More questions and few answers and the Arab invasion of the Middle East and beyond and the dark ages

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Feb 5, 2013 at 13:58

Ianus you wrote

Hi, dhimmi no more !

Hi ianus

> So the picture that emerges from Egypt by the 10th century is an Egypt that was wealthy and the bread basket of the ancient world to a very poor underpopulated country deep into the dark ages and one can only blame the Arabs and their invasion of Egypt <

What you write about Egypt strongly reminds me of Iran after the Arab conquest - a long dark age of a highly developed culture enslaved by an alien barbarian army inspired by a regressive cult. I remember a book which presented the results of excavations of Russian archeologists in the Khorasan area (Transoxania/Bactria) pertaining to the period of early Arab invasions there. The picture of horrors, massacres, plunderings and mass and wanton destruction that later literary sources hint at has been fully borne out by the archaeological evidence on the ground - a thick layer of ashes and broken, cut and scattered human bones and crushed skulls in Sassanid towns and fortresses from around the mid-7th to the early 8th century.

I'm not sure if you are also aware that the so called dazzling Baghdad of the early Abbassids might have never existed in the way we are told by Islamic sources that it was as it seems that the archaeological evidence is revealing nothing and not a thing no palaces or mosques or even homes or gardens or bath houses or libararies and why is that?

Ctesiphon? that is a different story

Now the excuse we are given by Muslims is that the evidence might be hidden under modern Baghdad! But the funny thing is that London which was a very small town archaeology revealed a lot of information about it so someone is a liar here

But another point is worth stressing too. What we describe as the Dark Age was a deliberate long-term policy of the Arab invaders.e

I do happen to believe both Pierrens and Scott that it was the Arab invasion that was the cause of the so called dark ages (and it was not the Barbarian invasions) and not just in Europe but also in the Middle East, Egypt included, and that there was total destruction of cities but more significant is the Arabs brought with them goats which ate all that was planted in the fields which means less food which means starvation and decline in population but the most significant disaster brought by the Arab invasion was the fact that the papyri trade came to an end as it was not safe to transport it from Egypt to Europe as the Arab piracy and slave trade made the Mediterranean sea very unsafe and in the case of Egypt Arabic became the official language of Egypt which led to the end of Greek as the litrary language of Egypt (in addition to Coptic) which was the real death blow to Hellenism in Egypt

Amazing crimes against humanity by the followers of the religion of Allah

Al-Biruni in his "Chronology of ancient nations "(p.42) has the following story :"Kutaiba ben Muslim had extinguished and ruined in every possible way all those who knew how to write and to read the Kwarizmi writing, who knew the history of the country and who studied their sciences . In consequence these things are involved in so much obscurity , that it is impossible to obtain an accurate knowledge of the history of the country since the time of Islam (not to speak of pre-Muhammedan times)."

I tend to read anything written by Muslim historians with suspicion because if they were not liars then they were making things up or telling us a story and no more

And Leo Africanus alias El Hasan ben Muhammed el-Wazzan-ez-Zayyati, confesses in his book "The history and description of Africa and the notable things contained therein " (translated by J. Pory , London 1600,v.1, p.166) that :"For certaine it is that at the same time the Persians lost those letters which were peculiar unto their nation; and that all their books, by the commendement of the Mahumetan prelates, were burnt least their knowledge in natural philosophie or their idolatrous religion might moue them to contemne the precepts of Mahumet".

He is alluding to the bogus story of the burning of the library of Ctesiphon by the Arabs which is just as bogus as the story of the burning of the library of Alexandria

Well I do not believe him either as the story of the burning of the library of Ctesiphon is also bogus

I had the great chance to attend a conference about 2 years ago and the topic was about the very early literary sources be it in pahlavi or Syriac of the Arab invasion of Iran and I was really surprised to hear that Fardawsi was silent in his Shahnemah about such claim by the Arabs and the burning of such library which makes Leo Africanus no more than another Muslim liar

So first you conquer a territory, plunder it, decimate and enslave its population, make them illiterate and rob them of their identity and past and then introduce your regressive Islam which you declare to be "light" and "a new golden age".

Sounds like islam to me

> What is most surprising is that if you examine let us say buildings built by Muslims in the 1st three centuries of Arabian and islamic imperialism you discover that this so called golden age of the umma the Arabs built only one mosque and that is the mosque of Amr Ibn al-As in today's Cairo and historians now believe that the Ibn Tulun Mosque was not built until the 10th century so you get the picture<

Why did they need to build any mosques if there were so many churches to plunder and change into mosques, I wonder ?

Not true the Arabs tell us that only 4000 Muslims invaded Egypt and yes this number is a real suspect that it is no more than the literary topos of 40, 400, 4000 but the truth is

1. The Arab importation into Egypt has been very limited

2. Egypt remained majority Coptic in religion and language for a fairly long period of time and that the conversion to Islam and the porcess of Arabization was very slow

3. Islam did not exist that early on in the way we know it now

4. We have reports by the Copts of Arab raids on monasteries like the ones located in Wadi el-Natrun just south of Alexandria and the Arabs were not looking for a place to pray but for gold and silver

But the real question that most historians of early islam cannot answer:

How can a few uneducated and poorly equipped ignorant Arabs invade and destroy the great civilizations of the late antique world be it Persia or the Byzantine Empire

unless the real invaders were really not Arabs but let us say Persians (we know that it was the Persians that made islam what it is and not the Arabs!) and yes this sounds crazy but so is also the idea that a few thousand Arabs can defeat great empires

It's a good old Mahometan tradition to sanction and encourage robbing and changing churches into mosques, isn't it?

And you forgot and to give 1/5 of the loot to Allah and Muhammad

But the real thing is they did not need churches to be converted to mosques this early on because there was only a few Arabs and islam was still undefined

Besides, what could illiterate nomads that invaded Egypt or Iran or Byzantium build ?

Very good question and this is why some historians of early islam are going back to the old questions how can a few ignorant Arabs defeat not one but two great empires

A tent in the desert ? And what the Egyptians felt towards Arabs is well illustrated by the symptomatic incident that took place during the great siege of Constantinople by the Arabs in 717/718. The Christian crews from Alexandria defected all to the Greeks even though they knew what horrible fate would befall their relatives left as hostages at home in Egypt.

I think that the Copts are the people that I respect the most because they were able to survive inspite of the barbarity of the Arabs and islam

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