islamic states in Spain were weaker, closer and probably had richer land than the Turks in Anatolia or the Fatimids in the Levant or Palestine. After winning the First Crusade most of them didn't even stick around. One of the reasons the Crusader states had such a hard time was that, once they had completed their pilgrimage to Jerusalem, most just wandered home. The Crusader kingdoms were massive money sinks, requiring constant support and reinforcement from Europe. OctaviusBeaver fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Nov 2, 2018 |
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Nov 2, 2018 23:19
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It seems like no matter how you slice it, there was definitely a religious element to it all. That was why so many of the minor crusaders settled for massacring jewish villages when it turned out that it was really hard to get all the way to Constantinople. Of course it's also tied up in things like how people like the Normans were fighters roving all over Europe fighting for a living and making conquests where they could, and the Crusades were just another opportunity for them, but with the legitimacy of the pope behind them. If you bring in the pilgrimage aspect, it becomes sort of a working vacation. Hell, the Norman takeover of southern Italy started out as a pilgrimage. It's hard to get into the mindset of people in different eras, but the behavior certainly seems to fit the rest of what was going on at that time.
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Nov 2, 2018 23:44
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There was a period where it was fashionable to not take people's religious convictions seriously and try to "well, actually" everything into economic/political motives instead. Nowadays most historians think this was kind of dumb and that religious motivations should be taken seriously. Like how scholarship has largely settled on Constantine's Christian faith being genuine rather than some secret calculated move to do... something, idk.
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Nov 2, 2018 23:55
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I don't think it's unreasonable to posit that people are more likely to follow through with religious motivations when they line up with personal gain but you don't have to look further than a monastery to see that's not the whole story
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Nov 2, 2018 23:56
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Sure, if you can be for Jesus and also gold that's great, but the fashion was to completely dismiss the religious motivations entirely in favor of economic/political ones. Which is so easy to poke holes in I don't know how it became a thing, but whatever.
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Nov 3, 2018 00:02
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Grand Fromage posted:Sure, if you can be for Jesus and also gold that's great, but the fashion was to completely dismiss the religious motivations entirely in favor of economic/political ones. Which is so easy to poke holes in I don't know how it became a thing, but whatever. also FoR THE RECORD "better the turban than the miter"
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Nov 3, 2018 00:07
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HEY GUNS posted:i honestly think it's because the dudes who wrote those analyses weren't religious so they had no idea anyone else could be either without being stupid but i have no idea I guess but it's hard to do history without being able to get yourself in an alien mindset. I also am not religious and had no real exposure to it so I find the whole concept utterly bizarre and incomprehensible, but I get that other people are into it and it's important to them. Maybe I'm just super good and everyone else is poo poo??
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Nov 3, 2018 00:10
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Grand Fromage posted:Sure, if you can be for Jesus and also gold that's great, but the fashion was to completely dismiss the religious motivations entirely in favor of economic/political ones. Which is so easy to poke holes in I don't know how it became a thing, but whatever. because it's very simple to believe everyone secretly agrees with you ideologically, and that they only pretend to be contrary to that for the sake of posturing
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Nov 3, 2018 00:10
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Grand Fromage posted:I guess but it's hard to do history without being able to get yourself in an alien mindset. I also am not religious and had no real exposure to it so I find the whole concept utterly bizarre and incomprehensible, but I get that other people are into it and it's important to them. i can guess what it might feel like to be them but it never seems to "click"
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Nov 3, 2018 00:11
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Tunicate posted:because it's very simple to believe everyone secretly agrees with you ideologically, and that they only pretend to be contrary to that for the sake of posturing (not levi strauss)
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Nov 3, 2018 00:12
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I think it's a combination of protestantism (the Catholic Church is bad and probably not even Christian), enlightenment era anticlericalism like from Voltaire and a dash of post 1960s "every aspect of western civilization is evil".
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Nov 3, 2018 00:30
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I guess it's understandable that with the rise of sciences about trying to understand people's behavior from a secular viewpoint, academia maybe leaned a little too heavily in that direction. Other academic fields being fully secular might've also pushed things as well. I suppose I'd rather people trying to look at history from a secular viewpoint try to explain motivations than going in the other direction and just seeing religion as some kind of brainworm just causing people to act mindlessly violent causing all wars with its malevolent influence.
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Nov 3, 2018 00:50
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I think a lot of the "Crusaders were in it for Land only" is tied up in the portrayal of the Italian-Norman Crusaders in some of the primary sources, Bohemond I of Antioch especially.
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Nov 3, 2018 00:55
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HEY GUNS posted:i honestly think it's because the dudes who wrote those analyses weren't religious so they had no idea anyone else could be either without being stupid but i have no idea This is true, but for a lot of the work of like the Marxist historians of the 1960s, they didn't literally believe nobody had non-material motivations, its just those weren't the parts that interested them. Like I always took Marx's line that "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles," not to literally mean nothing else happened, just that those facts weren't of interest to the stories they wanted to tell. And when long-form works which spell out exactly what people are trying to do get simplified and summarized, all the hedging and caveats get left out. Still this overemphasis on material motivations is part of what led to the reaction against movements like Marxist anthropology. It hasn't even proved sustainable in conventional Marxist political philosophy, which has had to resort to ideology as an explanation for the failure of 20th century socialist revolutions in contradiction to classical historical-materialism. I admit though you post does describe teenage-me pretty well. I had an epiphany though watching a strange documentary called the "Coconut Revolution," which is about separatists in Papua New Guinea. In the first half they appear as extremely modern in their ideas, very creative and intelligent and relatable. In the second half though they take the film crew to a "clinic," where the local big-man takes describes how they were able to cure aids by blowing tobacco smoke on a sufferer and then rubbing herbs on his chest At which point I was kinda like uh. . . okay, they're probably mistaken about that, but it's like, just normal mistaken? Then they go into the jungle with one guerrilla who'se and in dead seriousness he explains how he makes himself invulnerable to bullets before a raid. And he's also somehow a super ardent Pentacostal preacher? And that's when I was like OH. They actually believe this. NOW the trinity makes sense to me!
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Nov 3, 2018 03:20
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