4 ms·

It's because of religion. The Christians "won" the war in the Middle East and Africa, and so they rewrote history to not focus as much on any of the great empi

by Cyph0n 10y ago

It's because of religion. The Christians "won" the war in the Middle East and Africa, and so they rewrote history to not focus as much on any of the great empires of the region. To add to your examples, the Ethiopian Empire and the Ottoman Empire are also constantly glossed over in history classes. The latter is basically summarized to: imperial concubines, Armenian genocide, fought with the Axis powers in WWI, lost WWI, joined the light by shedding the religion and culture we don't like. The 800 years before that are simply irrelevant, I guess? Let's not even mention the "gap" - the jump from the Greek/Romans to the Renaissance - in philosophy and science when Europe (i.e., Christians) was stuck in the dark ages. It's logical I guess; if the Christians weren't inventing shit, who else was? I am not against Christians or Christianity - on the contrary, I deeply respect the religion. But this is the unfortunate reality of how religion has functioned throughout history. And please don't attempt the "no religion = no problems" spiel.

eveningcoffee 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Byzantine_inventions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Byzantine_inventions
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  Wow, you've basically destroyed my entire argument! Jokes aside, for those of you who take things a tad too literally, what I mean is that Europe was in the dark ages relative to a number of civilizations outside of Europe. What an underwhelming list by the way. I expected more from the Byzantines to be honest.
  - eveningcoffee 10y ago
    In principle Byzantine was Europe at the time. More interestingly, Byzantine fell because of Christian invented artillery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orban
qb45 10y ago
> The latter is basically summarized to: imperial concubines, Armenian genocide, fought with the Axis powers in WWI, lost WWI, joined the light by shedding the religion and culture we don't like. The 800 years before that are simply irrelevant, I guess? Maybe in America, here in Eastern Europe everybody knows that the few preceding centuries was "bloody wars with those obnoxious Turks" ;) About their Middle Eastern and African conquest less is known but that's because we have had our own wars here in Europe and nobody cared, at least outside of the former colonial powers.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  That's definitely true. Many Eastern European countries were directly affected by the Ottoman Empire, so that would make sense. I guess that's the case in any school curicculum, but my issue is more with "World History" books that should be titled "Western World History" instead.
astine 10y ago
This is a common take on the issue but there is a lot wrong with it. The biggest reason that the Western understanding of Islamic history is so poor is because there was comparatively little contact between the West and Islam for hundreds of years. Yeah, the library at Baghdad was cultural treasure, but the West didn't have access to it. There was basically an Iron Curtain along the Mediterranean and only a limited amount of trade crossed it. They didn't rewrite the history books, they simply didn't have access in the first place. If you were to read history books from the time period by Islamic scholars, they would seem equally skewed but in the other direction.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  Your argument breaks down once you consider contemporary mainstream world history books. It is completely understandable that Western scholars of antiquity didn't write much about Eastern cultures, but it is inexcusable if modern texts only gloss over the history of the Middle East; from the texts I've read, I think that this is unfortunately the case. It is in fact rewriting if you don't focus on the impact other cultures had on the history of civilization because you've been at war with their religion for over a thousand years. It becomes even worse, and extremely xenophobic in my opinion, when you disregard the work of scientists who followed said religion. Oh, but isn't science above religion? Isn't the pursuit of knowledge the purest form of thought? Big words, not much to back them. This is in my view the worst kind of revisionism there is.
  - astine 10y ago
    "Your argument breaks down once you consider contemporary mainstream world history books." Not really. Most historians base their history books on those who came before them. The majority of texts available to western scholars are older western texts. Bear in mind that there is a big language barrier. Historical imbalances will persist without an attempt to counter them. The study of the middle eastern history/culture used to be a special field of study called 'orientalism' and required scholars to learn middle eastern and asiatic languages to make any of the history available in the west. In the 70's, traditional orientalist scholars came under fire for being overly western centric in their coverage and for exotifying their subjects, (mainly by Edward Said) but I think that sort of thing is almost inevitable when you are writing about someone else's history. If you are not a Turk, you'll have a harder time thinking from the perspective of the Turks. "It becomes even worse, and extremely xenophobic in my opinion, when you disregard the work of scientists who followed said religion." Most of the work of scientists and scholars from the Golden Age of Islam was unavailable in the West until much later so while much of it predated later Western developments, the later developments were still independent. Scholars such as Averroes and Avicenna on the other hand, who were very influential in the west, generally aren't ignored and haven't been. Religious scholars from the middle ages regularly cited Averroes and reference him in their work.

by Cyph0n 10y ago

eveningcoffee 10y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Byzantine_inventions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Byzantine_inventions

Cyph0n 10y ago
Wow, you've basically destroyed my entire argument! Jokes aside, for those of you who take things a tad too literally, what I mean is that Europe was in the dark ages relative to a number of civilizations outside of Europe. What an underwhelming list by the way. I expected more from the Byzantines to be honest.
- eveningcoffee 10y ago
  In principle Byzantine was Europe at the time. More interestingly, Byzantine fell because of Christian invented artillery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orban

qb45 10y ago

> The latter is basically summarized to: imperial concubines, Armenian genocide, fought with the Axis powers in WWI, lost WWI, joined the light by shedding the religion and culture we don't like. The 800 years before that are simply irrelevant, I guess? Maybe in America, here in Eastern Europe everybody knows that the few preceding centuries was "bloody wars with those obnoxious Turks" ;) About their Middle Eastern and African conquest less is known but that's because we have had our own wars here in Europe and nobody cared, at least outside of the former colonial powers.

Cyph0n 10y ago
That's definitely true. Many Eastern European countries were directly affected by the Ottoman Empire, so that would make sense. I guess that's the case in any school curicculum, but my issue is more with "World History" books that should be titled "Western World History" instead.

astine 10y ago

This is a common take on the issue but there is a lot wrong with it. The biggest reason that the Western understanding of Islamic history is so poor is because there was comparatively little contact between the West and Islam for hundreds of years. Yeah, the library at Baghdad was cultural treasure, but the West didn't have access to it. There was basically an Iron Curtain along the Mediterranean and only a limited amount of trade crossed it. They didn't rewrite the history books, they simply didn't have access in the first place. If you were to read history books from the time period by Islamic scholars, they would seem equally skewed but in the other direction.

Cyph0n 10y ago
Your argument breaks down once you consider contemporary mainstream world history books. It is completely understandable that Western scholars of antiquity didn't write much about Eastern cultures, but it is inexcusable if modern texts only gloss over the history of the Middle East; from the texts I've read, I think that this is unfortunately the case. It is in fact rewriting if you don't focus on the impact other cultures had on the history of civilization because you've been at war with their religion for over a thousand years. It becomes even worse, and extremely xenophobic in my opinion, when you disregard the work of scientists who followed said religion. Oh, but isn't science above religion? Isn't the pursuit of knowledge the purest form of thought? Big words, not much to back them. This is in my view the worst kind of revisionism there is.
- astine 10y ago
  "Your argument breaks down once you consider contemporary mainstream world history books." Not really. Most historians base their history books on those who came before them. The majority of texts available to western scholars are older western texts. Bear in mind that there is a big language barrier. Historical imbalances will persist without an attempt to counter them. The study of the middle eastern history/culture used to be a special field of study called 'orientalism' and required scholars to learn middle eastern and asiatic languages to make any of the history available in the west. In the 70's, traditional orientalist scholars came under fire for being overly western centric in their coverage and for exotifying their subjects, (mainly by Edward Said) but I think that sort of thing is almost inevitable when you are writing about someone else's history. If you are not a Turk, you'll have a harder time thinking from the perspective of the Turks. "It becomes even worse, and extremely xenophobic in my opinion, when you disregard the work of scientists who followed said religion." Most of the work of scientists and scholars from the Golden Age of Islam was unavailable in the West until much later so while much of it predated later Western developments, the later developments were still independent. Scholars such as Averroes and Avicenna on the other hand, who were very influential in the west, generally aren't ignored and haven't been. Religious scholars from the middle ages regularly cited Averroes and reference him in their work.