SOCIOLOGY While discussing some aspects of Islam and the empire's contribution to western science and technology, we (family) revisited the PBS video "ISLAM: Empire of Faith" last night. Due to the recent developments in Iraq, Afhganistan and Iran - it is very interesting It is highly recommended if anyone is interested as to where the world could be going. The video is available as free rental from your local library too. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! http://www.pbs.org/empires/islam/ Looking at the next 200 years, serious discussion is welcome by those who saw/revisited the topic recently. Moderator, if we need to move the topic to another location, pls do so.
Islamic civilization was the civilization for Europe during a lengthy bout of history. Based on my limited knowledge I'd conjecture that the real fall of the Muslims began with their expulsion from Spain. That was the time that Christian Europe began to ascend to power, to conquer the world. For a time, Spain would have an Empire larger than that of Rome worldwide, and, don't forget, the same monarchs that gave Columbus his ships were the ones that expelled the Cordoba Caliphate to begin with. So, if the Muslims had managed to hold onto or take Spain back, maybe we'd be living in a different world today. Dhows instead of Galleons, you know?
Man. Assuming the United States even existed as it is, the U.S. would have a pretty different relationship with Mexico, I'd wager. Sounds like the premise for a Turtledove novel!
Well that'd be depending on where Britian played into all of this. Had the Muslims taken Spain i doubt the sun would have never set on the British Empire, or maybe that factor would never be a deciding fate of Britian and its eventual history. A different world however if what Pollux suggested took place.
The telltale sign, to me at least, of an empire's immenent doom is their use of mercenaries. If an Empire uses mercenaries more so than homegrown armies then they're done for. It happened to the Muslims and it happened to the Roman Empire. They were fighting wars they didn't have to fight, bickering amongst themselves, by using mercenaries. If you're not using your own men to fight then you shouldn't be fighting in the first place.
there's a book by kim stanley robinson called "the land of rice and salt" about a world where bubonic plague killed off christian europe and the muslims and chinese rule the world. follows the progression through time. good author he wrote the mars trilogy about terraforming mars, too.
USA. UK. Belgium, Germany, et cetera owe a huge debt to Charles Martel (Charles The Hammer). By the early 700's, the Arabs had taken over a huge amount of territory: Spain, North Africa, Turkey, The Middle East, and (I think) India. They started to invade the rest of Europe from their base in Spain. Charles Martel (grandfather of Charlemagne), met them south of Tours (France) in 732. Martel dealt them a crushing defeat, although the battle was initially some what in doubt. Charles was called the Hammer because he pursued defeated foes and attempted to annihilate (hammer) them. He pursued the Arabs, chasing them back to Spain and killing many on the way. The Arabs never again attempted to expand into Europe from Spain. If Martel had lost that battle, the forces of Islam would probably have taken over most of Europe, establishing an empire that might have prevented the development of what became the Western democracies. It was lucky for us and for the rest of the world that Martel beat them. An Islamic culture might have suppressed science in favor of religion, leaving us with the 10th century culture of the current Arab world.
I disagree, but we can only speculate. In the Medieval Era the Muslim world was the center of science, art and culture. Our white ancestors were busy clubbing each other with mammoth bones (not literally) and getting hammered on meade while the inhabitants of Baghdad (for a time, I believe, the largest and most beautiful city on the planet) were busy pushing their civilization outward into India and Asia. They also got pretty far into Europe, at their height, taking most of Spain and what was left of the Byzantine Empire (modern Turkey, which is, if you'll notice, relatively Muslim). In any case, given a choice, I would have taken Baghdad over any city in Western Europe at that point. Can any real city even be named? Paris I think was established by Charlemagne's dad, Pepin the Short, but I'm not sure. Londinium was hardly more than a little town after the Romans left it. There's Cordoba, in southern Spain, but that's a Muslim city until right before Columbus discovers the New World. Constantinople was a great city, but it can hardly be called a Western one, seeing as how it was dominated not by Catholicism but by the Christian Orthodoxy. Not to mention how it, like its sister city, Rome, was under nearly constant attack by barbarians. I think that the Arabs could have taken Europe and the undiscovered Western Hemisphere if they had wanted to. I think they lacked the impetus of the Europeans, the profit motive, that took their white buddies to China and America's eastern seaboard.
