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Interesting that al-Rūmī like so much 'Arab Golden Age' or 'Islamic Golden Age' contributors was of Greek descent. I really wish the balkanizing narrative wasn'

Interesting that al-Rūmī like so much 'Arab Golden Age' or 'Islamic Golden Age' contributors was of Greek descent. I really wish the balkanizing narrative wasn't forced around this era of history I think humans would have found better understanding of each other and our connections/sameness rather than defining one specific and non-representative group running an empire of conquest as having 'uniqueness' 'specialness' and 'otherness' during this period of time. A lot of conquered people just get erased from history as if the people conquered in the name if Islam just one day became their conquerors. Why? How can we understand and learn from such strangely defined history? It would be like classifying the Sioux as European thinkers. We push that Arabs kept Greek knowledge alive when in a lot of cases it was greek knowledge that was already established in the region because the people that lived there were... Greek and the people keeping it were Greek. Then we call lands ran by Christian Germanic peoples and their religion ignorant/savage/anti knowledge because they lost this 'European' knowledge. So many traits being assigned by geography and losing all context of culture, understanding, or insight to fit a narrative.

dr_dshiv 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Rumi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Rumi “Greece” extended from Sicily to Afghanistan to Egypt. Hellenization incorporated a lot of different people. Then Islam incorporated a lot of different people.
eli_gottlieb 3y ago
>A lot of conquered people just get erased from history as if the people conquered in the name if Islam just one day became their conquerors. Why? Because you'll be bombed or shot or invaded if you try to assert the authenticity of non-Muslim, non-Arab identities being native to the Middle East and North Africa.
- pipologist 3y ago
  Arabs were open to other ethnicities and didn’t try to arabize them. This is apparent in Persia, Turkic countries, etc. The regions assimilating Arabic were regions which spoke Afro-Asiatic languages, from which Arabic also hails. Similar assimilation happened with Aramaic before it and Assyrian before that, even thousand of year prior to Islam.
  - eli_gottlieb 3y ago
    > Arabs were open to other ethnicities and didn’t try to arabize them. This is apparent in Persia, Turkic countries, etc. Lol tell it to the 20th century, bud. They were fine with not executing a cultural genocide only as long as they could hold it over other groups that "we brought you Islam". Once Islamic empire stops being the unifying political force, all of a sudden you get pan-Arabism: Kurds and Imazighen have their languages banned, Jews are thrown out of the country, etc.
eternalban 3y ago
> A lot of conquered people just get erased from history as if the people conquered in the name if Islam just one day became their conquerors. Why? How can we understand and learn from such strangely defined history? This is history as written by Europeans*, don't forget. So the question is: why do we refer to e.g. Newton writing in Latin as an English scientist (and not Christian, or Latin) but anyone who wrote in Arabic is either an Arab or Muslim scientist. Now this may have started due to lack of information (before Europeans came to fully survey "Middle East") but it persists to this day. One can speculate to the possible reasons, of course, but it suffices to point out the pheonomena. * Ibn Khaldun, the famous Arab historian, for example, did not have this issue (to his lasting credit): https://sonsofsunnah.com/2011/11/12/ibn-khaldun-on-the-persians-sunnah-muslims/ https://sonsofsunnah.com/2011/11/12/ibn-khaldun-on-the-persi...

dr_dshiv 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Rumi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Rumi “Greece” extended from Sicily to Afghanistan to Egypt. Hellenization incorporated a lot of different people. Then Islam incorporated a lot of different people.

eli_gottlieb 3y ago

>A lot of conquered people just get erased from history as if the people conquered in the name if Islam just one day became their conquerors. Why? Because you'll be bombed or shot or invaded if you try to assert the authenticity of non-Muslim, non-Arab identities being native to the Middle East and North Africa.

pipologist 3y ago
Arabs were open to other ethnicities and didn’t try to arabize them. This is apparent in Persia, Turkic countries, etc. The regions assimilating Arabic were regions which spoke Afro-Asiatic languages, from which Arabic also hails. Similar assimilation happened with Aramaic before it and Assyrian before that, even thousand of year prior to Islam.
- eli_gottlieb 3y ago
  > Arabs were open to other ethnicities and didn’t try to arabize them. This is apparent in Persia, Turkic countries, etc. Lol tell it to the 20th century, bud. They were fine with not executing a cultural genocide only as long as they could hold it over other groups that "we brought you Islam". Once Islamic empire stops being the unifying political force, all of a sudden you get pan-Arabism: Kurds and Imazighen have their languages banned, Jews are thrown out of the country, etc.

eternalban 3y ago

> A lot of conquered people just get erased from history as if the people conquered in the name if Islam just one day became their conquerors. Why? How can we understand and learn from such strangely defined history? This is history as written by Europeans*, don't forget. So the question is: why do we refer to e.g. Newton writing in Latin as an English scientist (and not Christian, or Latin) but anyone who wrote in Arabic is either an Arab or Muslim scientist. Now this may have started due to lack of information (before Europeans came to fully survey "Middle East") but it persists to this day. One can speculate to the possible reasons, of course, but it suffices to point out the pheonomena. * Ibn Khaldun, the famous Arab historian, for example, did not have this issue (to his lasting credit): https://sonsofsunnah.com/2011/11/12/ibn-khaldun-on-the-persians-sunnah-muslims/ https://sonsofsunnah.com/2011/11/12/ibn-khaldun-on-the-persi...