How come the Middle East lacked continuously existing nations compared to Europe? At some point there was a France, an England, a Spain and Italy and so on, but whenever you look at maps and timelines of the Middle East it's mostly dynasties, with maybe an Egypt or a Persia that was more like another dynasty whose borders happened to coincide with modern Egypt/Iran? Even when dealing with barbarian or tribal states it's usually an ethnonym for European kingdoms like Visigoths or Lombards or Saxons while the same kind of thing in the Middle East tends to get named for a founder of a dynasty like Sassanids, Arsacids, Abbasids, Seljuks, etc. Even India and China are kind of like this.
How come there wasn't a King of Syria like there was a King of France?
>>718696
Nationalism is a relatively new idea that originated in Europe. Before Napoleon there really wasn't a France or an Italy like we refer to it today.
However, because of nationalist revisions of history we tend to look at Europe through a lense of the currently defined nation-state borders.
>>718696
It doesn't really have so much to do with the difference between the concepts of nations as it does the difference between the concept of titles. In Europe, the title of a count, duke, king, baron, or whatever would be pretty clearly defined by what they ruled over. In the Islamic world it didn't really work that way. Titles were less definite, but were still things that could continue through different people, just based on influence, and not clearly what they rule. In the same way a Saxon and later a Norman could both be "King of England", an Abbasid and way later a Fatimid could both be the "Caliph".
>>718708
they didn't have treaty of westphalia
>>718696
Maps do not tell you the whole story.
Arab writers, just like Europeans, were obsessed with describing the qualities of different peoples. It usually hinged on the qualities of a provincial center and its hinterland. Areas like "Baghdad" and "Damascus" were recognized as being distinct cultural units. No matter what dynasty ruled over an area, contemporaries referred to them by place names, not by the names of rulers.
There wasn't a "King of Syria" like there was a "King of France," because sovereignty was not so clearly articulated. Figuring out the exact area over which a ruler ruled is still very difficult, and we have to rely almost entirely on coins found in an area that correspond to a particular ruler and the names of rulers read out in Friday prayers in Mosques.
>>718725
There were local rulers with increasing amount of land and hierarchy though.
I mean, Persians had that back when they made their first empire. Which also is the first empire to ever exist if I remember correctly.
>>718696
Lol, Europe was the same thing.
There was a King of France. Equally important however was the Dukes and COunts who at times for most of the medieval ages acted like their own country.
>Even when dealing with barbarian or tribal states it's usually an ethnonym for European kingdoms like Visigoths or Lombards or Saxons
Fun fact: those entities you described contained people from other tribes. And Romans. Lots of Romans. Turns out to be "Saxon" just means "I swore an oath to a Saxon King. All that bullshit with language was revisionism by 18th-19th Century nationalism.
Not to mention that clusterfuck that is the
>H
>R
>E
Thinking that nations are inevitable is some serious fucking progressivism.
>>718708
Don't fall into the trap of moving too far in the other direction.
Imposing 19th century ideas about nation-states backwards in history is problematic, but there is no doubt whatsoever that national identity is much older.
French writers in the 17th century, for instance, very clearly articulated a belief that they were French, a common people with a common culture, and identified other people, like the English, as belonging to an equally well defined "gens".
>>718696
>Even India and China are kind of like this.
Uh, no?
In China's case, dynasties only get used when you want to name the Government. If you asked what someone's race was, they'd say their race. Ask where his loyalty lies and he'll say "I'm a man of T'ang/Song/Yuan/Wei/McSweeneys." But they have a name for
1) Their country: Zhongguo
2) Their race(s): Han, Yue, Hmong
Except Zhongguo-ness is cultural rather than ethnic. A redhead whiteish looking Turk cunt can be Chinese if he spouts Chinese lingo, follows Confucius, and such. Admittedly Chinkiness (or to use the formal term: Huaxia) its based on Han culture but they (initially) never rejected people so long as they're Sinified.
As for India, its default existence for much of history is that of being several countries with their own cultures and language but sharing a similar, general culture. Much like Christian Europe.
>>718696
What about Persia?
>>718696
>>719284
>Middle East tends to get named for a founder of a dynasty like Sassanids,
Because Western Historiography?
Persia was based on a city state in Parsagadai. Hence the name. And hence its stupid to apply it to all Iranics.
Anyway, the Sassanids themselves did not call their empire "Sassanid Empire." It was Eranshahr."Kingdom of Iranians." Because as far as the -nids were concerned, they have united ALL the Iranics. Kurds, Hyrkanian, Daylami, Daha, Parni, Parsa, Hayastani (debatable), all of em.
>>719294
I was very surprised to read Sassanids and even Arabs during their Islamic expansion used more heavy cavalry than their Byzantine counterparts.
>>719299
The mass of Middle Eastern cavalry was Light Cavalry tho. Horse archers and cunts with javelins.
>>718696
They didn't call themselves that. Those are names given to them by western historians.
Similar examples exist in west, Byzantines never called themselves Byzantines, they called themselves Romans. Likewise Iberian Union wasn't called Iberian Union, it was called Spain because Spain used to mean all of Iberia consisting the kingdoms under it like Castile, Portugal and Aragon.
>>719305
Yeah but you keep hearing about how Byzantines used heavy cavalry but then you learn their enemies used it more (numerically) than they did, it is surprising.
>>719311
Well the Middle East/Central is horse country. There's so little you can do with, I dunno, Thessaly, Rocky Anatloia, and the Macedonian Plain.
>>719299
The Sassanids were always stronger military wise than the Romans
The Parthians were faggots which is why the Romans rolled all over them during the 1th Century
>>719277
Historically Zhongguo was either toponym for the central plains or a view that the dynasty was the continuation of Zhou civilization(see Korean/Japanese/Vietnamese reaction to the Qing).
Dynastic founders/nobility might trace their ancestry to the sage kings but this was also extended to non Hua polities e.g. Chu,Xianbei etc.
Ethnicity/Race are both anachronistic concepts,Sinitic speakers identified with former regional polities(Chu,Wu,Yan,Zhao etc.) or the current dynasty.
>>719255
>persians
>first empire
Akkadian empire was arguably the first.
Even if you don't accept that the Assyrians were definitely an empire as were the babylonians before them.
>>718696
Because of the age and development of the region, the frequency and fleeting nature of every dynasty, etc, the local population almost never assimilated into the identity of a conquering tribal aristocratic minority like European nations.
Due to Romanization the provinces of Western Europe no longer identified as tribes but citizens with legal rights and privileges. Old Celtic and other pre-Roman identities faded away except in the East. When the Germanic migrations rolled through you now had for example Franks who ruled over these citizens that now found themselves to be subjects ruled by a law subservient to Frankish law and identity. So eventually these citizens began to flock to Frankishness.
Fast forward a few centuries and you end up seeing the lines blur between the crown, the aristocracy, the land, and the people.
This almost happened in the Middle East with the rise of the Arabs, but unlike the almost uninterrupted continuity of Frankish rule the Caliphate was overrun about 300 years into its existence by Berbers, Turks, and Iranians who chipped away at its authority until only Islam remained. Rather than identity with the short lived and continuously overthrown tribes that came and went, the people formed their identity around their religious laws and traditions.
>>719277
>McSweeneys
I get that reference
>>719294
Is there a specific reason all those historical maps label what should be Iran/Eran as Achaemenids, Sassanids, etc?
>>718696
The idea of a nation state arose quite late in the near east. Rather, boundaries were defined by which Sultan, Emir,Malik, or Shah the particular city or province was sworn to. Europe was like this as well, prior to the Westphalian state system.
Also, ethnic/cultural lines are hardly defined in the middle east because ethnic and cultural groups overlap and are dispersed quite a bit. I'd say Iran and Turkey are the most relatively defined states here. Arab states were pretty much just created when Britain and France drew lines in the sand
>>721056
Yes: to track whose dynasty was ruling it.
Because there was major differences between Iranic Dynasties.
>Achamaenid
Persia
>Parthians
Arsacids, a Parni dynasty.
>Sassanids
Persians again. Only this time with some sort of Pseudo-Nationalism in the form of a concept of a Kingdom of All Iranic People.
>The rest
Utterly Muslim.
>>720966
RIP
>>721128
>Safavids
>Not reasserting the Iranian identity in Persia
I will never understand why this board likes to ignore the importance of the Safavid dynasty, since they were effectively the first Persian dynasty in Iran since the Sassanids.
>>721173
Well, I wanted to get to them but I dont have the time between naming all rulers of Iran since the Sassanids to the Safavids.
As you can tell, they're quite a lot past the Abbasids.
>>721173
>the first Persian dynasty in Iran since the Sassanids.
Wouldn't that be the Buyids or Samanids?
>>721194
Buyids, Ziyardis, Saffarids, Tahirids and Samanids never asserted total dominance over Iran, and pretty much coexisted all at the same time. There was no "Iran", just a bunch of warlords attempting to dominate the Iranian Plateau and Iraq.
Then the Seljuqs came, and it went downhill from there, until the Safavids.
Some people, however, like to consider the Timurids a Persian dynasty, but it has mostly to do with the fact that they were heavily persianized, which defies the point.
>>719294
>Persia was based on a city state in Parsagadai. Hence the name. And hence its stupid to apply it to all Iranics.
That happens all the time.
>>719450
You could say they're the first large-scale multicultural empire though (like Rome).
As far as I know the Persians essentially started out with Cyrus adding 4 other empires to his own domain.
Maybe the Babylonians would count as first though, considering they conquered and absorbed Assyria before the Persians conquered them.
>>720453
how wrong u r m8
The reason the Middle East doesn't have nation states like Europe is because several reasons, none of which you mentions.
First, Islam taught to not be tribal/nationalistic. Nationalism IS tribalism, and it's stupid and bad for everyone. Just look at WWI and WWII.
Second, the Islamic Empires functioned with ideals that are more related to American ideals than European ones. In that, your race doesn't matter, as long as we're unified under this idea (The idea of Islam in the Middle East, or Democracy/Liberty/Equality in the US, instead of Nation-State/Ethnicity).
Europe is an anomoly, due to it's open land, high population density, and winters cold enough to kill off diseases. This meant Europe had less smaller natural disasters, and less threats due to being small Peninsula of a Continent. That's why the Black Plague was worse in Europe: because everyone was packed together.
This population density meants that kingdoms based on ethnic groups (which basically meant language, as ethnic groups don't really exist and change constantly in everything but name, and even that changes, just more slowly). Those kingdoms established themselves before the Renaissance, and thus, became the status quo.
The Middle East, on the otherhand, has had a long history of different ethnic groups, living literally door to door (central Iraq, greater Syria, Iran, N Africa are all like this), and spoke Arabic as their unifier (much how English is the central language of the US, even though English ancestry is minority).
There are billions of other reason, too. but another major one was the recent fall and dissection of the Ottoman Empire, and the French and British drawing arbitrary lines based on what was beneficial to them politically (Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine never existed as separate regions, Iraq was 3 provinces under the Ottomans, most of N Africa was nothing like it is now).
That kinda implies Europe had "continuously existing nations", which it obviously didn't. The continent earliest nation-states (England and Portugal, arguably France and Spain) can only date back their "nationhood" ~500 years back.
Many others came much later. Germany and Italy only came into their own 150 years ago, and east europe is full of make-belief "nations' that really have no basis in anything pre-WW1.
>>721511
Azeri considered themselves Iranian, and are still today one of the main minorities of Iran, with Kurds and Armenians.
You don't have to analyze it with the ethnic nationalist modern concept, but with the cultural influence/religious concept.
Safavids intertwined Shi'a Islam to Iranian identity, and helped define, by reasserting political dominance, the concept itself of an Iranian nation-state.
Saying "but he was ethnically Turkic" doesn't really mean much, many Roman/Byzantine emperors weren't ethincally Latin/Greek.
>>719299
arabs mostly used light cavalry though
>>721535
I read somewhere that the Ghori Dynasty was related to Sassanian nobility. They were based in Afghanistan and mostly focused on conquering India, but they did rule Iran for some time
>>721766
All I know is that the consensus is they were ethnically tajiks, but had probably Sasanian Persian origins.
>The Ghurids came from the Šansabānī family. The name of the eponym Šansab/Šanasb probably derives from the Middle Persian name Wišnasp (Justi, Namenbuch, p. 282). After the Ghurids had achieved fame as military conquerors, obsequious courtiers and genealogists connected the family with the legendary Iranian past by tracing it back to Żaḥḥāk, whose descendants were supposed to have settled in Ḡūr after Ferēdūn had overthrown Żaḥḥāk’s thousand-year tyranny. The Šansab family was then brought into the framework of Islamic history by the story that its chiefs received Islam from the hands of Imam ʿAlī, subsequently aiding Abū Moslem Ḵorāsānī’s uprising against the Omayyads and having its power legitimized by being invested with Ḡūr by the caliph Hārūn al-Rašīd (Jūzjānī, Ṭabaqāt I, pp. 318-27, tr. Raverty, I, pp. 300-16, citing a versified genealogy of the Ghurids compiled for Sultan ʿAlāʾ-al-Dīn Ḥosayn Jahānsūz by Faḵr-al-Dīn Mobārakšāh b. Ḥosayn Marvrūdī, q.v.). It goes without saying that we have no concrete evidence for any of this. The chiefs of Ḡūr only achieve firm historical mention in the early 5th/11th century with the Ghaznavid raids into their land, when Ḡūr was still a pagan enclave. Nor do we know anything about the ethnic stock of the Ḡūrīs in general and the Šansabānīs in particular; we can only assume that they were eastern Iranian Tajiks.
>>718696
Only the huge empires have lasting nationalities in the middle East. Assyrians (Syriac Aramaic), Jews, Arabs, Persians. They all have a seperate language that was passed on continuously for centuries and they're all genetically distinct from each other. It's just that Arabs have the largest population and most land due to their previous conquests. Nationalities like Kurds probably originated from mountain dwellers and gypsies who came to the middle East from areas that were never heavily occupied, such as the mountains.
>>721276
Persian Revolt occured because they were tired of being mistreated and taxed into the dirt by Cyrus' maternal grandfather, the Median Empire's final ruler. Lydia, Egypt, and Babylonia all were allies of Media and declared war on Cyrus and that's how the Persian expansion happened.
>>719450
The Persian Empire or rather Achaemenid dynasty's empire was the first truly "global" empire. But I agree, it wasn't the first empire.
>>721511
Safavids are ethnically Iranian, not Turkish. They are and were Persianized Kurds and Azeris before Russians started that whole "Azeris are Iranian/Iranic and actually Turkic" propaganda in the 20th century.
>>721793
Tajiks are essentially Persian. They are Persians who colonized the areas outside of Pars (Shiraz/Iraq) to where Khorosan corresponds to Tajikistan and Afghanistan.
>>719250
>It usually hinged on the qualities of a provincial center and its hinterland. Areas like "Baghdad" and "Damascus" were recognized as being distinct cultural units.
Yea, basically this. My middle eastern grandmother refers to all Iraqis as 'Baghdadis'. She uses the words Iraq and Baghdad completely interchangeably.
>>719361
Not always it ebbed and flowed towards the end the Iranians did gain a definite advantage though.
>>723139
So they were more like city-states. Tunisia and Algeria are basically this, right?
>>724458
That's the way it used to be. They have a Nationalist view of the world now. Arab countries have stereotypes about each other, etc...
>>724458
Is that also why a lot of these recent civil wars seem to be about a distant major city and its sphere fighting the capital?
>>721524
>ast europe is full of make-belief "nations' that really have no basis in anything pre-WW1.
except, you know, language and culture
>>718708
No that's wrong. There was a france, and an england, and a scotland(even though they were under a single monarch), there was even a germany and an italy, even though they were politically divided, they were considered(by themselves and by outsiders) a nation. There was also a hungary and a greece even though they were under foreign rule.
Nations existed before the 19th century, saying they didn't is a marxist lie.
Quick question: What made nations based in Iran so strong throughout history? Was it the fact that the military hardness of the peoples there enabled them to often own Mesopotamia, one of the richest lands on Earth?
How was cavalry so important when Iran is so hilly and mountainous, which usually destroys cavalry's advantage?
>>724966
>so strong throughout history
What do you mean by this? There are tons of exceptions
LOW IQ
>>724588
Even that keeps changing every few hundred years.
>>724966
The three main powers in Middle East has always been those based on the Nile, in Anatolian Plateau and Persian plateau.
The current situation of KSA being the main Sunni Arab power and not Egypt is an aberration that will only last until either Egypt gets its shit back together or KSA runs out of oil
>>718696
I'll take that question in good faith, although it sounds absurdly stupid.
The idea of "nation" is very recent, and of Western origin. It is completely alien - and, in the case of Islamic Civilization, incoherent and incomprehensible.
The Islamic ideology guide to the premise - sharing, in certain respects, with medieval Christianity - a universal community, having the same innate prerogatives, and the same natural condition.
The state - as the "form of society" to use the words of Ibn Khaldun - was not, nor should be, tied to an ethnic identity. The tribe is a mere constituent element of the social environment - not to be confused with the society itself.
>while the same kind of thing in the Middle East tends to get named for a founder of a dynasty like Sassanids, Arsacids, Abbasids, Seljuks, etc.
These are modern and anachronistic classifications. They did not use those names.
The Sassanids ruled over the kingdom of Iran (Eranshah). The Arsacids on the Kingdom / Satrapy of Armenia. The Abbasids on the Caliphate (nothing else), and the Seljuks on a parallel military jurisdiction that did not constitute, and never formally constituted a state.
>>725134
There are exceptions, yes, but nations that dominated both Iran and Mesopotamia, as well as sometimes Egypt, Anatolia, Armenia, and Central Asia originated in Iran, whereas the opposite (states based in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, or Central Asia) dominating the rest is almost never true. So, how come? Iran is half practically uninhabited desert, how did the people there come to dominate nations with so much fertile arable land so often?
>>725208
But why the Persian and Anatolian plateaus? What exists there that enables main powers? Also, especially in early ancient history, Mesopotamia was the spring of the greatest powers.
>>725164
so you're trying to say the whole world is make belief?
>>725439 because those are the most geopolitcally significant areas in the region i.e. the ones that the most trade routes pass through. Persia lies at the intersection of a ton of land and sea trade routes, and Anatolia likewise. Also, those two plateaus have terrain just rough enough to give their people an edge in warfare, but not rough enough to make trade impossible. Thus, Iran and Turkey exist.
>>719267
Didn't people in Brittany and Southern France consider themselves a different people from Parisians? Not to mention, those from Flanders or the people from Alsace and Lorraine?
>>725484
Why is this concept so hard for people to understand?
I live in Florida, and around where I live there are stereotypes of Pasco county as a crack- and meth-riddled shithole with low property taxes and even lower property values. They consider us a different way, certainly, but consider each other, together, Floridians as opposed to Georgians, and have that Floridian identity.
>>725435
Iranian and Anatolian cities are fairly stable, Mesopotamian cities not so much. The changing course of the Tigris and Euphrates meant no city could expect its economic fortunes to last for more than a century or two before another town overtook it. Wealth might return eventually, but the point is one couldn't have a single political or military power base in this region past a few generations, and local aristocracies found themselves constantly moving. As itinerant merchants and statesmen they were unparalleled, but they couldn't raise a local force the same way their rivals in Iran could.
>>719294
>Hayastani (debatable)
No, it's not debateable in any way. Armenians are not Iranic, end of discussion.
>>719294
>they have united ALL the Iranics
>even though they were constantly fighting wars against Iranic horseniggers on the Northern borders
>>725484
French here, studying history, No.
>>725435
>Also, especially in early ancient history, Mesopotamia was the spring of the greatest powers.
Don't confuse greatest level of civilization with greatest power.
>>725281
I always wondered about how Middle Eastern factions would be defined in RTS games. The Turks, Egypt, and the Moors for example in M2TW. How should they be defined instead? It feels like most games construct the Western Medieval kingdom like France or England as the base, and then try to create Eastern factions in this image.
>>721511
Earliest known confirmed ancestors that the Safavids were claiming lineage from was a Kurdish-Persian Sufist. Turkic my ass.
>>726577
I think he meant that the situation of being united with the other Iranics was debatable, not their status as Iranics.
As an aside, why so butthurt amigo?
>>726591
What in the actual fuck.
>Uruk
>Akkad
>Assur
>Ur
>Babylonia
How are these not the greatest powers at those points in history? Aside from Egypt, who else was there besides hunter-gatherers and random plowniggers just starting to make villages?
>>728203
>why so butthurt amigo?
He's probably Armenian.
