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Grand Fromage posted:If they just have worship in the Hagia Sophia without otherwise destroying it, well, whatever I guess. I don't trust the Turkish government but I do sort of trust the desire for tourist dollars. I really can't imagine too much iconoclasm in regards to the Hagia Sophia, since pretty much anything Christian was long ago removed. My guess is that they'd treat it as they do the other major tourist mosques in Istanbul (Blue Mosque, Suleymaniye Mosque, the New Mosque, etc.) where it's opened and closed several times a day for prayer services, and tourists are prohibited from entering certain areas (there's separate entrances and ropes set up to maintain boundaries) and particularly the center of the prayer hall. Tourists prepare themselves for entering a mosque by removing or covering their shoes, women cover their hair, and there's clothing requirements. That would probably be the biggest change, as the Hagia Sophia hasn't had those mandates previously and they'd need to reorganize the exterior space somewhat in order to do that.
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Jul 10, 2020 20:36
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Are there/have there been any historical church-turned-mosques or vice versa that allow both faiths to worship there? I think there was some of this during the Crusades, in between the massacres. Usama ibn Munqidh posted:... Up to the Aqsa mosque, beside which stood a small mosque that the Franks had converted into a church. When I went into the Aqsa mosque -- where the Templars, who are my friends, were -- they would clear out that little mosque so that I could pray in it. Source is the Outremer chapter from Thomas Asbridge's The Crusades. I don't know how common that was or if Usama just had connections.
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Jul 10, 2020 20:48
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Are there/have there been any historical church-turned-mosques or vice versa that allow both faiths to worship there? Sort of related - anyone know of places of worship that have gone from one faith to the other and back again? Thinking about it myself the only places I could really see this happening would be Greece and the Balkans but maybe I'm not being imaginative enough.
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Jul 10, 2020 21:26
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Badger of Basra posted:Sort of related - anyone know of places of worship that have gone from one faith to the other and back again? Thinking about it myself the only places I could really see this happening would be Greece and the Balkans but maybe I'm not being imaginative enough. I imagine there are many sites across India that might qualify.
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Jul 10, 2020 21:30
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Badger of Basra posted:Sort of related - anyone know of places of worship that have gone from one faith to the other and back again? Thinking about it myself the only places I could really see this happening would be Greece and the Balkans but maybe I'm not being imaginative enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babri_Masjid This one in India dubiously counts, but the existence of a major hindu holy site on the site if the mosque is very much not clear. It's been ruled official though, and nearly three decades after a mob destroyed the mosque a temple is going up. (yes if you were wondering, the people who destroyed the mosque are associated with the BJP and Nardendra Modi. yay fascism) Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Jul 10, 2020 |
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Jul 10, 2020 21:42
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Badger of Basra posted:Sort of related - anyone know of places of worship that have gone from one faith to the other and back again? Thinking about it myself the only places I could really see this happening would be Greece and the Balkans but maybe I'm not being imaginative enough. The Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron had a site that was a church, then a mosque, then a synagogue inside the mosque, then a church, then a mosque again, and is now a synagogue. There's the fairly controversial case of the Babri Masjid, which was, some religious Hindus claim, with dubious evidence, was a Hindu temple, and then became a Mosque. It was destroyed by Hindu rioters in 1992, and the government plans to build a temple on the site. The Cathedral of Kars was originally an Armenian Orthodox church, then when the Turks took over Kars, it was turned into a mosque. Then when the Russians took it over, it was turned into a Russian Orthodox church. Then, when the Turks took over Kars in 1918, it was turned into a mosque. Then in 1919, the Turks were forced to turn over control of the city to the Armenians and it was turned into an Armenian Orthodox church. Then in 1920, the Turks took the city back and it was turned into a mosque. Then, after Ataturk took over, it was first an oil storage site and then a museum until 1993, when it was turned back into a mosque as part of an "Armenians? There were never Armenians here" move by the government.
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Jul 10, 2020 21:52
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Badger of Basra posted:Sort of related - anyone know of places of worship that have gone from one faith to the other and back again? Thinking about it myself the only places I could really see this happening would be Greece and the Balkans but maybe I'm not being imaginative enough. There's a ton of sites in Spain that are like this. Between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania and the following Spanish Reconquista there's absolutely gobs really. The Mezquita de Córdoba that I was talking about earlier was like this - originally the site of a Roman/Visgothic christian church, it was largely razed and converted into a Umayyad islamic mosque; after the reconquista it was changed back into a Catholic cathedral. If you go there you can see all three eras: The elaborate Baroque nave at the heart of the building, the brilliant geometric designs, courtyards, and minarets throughout the periphery, and an archeological cut-through to view the ancient church foundations that it was all build upon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosque%E2%80%93Cathedral_of_C%C3%B3rdoba Here's a helpful list of Spanish buildings that were once mosques, some of which were previously churches: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_mosques_in_Spain#List_of_mosques_in_Al-Andalus_(with_original_buildings_&_ruins) Kaal fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Jul 10, 2020 |
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Jul 10, 2020 23:37
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I don't know any by name but I would assume there are a bunch of ones in the Levant that went church -> mosque -> church -> mosque.
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Jul 10, 2020 23:43
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Whatever I’ll just call them basilicas
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Jul 10, 2020 23:45
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Grand Fromage posted:Yeah, I know it's not completely forbidden, there was one mosque in Kuala Lumpur that opened for tourists part of the day. All the other ones I wanted to peek into were not allowed. They have alot of desire for tourist dollars because alot of those tourist dollars stopped flowing ever since the failed military coup, and the airport bombing. It does suck you never got to see the Hagia Sophia yet, it was to me, much more impressive than the Blue Mosque. I don't see the political situation getting better there any time soon.
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Jul 11, 2020 00:03
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GoutPatrol posted:They have alot of desire for tourist dollars because alot of those tourist dollars stopped flowing ever since the failed military coup, and the airport bombing. if you do end up in the Istanbul area, the best mosque I saw wasn't in Istanbul proper, but a daytrip away in Edirne (ancient Adrianopolis): the Selemiye mosque as for Istanbul's mosques, my take is that the blue mosque looks better on the outside, but the Hagia Sofia is much much better on the inside. The real treat, though, in my opinion, is the public park in between them, with both buildings overlooking it. I was lucky enough to be there during Ramadan, when they strung both buildings up with lights. Breathtaking.
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Jul 11, 2020 00:29
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Trad caths are losing their poo poo about Hagia Sophia, conveniently forgetting that Catholics in 1204 did more damage to the place in hours than Muslims did over centuries.
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Jul 11, 2020 00:42
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The inside of Hagia Sophia is legitimately awe-inspiring. I was there a few days before the big earthquake around the turn of the century, when we felt the tremors the first thing I thought was “that building must be falling down right now”. It didn’t tho. Romans knew how to build poo poo
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Jul 11, 2020 00:42
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I went to Istanbul last year and I've been doing a bunch of research for a hypothetical Egypt trip once COVID is taken care of, and in that I think I've only come across one mosque that explicitly bars non-Muslims from entry. It seems it's the exception, not the rule, at least in that part of the world. For me both the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia were more impressive from the outside than the inside (they are really impressive from the outside, to be fair). The Hagia Sophia has really interesting chunks where they've stripped off the plaster to reveal Christian paintings and iconography, but perhaps as a side effect of being a secular building, it feels kind of empty without church pews or the central carpeted prayer area of a mosque. I also went there really early in the day so it was a kind of uncanny experience walking around this giant empty building with only a few other people in it. The interior of the Blue Mosque was perfectly fine, nothing to write home about, but just by virtue of being a working mosque with people in it there was a lot more life to the interior.
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Jul 11, 2020 00:47
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Mr Enderby posted:Trad caths are losing their poo poo about Hagia Sophia, conveniently forgetting that Catholics in 1204 did more damage to the place in hours than Muslims did over centuries. That's more of a lesson about the importance of paying off violent destructive contractors even if they were brought there to install your dead predecessor. Gotta take your pay somehow. If anything, polish construction workers in New York should've followed the same example.
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Jul 11, 2020 01:10
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skasion posted:The inside of Hagia Sophia is legitimately awe-inspiring. I was there a few days before the big earthquake around the turn of the century, when we felt the tremors the first thing I thought was “that building must be falling down right now”. It came close. Turkish restorers have done excellent work.
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Jul 11, 2020 01:27
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GoutPatrol posted:It does suck you never got to see the Hagia Sophia yet, it was to me, much more impressive than the Blue Mosque. I don't see the political situation getting better there any time soon. In a world where I eventually have a job again and can travel to Europe again, Greece/Istanbul is the first trip. I tend to doom countries by wanting to visit or work there. Here's my list from the past decade or so: Turkey Syria Egypt Hong Kong Chile Libya Yemen Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Jul 11, 2020 |
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Jul 11, 2020 01:34
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Rochallor posted:The Hagia Sophia has really interesting chunks where they've stripped off the plaster to reveal Christian paintings and iconography, but perhaps as a side effect of being a secular building, it feels kind of empty without church pews or the central carpeted prayer area of a mosque. Hagia Sophia wouldn't ever have had pews or anything resembling them. It was supposed to feel huge and empty. It would have been a huge sacred space for the faithful to cross, as they approached the hubub of liturgy from the distant smoke-shrouded alter.
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Jul 11, 2020 01:41
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Are there/have there been any historical church-turned-mosques or vice versa that allow both faiths to worship there? I vaguely remember hearing of one that was also formerly a temple of janus, but I don't recall the details on it.
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Jul 11, 2020 02:15
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Mr Enderby posted:Hagia Sophia wouldn't ever have had pews or anything resembling them. It was supposed to feel huge and empty. It would have been a huge sacred space for the faithful to cross, as they approached the hubub of liturgy from the distant smoke-shrouded alter. Ah, okay. The central lobby when I was there had a ton of scaffolding for work on one of the domes, so I assumed they had put something into storage to make room for construction. That may also have colored my experience.
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Jul 11, 2020 02:21
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I'm not sure if I should go ask in the pyf maps thread or whatever but I'm looking for a picture of the whole of Alexander's Empire at the height of it's reach that is at least relatively accurate and not inflated/totally wrong. I also for the life of me can't find the actual wording of a quote that goes something along the lines of "He was surprised to learn that alexander, having accomplished [everything in his life/conquering the world] by 32 [wasn't interested in] setting order to his empire" or something along these lines. If the map integrated the quote that'd be cool. I'd buy a pre-done thing or just use a service to throw an image onto a canvas or something It's a gift 
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Jul 13, 2020 18:07
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I always found the idea that Alexander "conquered the [known] world" really bizarre. He didn't even finish conquering India or the Middle East, and he hardly conquered any of Europe outside of Greece. It's also interesting to reflect that the "known world" is a moving target; the further you conquer, the more knowledge you can get from the people you've conquered of places even further out. Even if Alexander had lived to age 100, he certainly couldn't have expanded his empire to include Ireland and Japan simultaneously.
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Jul 13, 2020 19:28
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I’ve always enjoyed Arrian’s smuggery about Alexander’s reputationEulogy of Alexander posted:Whoever therefore reproaches Alexander as a bad man, let him do so; but let him first not only bring before his mind all his actions deserving reproach, but also gather into one view all his deeds of every kind. Then, indeed, let him reflect who he is himself, and what kind of fortune he has experienced; and then consider who that man was whom he reproaches as bad, and to what a height of human success he attained, becoming without any dispute king of both continents, and reaching every place by his fame; while he himself who reproaches him is of smaller account, spending his labour on petty objects, which, however, he does not succeed in effecting, petty as they are. Anyway the map at this link is more or less correct, and seems buyable in various sizes. skasion fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Jul 13, 2020 |
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Jul 13, 2020 19:42
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skasion posted:I’ve always enjoyed Arrian’s smuggery about Alexander’s reputation Again, "without any dispute king of both continents" is nonsense. "King of Asia" makes sense if you're unaware of things beyond India, but surely Arrian, who lived in the Roman period, would have reflected that Alexander never conquered Italy, let alone the rest of Europe. Also, maybe it's an artifact of translation, but "both continents" instead of "two continents" strikes me as rhetorical sleight of hand, a way to ignore the fact that Alexander never conquered much of Africa either.
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Jul 13, 2020 19:55
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I always took "Asia" to mean "Anatolia and its immediate surroundings east of the Aegean" in that context. Did the am Kent's think of Asia as "all land east of Greece"?
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Jul 13, 2020 19:58
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Ynglaur posted:I always took "Asia" to mean "Anatolia and its immediate surroundings east of the Aegean" in that context. Did the am Kent's think of Asia as "all land east of Greece"? "Asia" would generally mean just Asia Minor, sure, but "both continents" would seem to include Asia in the "all land east of Greece" sense.
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Jul 13, 2020 20:03
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The definition isn't consistent. The Greek meaning of Asia is basically Anatolia and Persia. There were also writers who used Asia to mean something more similar to what we do. It's hard to think of how inconsistent geography was before we all had reliable maps and knew what the world looked like. Regional definitions also aren't consistent today, really. I've heard Californians refer to Nevada as "the midwest", you can't expect ancient people to be consistent about where Serica is categorized.
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Jul 13, 2020 20:06
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There are three continents in the world, or two depending on how you count. Arrian considered Africa to be part of Asia because there’s no strait dividing them, unlike the Hellespont dividing Asia from Europa. The point he makes, also assumed in practically every discussion of Alexander’s “world conquest”, is that there was nothing worth conquering that Alexander didn’t conquer. The interior/non-Mediterranean parts of Western Europe and Africa beyond Libya were basically darkest Peru to Greeks of Alexander’s age: there’s nothing out there beyond the coastal colonies except for various kinds of barbarous savages, such as Keltoi and Tyrsenoi, who obviously don’t count for much. Obviously this is a Hellenocentric point of view, but why should we expect ancient Greeks discussing the origin of the “Greek world” not to think of it in terms of what it meant for Greeks? Put another way: these people knew of India because Alexander went there and came back. They didn’t have a world map they could look at and rubbish the scale of his achievement. Arrian would have been only too gratified that Alexander ignored Italy in much the same way that Romans ignored Germany: because it was a backwater inhabited by worthless hillbillies.
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Jul 13, 2020 20:28
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skasion posted:There are three continents in the world, or two depending on how you count. Arrian considered Africa to be part of Asia because there’s no strait dividing them, unlike the Hellespont dividing Asia from Europa. Did they not know the Black Sea has coastline all the way round?
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Jul 13, 2020 20:37
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skasion posted:There are three continents in the world, or two depending on how you count. Arrian considered Africa to be part of Asia because there’s no strait dividing them, unlike the Hellespont dividing Asia from Europa. This makes me think, what did the ancient civilizations of the Americas and of Australia think about the world? Where they aware that there were other continents, or did for example the ancient American civilizations think the Americas was all there is?
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Jul 13, 2020 20:47
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sebzilla posted:Did they not know the Black Sea has coastline all the way round? They did, but the far end of the Black Sea would have been another irrelevant and distant question to most Greeks (in the Argonaut mythology, Colchis is located there as a convenient position for, essentially, Fairyland), whereas the distinction between the two sides of the Aegean was proximate and often extremely significant. The distinction between the continents was, and is, pretty arbitrary and the arguments over where they were and how many suggests that plenty of Greeks realized that these concepts were rationalizations of extremely archaic divisions that didn’t make best sense. Herodotus IV.45 posted:But it is plain that none have obtained knowledge of Europe's eastern or northern regions, so as to be able say if it is bounded by seas; its length is known to be enough to stretch along both Asia and Libya. I cannot guess for what reason the earth, which is one, has three names, all women's, and why the boundary lines set for it are the Egyptian Nile river and the Colchian Phasis river (though some say that the Maeetian Tanaïs river and the Cimmerian Ferries are boundaries); and I cannot learn the names of those who divided the world, or where they got the names which they used.
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Jul 13, 2020 20:47
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In fairness we still have endless dumb arguments about how many continents there are.
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Jul 13, 2020 20:51
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Libluini posted:This makes me think, what did the ancient civilizations of the Americas and of Australia think about the world? Where they aware that there were other continents, or did for example the ancient American civilizations think the Americas was all there is? No idea about premodern Americans or Australians. The Maori traditionally believed that they came to Aotearoa across the sea from the north, which is true enough, although they also considered this place (Hawaiki) to be the spirit world: both where their ancestors came from and where they are found once dead.
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Jul 13, 2020 20:59
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skasion posted:There are three continents in the world, or two depending on how you count. Arrian considered Africa to be part of Asia because there’s no strait dividing them, unlike the Hellespont dividing Asia from Europa. This makes a bit more sense of Arrian's statement, I guess. Though it doesn't explain why the Romans themselves seemed to acquiesce in the mythologizing of Alexander so much, given the dismissive of view of Italy it implies.
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Jul 13, 2020 21:13
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Silver2195 posted:This makes a bit more sense of Arrian's statement, I guess. Though it doesn't explain why the Romans themselves seemed to acquiesce in the mythologizing of Alexander so much, given the dismissive of view of Italy it implies. At least some Romans kind of liked that they, from the periphery of the Greek world, had risen to be masters of it. “Captive Greece held captive her uncouth conqueror and brought the arts to rustic Latium.” It would also have been hard not to acquiesce to the myth of Alexander, the most significant and best known cultural figure in the Greek world. Everyone in Syria or Egypt who spoke Greek did so ultimately because of Alexander. Romans could consider him not so much as a Greek as much asthe prototype of their own “world empire”. The goal of the successful Roman generalissimo was often to attempt to reenact or surpass his conquest of the East — Crassus, Caesar (allegedly), Antonius, Augustus (all diplomacy and no fighting, but the idea was the same), Trajan, Severus, etc. FWIW, Polybius, who was sucking up to his Roman friends the Scipios quite as much as Arrian would have been sucking up to Grecophile-in-chief Hadrian, has the following to say about Alexander’s “world empire”: quote:How striking and grand is the spectacle presented by the period with which I purpose to deal, will be most clearly apparent if we set beside and compare with the Roman dominion the most famous empires of the past, those which have formed the chief theme of historians. Those worthy of being thus set beside it and compared are these. The Persians for a certain period possessed a great rule and dominion, but so often as they ventured to overstep the boundaries of Asia they imperilled not only the security of this empire, but their own existence. The Lacedaemonians, after having for many years disputed the hegemony of Greece, at length attained it but to hold it uncontested for scarce twelve years. The Macedonian rule in Europe extended but from the Adriatic region to the Danube, which would appear a quite insignificant portion of the continent. Subsequently, by overthrowing the Persian empire they became supreme in Asia also. But though their empire was now regarded as the greatest geographically and politically that had ever existed, they left the larger part of the inhabited world as yet outside it. For they never even made a single attempt to dispute possession of Sicily, Sardinia, or Libya, and the most warlike nations of Western Europe were, to speak the simple truth, unknown to them. But the Romans have subjected to their rule not portions, but nearly the whole of the world and possess an empire which is not only immeasurably greater than any which preceded it, but need not fear rivalry in the future.
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Jul 13, 2020 21:44
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Had Alexander lived would have he filled out the rest of his to do list of conquests easily or would he have gotten bogged down and given up?
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Jul 14, 2020 00:18
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Grand Fromage posted:In a world where I eventually have a job again and can travel to Europe again, Greece/Istanbul is the first trip. vilerat?
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Jul 14, 2020 00:19
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skasion posted:FWIW, Polybius, who was sucking up to his Roman friends the Scipios quite as much as Arrian would have been sucking up to Grecophile-in-chief Hadrian, has the following to say about Alexander’s “world empire”: This seems just as overstated as Arrian's view, though. The Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD (at least according to Peter Turchin) was 5.0 million square kilometers. Alexander's empire, according to Turchin, was 5.2 million square kilometers; Achaemenid Persia in 500 BC was 5.5 million square km.
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Jul 14, 2020 00:53
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Silver2195 posted:This seems just as overstated as Arrian's view, though. The Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD (at least according to Peter Turchin) was 5.0 million square kilometers. Alexander's empire, according to Turchin, was 5.2 million square kilometers; Achaemenid Persia in 500 BC was 5.5 million square km. Genghis wins again.
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Jul 14, 2020 01:19
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Silver2195 posted:This seems just as overstated as Arrian's view, though. The Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD (at least according to Peter Turchin) was 5.0 million square kilometers. Alexander's empire, according to Turchin, was 5.2 million square kilometers; Achaemenid Persia in 500 BC was 5.5 million square km. If you would rather overstate things in that direction, you could consult a Persian source: Cyrus Cylinder posted:20. I am Cyrus, king of the universe, the great king, the powerful king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four quarters of the world,
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Jul 14, 2020 01:34
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