why didn't I learn about the Umayyad Caliphate in high school? It seems like they royally BTFO everyone for like 300 years.
What was going on in 700 AD?
>What was going on in 700 AD?
They built a lot of cool stuff in the Levant around that time. Also everyone hated them.
>>1153178
>for like 300 years
I don't think they lasted more than 200. Otherwise, it's because we know a lot less about them than we do the Abbasids, and they're in that span of time between the fall of Rome and Charlemagne that even most people who actually care about the early Middle Ages just don't care.
I remember learning about them in 10th grade world history. They were mentioned passingly along with the Abbassid's
Generally these days, the only history that's taught extensively in the U.S. is Enlightenment ----> American Revolution ---> Slavery ---> Segregation ---> Civil Rights Movement ---> Vietnam ---> 9/11
>>1153276
guess I'm more surprised that I didn't learn about caliphates in my european history class, since they reached so far (the caliphates).
you learned about 9/11? we stopped at about slick willie's impeachment
>>1153316
I was in HS in 2005 and they were already talking about 9/11, mainly in the context of "our rights are being reduced" and "Muslims are being persecuted"
>>1153178
Umayyad?
More like
U Mad
>>1153193
how did the ottoman empire relate to the caliphates?
>>1153178
>why didn't I learn about the Umayyad Caliphate in high school?
Because you're from the United States and we don't give a fuck about anything that happened before white people found America.
>BTFO everyone for like 300 years
Not really, the majority of the conquest happened during the preceding Rashidun Caliphate. The Ummayads really only expanded into Spain and a little further into central Asia. Also it only lasted 100 years before the Abbasid revolt.
>>1153193
>everyone hated them
If anything people were pretty mutual to their arrival. Most eastern Christians figured it seemed like a better deal than the Byzantines had been giving them before.
>>1153178
same reason nobody i know really knows anything about the ottomans. i remember a friend of mine used to think they were some minor footnote in history until he saw a map of the territory they controlled
>>1153178
I did, but I studied in Spain.
>>1153178
It was becoming decadent, bloated and expensive. Bureaucracy was inflating, taxes increasing, and the first half of the eighth century, the government began to inflationate the dirham with subsidized credit and expansive mining.
Then, the Abbasid Revolution imploded in the East, and I imagine you know the rest.
>>1153178
Not once in school did any history teacher tell me that the Muslims were slaugthering their way across the mediterran and were about to start shit in the south of France when the Pope told everyone to get their heads out of their asses and start taking their land back.
Why?
It was always just.
"Them evil crusaders going to Jerusalem and killing them honorable sanddwellers"
Seriously, I know barely anything about what led to this shit.
>>1154457
>Not once in school did any history teacher tell me that the Muslims were slaugthering their way across the mediterran and were about to start shit in the south of France when the Pope told everyone to get their heads out of their asses and start taking their land back.
Maybe because those two events were separated by like 300 years.
>>1154472
You'd think they at least talk about it as it preludes the crusades which we did talk about.
Albeit only slightly as well.
History classes were handled incredibly weird here.
>>1154494
Most history classes, if they're not teaching for some test, are focused on culture and world systems instead of political back and forth. The Crusades have a lot of influence on Western European religion, law, and culture, while the Umayyads barely register because they were one of several flashpan imperial powers whose influence on the Middle East is barely understood, let alone whatever they might have influenced in Europe.
>>1154509
Weren't they blockading the Mediterrenanean sea leading to the stagnation of Europes economy?
>>1154522
No. This was what Henri Pirenne proposed decades ago, but archaeology has shown that the Mediterranean economy was already on the decline, and by the middle of the 8th century had stabilized and begun to rise in prosperity again.
By that time of course the Abbasids came into the picture, and they get all the attention because of their more visible impact in culture and economy.
The Umayyads are kind of like the Merovingians, or the Saxons, technically important in a lot of ways but overshadowed in popular imagination and education by the likes of the Carolingians and Normans.
>>1154509
There - someone gets it.
The reason the Crusades are talked about more than all the Islamic conquests isn't some kind of anti-Christian/Yuro conspiracy, but merely a side effect of the fact that more influential events tend to get more exposure. For the West, the Crusades were a lot more impactful than the Islamic conquests, as they allowed for a shit ton of cultural exchange that arguably led to the development of Europe into what it is today.
>>1153178
>why didn't I learn about the Umayyad Caliphate in high school
School isn't there to teach you every thing. Somethings need to be learned outside of the class room.
