I was writing at one point a book about this... and this is what I had come up with:
A Greek-Baktrian expedition in the Tarim Basin and then China in the 206-201 period where it becomes embroiled in the Chu-Han contention (basically it becomes a mercenary ally of Liu Bang against Xiang Yu)...
He gave destiny its own. It was fated that in the primeval grove someone of the great Kings must lay for the rest of time besides the God’s walled house and with heroic processionals dwell there, mantic, amid much sacrifice. We are bold to speak from within, by the high road of speech, over...
I had to look on-line what Mahommedans are. I thought they were some kind of Turks. So, you think that a limited raid on one of the most important empires in history could have brought the end to both the Sassanids and the Byzantines? A raid led by some random arab dudes, united under a...
Peter the Great. Easily. A monarch so modern that he was years ahead of his contemporaries: modernized Russia, created its first fleet, built a sea capital, defeated Sweden. And all this while being the most curious man of his times, capable of working as a simple carpenter in a Dutch harbour or...
You came, we saw, we got influenced. I don't believe that we could have done it without all the characteristics that helped you achieve it. We were fighting among themselves, we had virtually no useable trade good, the technological advances were pitiful, to say the least.
When you discovered...
It's not that ASB. Remember that the Song regime had little love for the military and their previous war affairs had ended quite badly. The only problem is that I don't see mongolians or turkmens as their main foes; the Jurchens would have still been able to cause them problems without the...
The Han is the most probable. Not only did the dinasty last for over 400 years, but many following rulers tried to play the Han card in getting a legitimacy over the throne of China (I'm thinking Liu Bei of Shu and the 316 founding of the Xiongnu Han Dinasty). It had a very potent power base, it...
I'm not a specialist but I have a few thoughts...
It's weird, for example, how the Fatimids, a fundamental theocracy at its beginnings, managed to maintain and even enrich the intellectual life of Egypt. Many say it was because the early rulers wanted to show that their version of Islam is...
Besides, I find it strange to associate Plato with retarded scientific development when he was a guy truly interested in science. I cannot but associate Aristotle's later career with the teachings he gained at the Academy, one cannot forget the Plato obsession regarding mathematics, numbers...
I might seem a bit harsh but secular Golden Age Islam was indeed dead by 1258. It was a process that started with the Almohads, crusades and the Sufism movement. Yeah, we have plenty of interesting intellectuals after this but the few reasonable thoughts that popped in their heads were...
All persian, and they did not owe to Baghdad nothing.
Now, this raises an interesting point. What is Islamic Culture? Let's look at it from our own Christian perspective. A Christian writer is Abelard; yet Chretien de Troyes is not a Christian writer, but a writer that believes in Christianity...