When Did the ME Go Wrong?

[Queequeg]

I've read a few books by Bernard Lewis on the subject, but I'm interested in what people here have to say.

The initial Muslim Empire was flawed, certainly, but it managed to produce some of the greatest minds in history, in a few cases as great as any of the Renaissance or the Hellenes (al-Khwarizmi, Persian admittedly, ibn Khaldun, Avicenna, also Persian, al Kindi, Geber, also Persian, etc..).  It was also by most accounts a decent place to live; relatively common literacy, an okay life expectancy, thriving economy, tolerance for People of the Book (later on some for Zoroastrians), and was generally just a better place than the West or, in most respects, the Byzantine Empire. 

Now a lot of areas have gone through bright spots and dark spots (China, probably more impressive than the whole of Islamic Civilization and thousands of years older, was in lot of shit until Deng Xiaoping), but it seems remarkable to me that the same people who once were as fanatical and in some ways more impressive in their love of knowledge as the ancient Greeks now decapitate people for teaching women how to read. 

I have my own theories, but why do you think this happened?  Was there some kind of Arab Sonderweg (different path though history producing completely alien society)?  Was it because of the poor Political and Economic models the Arab world adopted in the aftermath of decolonization, or was the humiliation of finding out about the superiority of other civilizations after Napoleon's Egyptian victory too much to handle? 

[Queequeg]

BTW, I'd really appreciate it if we tried to keep the LOL ARABS DIDN'T DO SHIT DURING UMMAYAD AND ABBASID PERIODS stuff down to a minimum.  There were some very, very impressive thinkers and for the time it was a very, very, very impressive society.

[Sheilbh]

The constant dominance of Central Asian rulers destroyed the emerging Islamic culture.  That's why the areas least affected by their rule (the Maghreb and Iberia) was the area that demonstrated the most exciting and interesting cultures at the time the Central Asians were, whether as mercenary troops or dominant powers, destroying Baghdad and raping Egypt.

Effectively from around the 13th century until the 1940s there's almost no Arab self-government.  That has an effect on a people.

[Queequeg]

The constant dominance of Central Asian rulers destroyed the emerging Islamic culture.  That's why the areas least affected by their rule (the Maghreb and Iberia) was the area that demonstrated the most exciting and interesting cultures at the time the Central Asians were, whether as mercenary troops or dominant powers, destroying Baghdad and raping Egypt.

Effectively from around the 13th century until the 1940s there's almost no Arab self-government.  That has an effect on a people.

Pretty close to my view.

But still doesn't totally explain it.  Why didn't the Ottoman Turks share in the scientific advancements of the west the same as the Christian world did from the Muslim during the age of Averroes, Avicenna, al-Khawizmi and ibn Khaldun)?  Why didn't the Arabs rise up against the Ottomans when the primary reason the Turks dominated (the superiority of the horse-archer) was gone?

[CountDeMoney]

When did the ME go wrong?  With the advent of Islam.

[Sheilbh]

But still doesn't totally explain it.  Why didn't the Ottoman Turks share in the scientific advancements of the west the same as the Christian world did from the Muslim during the age of Averroes, Avicenna, al-Khawizmi and ibn Khaldun)?  Why didn't the Arabs rise up against the Ottomans when the primary reason the Turks dominated (the superiority of the horse-archer) was gone?

I think it was a consequence of a shift of European civilisation.  Prior to, say, the 16th century the Levant and the Mediterranean is the centre of the world and a hugely important area for cultural mixes and trade and so on.  After the discovery of the New World Europe's interests, her trade and her whole cultural focus shifts to the Atlantic, or as the Arabs call it 'the sea of obscurity'.

Plus I think the Ottomans were generally a pretty philistine Empire.  They had no interests in great libraries like that in Baghdad that the Arabs amassed.

[Ancient Demon]

The Middle East was the richest and most advanced area of the world for millenia prior to the Islamic conquest. Would it be totally out of line to consider that rather than Arab Muslims creating an advanced civilization, they were through good fortune able to conquer an already advanced Middle East and gradually run it into the ground?

[Valmy]

The initial Muslim Empire was flawed, certainly, but it managed to produce some of the greatest minds in history, in a few cases as great as any of the Renaissance or the Hellenes (al-Khwarizmi, Persian admittedly, ibn Khaldun, Avicenna, also Persian, al Kindi, Geber, also Persian, etc..).  It was also by most accounts a decent place to live; relatively common literacy, an okay life expectancy, thriving economy, tolerance for People of the Book (later on some for Zoroastrians), and was generally just a better place than the West or, in most respects, the Byzantine Empire.

Maybe in the palaces of Bagdad and Cordoba maybe but generally most of the Islamic Empire seemed to be a bunch of local lords with high taxes and endless military adventures and that does not strike me as massively superior to anything going on in Western Europe.  It sounds pretty much the same to me.  The Muslims just had more money since they conquered the wealthy Eastern Empire whereas Western Europe was in the land of Germans and Gauls.

That is sort of like claiming Constantinople was typical of the Byzantine Empire, rather than the only signicant city or cultural center.

[Sheilbh]

The Middle East was the richest and most advanced area of the world for millenia prior to the Islamic conquest. Would it be totally out of line to consider that rather than Arab Muslims creating an advanced civilization, they were through good fortune able to conquer an already advanced Middle East and gradually run it into the ground?

Yes.  Because what the Arabs acheive for around 500 years is remarkable.  They aren't, in that period, creative in any significant way but they are almost uniquely brilliant and mixing cultures.  So they have Persian literary style and pretension (as well as that of the Quran, the great achievement of the Arab tongue), they have Indian astronomy and mathematics and Greek philosophy, mathematics and astronomy.  They mix all of the above and produce something that's totally different and distinctive and intellectually remarkable.

It's also fair to say that way and ahead of European history the Arabs get their, that may be their only truly 'original' science.  They also have some of the best travel writing around at this time, in my opinion the best since Herodotus.  If you can get the abridged translation of ibn Battutah I really recommend it it's a great read.

Now to take an example from what I understand the Arabs had very developed irrigation that was there from the Roman and Byzantine period.  They took it and maintained it and developed it (in the early Caliphates the civil service was, essentially, Syriac after all).  Indeed, in contrast with most of Europe, they improved on it.  The destruction and decline of that agriculture, of the great centres of learning comes with their dependence on hired Central Asian armies that become more and more powerful and eventually replace the Arab regimes.  That and the Mongols.

Do they gradually run it into the ground?  Baghdad's peak at the time it's probably the greatest city in the world is brought to an end by the Mongols not some slow degeneration of Arab culture.

[Grey Fox]

I thought this thread was going to be about Windows Millenium.

[Valmy]

Do they gradually run it into the ground?  Baghdad's peak at the time it's probably the greatest city in the world is brought to an end by the Mongols not some slow degeneration of Arab culture.

Well to be fair by the time the Mongols showed up Baghdad was not what it once was.

[Sheilbh]

Well to be fair by the time the Mongols showed up Baghdad was not what it once was.

That's true but in the intervening 200 or so years Baghdad had hugely worn down by Seljuk Turks ruling in the name of the Abbasid Caliph under their protection.  Again, the same Central Asian dominance that removed Arabs from power.

[Valmy]

I have my own theories, but why do you think this happened?  Was there some kind of Arab Sonderweg (different path though history producing completely alien society)?  Was it because of the poor Political and Economic models the Arab world adopted in the aftermath of decolonization, or was the humiliation of finding out about the superiority of other civilizations after Napoleon's Egyptian victory too much to handle? 

One thing that baffled me was where the obsession with thought and belief purity on the part of the Muslims in Spain come from?  I mean history goes on and on about the Golden age of Spain was the tolerance of different beliefs and then suddenly you have things like the massacre of the Jews of Grenada and the strict enforcement of Islamic law and so forth.  Shortly after that the Christians start gaining serious momentum as the Jews switch sides.

Was that symptomatic of a sort of intellectual decline on the part of the Muslim world or some sort of local Spanish-North African thing?  I presume no Asian mercenaries or Mongols had anything to do with that.

[Queequeg]

Sheilbh is right, and AD is further wrong as the ME was a disaster zone at the time of the Arab Conquest (which is why there WAS an Arab conquest).  The Romans and the Persians had been fighting each other into oblivion for over half a millennium, leading to plague, mass depopulation, constant religious conflict (I've read a convincing theory that Islamic Jihad was based on the the Roman recruitment of Arabian Christians to fight in a "Holy War" against the heathen Sassanid) and, immediately before the conquest, a war fought on three continents that destroyed both the Sassanid and Byzantine ruling apparatus.   The Arabs brought peace, a renewed interest in science and some of the most innovative thinking in civilized history.

I tend to prefer the Byzantines and Sassanids on an aesthetic and emotional level (Muslim iconoclasm ftl, Zoroastrianism and Christianity ftw), but the Arab's accomplishments were impressive.

Sheilbh is right about the Central Asians (read Turks).  Think of it like SKYNET; the Arabs enslave some Turks who fight well, then they convert to Islam and merge their warlike nature with the ghazi tradition and they fight REALLY well, and before you know it they become self aware and are taking over the world.

[Faeelin]

The destruction of the Ottoman Empire, and the imposition of colonial rule.