Archaeology and early Islam

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), May 27, 2013 at 08:23

Dr. Pipes

Very good reading you also wrote

Basically, yes. The striking thing about Islam is its early success (in the 7th and 8th centuries). If you'd looked around the world at that time the cities of Damascus, Cairo and Baghdad were centres of commerce and technical development and literacy and medicine. This was the great period of Islamic civilization. Then things stopped roughly around 1200 A.D., partly as a consequence of the Mongol invasions and the dominance of the theocrats.

I have to disagree with you here as the archaeological evidence is revealing that the Arab invasion of the Middle East not only dragged Europe in the "dark ages" but it also led to dragging the civilized Middle East into the same dark ages and that the first 300 years of Islam and Arabian imperialism were no more than destruction of the cities and country-side of the late antique world and indeed Egypt is a case in point where the only two monuments that were built in Egypt in the first 300 years of Islam in Egypt and they are The Mosque of Amr Ibn al-As as well as The Mosque of Ibn Tulun (which is now believed to have been built in the 10th century) and there is also evidcence that the Egyptian falaheen were abandoning the land and in some cases whole towns were abandoned (as in the case of Jeme in Upper Egypt) and there were revolts (eg: the bashmour uprising) that led to more destruction as the peasants could not afford the taxes imposed by the Arabs be it the jizya or the kharj tax and the population declined very fast and the city of Alexandria declined very fast

You do not see any palaces or bath houses or high ways or monuments in Egypt for 300 years and why is that!

Even in the case of "opulent" Baghdad the archaeological evidence is lacking and why is that?

The answer at least to me is very clear that the Arabs wanted to loot and destroy and then leave as they expected that the Greeks will chase them out but when no one came to resuce the civilized in the Middle East and when the civilized realized that the Arabs are not going any where the economies started to flourish and expand and it was the native people that brought the opulence of the so called Islamic civilization and not the Arab invaders that only wanted to loot rape and destroy

So much for the opulence of early Islam

So what are we left with? not than 200 years of "opulence" that was brought to a halt by the reactionary Ulama that had no like for logic or science and the Mongol invasion was no more than the straw that broke the camel's back and ended the Islamic civilization

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