Huh? So what? My point was not that there were Jewish kingdoms when Mohammed was around, but that there were Jewish kindgdoms: (1) after the Roman Diaspora; and (2) before 1948.
Thus, as I said, it “isn’t entirely true” that:
… because there were Jewish kingdoms in Arabia during that time; the last was destroyed by the Christians.
After that time, there were powerful Jewish tribes and some cities mostly dominated by Jews, and some of there tribes fought against Mohammed (and lost).
Both Christianity and Islam rolled over paganism wherever they found it. They both hit a wall when they hit the east Asian religions of Hinduism/Buddhism. Though admittedly Islam had somewhat greater success in that regard.
What happens when Christianity and Islam go head to head? If I understand John Mace’s argument, nationalism (or rather regionalism) triumphs. Christianity won in the West because both Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox were European centered. Islam displaced Christianity in the Mid-east because it was native to the region. There are exceptions to this pattern, notably Islam in Spain and Christian communities throughout the Mideast.
So if the Vatican was transferred to Jerusalem in 500CE, Islam may not have made such inroads, according to this view.
Thank you for the interesting information. I was aware what is now
Yemen was inhabited by advanced political societies for several centuries,
and prior to both Christain and Muslim eras, but not that one of those
societies was for about a century truly Jewish, a new discovery according
to your second link.
However, I am not sure SW Arabia ought be considered part of the ME,
since it was 1000 miles distant and not contiguous with any ME political
power. Even if it were, the gist of my post was true, namely that the ME
post-diaspora Jews were too few and too scattered to contest soveregnty
with Christians or Muslims (or pre-Muslim Zoroastrian Iranians). The Himarites
might have been the sole exception as a challenge to Christians; they were
overthrown 85 years before Mohammed’s first vision.
Besides the Himarites, the only pre-modern, post-diaspora Jewish state
anywhere that I have ever heard of were the Khazaks of the Pontic steppe
closer to the ME than the Himaraites, but separted from the ME by the
Caucasus mountains and the Black Sea. This Jewish kingdom apparently
was ground between European Christian and Turkish Muslim and disappeared.
Last time I was in Rome it was still there.
Look, this is not particularly complicated.
The ME was eventually entirely conquered by the emergent forces of a newly revealed Abrahamic religion. Though said religion was not initially universalist ( or at least was not held to be by Muhammad’s immediate successors ), it quickly became so. Over time as the faith of the new dominant class it gradually replaced Christianity amongst the great majority of the local population. People converted - sometimes under threat of persecution, sometimes out of simple self-interest, sometimes through real converted zeal. It then propagated down to their descendants.
So Christianity is now a minority faith in the land of its birth. As noted this is not unique.
I’m not really understanding what the debate is here. Do you just want more details as to why and how this happened?
Yes, please.
It’s a puzzle why Buddhism was beaten back by Hinduism in India, while being fecund enough to spread to Nepal, China, Japan, etc. Similarly, it’s odd that Islam trounced Christianity in Egypt and Turkey, but not Spain. Are these religions best seen as ideologies that happen to underpin particular states, states which perform better or worse in the art of conquest?
…Which gives a only a very brief mention, and nothing more. And makes a somewhat diametric point.
It’s not always the case that the conquered adopted their conquerors’ religion. The Mongols practiced old religions like Tengriism, but at different periods in different places with different hordes, they adopted Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. And you can’t really say they were known for their defeats.
This is what I was going to say.
For the time period we’re talking about, it’s arguable whether “Nepalese” is a distinct category compared to “Indian.” There was neither an “India” nor a “Nepal” in nation-state form. And the culture and society of the place and people of Siddharta Gautam’s birth was part of a continuum with the rest of the places and peoples of the subcontinent.
The split between the Catholic church and the Orthodox church has to shoulder a big chunk of the blame.
Constantinople and the Byzantine empire was fatally wounded when it was captured by Christian crusaders during the 4th crusade. It never really recovered, all of Turkey and significant chunks of the levant might still be majority christian if it wasn’t for the fact that the Catholic church treated Eastern Orthodoxy as just as heretical as islam was seen at the time.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read my Villehardouin, but wasn’t it that religion would be a minor part of it, in favor of French and Venetians trying to get money? Also, as a major cause, restoring Isaac II so that he would give financial and religious patronage? I might be off, but it just seemed like one of the least religiously motivated Crusades.
Ok looks like you’re right, the pope tried in an ineffectual way to prevent attacks on christian cities including the Byzantine empire. But regardless the fatal blow to the Byzantine empire was struck by the Fourth crusade, it could have lasted much longer against the Ottoman empire if it wasn’t for that.
Islam did trounce Christianity in Spain. In Muslim Spain, the majority of the population was itself Muslim by the end of the 10th century. It wasn’t until the Reconquista and Muslims converting or fleeing, that Spain became Christian again.
As noted the Muslims did trounce Christian forces in Spain ;).
I wrote up a longish post once about some of the factors underlying the early Arab successes. Unmentioned in that earlier post but also a factor, was superior military leadership. Though it is hard to untangle hagiography from history at this far of a remove, the Arabs really do seem to have benefited from having a exceptionally capable general or three. So in short the Arabs explosion happened at an exceptionally propitious time, with the local great powers exhausted and prostrate and at a time when they managed to produce the right combination of leadership.
Not necessarily. As I noted in the post I linked to, there was certainly nothing inherently superior militarily about the early Arab state relative to their great power opponents - to the contrary, probably. You can point to periods where certain states held a some degree of institutional superiority and advanced religion as an unintended byproduct ( or at least not a primary intention ) of expansion. The Ottomans in Europe from ~1400-~1600 perhaps.
But in general there are enough examples of aggressive and successful states of almost every major religion to probably rule out any notion of a particular ideology as being the key factor to winning wars.
It’s kind of silly to say that Jesus founded Christianity. While he was alive the central definer of Christianity, the resurrection, had not yet happened. It took many years for things like the Trinity, the virgin birth, Jesus as son of God, and the resurrection to come together to form what we now called Christianity. Early followers of Christ saw themselves as Jews rather than as “Christian”.
Don’t leave out Edward Said!
Arab nationalism was (at first) invented and promoted by 19th-century Christians like Ibrahim al-Yaziji. That was in the context of Christian opposition in Syria to the Ottoman Empire’s rule over Arab lands. The Ba‘ath Party* was founded by Christian Michel ‘Aflaq. Arabic literature in the early 20th century was revitalized by the Mahjar, the expatriate poets and writers who went to the Americas, the most famous of them being Khalil Gibran, whose religious conflicts were with his own church, and AFAIK he didn’t bother much about Jews and Muslims.
*Ba‘th literally meaning ‘Resurrection’
All of Arabia is in the Middle East by definition. Let us have no more of this folly.
That’s Ḥimyar, not Ḥimar. Ḥimār is Arabic for ‘ass’. It would be a faux pas to call them that.
That’s Khazar, not “Khazak.” Were you thinking of Kazakhstan? Modern western Kazakhstan overlaps part of what was eastern Khazaria 1,000 years back, but otherwise they have nothing to do with each other. They both speak Turkic languages, but Kazakh belongs to the main body of Turkic, while the Khazar language came from the highly divergent branch called r-Turkic, whose only living member today is Chuvash, spoken in Russia.