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Who Were the Mamluks?

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Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#71

Post by kumarharsh »

puranjay wrote: post #38

Every time I read something like this, I'm reminded of how much I know my grounding in history to Age of Empires 2 . Sure, it got a lot of things wrong and it took liberty with a lot of historical facts, but it also gave me a basis for, and appreciation of history. I knew about the Mamluks because they were an elite unit in the game, and I happened to one day just Google their name and read the wiki page.

So true. AoE II was a great learning experience too on top of being an excellent game. The campaigns (although not exactly historically accurate) made me learn a lot about European and Asian histories, rivalries, amd personalities.

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#73

Post by madeuptempacct »

evol262 wrote: post #70
madeuptempacct wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>devoted to advancing technology, peace, trade, and preservation of the writings of earlier civilization >peace >Less than a century after Islam started, they were laying siege to Constantinople. Pick one.

Pretty sure this isn't 4chan. Don't conflate manifest destiny/religious destiny and culture. The caliphate(s) eventually gave up on sieging Constantinople after the utter failure of 717. But before that, they were essentially a collection of tribes which rapidly expanded, and whose opponents fell so quickly they felt they were destined to bring Islam to the entire world, with Constantinople as a prophecied conquest.…

> Beyond which, you should not assume that they were not peaceful just because they conquered their neighbors.

That's the definition of not being peaceful.

>The laws of the caliphate(s) were extraordinarily generous to believers of other religions

As in, they were second-class citizens who were tolerated because they paid extra taxes?

>Pretty sure this isn't 4chan.

Yea, but I haven't been there or responded to anything with "implying implications" for years, so forgive me this indulgence.

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#74

Post by catacombs »

swampthinker wrote: post #12
catacombs wrote: post #4

They were those bastards who nearly dominated the Ottoman Empire and all of the western Mediterranean region in my recent EU4 game. They listed me as a rival for nearly 200 years without ever waging war, which, in hindsight, was a blessing.

Who were you playing as?

Castille

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#75

Post by beat »

ng12 wrote: post #67
beat wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Byzantines were an eastern empire, not a western one - more aligned with the Orient than with Europe. That said, pretty much the moment Islam appeared, they ripped Egypt and the Levant out of Byzantine hands - reducing the "Byzantine empire" from "empire" to "regional kingdom that will eventually get sacked". Less than a century after Islam started, they were laying siege to Constantinople. Over the next couple o…

> the Islamic empire lasted for north of 13 centuries I mean if you count the Ottomans, Abbassids, Fatimids, Seljuks, Umayyads, and Rashiduns as one single entity, sure. By that measure you'd also have to consider the Romans and Byzantines (and maybe even the HRE) to be a single contiguous entity as well.

Why not? Everyone else seems to be considering the Romans and the Byzantines to be a single contiguous entity. Sauce for the goose.

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#76

Post by evol262 »

madeuptempacct wrote: post #73
evol262 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure this isn't 4chan. Don't conflate manifest destiny/religious destiny and culture. The caliphate(s) eventually gave up on sieging Constantinople after the utter failure of 717. But before that, they were essentially a collection of tribes which rapidly expanded, and whose opponents fell so quickly they felt they were destined to bring Islam to the entire world, with Constantinople as a prophecied conquest.…

> Beyond which, you should not assume that they were not peaceful just because they conquered their neighbors. That's the definition of not being peaceful. >The laws of the caliphate(s) were extraordinarily generous to believers of other religions As in, they were second-class citizens who were tolerated because they paid extra taxes? >Pretty sure this isn't 4chan. Yea, but I haven't been there or responded to anythi…

Potato/potato. Do you consider the Pax Romana to be peaceful? Arguably, if your neighbors are "barbarians" or "infidels", the most peaceful thing you can do is conquer them to put an end to their incessant warring and impose civilization.

Remember that the Arabs (prior to the caliphate) were used as proxy troops/mercenaries by the Persians/Romans for centuries under the guise of the Ghassanids and Lakhmids. This has repercussions.

You can make the argument that the jizya made them second-class citizens who were tolerated, but you cannot make the argument that they were not tolerated, which stands in stark contrast to the various persecutions of other religious groups under Julian the Apostate, assorted Byzantines who decided that Arianism/whatever was heretical, Zoroastrianism's (well, the Sassanid rulers' interpretation of it) treatment of nonbelievers, etc. I'm not arguing that sharia is a modern, progressive system of law. In the context of 650 AD, though, it definitely was.

> Yea, but I haven't been there or responded to anything with "implying implications" for years, so forgive me this indulgence.

My comment is more that:

> foo bar quuz baaz

> foo

Pick one

Is underservedly dimissive and really doesn't serve to advance the conversation. I do it also (mostly on Reddit, I guess), but the statement you were replying to wasn't obviously fallacious. There's a lot of nuance which you can't hammer away with

>implying

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#77

Post by boomboomsubban »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #52
boomboomsubban wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I question the "devoted to peace" part. They were devoted to expanding Islam by force, and peace after they had conquered you Also known as an empire. >Islam fought maybe ten times more battles to expand than the Crusades fought against Islam. What a strange comparison. Without seeing the details, it seems to be comparing the battles sanctioned by the Pope during a few centuries against any expansion battle by any…

> Also known as an empire. That still doesn't make them devoted to peace, though.

It makes them as devoted to peace as other's in similar positions. Sometimes they advocated peace, other times they engaged in war. Trying to paint them as uniquely expansionist is the problem.

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#78

Post by ng12 »

evol262 wrote: post #70
madeuptempacct wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>devoted to advancing technology, peace, trade, and preservation of the writings of earlier civilization >peace >Less than a century after Islam started, they were laying siege to Constantinople. Pick one.

Pretty sure this isn't 4chan. Don't conflate manifest destiny/religious destiny and culture. The caliphate(s) eventually gave up on sieging Constantinople after the utter failure of 717. But before that, they were essentially a collection of tribes which rapidly expanded, and whose opponents fell so quickly they felt they were destined to bring Islam to the entire world, with Constantinople as a prophecied conquest.…

> they felt they were destined to bring Islam to the entire world

By the sword. They would ask a city to surrender and convert to Islam, or they would take it by force and either kill or enslave it's citizens. Doesn't sound very peaceful to me.

> the caliphate was internally peaceful, enforced charity, successful as a gateway for trade between the East and West

And they were also the most prolific slave traders in all of history. It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to say that the caliphates were any more or less peaceful than any other world empires.

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#79

Post by beat »

evol262 wrote: post #66
beat wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Byzantines were an eastern empire, not a western one - more aligned with the Orient than with Europe. That said, pretty much the moment Islam appeared, they ripped Egypt and the Levant out of Byzantine hands - reducing the "Byzantine empire" from "empire" to "regional kingdom that will eventually get sacked". Less than a century after Islam started, they were laying siege to Constantinople. Over the next couple o…

The Byzantines were as aligned with the "Orient" as Alexander was. They held onto territory in Italy until a full 600 years after the West fell (once Belisarius recaptured it in the 600s). They had active diplomacy with the Holy Roman Empire and other states in the West up until the 4th Crusade, basically. You've completely glossed over the Renaissance of the empire around 1000 AD (550 years after the West fell) unde…

I'd also argue that Alexander was an oriental emperor, and even Rome had a lot more in common, economically and culturally, with the middle east than they ever had with northern/western Europe. Note the extent of the Roman empire in the east, relative to the west - they pretty much ignored everything north of the Mediterranean.

The rebound of the Byzantines is a good point, but they never really reclaimed their former glory. Still, point taken.

edit: Actually, going further with this, the modern "European-ness" of classical Roman and Greek culture is largely a retcon of actual history. The culture of western Europe had very little to do with the culture of ancient Greece, relative to, say, Egypt or Syria.

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#80

Post by canhascodez »

beat wrote: post #16

If you're interested in this kind of history stuff, I recommend reading The Silk Roads , by Peter Frankopan. It's a recent (2015) epic-scope history book, from the beginning of written history to the present day, based on the idea that the Middle East, rather than Europe, is the true center of civilization - that the area stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to western India has been foremost, and remains foremo…

Perhaps similar in theme would be Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes" by Tamim Ansary.
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