![islamic-early-conquests-map[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Z2NRnGI.jpg "islamic-early-conquests-map[1].jpg")
Hey /his/ I was wondering
Exactly how bloody was the muslim conquest?
My housemate is a history buff and she told me that muslims just came to places and declared it to be under muslim ocntrol and only ever fought when they were opposed by an army
Futhermore she claims people had many freedoms like freedom of religion and people who were a part of the muslim caliphate experienced a golden age
Is this true?
It seems hard to believe that a conquest would be peaceful
>>522052
They weren't any more bloody than Roman, Byzantine, or Persian campaigns, they were just more rapid because of the lack of opposition. Plus the Arabs didn't raze cities and towns to the ground like the Mongols would.
>freedom of religion
In the early caliphate, Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians were allowed to practice their religion but they weren't permitted to build new religious buildings without consent, display religious symbols on buildings, or ring church bells.
>>522052
>only ever fought when they were opposed by an army
That's accurate, but that's generally what invading armies do unless they're deliberately trying to raid or plunder.
The conquest of Egypt was achieved with a small force of around 4000 that was bolstered by defections and Bedouin tribes to around 12000 by the time Alexandria surrendered.
>muslims just came to places and declared it to be under muslim ocntrol
Again, pretty much. In the Rashidun period Islam was very much a Arab-centric religion so conversion was dissuaded. They'd turn up, leave a garrison, and move on.
>people had many freedoms like freedom of religion and people who were a part of the muslim caliphate experienced a golden age
The "golden age" is a bit of a meme, for the most part life just continued as normal. Arabic wouldn't replace Coptic and Greek as Egypt's first language until almost 500 years after the conquest
>>522052
It was relatively peaceful given the amount of land conquered in a short amount of time. This may have been helped by the fact that the Eastern Romans and Persians had simply exhausted themselves through the last war, and the populace of the respective empires had grown disillusioned and likely to capitulate. As a result, there wasn't much opposition to the Arabs- therefore the Arabs didn't have to resort to much violence in subduing the population.
The early Muslims were quite fair in respecting local religions if they paid a Jizya tax( keep in mind that Muslims paid a Zakat tax). The "spread by the sword"meme propagated by conservative historians is a bit dishonest considering that most conquered areas didnt even become majority Muslim for centuries. Persia for example was Zoroastrian well into the Abbasid era and Christianity was long very prevalent in Egypt and the levant.
It was relatively peaceful compared to other empires, /pol/ will have you believe hundreds of thousands of arabs on horses exploded out of the gulf for the first time in history and slaughtered the entire middle east and north africa though
>>522831
>The early Muslims were quite fair in respecting local religions if they paid a Jizya tax( keep in mind that Muslims paid a Zakat tax).
No.
Also, revisionist arab detected.
>>523663
Care to present an argument?
>>523668
he won't
>>523668
Care to read the thread? All the arguments were presented above.
You come in and spew your blind revisionist tripe without looking at the discussion.
>>523673
If you have to samefag at least do it properly.
Mind the number of posters, it did not go up, see this is how you can tell without the IDs.
>>523680
Wwhat?
What's with everyone in this thread? Why are you guys completely ignoring the other side to this issue
If you took these post at face value they would have you believe that nobody cares and everyone just happily accepted their new Muslim overlords. But that ignores the several major Zoroastrian rebellions in Persia, the Byzantines bitter fighting to hold them off, and the Muslim raids on southern Italy and most of Southern Europe
I don't think you can really say conquest is ever peaceful. if someone claims so then they have an agenda
I also don't think it's correct to look at the Mongols who would slaughter an entire city to keep the rest of the population in line and then look at Muslims or Christians or Roman conquests and say:
>see the Mongols killed 100,000 when they came to this area but x only killed 30,000, what an enlightened and peaceful people
>>523906
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisegesis
I don't see a single poster who's argued anything you've indicated in your post. The consensus here seems to be "it was no bloodier than your usual conquest" which doesn't even come close to "everyone just happily accepted their new Muslim overlords".
Also note the original post itself has shaped the discussion in some way by specifically bringing up religious tolerance and the issue of how comparitively or relatively "peaceful" Islamic expansion was
>>523680
or maybe anon commented previously on this board you fucking retard
>>523953
>commented previously on this board
Holy shit you don't even know how this place works. Throw yourself off a window you fucking newfag.
>>525085
not the guys you're talking to. But hot damn you're a prick.
>>525116
>hot damn you're a prick
Is reddit having a field trip today?
>>522075
Weren't the Muslim conquerors (slightly) better than the Byzantines in their treatment of the conquered Christians - since they didn't see repressing heresy as part of ruling places like Egypt?
They weren't all that bad except in Pakistan and Persia.
The Egyptians and other peoples welcomed them with open arms because the Jizya tax was actually better than Byzantine taxes. And they didn't persecute non-orthodox christians.
>>525232
As long as non muslims paid the jizya, a tax, they were supposedly allowed to coexist.
Though what they really crack down on is different interpretations of the qoran
So similar to the orthodox to protestants, but I believe more harsh
>>523906
Well everyone was happy until white people showed up to "liberate"
>>522831
>The "spread by the sword"meme propagated by conservative historians
Christianity was created by a hobo and spread through the Roman empire and beyond touching the hearts of millions trough the power of its message alone before any kind of violence was involved.
Islam was created by a warlord who had to engage in warfare to spread his badly pieced together compilation of local legends from the start. It never had a chance to prove the validity of its message because coercion was involved from the get go and his religion was following his conquests. Then later gold and commerce were the main motivations for the fringe tribes muslim traders reached.
All the other big religions have propagated a disproportionate amount trough pure proselytism compared to warfare and oppression. Islam is the only exception. And the current situation in the middle east only confirms the root of this religion is violence.
>>522052
I bet she is a muslim
>My housemate is a history buff and she told me that muslims just came to places and declared it to be under muslim ocntrol and only ever fought when they were opposed by an army
Why uh
why would they fight unless they're being opposed by an army
>Futhermore she claims people had many freedoms like freedom of religion and people who were a part of the muslim caliphate experienced a golden age
They had a tax for non-believers and then started taking away other rights, until it got to outright persecution
>"history buff"
so a reddit memestorian
>>525377
*non-Muslims that were part of an Abrahamic faith. But non-Muslim men were forbidden from marrying Muslim women while the inverse was not true and on top of that pagans were faced with conversion or death.
>>525767
>while the inverse was not true
It was however greatly discouraged and denounced.
>>525736
>Christianity was created by a hobo and spread through the Roman empire and beyond touching the hearts of millions trough the power of its message alone before any kind of violence was involved.
lol, christianity was spread only because some roman emperor decided it was useful for the roman elites. and then he began forcing it on everybody.
>Islam was created by a warlord who had to engage in warfare to spread his badly pieced together compilation of local legends from the start. It never had a chance to prove the validity of its message because coercion was involved from the get go and his religion was following his conquests. Then later gold and commerce were the main motivations for the fringe tribes muslim traders reached.
nope. islam was not created by a warlord. he was nothing but a trader. and if could not convince enough people around him to convert he would have died and unknown death. he became a leader when he had gained enough followers. and leaders defend their people. islam did not spread by the sword. it was taken up voluntarily by people in the middle east. christianity worships the god of vanity and the claims of it being peaceful is just that and indulgence in vanity. european christianty from the very beginning was a tyrannical religion that spread by vanity.
>All the other big religions have propagated a disproportionate amount trough pure proselytism compared to warfare and oppression. Islam is the only exception. And the current situation in the middle east only confirms the root of this religion is violence.
the current situation in the middle east is the result of the nation state disease. this created was invented by europeans who still worship the god of vanity, in another name. this disease led to the deaths of tens of millions in europe. when this disease was brought to eastern europe it caused the the two world wars. now this disease, that the eurpean calls enlightenment, has been brought to all of humanity.
>>525736
>All the other big religions have propagated a disproportionate amount trough pure proselytism compared to warfare and oppression
islam is simply not a proslytising religion. name one muslims organization that goes around the world proslytising non muslims to islam. there is none. while there are plenty of them in christianity. one would think that if islam was so desperate for converts that it would force people to convert, there would at least be some muslims organization dedicated to doing it peacefully as well. calling islam an evangelizing religion is european delusion. it is delusion born out of vanity. since the european worships the god of vanity in its many forms.
>>525767
>pagans were faced with conversion or death.
prove it. how is it that pagans still survive in iraq till today. when iraq was the place of capital of muslims caliphate and power for centuries. i am talking about the yezidis. also the zoroastrians still living in iran. your claims is another western invention that the west invented in its worship of the god of vanity.
>>526037
>lol, christianity was spread only because some roman emperor decided it was useful for the roman elites. and then he began forcing it on everybody.
By that time it had already peacefully spread in a considerable proportion of the eastern half of the Empire. If it was just some fringe sect it would have never reached the Emperor. Retard.
>lol
>namefag
And filtered.
>>526048
>islam is not a proselytizing religion
>says the paki
>>522052
Since the goal was to conquer, not to destroy, it makes sense that a lot of people were left alive so that they could continue to maintain a level of civilisation for their new masters to enjoy.
>>526262
you comment makes no sense. people in pakistan converted to islam of their free will when they came in contact with muslims. much like the rest of the world. how does that mean that muslims were going around trying to convert non muslims in pakistan.
>>525736
>Islam was created by a warlord
He didn't become one until after he "found" his faith
>All the other big religions have propagated a disproportionate amount trough pure proselytism compared to warfare and oppression.
The Muslim army initially didn't force conversion on anyone. Sure in many instances it became easier for a person to convert rather than keep their original faith, but again in some instances it was easier for someone not too. Like someone else said earlier the Umayyads were extremely arab-centric to the point where they tried to keep non-arab conversion to a minimum because they didn't want them filling important positions or from becoming powerful. The Ottomans were guilty of this to an extant too. And to claim that Christians didn't force conversion at the point of the sword is a flat out lie because 1st hand accounts from the people that did it exist.
>muslims just came to places and declared it to be under muslim ocntrol and only ever fought when they were opposed by an army
That's how invasions work. Those were also very weak regions during that time period. The Muslims were just organized enough to take advantage.
You have to remember that Egypt was not a strong civilisation following their "collapse" during the bronze age. Everyone with an army conquered them from 1000BC to present. Even a country as small as Israel did some respectable damage in a week.
The Muslim conquest, like most conquests, was a matter of timing, not some disillusioned sense of morale superiority. The British Empire didn't grow while the Spanish Empire collapsed because they were "better" people. Actually, the Spanish suck so that was a bad example.... but you know what I mean.
>>526795
>people in pakistan converted to islam of their free will when they came in contact with muslims
;^)
>>522075
Look up what the Caliphate did to the Copts if you want some first rate gore.
>>527348
How about how many BTUs it takes to burn a body? All during a fuel shortage.
>>526054
zoroastrianism wasn't considered paganism according to islam, apparently.
as for the yazidis, they either got really lucky or did a damn good job at convincing their conquerors that they were technically monotheistic.
in sicily christians literally invited them to colonize
>>522052
By all accounts the early Islamic conquest were quite civil. There were a number of big battles and tens of thousands of people died, but I can't recall any slaughters of civilian populations off the top of my head. They allowed people to practice whatever religion they wished so long as it only had one god and they payed a tax.
Even up to the thirteenth century, under the Abbasid Caliphate, the Muslim world was a center of learning and progress. This is largely due to the influence of the largely secular Mu'tazila school. It believed that good and evil were not determined by scripture, but by logic and reason. It was ultimately the mongols who would finally come in to rape, burn, and destroy (as they're wont to do), and put an end to this period of relative stability and peace.
After the complete collapse of the Abbasids, the school of Ash'ari came to prominence. Ash'ari believed that it was only through divine revelation that one could know good from evil and acted accordingly. Free thought and reason were suppressed, Greek philosophy scorned, schools shut down, and libraries burnt.
Granted, the Islamic Golden Age was largely caused by the Islamization of Persia and the flood of Persian scholars into Baghdad. The Abbasid Caliphate was essentially a Arab dynasty run by Persians with Turks fighting their wars. It was in the 650s that the Abbasids really started trying to convert the landed gentry and suppress any and all resistance to Islam through force, and it was in 930 AD that laws were passed requiring that all bureaucrats be Muslim.
>>528118
>They allowed people to practice whatever religion they wished so long as it only had one god and they payed a tax.
Except with a ton of restrictions, regular unwarranted crackdowns, pogroms and destruction and being treated like a second class citizen.
Nice try moslem apologist.
>>522052
>My housemate is a history buff and she told me that muslims just came to places and declared it to be under muslim ocntrol and only ever fought when they were opposed by an army
That doesn't sound terribly peaceful. It sounds like declaring yourself ruler of a territory and then crushing any resistance.
>>527357
They didn't do anything particularly bad to Copts..
Copts are somehow incessantly annoying.. They like to claim they are the only "true Egyptians" and everyone else is a Bedoin invader.
>>526037
Achmed you're a retard
>>528412
All of that was incredibly tolerant for the time period. Look at what happened to the Pagans in Europe...
>"durr hurr Mozlem apoligizt"
nice buzzwords
>>528485
Well m8 to be fair they don't call themselves Arabs unlike Muslim Egyptians
>>528801
Copts are arabs tough.
They speak arab,their culture is arab with some leftovers from ancient times(like all arabs outside the gulf).
The only difference is that they are christians
>>527357
look up what the Byzantines did to Copts while you're at it
Alexandria fell without much of a fight while outnumbering and outclassing the attackers partly because the current prelate was sent over purely to terrorise the Copts out of existence
>>522052
It was absolutely peaceful. Everyone willingly submitted to the peaceful and enlightened muslims.
Compare this to the evil christian white men. Evil christian white men plundered the world and killed over 6 billion people.
>>528500
The middle east literally went from being the roman empire to being governed by ISIS.
How the fuck is that an improvement?
>>528935
some things may have happened in between
>>528935
if you actually believe this than you are literally too retarded to reply to
>>528984
>Hello Muhammad.
Hello.
How are you today, Arnold?
>>528984
Here's your (You)
>>529025
>Do you have anything relevant to say besides "I'm a historically illiterate moron"?
That does sound pretty relevant though.
>>528894
any proofs?
>>529033
kek'd
>>529052
What do you want? Proof that the Roman Empire extended into the Middle East? You could just check out wikipedia for that.
I'm curious how you're rationalizing that a bunch of fanatic camelfuckers were better than the romans. You're literally arguing that if ISIS were to conquer Europe today it would be a net improvement.
>>522052
>My housemate is a history buff and she told me that muslims just came to places and declared it to be under muslim ocntrol and only ever fought when they were opposed by an army
>Futhermore she claims people had many freedoms like freedom of religion and people who were a part of the muslim caliphate experienced a golden age
>go somewhere, declare it to be yours and kill those who oppose you
how peaceful
what was she arguing for exactly?
>>525122
fair enough.. fucking /pol/fags tho...
>>528908
Nah man. /po/ taught me that the Byzantines were the epitomy of White Aryan Roman civilization that defended all christians until the evil Muslims came and raped the white out of them and burned le ebbin library of alexandria
>>529697
>ethnic cleansing
let me guess... you think the Sassanids were le white Aryan masterace before the evil Arabs came in and turned them into brown Muslims....
>>526037
>islam was not created by a warlord.
yes it was
holy shit this is fucking fundamental to the religion and the quran is the telling of the life of muhammad and what he did while he was a warlord
>he became a leader when he had gained enough followers. and leaders defend their people.
like warlords
>christianity worships the god of vanity
all abrahamic religions worship the same god
>lol, christianity was spread only because some roman emperor decided it was useful for the roman elites.
NO NO NO
this is a fucking history board you stupid nigger, even people with the shallowest understanding of history aren't this stupid
christianity spread from the BOTTOM up, through slaves and commoners to their masters and patrons and of course through the army all of whom had to worship in secrecy at first before the emperors took up the religion
>and then he began forcing it on everybody.
who is HE?
that one emperor lad who lived for thousands of years forcing his immortal will on everybody?
get your shit together you paki namefag
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_the_Library_of_Alexandria
The Arabic barbarians destroyed over 1000 years of knowledge, including mathematical proof that the world was round. To be fair the Romans had spread the idea that it was flat despite the Greek knowledge to the contrary, but it is inexcusable how much knowledge was lost. It also laid the foundations for Ottoman violence against greek and balkan christians, and even the Armenian genocide.
>>525736
>Muhammad spread Islam through coercion from the get go
Read a book m8. Muhammad and his handful of followers spent 10+ years having sanctions placed on them, isolated, tortured, killed and ultimately exiled to Yathrib (currently Medina)
>this is a /his/ board
gets the facts then.
>>529784
surely it was virtually empty after all the other times it burned down
was architect of the library a hereditary job given to a family of people with severe substance addiction?
a lot of christians died please refrain from posting this i'm a christian and am offended if you want to hurt peoples feelings go back to pol mkay
>>529071
>comparing one of the biggest and most powerful empire of the world with an actual goverment which lasted for 600 years to a bunch of US-funded goatfuckers who have no idea what they're doing
Do you have braindamage or something?
>>529784
The library had been destroyed a bunch of times over by that point? Literally any army that entered Alexandria had a turn.
>all these people posting in a really unconvincing troll thread
it wasn't any more bloodies than roman or persian conquests of the time and it was far less bloodier than christian conquests
still Zoroastrianism and Tengrism are better religions than the Judean ones
>>525085
>throw yourself off a window
I-is this gonna become a meme?
>>528435
What is imperialism
>>530383
a way to help bring people together
>>530447
:^)
>>530360
Better how?
>>529025
>he allows his political beliefs to dictate his historical beliefs
>>522052
The conquest of Arabia was by force but the spread to Africa (not sure about the North but I doubt it was too bloody) was mostly peaceful. Mohammed died before Islam spread outside of the Arabian peninsula.
>>529784
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_the_Library_of_Alexandria
FROM YOUR OWN LINK
>The errors in the sources are obvious and the story itself is almost wholly incredible. In the first place, Gregory Bar Heræus represents the Christian in his story as being one John of Byzantium and that John was certainly dead by the time of the Moslem invasion of Egypt. Also, the prospect of the library taking six months to burn is simply fantastic and just the sort of exaggeration one might expect to find in Arab legends such as the Arabian Nights. However Alfred Butler's famous observation that the books of the library were made of vellum which does not burn is not true. The very late dates of the source material are also suspect as there is no hint of this atrocity in any early literature - even in the Coptic Christian chronicle of John of Nikiou (died after 640AD) who detailed the Arab invasion. Finally, the story comes from the hand of a Christian intellectual who would have been more than happy to show the religion of his rulers in a bad light. Agreeing with Gibbon this time, we can dismiss it as a legend.
>we can dismiss it as a legend
>dismiss it as a legend
>>531998
that's someones own personal opinion, not an accepted fact by historians everywhere
>>522052
Pretty bad. Cities that had been populated for a thousand years with populations that weren't reached again for another millenia were destroyed utterly.
e.g. Carthage.
Various smaller cities just vanished from the historical record, if you look at map of Roman north Africa for example, 99% of the cities vanished in the immediate aftermath of the Arab invasion. Africa province went from being the richest and most urban part of the former Roman Empire in the mid-6th century to being a shitty, desertified wasteland when the Arabs came along.
It wasn't a genocide, but they wiped out the entire urban culture of the areas they conquered, replacing them with a few major Arab garrisons like Cairo, Damascus etc.
>>532023
Didn't they just replace Carthage with Tunis, another large urban centre a few hundred metres away?
>>532011
What historian actually accepts that the Library was destroyed by 7th century Arabs as fact?
>>531163
Really? That's sad. Didn't know they were that cucked.
>>533969
Only Coptic diaspora are desperate to separate themselves from Arab culture when many of the founders of modern Arab nationalism were Christians.
>>533976
Yeah, it's understandable. Being a Christian Arab in a secular country is better than being a dhimmi in a Muslim one.
>>532041
>just replace Carthage with Tunis, another large urban centre a few hundred metres away?
Tunis already existed, Carthage was completely destroyed and the Arabs put a garrison in the nearby city of Thuni.
>>532284
>were ruined by Berber migrations and plague that preceded the Arab invasions, who began to build new cities.
You sound like an apologist, Africa was still incredibly urban and wealthy even after the Vandals and its reconquest by the Eastern Roman Empire. Berber raids had been devastating to certain areas like what is northern Libya and the former limes areas in Algeria, but the area covered by what is now modern Tunisia was still a fairly urbanised region (albeit with decline set in)
Plague was never anywhere near as catastrophic in the early middle ages as some historians like to make out.
The Berber migrations are mostly a meme, these areas had been inhabited by Berbers for centuries. Their patterns of alternating between raiding and pastoral agriculture had not altered in a thousand years. It was the Arab invasion that disrupted it.
If you look at this map
http://pelagios.org/maps/greco-roman/
Dozens of these settlements were sacked or outright destroyed. Hundreds more declined as a result of the Arab invasion, particularly in the Byzantine borderlands.
>>533994
The thing is the Arab Christian nationalists didn't really like religion very much at all, whether it was Christian or Muslim. And some of them tended to concede that if Arab nationalism was about the power and glory of the Arab people, Islam and Muhammad exemplified that a little better than Christianity:
>"Naturally, no man is capable of achieving what Muhammad achieved, however great he becomes. However, any man, however limited his capabilities, may emulate and act according to his capacity the example of life left as the legacy of Muhammad, as long as this person belongs to the mother nation that gave birth to Muhammad, or is a member of a nation that Muhammad used his power to give birth to. In the past, one person’s life summarized the life of a nation. Today the life of the whole nation in its new revival should become a detailed exposition of the life of its great man. Muhammad was all the Arabs. Let all the Arabs be Muhammad today."
>--Michel Aflaq
Under the dhimmi systems, even though there had always been a common Arab culture between the Muslims and Christians and even many Christians then saw Muhammad as something of an Arab forefather or wise man whose teachings were misunderstood by the Jews, but there had always been a consciousness of their distinct religious identities and so many Christians, like the Jews, debated on how close they should get to the Muslim "infidels".
The Christian Arab nationalists were probably as much against traditional Arab Christians who were accustomed to the dhimmi system and didn't want anything jeapordizing that social order they had grown comfortable with, which allowed segments of its leadership to hold privileged positions in Muslim imperial administrations (which was useful against other Christian opponents) while creating a sure enough barrier between "us," and "them". And since Jesus was going to come back any day then on behalf of the Christians, why should they seek any more power for themselves?
>>534140
>that quote
Just sucking up to Muslims who were and are the majority among the Arabs.
>>533999
Tunis was a small village that eventually turned into a major city, along with other North African towns like Algiers, Kairouan, Fez, Marrakesh, Rabat, etc.
The empire wouldn't have organized Africa into a praetorian prefect and then exarchate in the first place if there wasn't a need for a governor with substantial military authority. Tunisia was not spared, and local capitals like Hadrumetum were sacked in the Berber revolts and are not mentioned again as places of any importance until they were rebuilt around the 9th century and after, like Sousse.
>Plague was never anywhere near as catastrophic in the early middle ages as some historians like to make out.
Sure, okay, Justinian's Plague was only kind of catastrophic. A few million, no big deal. And the Byzantines definitely weren't pushed to the coast holding only a few key ports by the end of the 6th century compared to the extensive urban network of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. It was just a little decline, a meme plague, and business as usual. All those cities the post-Islamic Arab-Berber dynasties built, especially in current day Morocco and Algeria, just big camp sites.
The Arab destruction you're talking about comes from the later raids of the Banu Hilal confederation around the 11th century, but we're talking about the 7th century Rashidun-Umayyad conquests, which continued the urbanization already present (not much due to the Berber revolts) and even revived some of the decline through to the 10th century.
>>534188
It's really impossible for any Arab Christian to hold his or her Arab identity and hate Muhammad as a person desu
In traditional Arab Christian circles, those who hated Muhammad tended to also hate the fact that Christians had become Arabized.
Arab Christian Bibles and liturgy also tended to borrow Qur'anic terms in order to translate Christian concepts (eg. the 99 Names of Allah in the Qur'an suddenly start getting used to describe Yesu/Isa/Allah) and Christian apologetic literature attempted to prove Christianity by appeal to the Qur'an, not just by appeal to the authority of the Bible.
Some Christians complained about how "Christians have forgotten their language (Latin, Greek, Aramaic, etc.) and read the great Arab poets blah blah blah." Others seemed to have embraced the Arab cultural identity as a way of expressing Christian truth. But the problem was that almost everything Arab about themselves, they owed to the Arab culture brought by the Muslims which was permeated by the influence of Muhammad and the Qur'an. The old pre-Islamic Arab culture, including that of the pre-Islamic Christians had been replaced by one which bore the Muhammadan stamp. The only way to justify the Christian embrace of Arab identity to either their fellow Christians or the Muslims without converting formally to Islam was to portray Muhammad as something like a "noble pagan," along the lines of the Greek philosophers or even Christianize him and the Qur'an.
The Christian Arab nationalists were different in that they sought to secularize Arab identity in general. They continued the tradition of Christians attempting to paint Muhammad in a more positive light and in such a way that could be acceptable to Christians who liked their Arab identity, but with the aim of making him a secular national socialist hero against not only the Muslim religious portrayal but also the Christian apologetic portrayal.
>>534270
>Arab Christian Bibles and liturgy also tended to borrow Qur'anic terms in order to translate Christian concepts (eg. the 99 Names of Allah in the Qur'an suddenly start getting used to describe Yesu/Isa/Allah)
Can you elaborate on this?
Are all of the 99 names of Allah specific to Islam? I think I read that at least ar-Rahman was used by Arab Christians and Jews before Islam.
>>525120
Jesus fuck, /pol/. The adults are talking.
>>534478
>Can you elaborate on this?
According to scholars of Arab Christianity like Sydney H. Griffith, there are distinct Islamic influences on the culture and religion of Arabic speaking Christians, most notably when one looks at traditional Bible translations.
Arabic was not a very prominent language among Christians. Even in Arabia before Muhammad, most Christian Arab liturgies were in the languages of the churches to which they belonged, like Aramaic/Syriac, Greek and the like. There is also no evidence to suggest that any extensive translations of the Bible existed in Arabic before Muhammad. Arabic Bible interpretation at that time was mostly an oral thing, which could change between orators based on their individual emphases. We don't have anything written by Christians before Muhammad to compare to later Arab Christianity.
When one looks at Arabic Bibles after the expansion of Islam out of Arabia, they range in their level of mastery of Arabic, but one thing becomes clear: the better the individual translators' mastery of Arabic language, the more "Qur'anic" the Bible starts to feel. This is because both written and spoken Arabic these Christians knew was more or less standardized by the Qur'an.
So, when a Christian and Muslim argued about what it meant that Jesus was the "Word of God" or "Logos" in Arabic, they were generally speaking of what the term "Kalimatullah" actually meant and this couldn't be done without some understanding of what this word meant in its Qur'anic context. So when it came to translating the Bible, Arabic writing Christians weren't writing to convert Arabic speaking Muslims as much as they were writing to Arabic speaking Christians who knew a colloquial Arabic derived mainly from Qur'anic Arabic better than the standard liturgical language. If a community was more thoroughly Arabized, then usually the Arabic translation of the Bible used less Arabized Aramaic and Greek words and more terminology directly from the Qur'an.
>>535005
cont'd
It would be impossible for Arab Christians to try to restore a pure pre-Islamic Christian Arabic because the only Arabic they knew was that given to them by Muhammad's scripture which functioned a lot like a standard dictionary for all subsequent Arabic dialects. For many classical Christian translators, the goal was to strike a balance, where the Arabic they would use in their translation would retain the basic meaning it would have for both Muslims and Christians (with Christians mainly in mind) and yet it would still retain some of the meaning it had in either Latin, Greek Hebrew or Aramaic. This was of course easier for Eastern Christians because many of them were Orthodox/Apostolic and had a greater openness to translating the Bible into the languages of different cultures than say Western Christians who by this time had come to accept Latin as the only acceptable language for the Bible, which at least in Muslim controlled Iberia led to sharper divisions among those Christians who had become Arabized and those who attempted to resist Arabization and lamented the loss of Latin's prominence among the Christians more than those further East, who simply adapted to the new cultural circumstances..
The result was some translators making Arabic Bibles with more profound traces of Islamization, in as much as Arabic terms were used whose popular or standard meaning were taken mainly from their Quranic context instead of simply Arabic versions of words from other languages that didn't already exist in the Qur'an.
In the same way it might be said that Celtic, Greek or Russian Christianity still retains elements of these pre-Christian cultures that make them distinct from other Christian cultures, it might be said that Arab Christians and Muslims share a distinctly Muhammadan culture/philosophical outlook, which contact to the West has challenged as much for Arab Christians as Arab Muslims.
Didn't akhbar have an easy time in India with the rajputs
