Historical Mismatches

[Vince278]

Originally posted by curtsibling
Two words:

Religious fundamentalism.

Sad but true. This also happened in Christianity as well with the Vatican's treatment of Galileo being a well known example. I suppose it may have been the Reformation that eventually helped science to flourish again.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Cvetin
Salaam, NoRooz Mobarak Mhkhosravi
It's even more true for my country, Macedonia, who went from being no.1 power in the world to a miserable corrupted Balkan sh*thole.

Don't be so hard on yourself. Relatively speaking, Macedonia and Slovenia are models of stability in your region. Things aren't perfect but you have reasons to be proud.

[mhkhosravi]

Originally posted by Cvetin
Salaam, NoRooz Mobarak Mhkhosravi
I think my first reaction was about the islamic warriors you wanted in Civ4. I think that the UU should be from the period when a civilization was at it's grandest, not from just any period which may today be politicaly opportune.

yes ! Sure, I said that persian warrior must be a hakhamaneshian warior (2500 years ago warriors), I saw the "Immortal" as a persian unit , and I said that it is an after islam soldier and his dress is not good for persia because it is not unique for persia (all middle easterns use this dress).

I am totaly agree with you Cvetin, we have many problems about this. . .

Originally posted by Cvetin
because an Iranian court a few days ago sentenced a man to be blinded!!!

I didnt heard this in newspapers.They write these events.It is realy awful I am sure he wont sentenced to be blind in revision,it is not executable, and I wish not, but there is a law in Islam that if anyone do something with another, then he can do the same too. we always have dungeon for this kind of crimes but our judgments in primary matches with islamic laws and in revisions matches with Republic laws, I accept that we have some problems about this ...

There is a persian proverb that says "left the content of fruit and focused on its skin".
we wanted the islamic law to have courtesy government,ruling of courtesies to people not capitalists. but somtimes we confuse who rules to whom there is some smallllll problems I think

[joncnunn]

Simple, during the run of realtively bad caliphs during the High Middle Ages, they stoped reseraching at exactly the same time Western Europe was rediscovering technologies that had been lost to them but found in Alexandra and other libaries.

There was no single individual in Europe that had the amount of power the Caliph had or the Chinese emperor had. When the Caliph said we already know everything there is to know, everyone stoped researching. When the Chinese emperor forbid all chinese from making naval expeditions, the Chinese expeditions ceased entirely. Neither the Pope nor the Holy Roman Emperior even at their peak of powers could have enforced such degrees if they'd wish to make them throughout all of Europe.

Also, during the High Middle Ages after the end of the plagues, Europe's population boomed.

Originally posted by Vince278
I agree that Islamic scholars and scientists were among the best and brightest in the world as the Europeans were making little progress through the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages. However, I often wondered why it seemed like their progress halted centuries ago. Why are they not still leading us?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Cvetin

... and don't even get me started on the "first human rights after Kurushe kabir" because an Iranian court a few days ago sentenced a man to be blinded!!! It's sad really, that the nations which have built such great civilizations, who have contributed greatly to progress, are now in the basement of the world.

Well it would be nice to think that Iran under Western domination was a beacon for human rights and progressive thinking in the Near East, but it wasn't . The Shah's secret police had a quick way with political opponents at home and abroad, and they were supported financially by Western governments, were supplied with arms and training by Western militaries and secret services and I don't recall howls of outrage from anyone but the Left in all that time.

I'm not a fan of religious fundamentalism, and I've been an ardent campaigner for human rights from my schooldays, but it always strikes me as marvellous how suddenly after the return of Khomeini human rights in Iran supposedly took a nose-dive and yet still people were disappearing and being executed and tortured under the Shah. But then, he had granted some Westerners extra-territoriality with regard to crimes committed in Iran, and signed lucrative deals with Western oil companies, so clearly in the eyes of some, he could do no wrong.


The West (specifically Great Britain and the U.S.A. ) deposed Iran's democratically elected leader, Mossadegh in an oil-profits inspired coup, allegedly because he was a Communist. Which would have been news to him, because he saw himself as an Iranian 'liberal' nationalist and was opposed at various times by Iran's Communist parties.

The West supported the reinstallation of the undemocratic, unelected Shah, and after Mossadegh's removal in a coup, repression increased, nationalization of Iran's oil resources was off the agenda, and domestic repression was back on.



Oh, and Vince ?

I don't search google for my information, I read those old-fashioned things, books. I simply use internet sites I trust (such as the one that deals with great scientists from the past in an unbiased way) to back up my arguments. Think of them as the equivalent of footnotes in an essay.

Or googling the net. Go ahead, ask another question and see.

Vince 278

It's relatively easy (and quite common before and especially now after September 11) for people to forget how fruitful and everyday were the exchanges of culture and knowledge between the West and the Islamic East, and between Islam and China and Islam and Hindu India.

Iranian states were using paper money before Arab states, and using Hindu numerals before the Maghrebi states and Fibonacci and Western scholars.

But then, you'd have had to have read a few of those old-fashioned sources of information, books, to have known that. And I tell you what Vince- I won't provide the usual courtesy of a link to an internet site to support my statement- I'll simply request that you take it on trust.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by joncnunn
Simple, during the run of realtively bad caliphs during the High Middle Ages, they stoped reseraching at exactly the same time Western Europe was rediscovering technologies that had been lost to them but found in Alexandra and other libaries.

And yet Ulugh Beg and other Muslim Turkish, Iranian and Indian astronomers were still conducting astronomical and mathematical research into the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.

I suspect the prohibition on the printing press in the Ottoman Empire had more to do with stifling innovation- and the simultaneous growth of mystical and fundamentalist groups in the Islamic world. Mystics frown on scientific method or overtly rational approaches to the discovery of knowledge, and fundamentalists reject innovation and see mystics as being dangerously heterodox.

Islam is a at heart, a religion of the word; and the Qu'ran has been especially precious in hand-crafted manuscript editions.

It is no great surprise that one of Islam's greatest cultural adornments, even today, is the art of calligraphy, whether on vellum, papyrus, paper or in stone, mosaic or painted on faience, inscribed on glass, or etched into metalwork, or embroidered in fine cloth. A resistance to the prodigality of printing with moveable type on paper is therefore not that surprising.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Vince278


Or googling the net. Go ahead, ask another question and see.

Vince if you're genuinely interested in what I've been reading, these are some of the books on a lengthy list:

The Renaissance Bazaar: Jerry Brotton

Islam- A Thousand Years of Faith and Power: Jerry Bloom and Sheila Blair

The Heritage of Persia: Richard N. Frye

Augustine to Galileo- Science in the Middle Ages: A.C. Crombie

The Cambridge History of Iran (various authors)

The Oxford History of Islam

History of the Persian Empire: A.T. Olmstead

Food in History: Reay Tannahill

Cities of Destiny: Arnold Toynbee

As well as books on the history of Cairo, Istanbul and Tangiers.

[DeathByTheSword]

ah molly just bought The Renaissance Bazaar: Jerry Brotton am just in the first chapter liking it already :b.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by DeathByTheSword
ah molly just bought The Renaissance Bazaar: Jerry Brotton am just in the first chapter liking it already :b.

It's an excellent book- I think there's been a kind of creeping revisionism in many aspects of Western history, so that Protestant nationalism is wrongly credited with scientific and economic achievement that were not unknown to the Catholic, Orthiodox and Islamic worlds, and Islamic science and Western indebtedness to Islamic science is briefly glossed, then passed over.

Even Classical Greek indebtedness to or use of Mesopotamian and Iranian science is ignored, presumably to preserve some 'purity' of transmission.

I'd also recommend A.C. Crombie's Augustine to Galileo- Science in the Middle Ages'

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0486288501/ref=pd_sxp_f/103-0566393-0323813?v=glance&s=books

It has a very useful table which enumerates the principal sources of ancient/classical science in the Christian West between 500 a.d. and 1300 a.d. . It lists the authors (where known), the title of the work, the name of the Latin translator, the language it was translated from, and the place and date of transmission into Latin.

A quick glance at this table would put paid to any misplaced notions people might have about how and when the Renaissance began or that the Western scientific revolution began when the Ottomans took Byzantium.

The number of Arab, Mozarab, Jewish and Iranian authors is worthy of note too- from al Khwarizimi to Isidore of Seville, al Rhazes, Haly Abbas and Ibn Sina.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by molly bloom
Vince if you're genuinely interested in what I've been reading, these are some of the books on a lengthy list:

Most of what I know about Islam has come from reading the Koran and visiting various Middle-Eastern nations but some of the sources in your list look interesting. Thanks.

[mhkhosravi]

Originally posted by molly bloom



Well it would be nice to think that Iran under Western domination was a beacon for human rights and progressive thinking in the Near East, but it wasn't . The Shah's secret police had a quick way with political opponents at home and abroad, and they were supported financially by Western governments, were supplied with arms and training by Western militaries and secret services and I don't recall howls of outrage from anyone but the Left in all that time.

It is not related to this thread. but only a comment that must been added.
please add 8 years of iraq war, and chemical bombs and silence of UN when still they see our chemical injuries in all hospitals of the world.
and add where was human rights when iraq captured "Khorramshahr" and civilians didnt leave their houses, and iraqis burned them alive in their houses, hanged them, beheaded boys and girls, and destroyed their buildings on them.
and add what we did with iraqi captured soldiers with universal laws and under superwising of RED CROSS and what did they do with iranians.all kind of tortures , where were RED CROSS ? (it is proved not stories, you can ask iraqis, they accept honorly !!!)
and say we do not eat insects in our ghorme sabzi as the american woman sais in her story of "never without my daughter" and ask the story writer that how much books does he write , and what was his previous book? (another book, he writes same things about turks! he is from Israel)
the lover of human rights never invited the accused iranian to court! and showed this film in all over the world . no one asked the american neighbors of her, they always said that we witness that these are all lies.

but there was a court with a judge and a complain
It was the face of Western human rights for us

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Vince278


Most of what I know about Islam has come from reading the Koran and visiting various Middle-Eastern nations but some of the sources in your list look interesting. Thanks.

Alas I have yet to visit the Fertile Crescent or Iran, but I have managed to get to Morocco. The Muslim countries that interest me the most are the ones with the most cultural diversity- like Morocco, Egypt, Iran and Turkey, the Lebanon.

Fortunately being brought up in Great Britain and also living in Melbourne has meant exposure to many different aspects of Islam- from Iranian art house cinema, to secular Muslim political activists, Anglo-Asian novelists and playwrights, and best of all, friends and neighbours who invite you in for eshkenezi shirazi or early morning chapattis with masala tea, or great Lebanese cafes and supermarkets where you can buy rose water for your Turkish coffee or sumac for your salad.

[Vince278]

Of the countries you listed I enjoyed Turkey the most. They were alot friendlier than I expected. I shared many a cup of coffee with some of their army officers (and a little raki with one of their mayors ).
One of my wife's friends is from Morocco though I can't recall the city.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Vince278
Of the countries you listed I enjoyed Turkey the most. They were alot friendlier than I expected. I shared many a cup of coffee with some of their army officers (and a little raki with one of their mayors ).
One of my wife's friends is from Morocco though I can't recall the city.

I've always found that the easiset way to dispel media myths about Muslims is personal contact.

Some of the girls and women where I live in East London wear the hijab, or abas, but with trainers or Dr Martens shoes.

They might wear a full veil but listen to Nine Inch Nails or Slipknot or Usher, and talk on the Tube or bus about being complete shopaholics, how they fancy David Beckham, what a slapper Jordan is or how their driving lessons are going.

Morocco was real eye-opener- I had an 8 year old boy approach me in Chechaouen and he addressed me first in Spanish. When I replied 'No habl'espanol' and told him in French I was British. he switched from French to English.

His favourite music was Bob Marley, Khaled, Massive Attack and Baaba Maal. He was also a big Manchester United fan....

[mhkhosravi]

Originally posted by molly bloom

Alas I have yet to visit the Fertile Crescent or Iran,.

ok after morocco come iran please
we build Milad Tower then come Iran .it is just built on a hill in front of my house (Tehran) then I will invite you for some ghorme sabzi , and KABABE BARG in it

and here is some pics of our ancestor home in Kashan (my grand mothers , mother of my mother , TABA-TABAEE's House )
Kashan is in Isfahan State.


in yard , the front door is door of sun room (otaghe aftab gir)







the government bought it from my grand mother and her brothers and sisters,now it is a museum and all people can see it.