9th January 2008, 6:53 PM
lazyfatbum Wrote:Are we talking about the same middle east? Going back to the start of major society the middle east has been a minefield of culture clash with almost every territory being a war-driven group.
They've done nothing but fight over pieces of land and borders since before Christ, look at the Yom Kippur war and iran's islamic revolution, hell look at now :/ In reference to white people: britain (hello?), USSR, eastern-euro blocks, ROME and especially good ol' USA. = Stay the fuck out.
Middle east as peaceful? When? Pangea!?
Yeah... so between Christ and the Islamic revolution, there's about 2000 years, including 500 or so of which are referred to as the Islamic Golden age (roughly from the Hegira to the invasions of the Seljukid Turks in the 11th and 12th centuries). During that time, the Arabs made great strides in disciplines like astronomy, medicine, chemistry and mathematics, which would eventually be brought back to Europe through the Crusades and lead to the Renaissance. They notably conserved several works of Greek authors that were long gone from Europe, and for a long time Europeans had to rely on Arabic translations of Aristotle and the like (until earlier Greek versions were dug up from the dusty basements of monasteries over the course of several centuries). The Middle East, politically, was united under one caliphate, then under two or three as the situation degraded, but it really was nowhere near as bad as in Europe.
As for the Persian empire, it has about a gazillion incarnations (Medes, Achaemenids, Parthians, Sassanids, Khorezm...) so it would be nice to know which one you're referring to, but there generally wasn't an independent Persian polity during those days - it was subordinate to the Caliph, at least for some time.
edit: amusingly, it's precisely this golden age that groups like Al-Qaeda aspire to and wish to bring back. Of course, they don't realize that their interpretation of Islam is probably 100% more hardcore than the one they had back then.