[HN Gopher] Rare eleventh-century astrolabe discovery shows Isla...
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Rare eleventh-century astrolabe discovery shows Islamic-Jewish sci.
exchange
Author : wglb
Score : 47 points
Date : 2024-03-20 14:49 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| gadilif wrote:
| This is... not a surprise. Jews have lived in Islamic countries
| for centuries, and had very good relations with their Islamic
| neighbors. In fact, there are many Jews with Arab origins living
| in Israel today. Unfortunately, after WWII, most Arab countries
| forced the Jews living there to leave (mostly to Israel). There
| are minor Jewish communities in some Islamic states still, but in
| recent decades this is very rare (there is, obviously, a large
| minority of arabs, both muslims and christians, living in Israel.
| Yes, as first class citizens - I'm not talking about the occupied
| territories, but Israel within the 1967 lines).
| myth_drannon wrote:
| More like Jews had lived in Pagan/Christian countries (Iraq,
| Iran, Egypt..) for thousands of years before the arrival of
| Islamic colonizers.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| More like, get a history book, please. Different things
| happened in different places, but your summary's not very
| accurate. (There weren't _any_ Christian countries thousands
| of years ago, with Armenia converting about 1715-ish years
| ago, so I 'm not sure how anyone - Jewish or otherwise -
| could've lived in them.)
| wslh wrote:
| Could you please expand what is wrong with the comments
| upper in the thread?
|
| I see the expression I think you referenced logically
| right: Jews lived for thousand years even if there were
| other religions there, Pagans (not Christians) included.
| That is any other faiths.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| The first one's fine: no objections there. The second
| comment is just _misleading_ in so many ways it 's hard
| to pick one.
|
| Dividing the world into "Pagan countries" and "Christian
| countries" is both inaccurate (Jews weren't considered
| pagans) and overly-simplistic (state religions aren't a
| solid, fixed thing, especially over large areas before
| modern communication). While the Arab conquests were
| significant, not every Muslim country was converted "by
| the sword": there's even debate over whether the Muslim
| citizens of the early caliphates were, since such a small
| group, while large enough to conquer, would surely find
| it tricky to police the day-to-day behaviour and
| practices of so many people. (The Mongol Empire didn't
| manage to eliminate the practice of Islam in the areas
| under its control, despite ritual washing being
| punishable by summary execution, so it's plausible that
| Islam is just that persuasive.)
| pgeorgi wrote:
| > Dividing the world into "Pagan countries" and
| "Christian countries" is both inaccurate
|
| That's not what the post said. Just that, before Islam
| was even a thing, those countries that Jews lived in
| which these days are considered "Muslim countries" were
| broadly "pagan" and/or "christian", depending on time and
| location.
|
| As for your assertion of no christian countries thousands
| of years ago, where you state yourself "Armenia
| converting about 1715-ish years ago": That's thousands of
| years (as in: more than 1000)
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _those countries that Jews lived in which these days
| are considered "Muslim countries"_
|
| Is irrelevant, since we're talking about the 11th
| century. (I can't find a good 11th-century map to point
| at, but the article describes enough to give the
| impression of how different it was back then.)
| pgeorgi wrote:
| Three posts above the goal post stood at "inaccurate" and
| "overly-simplistic," now we're at irrelevant. Okay.
| elevaet wrote:
| > (The Mongol Empire didn't manage to eliminate the
| practice of Islam in the areas under its control, despite
| ritual washing being punishable by summary execution, so
| it's plausible that Islam is just that persuasive.)
|
| When/where did the Mongol empire ever try to eliminate
| the practice if Islam? They definitely shed a lot of
| blood and destruction in the Muslim world, but afaik the
| point was never to eliminate Islam, but just territorial
| conquest. The Mongols were famously tolerant of diverse
| religions within their borders. Many Mongol rulers even
| converted to Islam.
|
| Of course, history is vast and multifaceted, so you might
| be talking about a different time/place than I am.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I don't know they ever did try to eliminate Islam, but
| the particular issue of washing was a conflict between
| their religious practices. I learned this from https://tu
| be.kockatoo.org/w/hfsnrYC2aGbr1HEehhwrqZ?start=6m3... by
| _Premodernist_ , which quotes and discusses _Chang Chun
| Zhen Ren Xi You Ji _ :
|
| > Now the subtext here, which Li doesn't come right out
| and say, but is kinda understood for a contemporary: when
| the Mongols forbade people from washing in the rivers,
| that means that if they caught you going into the river
| to wash, they would kill you on the spot; because that
| was a taboo in the Mongol religious system. Now that was
| a problem if you were a Muslim who had come under Mongol
| rule, because Muslims of course do ritual washings before
| prayers, and in central Asia they would very often just
| go down to the local stream or river to do the washings.
| But if a Mongol saw them doing that, they would go over
| there and strike them down and kill them. And there are
| accounts - not in this account, but there are accounts in
| other historical works from the period, particularly from
| Muslim writers - that talk about, it was not uncommon for
| Muslims to be killed by Mongols in this way.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| You might wanna look into the history of this guy
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Taymiyya
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Many of those places were Christian or Zoroastrian or
| whatnot way before early Muslim conquests, look it up. And
| Jews lived there since before year 0
| myth_drannon wrote:
| right, there was no country called Iraq until recently.
| What I meant was not a political entity but a region where
| the modern state of Iraq resides, so you can call it
| Assyria/Babylon/Roman Empire/Greek Empire/British Mandate.
| Same for Iran, with countless empires but the region is the
| same.
| lots2learn wrote:
| I don't think you understand the word colonizer. The Muslims
| conquered and lived among the people. They created a
| civilization which non-Muslim minorities were a part of. This
| is very different from European colonialism that extracted
| resources from the lands and people they conquered for the
| exclusive benefit of the Empire.
| mutatio wrote:
| They were colonizers and practiced genocide. It's a great
| source of pride that Jews were banished from the Arab
| peninsula (or forcefully converted).
|
| Other branches of Islamic history such as the Ottomams were
| also colonisers.
|
| Don't forget Muhammad himself was a warlord.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| If they were banished from the Arabian peninsula, what
| were they doing in Yemen in 1948?
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > The Muslims conquered and lived among the people.
|
| Muslims in europe had white people (and black people too)
| as slaves, way, way, way before europeans started trading
| slaves. FWIW slavery is still ongoing, today, in some
| muslim countries. The last country to officially abolish
| slavery was a muslim country: Mauritania. Mauritania
| abolished slavery in... 1986. But it's only starting from
| 2007 that slave owners there could be prosecuted.
|
| And slavery is still ongoing there today.
|
| Spare us the "muslims peacefully conquering the world /
| evil european" angle please.
| g8oz wrote:
| >>way, way, way before europeans started trading slaves.
|
| You might want to look into the Roman slave trade.
| teejays wrote:
| Makes sense. This also somewhat points to how politically and
| socially disturbing the rise of Zionism was that it flipped the
| narrative of peaceful coexistence among these religions (in the
| Middle East).
| wslh wrote:
| I think another way to see it is that Zionism is the perfect
| excuse for struggle.
|
| There are 16m of Jews in a world of 8b people. And, the world
| was silent while half of the Jewish population was been
| literally exterminated. Even US was closed to Jews refugees.
| user982 wrote:
| This was Jerusalem in 1896:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vaIK8wlAl0
| ars wrote:
| When Zionism started "peaceful coexistence" was long since
| gone.
|
| You are combining time periods over hundreds of years.
| Peaceful coexistence ended around 860 (and stated getting
| worse in 636 with the Siege of Jerusalem), while modern
| Zionism didn't start till 1840's - around 1,000 years later.
|
| Possibly prompted by the Arab massacres in 1834:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1834_looting_of_Safed
|
| People sometimes talk about how Israel was mostly inhabited
| by Arabs before Israel was founded, but they neglect to
| inform that this was because of the numerous massacres
| against Jews who had been living there for thousands of
| years.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| What happened in 636, who was expelled?
| g8oz wrote:
| Zionism was prompted by what happened in Europe not in the
| Middle East. Literally 5 minutes of Googling will help you
| out here.
| hdlothia wrote:
| During the rule of al-Mutawakkil, the tenth Abbasid Caliph,
| numerous restrictions reinforced the second-class citizen
| status of dhimmis and forced their communities into
| ghettos.[15] For instance, they were required to distinguish
| themselves from their Muslim neighbors by their dress.[16] They
| were not permitted to build new churches or synagogues or
| repair old churches according to the Pact of Umar.
|
| Is this an accurate portrayal of the good relations you
| describe or an exception? It's hard to find unbiased accounts
| of what Jewish-Islamic relations were like pre-israel,
| especially since both sides have an agenda to push.
| g8oz wrote:
| And yet this hardly compares to what happened in Europe
| during the medieval period.
| hdlothia wrote:
| It seems like neither the Christian world or the Islamic
| world have been safe havens for Jewish people.
| msteffen wrote:
| I do think that your comment almost understates the
| relationship: in 1917, an incredible 40% of Baghdad's
| population was Jewish.
|
| The nature of historical Jewish-Islamic relations _is_
| obviously a matter of great political contention (especially
| now). It varied depending on the politics of the time and place
| --sometimes rich and peaceful (and indeed better than Europe)
| and sometimes tragic and violent--but for anyone casually
| curious, there is a dedicated Wikipedia article that I think is
| pretty good:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_under_Musl...
| wslh wrote:
| Probably most people ignore the good relationship between Jews
| and Arabs because it is not taught or communicated, sadly, often.
| They participated in math, medicine, astronomy, and philosophy.
| hersko wrote:
| From what i understand, at the time this thing was made,
| Islamic society was more advanced and way better for jews than
| Christian Europe.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Right, while the Christian Europe was amidst a Dark Ages and
| was torturing and burning Jews and others, Islam was in its
| Golden Age period. Too bad it was short and Mongol hordes
| ended it, leaving a significant mark on the Islamic culture.
|
| Just realized we are witnessing at the moment two wars (there
| are more, but these two just get significant news coverage)
| by cultures who were scarred by Mongols - Russia and Islamic
| Empire
| cess11 wrote:
| Yes. And zionism as a global political force is in large
| part, possibly mainly, funded and promoted by christian
| zionists, and not by jews.
|
| Comment above implies a dichotomy between arab and jew which
| is wildly ahistorical.
|
| To an extent the migration of jews to Israel from arab
| countries post-WWII was done by Israel, infamously the 'magic
| carpet' from Yemen for example.
|
| As an aside, the urge among zionists to claim that muslims
| are the worst, OG colonizers is probably related to zionism
| being an explicitly colonial project, as stated by pretty
| much every influential early zionist. Cecil Rhodes was begged
| to help out due to his experience in this area, and the
| intimate relation between apartheid South Africa and Israel
| was in part made possible due to this similarity.
| ars wrote:
| It's probably not taught in the US, but it's certainly taught
| in Israel, but they also include the periods after that when
| Arabs started massacring and prosecuting Jews.
|
| It's not a single time period, a lot of stuff happened, and the
| relationship changed - and not because of Israel (history
| didn't start in 1948).
| wslh wrote:
| Israel is tiny and not influential in terms of global
| education. It is also studied in Jewish schools around the
| globe but also this is tiny comparing to the world itself.
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