Our views on how rosy religious tolerance is defined must differ ;). The argument is whether Islamic states set out to wipe out local religions, sacred sites and history. The answer to that question is generally no. That does not imply happy-happy ecumenicism. It just implies that they usually weren’t looking to wipe anyone out. The old ‘conversion by the sword’ meme did happen, it just wasn’t particularly common or widespread.
From your own cite - The roots of this practice lie in the internecine warfare among different Rajput clans. I think we’re looking at an atavistic cultural practice centered on ritual purity here, not some Muslim-fear-induced act of desperation. Muslim rulers made heavy use of Hindu troops under their native rulers, particularly Rajputs under the Mughals. Hindus were about as likely to be raped and slaughtered by their own as they were by invaders.
Not much evidence of anything I’m afraid, other than war is hell and sacks are its lowest circle.
Not meaning to nitpick, but the Mayan codices and religious items were all burned by one man, Diego de Landa. He was later recalled to Spain to stand trial for his illegal inquisition. To say the Spanish did it is incorrect, as de Landa’s actions did not have the blessing of the Church or the Crown.
I disagree especially in the context of the spread of Islam in Asia. Compared to Buddhism and Jainism - Islam’s spread was coercive and brutal. It is fair to compare the spread of religion and state with Islam - because Islam makes no distinction between the religion and the state. The religion is the state and vice-versa in Islam.
Disagree again. The roots were small in scale and frequency. All recorded instances (as presented in the wikipedia page) are for wars with Muslims. In one instance 24,000 Women and kids burned themselves up to prevent Muslims (Jauhar of Jaisalmer) getting to them. That directly answers the OP - since they feared to be wiped out, rather brutally at that.
You think wrong. 60 to 80 million people died in India between 1000 and 1525 as result of the Islamic invasion of Indian subcontinent. Cite. It is indeed Muslim-fear-induced act of desperation.
Muslim rulers and invaders killed millions of enslaved hindu men while taking them back to Persia through the Hindukush - sure Muslim rulers used them. When people are enslaved or persecuted - some people rise among the persecuted to help the persecutor. This is the same as some of the Jews who helped the Nazi’s at the camps and killed other Jews. That doesn’t prove anything - its a human weakness : thats all.
That maybe the Islamic philosophy. Not all wars were fought to subjugate/humiliate or forcibly convert the religion of the other side - although this was the common theme for Islam in Asia.
For example : Sun Tzu said: In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good.
Another Example : Alexander attacked India too and won the battle against Porus in the Battle of the Hydaspes. After the battle, there was no barbaric destruction of the civilian population or temples and Greeks helped Buddhism flourish in India.
For those dopers feeling a bit cutesy about Imperial British ‘exploration’, I think you may have read into some of the nicer versions - certainly not all of it was heinous, like India -but what they got up to in early Australia often was not nice. Not so much the trashing of sacred sites - in indigenous folklore these are just part of the land and not constructed buildings. There were forced marriages though, a lot of them, to breed the locals out. Violent pogroms lead by colonists to kill or cower local tribes… the destruction of many local game species (that could be both sacred and the only dinner around if you are living in the bush) for pelts and other curios to send back home to England etc. Not genocide or brick smashing, but it was nonetheless harmful aplenty.
I’m surprised by some thoughts concerning the mongols. Admittedly I am no historian - and I may have fell prey to urban legends regarding this one, but were they not in general known for you know… If you don’t fight us, that is cool, you won’t get hurt. But if you do choose to fight, we will slaughter every woman and child, burn down every building kill all the livestock etc? Somebody enlighten me.
I know its wiki and all, but check out the bittie under “destruction of culture and property”. It at least talks about the burning of libraries and books from the Jin dynasty as well as the same in Baghdad.
Also my goodness did they get up to some naughty stuff.
Most everything is brutal relative to Jainism - that’s kinda intrinsic to a pacifistic faith ;).
Again, I’m not entirely sure what you’re arguing against. Actual widespread forced conversion is rare in Islamic history. Not unheard of, just uncommon. That’s a hard fact. That doesn’t mean Islamic states didn’t aggressively expand - that’s also a fact. Of course you also have examples of relatively peaceful expansions of Islam ( Bengal as noted above, Southeast Asia generally ). But it’s certainly true that Islam is a militant, aggressive faith.
Now you can argue that Muslim states de facto spread Islam by force by conquering areas and then setting up situations where as second-class citizens many lower-class non-Muslims were motivated to convert and ruling classes were motivated to get ahead in rather different circumstances. And that’s a perfectly reasonable argument - but it is rather separate from the question of whether it was actually policy ( rather than occasional propaganda ) to suppress non-Muslim faiths. The evidence on balance was that sometimes it was in the case of certain zealot rulers, but more often it was case of indifference or grudging tolerance for the sake of a more functional state.
Burned themselves up or were burned by the menfolk? Not that it matters much, but I really rather suspect their husbands chose for them most of the time. At any rate if this was a general reaction why was this phenomenon so closely associated with Rajasthan and not, say, Awadh? Sheer happenstance? Nah - this was a local cultural practice. That is linked culturally with sati is more than a little suggestive.
Again not saying sacks weren’t horrific. But ALL sacks were horrific, the Muslims certainly didn’t have any corner on the market.
If you accept Lal’s numbers. I’ll just note that many don’t, it is hardly settled academic bedrock. He has a little bit of a bearish reputation re: his arguable Hindu nationalist leanings.
But again it really isn’t central to the OP. The Muslim invasion of India may have been incredibly traumatic and destructive ( almost certainly was ). Invasions tend to be. That doesn’t address a systematic attempt to wipe out Hinuism, Buddhism or Jainism.
Eh, no - this is not what I was referring to. Mahmud of Ghazni made extensive use of Hindu mercenaries in his annual raids into India. Mu’izz al-Din was allied with the prince of Jammu and counted plenty of thakurs leading their own troops under his banner. From the first Muslim rulers co-opted local Hindu elites by the simple expedience of leaving them alone to govern as vassals like they always had.
Per John Richards ( The Mughal Empire, 1993, Cambridge University Press ) under the Mughal Shah Jahan in the 1640’s, ~20% ( 90 of 443 ) of the state mansabdars of 500 zat or more were Hindu, most of them Rajputs. Including the major Rajas/Ranas of Marwar, Mewar, Gaur and Amber, who held rank just behind 10 Muslim mansabdars ( four of them Shah Jahan’s sons, gifted with wealthy appanages ).
And it went both ways. That post-hoc lionized exemplar of Hindu nationalism, Shivaji, was perfectly happy to recruit Muslim troops. It is unfortunate that we tend to few things through retrospective lenses. Remember to a medieval mindset, religion mattered both more and less. Religious and ethnic nationalism was far less of a going concern.
Alexander didn’t really have time to do much in India, but his successors were certainly busy little proponents of Hellenism ;). He didn’t treat Perseopolis nearly as gently. Though it is true that despite being a vicious drunken thug, he was pretty pluralistic as such things went ( much to the disgust of his Macedonian followers ).
Look Hindus were known to tear down Hindu temples:
*Conquest was therefore sometimes imprinted by the destruction of a temple. Thus when the Rashtrakuta King, Indra III, defeated the Pratiharas in the early tenth century, a Pratihara temple at Kalpa was torn up to establish the victory. On defeating the Chalukyas, the Paramara King of Malwa, Subhatavarma, destroyed the temples that the Chalukyas had built for the Jainas as well as the mosque for the Arabs. Both the Jainas and Arabs were traders of some economic consequence, hence the royal patronage.
…Not surprisingly therefore they were targets for greedy kings. Kalhana writes of the kings of Kashmir of this periods looting temples, and one among them, Harshadeva, even appointed a special officer to supervise this activity. Kalhana uses the epithet ‘Turushka’ for him! This would suggest that the destruction of temples by Hindu rulers was known and recorded, but such acts were considered more characteristic of the Turushkas. Mahmud’s attacks would have been resented but may not have been an unfamiliar experience.*
Romila Thapur, from Early India:From the Origins to AD 1300 ( 2002, University of California Press ).
This, once more, is not to try to make light of destruction caused, but more to put it into the context of the OP. To wit…
That is absolutely correct. The Mongols were enormously destructive. Both immediately ( massacres and sacks a-plenty ) and long-term, as the parasitic, extractive economy they practiced tended to bring economic ruin to the urban centers and settled farmland they ruled from afar. Whatever good they did by briefly uniting a stable world economic trading system via their massive expansion was easily outweighed by the damage they did in that respect.
But for all that in the first few generations they were remarkably ecumenical :). The cultural and religious practices of their subjects were about the least of their concerns. Religious bigotry only became a feature after the unitary state had broken down and successor states had adopted local faiths. Islam in the Golden Horde, the Il-Khanate and the Ulus Chagatai. Buddhism in Moghulistan and Mongolia, which less you think it might be gentler actually triggered brutal repression of native shamanistic faith in the 16th century as well as violent Buddhist sect rivalries, particularly in Mongol-dominated Tibet.
I should correct myself - Moghulistan largely went Muslim as well, it just was later dominated by the Buddhist Dzungars, the last significant Mongol successor state.
I think people have to keep in mind that there is a big difference between invaders sacking, looting and burning, and invaders with a deliberate policy of cultural or religious destruction/replacement.
Throughout history, the former was sadly common, and the latter happily rare.
To give but one example: in the Hundred Year’s War, the “Chevauchée” was an accepted and widely-practiced tactic, particularly by the English - this involved a raid, the purpose of which was to do as much damage as possible to the locals by way of rape, burning, and massacre. Henry V is quoted as saying something like “you can’t have war without fire any more than you can have sausages without mustard”. Religious establishments were commonly victims of this policy.
The kicker of course its that there is no way this was a policy of religious or cultural displacement - the English king was of course of the same religion as the French - indeed, his claim was that he was the French king! The people he was massacring and burning were, at least potentially, his own subjects.
But, Chevauchee and it’s ilk were quite the opposite of trying to impose a religion. Chevauchee was used to compel an army to give battle. We saw a variation of it in the WW2 strategic bombing
Things like the Chevauchée (or strategic bombing, or Roman frighfulness after a siege) are relatively common - things like the Holocaust or First Crusade are quite rare.
That is, massacre and burning for terrorism or strategic reasons is relatively common, massacre and burning to wipe out or impose a religion or culture are reasonably rare.
Speaking of which, if you’ll allow me a sidetrack since you seem to know your shit and it’s been on my mind lately : what was the stated “purpose” of the jizya, and how much was it ? What I mean is : was it a punitive “if you sell half of your shit you might be able to pay it… this year…” tax, in effect used as a soft but definite force towards conversion; or was it more of a background “cost of doing business” tithe e.g. the ~10% the Catholic church sliced off the top in the Occident ?
Also, what was done with the money ? Was it just thrown in the collective pile like any other source of income for the Khalif/Amir/Sultan/local magistrate, to be used when and as needed; or was it set aside to be used for specific purposes, like charity works which the Koran mandates but obviously non-Muslims would not necessarily be involved in ?
Both, really. That it turned into a poll tax with certain prescribed exemptions ( of a variable nature ) is probably just based on the adoption of Sasanian administrative procedures in the immediate post-conquest period. It is undefined in that sense in the Qur’an. But in general it was intended as a visible symbol of subjection to Muslim rule, which by the subject accepted inferior status in exchange for certain legal ( but usually no political ) rights.
The terms were highly variable as well. One common prescription was to set it at twice the corresponding Muslim zakat ( alms ) tax rate, but that was far from universal. In practice it was set wherever a ruler wanted and needed it to be set. It at any rate was not usually the most crushing form of taxation which was always land tax, which as noted above Muslims were initially exempt from ( for about a century ). However it was the unpalatable cherry on top and could turn onerous levels of taxation to intolerable levels of taxation pretty quickly.
In that sense it was later argued that it also served to encourage conversion, both through the promise of moderate tax relief and as escape from the ritualized humiliation many saw it as being. Obviously that wasn’t a motive in the earliest decades when non-Arab converts were not being sought. But in practice it does appear to have been an inducement in many places and times.
All of the above. At times it was segregated as a source of funds and used for things like alms and endowing charitable institutions ( waqf ), at other times it just entered a common treasury and pretty much every permutation in between. There was no real uniformity.
It was based upon the Army rolls. For the most part it was levied community wide and the assessment was on the number of able bodied young men in a community. This meant the the collection was done by the community itself (mostly) not the central authority. This meant that the more well off might have a higher tax burden while the poor might pay nothing.
The practical effect of this was that a community who paid were exempt from Army service.
Making generalities is difficult. Jizya was somewhat loosely collected at time and places and interpretation was varied. Collection was often not done where conscription did not exist.
It was also more a relevant thing in the early centuries then later on. In the Mughal Empire, Jizya was not usually imposed and Aurengzeb’s (partial) introduction was very unpopular, and even that was more to raise revenue for his endless wars/ punish some annoying group.
I’ve been surprised how historical sites are preserved even in war. Germany bombed Britain heavily in WWII. But most of the Queen’s castles and estates were spared. Paris has many iconic landmarks that were spared. Many of the historic cathedrals in Europe survived the war.
By the way, Alexander’s campaigns in what in now Pakistan (especially in Swat and the Southern Pujabd area like Multan, where old Alex probably got the wound that killed him eventually), were pretty damn genocidal, so for somebody upthread, no there was quite a lot of destruction, by the end his army had hordes of displaced following them. Also current research suggests that the Indo-Greeks were not Hellenized locals as believed earlier, but in many cases actual transplanted Greeks, I have read some good books which suggest that Taxila was composed mostly of settlers.
BTW, wy are the C Asian muslims attackers mentioned here and the Khushans, Greeks, Sakas, Aryans etc get a pass?
Well, obviously there was pressure from the Free French on the other Allies not to blow the everliving shit out of their cultural hub; but we can still thank von Choltitz (the German general in charge of the defence, then evacuation of Paris) as he did get orders direct from Hitler to burn it to the ground before leaving, yet chose to ignore them.
And obviously, on the way *in *what little French resistance could happen happened out in the east, not in or around Paris proper.
Still, to this day the city bears the marks of the war and the street fighting that led to its liberation. There are quite a few buildings still pockmarked with bullet holes for example.
Other cities did not fare as well - Cherbourg in particular was all but levelled.
But it’s true than on the whole, and excepting Germany proper where Bomber Harris was very enthusiastic, the murdering bastard, both sides very generally did what they could to preserve historical sites. One reason the battle of Monte Cassino dragged out for so long was that the Allied forces were initially reluctant about reducing a pristine 14th century monastery to bits. As well, the German battle plans deliberately did not make use of its defensive opportunities & features (Kesselring even informed the Allies of the fact). And then it got rubbled anyway.
Then again, it’s kind of expected - they were mostly Christians fighting Christians in and around awe-inspiring Christian sites, and all under the watchful gaze of the Pope too. Wholesale slaughter of NPCs is fine, but *he *was a named character :D.
Making this statement as if it were a fact is biased nonsense. There’s very little evidence that would indicate that Alexander died as a direct result of a wound he received more than a year before his death. The most common theory for Alexander’s death is disease, with malaria being the favorite, but certainly not the only, suspect. There were also suspicions of poisoning, as well as suggestions that he drank himself to death.
That seems kinda strong. Hard to see where anyone would be “biased” about how old Alex bit it back in the 4th century B.C. and it is certainly possible his wound contributed to his young demise. Though I’d agree that’s not what I expect really did him in, we’ll never really know - we don’t even have a corpse to test for poison :). I’d just pare AK84’s “probably” down to a “possibly contributed”, but I don’t think his supposition amounts to nonsense per se.
Secretary of Evil, accusing a Pathan lad of being biased for Multan is really really rich.
He was shot in the chest and got a collapsed lung. Those are difficult to treat, now, never mind 2400 years ago. It would have weakened him considerably, and made otherwise minor future illnesses potentially lethal. As is the case it seems. So, I am comfortable in saying that that wound probably killed him.