Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Who Were the Mamluks?

historytoday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 121 posts

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#81

Post by madeuptempacct »

evol262 wrote: post #76
madeuptempacct wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

If you asked me if Rome was peaceful, I would tell you no. But no one is claiming that Rome is peaceful. Once again, there is nothing peaceful about conquering your neighbors, especially ones that didn't attack you first.

> 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.

Next you will argue that Russia had the right to attack UkraIne because Kievan Rus attacked the people that lived in the areas that are now Russia centuries ago.

> I'm not arguing that sharia is a modern, progressive system of law. In the context of 650 AD, though, it definitely was.

I don't know enough detail to comment on it either way. "I'm not arguing that sharia is a modern, progressive system of law." - we are on the same page then. With that, comes the idea that any comments on "peaceful" and "rightfully counter-attacking" would only, possibly apply in the context of the time.

Edit: I know it's against the rules, but I just want to note that I am not the one downvoting you, appreciate a good argument once in a while.

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#82

Post by ng12 »

beat wrote: post #75
ng12 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's the original argument I made to which you were replying. The Byzantines carried on the Roman torch.

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#83

Post by beat »

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…

As I said elsewhere, I'm distinguishing peaceful externally (obviously, they were very aggressive) with peaceful internally (which they were very good at).

And "second class citizens who were tolerated because they paid extra taxes" was a definite step up from the Romans (and before them, the Persians, and after them, the Crusaders).

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#84

Post by evol262 »

madeuptempacct wrote: post #81
evol262 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. If you asked me if Rome was peaceful, I would tell you no. But no one is claiming that Rome is peaceful. Once again, there is nothing peaceful about conquering your neighbors, esp…

> If you asked me if Rome was peaceful, I would tell you no. But no one is claiming that Rome is peaceful. Once again, there is nothing peaceful about conquering your neighbors, especially ones that didn't attack you first.

Well, some would claim that Rome was peaceful, in the same way that historians may later claim that the US was peaceful. To be honest, it's virtually impossible to stay peaceful when it's kill or be killed. The Romans always had justifications for their wars (often contrived, but still), but I take the converse position.

> Next you will argue that Russia had the right to attack UkraIne because Kievan Rus attacked the people that lived in the areas that are now Russia centuries ago.

I think you're interpreting this backwards. I'm saying that the Arabs were well-aware of the rapacious appetite for war their immediate neighbors had after watching the Persians duke it out with the Romans (and Byzantines) for centuries, with firsthand experience of serving in their militaries and watching their (Arab) leaders become enriched. It's not that the Arabs themselves didn't war on the peninsula, but...

Imagine that you're someone who's watched repeated proxy wars from foreign powers, and maybe even taken part in them. For this example, let's use the American colonists. You've watched the French and British recruit your friends and neighbors, either by coercion or bribery, to fight and die for someone else. Now, they've worn each other out, and you have a chance to remove their influence once and for all to put a better society in place. To do this, you need to wipe them off the map (the Americans did this regionally, but Canada was so underpopulated and the rest of the Empire so far away that it's effectively equivalent).

Is this just? Is this peaceful, in the end? To some, yes. To the Arabs, probably.

Yes, there were religious motivations, but it's exactly the same kind of "manifest destiny" that spread the American dominion coast-to-coast. Is it externally peaceful? No. Is the end result (internally) more peaceful? Yes.

(discussions about the relative peace of First Nations elsewhere, since we really can't say what the balance of force was like before European intervention due to lack of documentation, but the loss of territory to the Americans and introduction of horses/gunpowder definitely provided conflict).

> I don't know enough detail to comment on it either way. "I'm not arguing that sharia is a modern, progressive system of law." - we are on the same page then. With that, comes the idea that any comments on "peaceful" and "rightfully counter-attacking" would only, possibly apply in the context of the time.

That's the point, really. History must be evaluated in historical context. It's easy for us to look back now and say "of course the caliphate was warlike" or "of course the Romans were warlike", but that's hindsight. To a denizen of southern Gaul living in 200AD, you'd have a hard time arguing that it was anything but peaceful, and that Rome imposing her dominion on a bunch of barbarians was the best thing that ever happened.

> Edit: I know it's against the rules, but I just want to note that I am not the one downvoting you, appreciate a good argument once in a while.

> implying I care about internet karma points

But really, I don't. I come here to the internet for discussion

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#85

Post by evol262 »

ng12 wrote: post #78
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.…

> 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 al…

> 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.

This differs from the common behavior of powers at the time in what way?

But it's also incredibly misleading. That's what they did to the Crusader States, centuries later, but the collapse of Byzantine/Persian power, and the absence of any strong power blocs in North Africa (after the exarchate of Carthage was established and the Vandals broken) makes this a null argument. Cities traded hands all the time. Without a field army nearby, or, if the field army was decimated, the city essentially had no choice but to surrender.

Additionally, the umma under the Rashiduns and Ummayads often lived outside the city. The caliphate was happy to simply collect taxes, and have Arab troops live among Arabs (as an external garrison).

> 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.

This is incredibly speculative. The Romans are estimated to have had anywhere from 5-8m slaves throughout the Empire, for 400 years. We really have no idea what the scale of slavery was like in most of antiquity, or even late antiquity.

You're conveniently forgetting that chattel slavery as practiced in the Americas was wholly different from slavery in the "Old World", also.

I wasn't the one to assert that the caliphate was "more" or "less" peaceful than any other world empire, and I would not. I asserted that it's was peaceful.

If you're going to pick once that is the "most" peaceful based on duration and territory held, I'd go for China, but it's the kind of "who is the best baseball player ever" argument that goes nowhere.

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#86

Post by evol262 »

beat wrote: post #79
evol262 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 forme…

I'd disagree that the Romans had more in common with the Middle East than northern/western Europe purely on the basis that a substantial part of the feudal organization, religion, and law of northern/western Europe comes directly from the latter Empire. That's unfair as an argument, because we don't really know what was there before that (lack of Celtic writings), but it's also hard to disagree with. The Goths and Vandals were Romanized to a significant degree before they even came West.

I don't think it's fair to say that Roman culture being European is a "retcon". Sure, for the Greeks, but the Romans were the forebears of virtually all European institutions, and any argument that the society Europe consciously modeled itself upon was somehow not European falls apart.

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#87

Post by nickik »

beat wrote: post #75
ng12 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Rome and Byzantiums are a continued empire in every sense of the word. The people there didnt consider it different. It was totally contiois for a long time.

This is totally different for the islamic empires. The invovled massive chamges of the leading elites, internal organisation, sometimed completly know peoples.

Saying the Ottomans were continues with the older empires is ridiculus assertion.

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#88

Post by beat »

evol262 wrote: post #86
beat wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 forme…

I'd disagree that the Romans had more in common with the Middle East than northern/western Europe purely on the basis that a substantial part of the feudal organization, religion, and law of northern/western Europe comes directly from the latter Empire. That's unfair as an argument, because we don't really know what was there before that (lack of Celtic writings), but it's also hard to disagree with. The Goths and Va…

Yeah, I can see that. Certainly, the Celts and Germans had plenty of contact with the Romans, and Roman bureaucracy and aristocracy (not to mention Roman-distributed Christianity) directly informed their institutions. But in a lot of ways, it's not so much an inheritance as a cargo cult, but it's still a valid connection.

But Greek culture... yeah, that's a retcon.

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#89

Post by AnimalMuppet »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #77
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I wasn't trying to paint them as uniquely expansionist. I was (rather clearly, I thought) questioning that they were devoted to peace. They weren't.

Re: Who Were the Mamluks?

#90

Post by GW150914 »

beat wrote: post #88
evol262 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd disagree that the Romans had more in common with the Middle East than northern/western Europe purely on the basis that a substantial part of the feudal organization, religion, and law of northern/western Europe comes directly from the latter Empire. That's unfair as an argument, because we don't really know what was there before that (lack of Celtic writings), but it's also hard to disagree with. The Goths and Va…

Yeah, I can see that. Certainly, the Celts and Germans had plenty of contact with the Romans, and Roman bureaucracy and aristocracy (not to mention Roman-distributed Christianity) directly informed their institutions. But in a lot of ways, it's not so much an inheritance as a cargo cult, but it's still a valid connection. But Greek culture... yeah, that's a retcon.

Of course Roman culture was itself a retread of Greek culture with a few mods thrown in, they even pulled an asset flip with the Greek pantheon.
Post reply on HN