University of Sankore Confirmed PLUS Images of the Bezerker and MORE!

[Louis XXIV]

Or what about the Great Library, which burned down. Impact on the modern world is not what wonders are necessarily for. For most of them, they attracted attention during the time they were built and people came to visit them or simply talked about them.

[LordShiva]

Chichen Itza

[Autotropx Sox]

Or what about the Great Library

The equivalent to the Ancient age version of the Internet

The Great Library of Alexandria was an attempt at accumulating and categorizing all of the knowledge of the known world and proliferating it all of the literate people in the city. The Library is a worthy world wonder not because it was a particularly great architectural achievement or testament to one man's greatness, but it is a wonder because it symbolizes a truly novel attempt at accumulating knowledge of all known subjects and dispersing them to anyone who can read, not anyone who believes in a particular faith or dogma.

I never made the claim that I agree with all of the "wonders" in the game as most of them truly are not wonders aside from their construction. J.S. Bach's cathedral is a wonder because of the inspiration Bach gave to modern European musical and artistic culture while the Internet is a wonder because of its amazing ability at bringing us information and providing quick and easy means of communication across thousands of miles and hundreds of boarders.

...and, to me, the Uni of Sankora simply doesn't dramatically change humanity like so many other wonders in Civ IV.

Educating that many people is a big deal especially that long ago.

It educated them in religious dogma and philosophy...truly, teaching people the finer tenets of Jihad and infidels isn't on the same lines of teaching people about abstract physics, calculus, advanced mathematics, and other complex theories which the Oxford national wonder represents.

[Solver]

Ah, but you'll find plenty of people who have never used the Internet and don't give a damn about Bach's music. It's all relative.

[Autotropx Sox]

but you'll find plenty of people who have never used the Internet and don't give a damn about Bach's music

Ignorance does not make something not true.

The Internet has revolutionized the life of every single person in the developed world. Why, look around you, most huge business corporations conduct business over the Internet, people now communicate exclusively or at least largely through Internet phone lines, IM, or e-mails, and the power to quickly and efficiently exchange information over the Internet helps to power the innovation which makes our lives, their lives, a better place.

Bach's music was extremely influential on the Baroque period in European classical music. His works and life helped set the stage for a dramatic explosion in the arts in Europe and helped paved the way to a world where Europe's culture, not Asia's, was the dominate one instead of the subordinate. Really, as a symbol, J.S. Bach's cathedral is a metaphor for the huge expansions in culture that Europe saw during the 16th century to the 19th.

[Imran Siddiqui]

teaching people the finer tenets of Jihad and infidels

I guess now we see where you are coming from. It isn't because it is a "PC wonder" but because its a "Muslim wonder". Cute.

And you failed to answer why the University of Sankore shouldn't be in because it didn't have a modern impact, but the Pyramids and the Parthenon should because.... ?

And Bach's music was what paved the way for Europe's cultural ascendancy?! I think what did that is refered to by most people as "Imperialism". I suggest you look into it .

[Simplicity]

It educated them in religious dogma and philosophy...truly, teaching people the finer tenets of Jihad and infidels isn't on the same lines of teaching people about abstract physics, calculus, advanced mathematics, and other complex theories which the Oxford national wonder represents.

Well, the university *did* teach logic, literature, medicine, law, astronomy, and mathematics... They just also taught the Qur'an. Theology happened to be a rather large study back then, even in Christian colleges. Calculus and physics didn't exist at the time, so I hope you can forgive the poor jihadists for not teaching it.

[CarnalCanaan]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
How is it a PC wonder? Jeez louise, people just want to yell "PC" whenever their cherished Western buildings aren't chosen... the University of Sankore was a renown center of learning with a massive collection of books and manuscripts.

You mean the bestest schools in forever aren't located in the Greatest Country in History or maybe America Jr.?



Almost every "great" university in the world -- Western or otherwise -- was originally founded to provide theological education. (Some of the universities of China might be the exception if you don't consider classical Chinese bureacracy to be a religious tenet.)

Moreover, most Islamic studies focus on the challenge of extricating violent jihadism from Qu'ranic theology. Not unlike the tricky Christian challenge of reconciling empirical knowledge with Biblical Truth.

Frankly, our world could use a new Sankore.

[johnmcd]

The bit I found funniest was the requirement for the wonder to have an impact on the modern world.

Surely the measure is as much the impact it could have had as the impact it did have given the emphasis on 'possible' histories.

Anyway, I've always thought that the effects of the Great Lighthouse and the Collosus were the wrong way round.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Autotropx Sox

but certainly important.

That is the main contention; how is it important to modern world history?

What's modern world history?

[ProfessorPhobos]

The University of Sankore? Holy crap!

That's awesome! So obscure and appropriate. It makes a history nerd like me very happy.

[Tattila the Hun]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


What's modern world history?

What happened yesterday, silly.

How did Sankore contribute in the slaying of Basajev, I ask! Useless!

Anything far in history has huge effect on modern world. The students at Sankore moved along, tought their knowledge to new people, on and on, untill one day someone invented the computer, so we can bicker in Internet forums. They were the giants, on whose shoulders we stand on. (That would have been a great quote for a tech, maybe printing press or something...)

[johnmcd]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


What's modern world history?

modern, the time since the American Revolution.
world, the country known as America.
history, the bits Americans consider important that have happened in the modern world.

[MightyTiny]

Autotropx Sox - being an atheist, I'm no fan of religious dogma, but I don't see any sense in applying modern sensitivities and understanding as a yardstick to assess the policies regarding the aquiring of knowledge, and the world views of historical times. I also don't see how the secular knowledge nurtured under the ire of the dogmatic western Christian religious dominance in the past would be intricically better than secular knowledge nurtured under the ire of similar Islamic dominance elsewhere.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Autotropx Sox

but certainly important.

That is the main contention; how is it important to modern world history?

Irrelevant of the masses of books, manuscripts, and religious zealots it attracted, how did the University of Sankore truly contribute to the world?

Its very premise was to be mainly devoted to Islam and the study of Islamic theology and philosophy, not to pure science or mathematical formulae. Sure, they did study some of those subjects, but so did major Christian learning centers in Europe during the Middle Ages and Renaissance; but do we consider them to be especial wonders unto themselves or classify them merely as monasteries?

Strangely enough they studied quite a lot of theology at the UNIVERSITIES of Oxford, Paris, Salamanca, Salerno... the notion that they educated people in pure science is false.

and, to me, the Uni of Sankore simply doesn't dramatically change humanity like so many other wonders in Civ IV.

Aaah, because it had relatively few Europeans or Christians in its enrolment, I imagine.

Still, those funny ol' Muslims somehow managed to increase the sum of human knowledge with their Muslim science and student bodies all across the Muslim world, from the Umayyad Caliphate in Cordova to the Observatory of Maragha in Asia.

Should we imagine then, that owing to the pitifully few Persian or Iranian wonders in the game that the Achaemenid, Parthian and Seleucid and Sasanid empires also offered nothing of value to humanity ?

Or may we perhaps rather ascribe it to the Judaeo-Christian leanings of the average Western education....

J.S. Bach's cathedral is a metaphor for the huge expansions in culture that Europe saw during the 16th century to the 19th.

What is a 'huge expansion in culture' ? Do you mean trading with the Moghul, Safavid and Ottoman Empires, perhaps ?

Trading with Japan and China, or destroying the Aztec and Incan Empires, perhaps.

Very cultural, the last two...

I don't quite see how the music of J.S. Bach is a metaphor for what happened in the 16th Century in any case. You could have a better, more appropriate metaphor with a non-anachronistic piece of music, architecture or work of art.

And how Bach is meant to represent either industrialization or Romanticism is anyone's guess.

The most commonly used form of script in these Timbuktu manuscripts is Saharan, named for the desert that borders the city. Another form of Arabic script used in Timbuktu is Sudani, which refers to the belt of open farmlands that extends from East Africa to the lands just south of Timbuktu in West Africa. The third West African form of Arabic writing is Suqi–literally the market script. Suqi letters are noticeably square compared to the more elongated forms of Maghribi, Sudani, and Saharan.

While many books were authored and copied in Timbuktu, its resident scholars also imported books from other parts of the Islamic world. Therefore, manuscripts found in Timbuktu are often written in Naskh, the most common book hand found in Arabic manuscripts from Egypt, Syria, and neighboring lands. Naskh developed from the Eastern style of the original Kufic script.

These works, whose subjects cover every topic of human endeavor, are indicative of the high level of civilization attained by West Africans during the Middle Ages and early modern period. They are also an important element of the culture of Mali, and West Africa in general, which survived the colonial experience.

http://rs6.loc.gov/intldl/malihtml/islam.html

Ah yes, Egypt, Syria, West Africa, Mali, the Sahara, Sudan...

P.C. World !