Alternative Historythreadi: Nohammad

[Dr Strangelove]

Of course then there would be the possibility that the Turks might have convertd to Orthodoxy, seized Constantinople, then proceeded to steadily conquer the Balkans and the Middle East. Byzantium might have wound up speaking Turkish. Would a Christian Turkish empire begin to decay after 3 centuries as did the Turkish Caliphate?

India today woud be solidly Hindu or there might even still be a Buddhist presence in India. Indonesia would be Hindu.

With a large Orthodox empire and / or the Mongols blocking the way to India and China western Europe would have still gone out exploring and colonizing. The naval technology was bound to develop, naval technology was too important to the English and the Dutch.

[C0ckney]

i'm not sure it's a given that the turks would have appeared on the scene. they were first used as troops by the caliphate and then started to establish their own kingdoms as it weakened and then fractured. of course it's possible that they could have overcome the persians or been used by the persians in the same way as they were used by the arabs. however, the first would have been very difficult if persia had remained at least reasonably strong and united, and the second is perhaps unlikely because persia always had a military aristocracy, thus reducing the need for foreign troops.

[molly bloom]

Brief responses since I have responsibilities:

MB: There's no theological division between Greek and Russian Orthodoxy. The only thing keeping me from communion at a Russian church is the fact that Russian priests have a reputation for being very intimidating to confess with. Or were you wondering if they would fall under the influence of the Greek Patriarchs vs. the Russians in terms of politics?

Yes. I meant would Turks be more influenced by Russian civilization than Byzantine, with the religion following in the slipstream of trade or 'necessary' alliances.

Who knows ? Perhaps the Khazars might have persuaded them with some kosher wine and matzos to embrace Judaism ?

[Ben Kenobi]

What role did Islam have in the refusal of the eastern churches to kowtow to the Bishop of Rome's self-proclaimed world dictatorship?

The fact that Islam destroyed 4 of 5 patriarchies leaving Rome as the sole one had a huge effect on the development of Catholicism and the primacy of Rome. No Islam, and it's unlikely that the void in the east would need to be filled by Rome alone.

[molly bloom]

The Mongol sack of Baghdad was provoked by the unwise beheading of the Khan's ambassadors by the governor of Baghdad.

I meant the actual business of the despoliation- not the immediate cause. Doubtless without the beheading of the envoys ( a favourite Mongol trick to gain intelligence/trade/a casus belli- send merchant/diplomats and see what happens) an assault on Baghdad would well have occurred sooner or later, especially given the almost complete destruction of the nearby Khwarzm Khanate.

There did seem to be a Nestorian community of some size among the Mongols and the initial impact of the bubonic plague has been calculated by reference to archaeological digs in Nestorian cemeteries in China's western areas and Mongolia, if I recall correctly.

Once the Mongol dynasty was overthrown in China out went the favoured status of Nestorianism. I seem to remember there was still a long-lived but much smaller Chinese Jewish community in Kaifeng that survived into the 19th Century.

[Ben Kenobi]

I think the answer is that there is an eastern church despite the best efforts of the Catholics to kill them all.

The bitter irony is that if the Byzantine ex-emperor didn't invite the Crusaders in and then not pay them - Constantinople wouldn't have been sacked. And it wasn't the Latins that wrecked Constantinople at Mazinkert, and it was the Latins who retook Nicaea. No Latins - no Komnemnid restoration. If the Latins wanted to kill the East, all they had to do was nothing. Which is exactly what happened when they did fall - some 350 years after the First Crusade. Nobody came because the Byzantines had alienated everyone by that point. Had that happened during the Komnenids, they would have gotten crushed by the Turks then.

[Ben Kenobi]

You're right about the reforms; we got our **** together right around then, and I was thinking of that. It hadn't occurred to me that it was in response to Arab conquests, but wouldn't the theme system, etc. be valuable anyway, after the near-disaster faced by Heraclius? I imagined we'd want to retake the West simply as a matter of "Roman" pride, after whomping the Persians like that. But then, that was around the time the Empire began rapidly Hellenizing, wasn't it?

Again - remember that Rome was still a Byzantine client prior to Islam. No Islam and the defeat of the Persians - would likely lead to the eventual recapture of Italy. Byz really didn't take on Greek, until it became clear that after the loss of Egypt they were confined to the east. They also had colonies in North Africa too - in Carthage.

The picture of the Byz empire pre-Islam is very different from the one post islam. These changes in culture and outlook are part of the reason why the church reflected these changes as the church that emerged from Rome in the power vacuum in the west was very different from the East. If they had hung onto the west - there's no need for the later breach and divide.

[molly bloom]

Science, more specifically, Western European science, would have been a big loser.

The West's indebtedness to trade and intellectual contacts with Islam is much understated- and of course since a certain incident in New York and because of arsewater theories like 'the clash of civilizations', it's been almost heretical to mention the part that Islam played either directly on Western learning or indirectly as a clearing house or meeting place for new ideas (zero) or techniques (paper making from Chinese captives taken at the Battle of The River Talas).

Fibonacci, for instance, learned double entry bookkeeping through his father's trading contacts with Muslim North Africa. Then there's the part Toledo played as a conduit for the Muslim's knowledge of Greek science and philosophy, and the Muslim world's own advances in the theoretical and applied sciences.

[kentonio]

If more people played Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis they would quickly gain more respect for the might and technological advances of the old Muslim nations.

[molly bloom]

Adelard of Bath :

It is not as a philosopher that Adelard merits inclusion in this archive. Rather it is because he is [1]:-

... one of the translators who made the first wholesale conversion of Arabo-Greek learning from Arabic into Latin.

Adelard made Latin translations of Euclid's Elements from Arabic sources which were for centuries the chief geometry textbooks in the West. In fact there seem to have been three separate versions of Euclid's Elements written by Adelard. Version one is a translation of the whole fifteen books (the 13 original books written by Euclid and the two further books written by Hypsicles). Adelard seems to have taken as his source one of al-Hajjaj's Arabic translations from Greek.

The second version of Euclid's Elements by Adelard is quite different. It contains quite different wording of the statements of the propositions to that of version one, while the proofs are often only outlines or indications of how proofs might be constructed. The style of the translation tells experts that Adelard did not produce this from his own version one, but rather that he used some unknown Arabic source different from al-Hajjaj's translations.

There is debate as to whether the third version of Euclid's Elements attributed to Adelard is indeed his work. It is a commentary on Euclid's Elements rather than a translation of the original text. We know it was written before 1200 and became quite well known under Adelard's name. Roger Bacon gives quotes from this version in his works.

Adelard also translated al-Khwarizmi's tables, wrote on the abacus and on the astrolabe. We should make some further comments on his translation of al-Khwarizmi's tables which became the first Latin astronomical tables of the Arabic type with their Greek influences and Indian symbols. These tables contain, at the end of chapter 4, the date of 26 January 1126 (at least that is what the Arabic date of A.H. 520 Muharram 1 corresponds to). It is hard to see what this date is there for unless it is the date when the chapter was completed, and so it has been taken as the approximate date for Adelard's translation. However, there is a manuscript (written later but a copy of Adelard's translation) which mentions an eclipse of the sun which took place in 1133. It is possible that Adelard's translation took place after 1133 or, equally likely, that the scribe making the later copy added information about a recent eclipse which was not in Adelard's original text.

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Adelard.html

I'd also recommend this book- in fact, I can't recommend it too highly:

'The History of Science from Augustine to Galileo' by A.C. Crombie

and 'The Renaissance Bazaar' by Jerry Brotton.