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Since I just got back into One Thousand and One Nights, what the hell happened to the Islamic Golden Age?
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Nov 4, 2020 17:19
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Mongols mostly
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Nov 4, 2020 17:22
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Mistaken Identity posted:Since I just got back into One Thousand and One Nights, what the hell happened to the Islamic Golden Age? Kaaaaahhhhnnn!
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Nov 4, 2020 17:23
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Gaius Marius posted:Mongols mostly Should have been more specific. How did one of not the most advanced and learned societies of its age not have the means to defend against the mongol conquest?
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Nov 4, 2020 19:30
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Mistaken Identity posted:Should have been more specific. You could ask the Song Dynasty the same thing.
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Nov 4, 2020 19:33
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Mistaken Identity posted:Should have been more specific. horse archers, in locations where horses perform well, are the dominant weapons technology for all of history until the invention of the rifle. hope that helps
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Nov 4, 2020 19:36
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Mistaken Identity posted:Should have been more specific. Don't underestimate the Mongols, they were also very good at integrating conquered people's into their military to eliminate their weaknesses. For example, their conquest of the Song involved massive amounts of Persian siege engineers, and their attempted invasion of Japan involved thousands of Korean sailors and Chinese shipbuilders.
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Nov 4, 2020 19:39
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Mistaken Identity posted:Should have been more specific. I mean I'm no expert, barely read on it, but the same way the premiere world power China was defeated. They had a ton of men, all well trained, who could out maneuver any forces that were sent against them. And they brought chinese siege engineers to make up for their lacking siege technology. Defending against the mongols was nearly impossible hungary lost a tenth of it's population even if they did repel them in the end. Japan got lucky with tsunamis and still had to fight a guerilla war. Vietnam inflicted heavy casualties on them and got off relatively light just being made to pay tribute. Ain jalut is the first time I know of that they were decidely defeated on the field. The combination of good tactics, comparitvely small logistical needs, and maneuverability made them very very difficult for any nation to match. Until gunpowder and populations start exploding having vast swaths of horsemen who could sweep down and conquer your civilization was just a fact of life for anyone near the steppes.
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Nov 4, 2020 19:44
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my understanding is that the steppe peoples were always theoretically able to kick everyone's asses but they were rarely politically unified enough to pose a solid threat--and when they were, they routinely went toe-to-toe successfully with urban civilizations
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Nov 4, 2020 19:49
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They also had gunpowder because they'd already conquered China and adapted their technology. So you've got a large number of very mobile ranged units and some specialists with by the time futuristic technology.
FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Nov 4, 2020 |
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Nov 4, 2020 19:50
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Everyone needs to grab a copy of medieval 2 total war. Load up your side with the best pikemen, crack lights, men at arm's, longbow men, and cavalry. Load up the cpu with just horse archers. And start a skirmish. After ten minutes of watching your men get massacred as they desperately try and close the gap, you'll suddenly understand why nine times outta ten. You pay em off, marry off princesses, or invite infighting. Rather than deal with that total bullshit.
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Nov 4, 2020 19:54
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Mr Luxury Yacht posted:You could ask the Song Dynasty the same thing. Yep. Being smart and rich doesn't mean your politics are functional or you're good at fighting. It's also kind of unfair to fault the societies the Mongols defeated. You can make a strong argument the Mongol armies during the time of their expansion were the most effective military force in human history. Steppe forces are hard to deal with to begin with, and they were being led by an absolute murderer's row of commanders. Genghis Khan himself, Jebe, Subutai. The only people who survived the initial Mongol invasions either got super lucky, were in an environment so hostile to Mongol forces that they couldn't function, or were so far away that they never had to deal with a real Mongol invasion. Then once that first generation of leaders was gone, Mongol strength rapidly depleted and the empire fractured.
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Nov 4, 2020 19:57
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I was playing Civ4 the other day and at one point my war was going so poorly that I was pretty much holed up in my cities desperately lashing out with spearmen because my enemy was just spamming horse archers and spreading them out along my border. Everywhere I looked, another drat horse was pillaging a tile or capturing a worker or destroying a stack of siege engines, it was hell
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Nov 4, 2020 20:25
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Gaius Marius posted:Everyone needs to grab a copy of medieval 2 total war. Load up your side with the best pikemen, crack lights, men at arm's, longbow men, and cavalry. Load up the cpu with just horse archers. And start a skirmish. After ten minutes of watching your men get massacred as they desperately try and close the gap, you'll suddenly understand why nine times outta ten. You pay em off, marry off princesses, or invite infighting. Rather than deal with that total bullshit. I remember playing this and figuring I'd stash an army in a castle and let the Mongols siege it, which I thought would nullify the advantages of their cavalry since they'd be forced to attack through a narrow gate. Turns out their horse archers are perfectly capable of lobbing arrows like mortar rounds at targets they can't see behind 20ft walls. Total bullshit indeed.
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Nov 4, 2020 23:48
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It helped that the Chinese states of Jin and Song were exhausted from 40 years of intense warfare when the Mongols showed up.
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Nov 5, 2020 00:18
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Arglebargle III posted:It helped that the Chinese states of Jin and Song were exhausted from 40 years of intense warfare when the Mongols showed up. It's just like what happened with the initial arab conquests. Two major states beat themselves bloody and then nomads come in for the kill. Rome managing to hang on was a miracle
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Nov 5, 2020 00:21
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Gaius Marius posted:Rome managing to hang on was a miracle No it was geography 
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Nov 5, 2020 00:30
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The geography of being so far away from high command that the mongol empire started fragmenting before they could start paying attention to the far west.
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Nov 5, 2020 02:33
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The Romans saw which way the wind was blowing and allied with the Mongols. It worked out pretty well, the Mongols never attacked Roman holdings that I'm aware of and beat the poo poo out of the Turks a few times, giving the empire some breathing room.
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Nov 5, 2020 02:39
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Communist Walrus posted:I remember playing this and figuring I'd stash an army in a castle and let the Mongols siege it, which I thought would nullify the advantages of their cavalry since they'd be forced to attack through a narrow gate. Turns out their horse archers are perfectly capable of lobbing arrows like mortar rounds at targets they can't see behind 20ft walls. Pop a gate open and and have spearmen in a U around it. They will charge in and get hosed. If I recall correctly from playing it years ago.
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Nov 5, 2020 02:51
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Telsa Cola posted:Pop a gate open and and have spearmen in a U around it. They will charge in and get hosed. If I recall correctly from playing it years ago. one weird trick steppe nomads HATE!
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Nov 5, 2020 03:10
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Grand Fromage posted:The Romans saw which way the wind was blowing and allied with the Mongols. It worked out pretty well, the Mongols never attacked Roman holdings that I'm aware of and beat the poo poo out of the Turks a few times, giving the empire some breathing room. I just wanna see what the timeline where the franco mongol alliance materialized looks like. Can you imagine how weird the culture of the levant would be?
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Nov 5, 2020 04:00
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Gaius Marius posted:I mean I'm no expert, barely read on it, but the same way the premiere world power China was defeated. They had a ton of men, all well trained, who could out maneuver any forces that were sent against them. And they brought chinese siege engineers to make up for their lacking siege technology. You know, I realized that my question came from a considerable bias of ignorance about the mongols. I was kind of operating from the pop cultural depiction of them, I think. Movies like Mulan depict them as little more than a horde of murderous barbarians. I am now definitely going to read up on them.
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Nov 5, 2020 09:41
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Fwiw I don't think "the mongols" is the end-all answer to the question "what happened to the islamic golden age"
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Nov 5, 2020 10:47
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Mistaken Identity posted:You know, I realized that my question came from a considerable bias of ignorance about the mongols. I was kind of operating from the pop cultural depiction of them, I think. Movies like Mulan depict them as little more than a horde of murderous barbarians. Note that the original story of Mulan is almost a thousand years older than Genghis Khan, and is presumably set even earlier. The bad guys are supposed to be Rouran raiders, and I believe it's still debated whether they were closer to Mongols, Turkic people, or were an unrelated group.
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Nov 5, 2020 11:41
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Total War Horse Archer tactics probably aren't representative of the real thing, bows kind of suck at max range, rather, you want to ride in close while fire off a high power armor-penetrating shot, then wheel around in a caracole and fire off another powerful shot at close range. This kind of thing requires alot of disciple and very well trained soldiers, it just happened that the steppe was good at producing these kinds of soldiers. It's not perfect, heavy horse timing a charge right into the apex of the caracole are quite able to catch the horse archers and deal considerable damage, though it's not easy and requires forcing the horse archers to make an error. Mixing bows and crossbows into your infantry blocks can also be a countermeasure. But that all assumes the steppe nomads enter a pitched battle with you, when they could instead use their operational mobility to devastate your lands, while there is no way for you to penetrate their territory with your logistics train. https://acoup.blog/2019/07/04/collections-archery-distance-and-kiting/
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Nov 5, 2020 11:58
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They might've been Huns which themselves might've been Mongolic or Turkic or maybe even some Finno-Ugric or Iranian group. No one knows
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Nov 5, 2020 12:02
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Grand Fromage posted:If we're just talking something that's been in continuous use and buildings count, I'm thinking the Pantheon. But there might be older temples that were converted to churches, that's just the first one that comes to mind that I know has been in continuous use since it was built. There is a 5000 year old burial chamber (maybe?) in the backyard of a random cafe in France. You can walk into it and have a picnic in it if the cafe is open that day. That's 500 years older than the Pyramids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S6wP8ox1R4 quote:The Brasserie le Dolmen is a family-run café with an unusual garden feature: a 5,000-year-old megalithic chamber. It's the biggest prehistoric structure of its kind in France, and one of the largest in the world, so why has no-one heard of it? I
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Nov 5, 2020 12:24
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FreudianSlippers posted:They might've been Huns which themselves might've been Mongolic or Turkic or maybe even some Finno-Ugric or Iranian group. Wait, why not? Also, huh, that name apparently got applied to the Germans because Kaiser Wilhelm used it himself to puff up his soldiers after the Boxer Rebellion and the English referenced it in their propaganda in WWI
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Nov 5, 2020 12:26
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Fuschia tude posted:Wait, why not? Because the number of actual examples of the Hunnic language is very small and mostly consists of personal names, and not even all of those. “Attila” is a Gothic name and not Hunnic for example. (It also means “daddy”) skasion fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Nov 5, 2020 |
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Nov 5, 2020 12:34
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skasion posted:Because the number of actual examples of the Hunnic language is very small and mostly consists of personal names, and not even all of those. “Attila” is a Gothic name and not Hunnic for example. (It also means “daddy”) Listen, if the warchief of the Huns wants you to call him daddy, you save our city and call him daddy.
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Nov 5, 2020 15:55
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Mistaken Identity posted:You know, I realized that my question came from a considerable bias of ignorance about the mongols. I was kind of operating from the pop cultural depiction of them, I think. Movies like Mulan depict them as little more than a horde of murderous barbarians. You'll be surprised! Fuschia tude posted:Wait, why not? Because we have little to go on for records. All we have written are Chinese sources, and they don't tell us much we could use to identify the group. It doesn't help that many steppe groups had very similar cultural practices.
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Nov 5, 2020 18:05
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Roman/ancient history: Listen, if the warchief of the Huns wants you to call him daddy, you save our city and call him daddy.
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Nov 5, 2020 18:37
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Carillon posted:Roman/ancient history: Listen, if the warchief of the Huns wants you to call him daddy, you save our city and call him daddy.
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Nov 5, 2020 18:39
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Grand Fromage posted:You'll be surprised! Do we even know for sure that the xiongnu and the huns were the same?
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Nov 5, 2020 22:19
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Is there still a debate on whether Huns = Xiongnu, or do we know for sure one way or the other?
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Nov 5, 2020 22:19
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Do we even know for sure that the xiongnu and the huns were the same? Nope. General opinion is they're not, but there is no real consensus.
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Nov 5, 2020 22:23
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It’s a dated notion and that’s the only context in which modern books will bring it up. The Xiongnu and the Huns are separated by multiple centuries and all of Asia and even if there was a connection, it was the ship of Theseus kind.
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Nov 5, 2020 22:28
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I just listened to a Patrick Wyman talk on this point a few days ago - if I recall correctly the strongest evidence of them being one and the same is a Chinese text from before the Huns' appearance in the west which calls the Xiongnu "Huns"?
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Nov 5, 2020 22:32
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Yeah. There's probably some connections between the various steppe peoples, but the idea that the Xiongnu got beat and went west to attack the Romans as the Huns is almost certainly nonsense. It's not controversial that the Huns were Central Asian but beyond that, the theory's mostly based on an unspported assertion that the character for Xiongnu in ancient Chinese sounds vaguely similar to Hun.
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Nov 5, 2020 22:33
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