Dubai Is Nuts!!!!

[Bosh]

Originally posted by Pekka
Tuberski, Right, except that Japanese did copy most of everything from China. If not from China, then from somewhere else .

Why Korea of course.

[Drake Tungsten]

As I recall when Japan was the hate figure (or hate country) in the 1980s, some Americans came out with that very nonsense, even supposedly having 'scientific' research that showed that the Japanese brains were hardwired genetically without some alleged creative ability.

It's not genetic. They have to steadily beat the creativity out of the kids in school.

Why Korea of course.

Japanese copying of Korean copying of China is still Japan copying China, I think.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Brachy-Pride
Islamic doesnt mean arabic, most of the islamic mathematicians were persians.

Then by all means prove it.


It's the kind of statement one is constantly coming across in the new anti-Arab or anti-Islamic knee-jerk reactions.

It begs the question of course, that if the Arabs were such ignoramuses and only leeched off the superior Hellenistic, Indian and Iranian civilizations around them, then why on earth would they have bothered to get scientific and literary texts translated from Syriac, Greek, Aramaic, Sanskrit and Old Persian into Arabic ?


Was al Kindi not of Arab descent, for instance ? The Banu Musa brothers too, for that matter.

In any case, the point I would have thought, is not their ethnic origin but the fact that it was carried out at the orders of an Arab Caliph in a Muslim state.

If nationality alone was the key issue, or ethnic origin, then why doesn't one read of the great Byzantine strides in mathematics, physics and engineering from the same period ? After all they had original Greek manuscripts from which to work, and had been in touch with the Sasanid Empire and India too.

It was the Arabs in the Caliphate who encouraged learning at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad and in Umayyad Spain science also flourished- and yet it had been Christians under Justinian who had closed down the School of Athens, causing its philosophers and scientists to seek refuge in the east.

Then when the Nestorian Christians were persecuted, their scholar monks fled to Edessa, Nisibis and Jundishapur, bringing the knowledge of Ancient Greece with them.

They had a markedly better fate under the Zoroastrian Sasanids and the Muslim Arabs than they did under their fellow Christians.

Those primitive Arabs managed somehow to construct the Marib Dam in Yemen- a series of dams beginning c. 3000 B.C. - 2500 B.C. and lasting until the final disastrous breach in 610 A.D. .

The dam's main period of extensive use was from c. 700 B.C. until 580 A.D. , and it reached a length of 620 metres, a minimum height of 16 metres and a width at base of about 30 metres.

It extensively irrigated an area of almost 100 square kilometres (38.6 square miles for the non-metric) and was constructed of dense limestone blocks weighing between 1 and 2 tonnes, the blocks being fitted flush together.

A plaster and cement mix was used later on, this mix utilising a locally found volcanic stone which proved to be highly water-resistant, in effect forming a kind of concrete.

Not bad really for :

desert barbarians

One of the sluice gates from the Marib dam:

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by molly bloom

Those primitive Arabs managed somehow to construct the Marib Dam in Yemen- a series of dams beginning c. 3000 B.C. - 2500 B.C. and lasting until the final disastrous breach in 610 A.D. .

The dam's main period of extensive use was from c. 700 B.C. until 580 A.D. , and it reached a length of 620 metres, a minimum height of 16 metres and a width at base of about 30 metres.

It extensively irrigated an area of almost 100 square kilometres (38.6 square miles for the non-metric) and was constructed of dense limestone blocks weighing between 1 and 2 tonnes, the blocks being fitted flush together.

A plaster and cement mix was used later on, this mix utilising a locally found volcanic stone which proved to be highly water-resistant, in effect forming a kind of concrete.

Not bad really for :




One of the sluice gates from the Marib dam:

I agree with you in general that the region gave it's share of original contributions to science and engineering but this dam seems a curious choice of an example with which to wow the sceptics. It is a vastly simpler undertaking to dam up a wadi (since it's completely dry for most of the year) than it is to dam up a river.

The fact that there was a continual cycle of re-building and catastrophic failure also does little to demonstrate engineering genius of the dams builders to the sceptics.

[Al B. Sure!]

anyway the Arabs were a group of only a few thousand (the deserts of Arabia couldn't support that many people obviously) who conquered an empire stretching from Spain to India in less than a century. All the old peoples of this empire, the descendents of the Phoenicians and Akkadians and Babylonians and Egyptians and so forth, still exist today but back in the 7th century started to identify themselves with their minority conquerors and became Arabized.

I contend that the modern Arab of, let's say Iraq, is as much Sumerian/Assyrian/Babylonian as Arabic and therefore, the accomplishments of those ancient civilizations belong to those who call themselves Arabs. Similiarily, the Egyptian Arabs can claim Egyptian civilization as theirs, Lebanese Arabs can claim Phoenicia as theirs, the Palestinians can claim Canaan/Philistia as theirs, etc.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Albert Speer
anyway the Arabs were a group of only a few thousand (the deserts of Arabia couldn't support that many people obviously) who conquered an empire stretching from Spain to India in less than a century. All the old peoples of this empire, the descendents of the Phoenicians and Akkadians and Babylonians and Egyptians and so forth, still exist today but back in the 7th century started to identify themselves with their minority conquerors and became Arabized.

I contend that the modern Arab of, let's say Iraq, is as much Sumerian/Assyrian/Babylonian as Arabic and therefore, the accomplishments of those ancient civilizations belong to those who call themselves Arabs.

the Mongols grabbed more with even fewer.

[Al B. Sure!]

that's not the point. the point is that this shouldn't be just about the Arabs of the Arabian peninsula or the Arabs post-Islam. It should be about the ancestors of modern Arabs, peoples like the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians who started civilization.

[Colonâ„¢]

Originally posted by Geronimo


the Mongols grabbed more with even fewer.

And how much of a legacy did they bequeath? I can't think of peoples that got "Mongolianized", rather the opposite.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Geronimo


the Mongols grabbed more with even fewer.

But could not endure, and as I recall the Mongols used Muslim and Chinese experts in artillery and siege warfare.

One also doesn't hear much about the Mongol contribution to pure science....

this dam seems a curious choice of an example with which to wow the sceptics.

It's a large engineering undertaking by pre-Islamic Arabs. I also posted a picture of some of the remains of Petra. I could just have relied on Islamic contributions to world culture, but I get so irritated by the spurious attempts at 'history' in this thread and others that I thought some pre-Islamic Arab achievements were called for.

The fact that there was a continual cycle of re-building and catastrophic failure also does little to demonstrate engineering genius of the dams builders to the sceptics.

This is like saying that Gothic architecture is devalued by the numbers of structural failures in churches and cathedrals built in that style.

If you have a similar construction project built at the same time and in the same conditions, then let's have a comparison, by all means.

There's no point in viewing the achievement of the Marib Dam out of isolation of the political situation in southern Arabia at the time- the dam could not be maintained with the vastly depleted workforce.

I contend that the modern Arab of, let's say Iraq, is as much Sumerian/Assyrian/Babylonian as Arabic and therefore, the accomplishments of those ancient civilizations belong to those who call themselves Arabs. Similiarily, the Egyptian Arabs can claim Egyptian civilization as theirs, Lebanese Arabs can claim Phoenicia as theirs, the Palestinians can claim Canaan/Philistia as theirs, etc.

Albert Speer


You can contend it all you like, but this is as daft as including the Indus Valley civilization as part of modern India or Pakistan's history.


The Arabs were different from the Egyptians and the Assyrians and the Babylonians and the Phoenicians- the fact that a much later, larger civilization utilizing Arabic as its language of church and state and composed of a great many Arabs conquered the area and then married into the existing populations doesn't create an instant Arab Heritage Theme Park out of all of ancient history in the Middle East or the Maghreb.

There were distinctlivey Arab kingdoms- Palmyra, Nabataean Petra, at Edessa and in Himyar and the buffer Lakhmid and Ghassanid kingdoms during the wars between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sasanid Empire. Their rulers were Arabs, or spoke Arabic.

The same doesn't apply to the Babylonians or the Assyrians or the Phoenicians.

http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/181

From the Arab kingdom of Hatra:

[Al B. Sure!]

molly:

daft? how? An Iraqi is as much a descendent of ancient Assyrians and Babylonians as he is of Arabs.

if that is daft then Romans shouldn't be considered the same 'culture/history' as the Italians... Italians take pride in Rome so why can non-Arabian Arabs not take pride in ancient Mesopotomia and Canaan?

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by molly bloom


Then by all means prove it.


It's the kind of statement one is constantly coming across in the new anti-Arab or anti-Islamic knee-jerk reactions.

It begs the question of course, that if the Arabs were such ignoramuses and only leeched off the superior Hellenistic, Indian and Iranian civilizations around them, then why on earth would they have bothered to get scientific and literary texts translated from Syriac, Greek, Aramaic, Sanskrit and Old Persian into Arabic ?


Was al Kindi not of Arab descent, for instance ? The Banu Musa brothers too, for that matter.

In any case, the point I would have thought, is not their ethnic origin but the fact that it was carried out at the orders of an Arab Caliph in a Muslim state.

If nationality alone was the key issue, or ethnic origin, then why doesn't one read of the great Byzantine strides in mathematics, physics and engineering from the same period ? After all they had original Greek manuscripts from which to work, and had been in touch with the Sasanid Empire and India too.

It was the Arabs in the Caliphate who encouraged learning at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad and in Umayyad Spain science also flourished- and yet it had been Christians under Justinian who had closed down the School of Athens, causing its philosophers and scientists to seek refuge in the east.

Then when the Nestorian Christians were persecuted, their scholar monks fled to Edessa, Nisibis and Jundishapur, bringing the knowledge of Ancient Greece with them.

They had a markedly better fate under the Zoroastrian Sasanids and the Muslim Arabs than they did under their fellow Christians.

The point is , the Indians did not voluntarily give that knowledge to the Arabs , because the learned were never persecuted in India , unlike as in the examples you gave . The knowledge was taken without consent , from looted libraries and captured civilians who did not want to go out of India but were forced to , at least when India fell within the ambit of the Muslim-ruled world . This is not to say that the Arabs had no achievements to call their own , but post-Islamisation , the secular search for knowledge was subordinate to the religious search , and it is only because of the culture of the time , which was not orthodox Muslim , that secular knowledge flourished .

And whatever else may be said about it , at least one thing is clear - Indian knowledge was taken without Indian consent . The Indians were , at the time , very insular people , who were least concerned with things going on outside India's borders , and were equally uninterested in spreading Indian learning outside India . The knowledge that made its way out was taken by force ( except for Buddhism , which spread to China and beyond when Chinese monks visited India to study in the monasteries here , then went back ( but the monasteries were , as usual for religious structures , destroyed by the Muslim invaders - only massive ruins remain )) .

[aneeshm]

As for the dam thing - Al Beruni , an Arab ( AFAIK , that is ) traveller to India said of Indian construction projects that Arab engineers could not even imagine them , much less build them .

[laurentius]

The Arabs shouldnt take pride in whats not their heritage. In Iraq for instance its the Assyrians who are the direct descendents of Nineveh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrians

[Al B. Sure!]

laurentius:

The modern Assyrians remained a distinct ethnicity only because their ancestors refused to convert to Islam and remained Eastern Christian. I'm sure the vast majority of Assyrians in the 7th century converted to Islam and became Arabized. Only Christian seperatist Assyrians retained an 'Assyrian' identity. The rest converted and became Arabs.

[Al B. Sure!]

from Wikipedia:

There are no (known) Assyrian Muslims, but Arabic-speaking Muslims locally named Mhalmoye in Tur Abdin seem to be converts to Islam from the Syriac Orthodox Church in the 16th century

Those Assyrians, Christians until the 16th century, are now Muslim Arabs.