History

[Furious]

The crusade thread has turned into a history thread somewhat and I have a few questions that I think would make for some inetersting responses, therefor...

The middle east is home to the earliest of civilizations.  

Why did "progress" and technology pass them by?

How does this affect the current affairs of the middle east?


F.

[Dowding]

Geography and climate? Certainly, early Islamic scholars were remarkably free to pursue their interest, while the Christian church was very prohibitive.

[Shuckins]

Furious,

The capture of Constantinople by Mehmed II, sultan of the Ottoman Turks, gave the Muslim world almost exclusive control of the fabulous wealth that flowed down the trade routes from India and China.  The Middle East reached the height of its civilization during the time of Suleiman the Magnificent, sultan of Turkey.  His reign marked the culmination of hundreds of years of progress in all areas of academic endeavour, architecture, and medicine.

His death marked the start of a slow decline not only of Ottoman power but that of the entire Middle East.  The Renaissance was in full bloom in Europe and nations such as France, Spain, and Poland were growing stronger.  The Turks suffered defeat at the Battle of Lepanto, which turned the Mediterranean into a European lake.  By the 1600s the Ottoman empire had lost control of the highly profitably silk and spice trades between Europe and Asia.  European naval powers opened new sea routes to Asia that bypassed the Turks and the Middle East entirely, destroying their trade monopoly.  This decline in trade wealth laid waste the economies of the Ottoman and Safavid Empires.  The breakup of the Turkish Empire in 1923, after the end of World War I, marked the end of the last great Muslim Empire.  During this period of long decline, Muslim civilizations lacked the capital necessary to industrialize and take advantage of newly developing technologies.

Regards, Shuckins

[Kanth]

I think that it must be breaks in knowledge, unstable tribal factions as government doesn't promote the passing down of knowledge.

especially if you lose your thinkers in war.

Any time you have a large break in your civilization you will most probably lose all scientific information gathered up to that point because you have no records or the people who could understand them are all dead.

wipe out a people and destroy their records and their knowledge is lost to any that may have lived but are uneducated.

I'm not a history buff by any means (AT ALL) but the passing down of knowlege and the encouragement of creativity and invention has to be sustained for progress to occur.

along the lines of if 99.9% of the population of humans on earth died out just now, we would not be able to sustain the level of technology that we have today because those few wouldn't know how to do everything.

if all records were destroyed we would lost alot of scientific information, in fact all but the basics would be lost.

larger group of people (with circumstances), more specialization, better chance of winning wars etc...


in tribal factions you are keeping all of your knowledge within your tribe and not within a larger group...easier to wipe them out, than to wipe out the people of a continent who are sharing information.