Posts Tagged ‘Constantinople’
In social idiosyncrasies, the Devil is NOT in the Details
Note: Re-edit of “The devil is NOT in the details; (October 16, 2009)”
Details are the basis for any program execution. Do details bring people together to communicate, dialogue, and negotiate to reach compromises?
Strong with draft details, can each organization start to sort out the differences and comprehend the big picture? Why it is never the way around in social behavior?
The main wall that separate among communities is the concrete wall mixed with myths, general concepts, and abstract notions.
I will discuss two cases, one religious and the other of political nature.
First case:
After the crucifixion of Jesus, many Christian sects were born in the Near East in the first four centuries. Fundamentally, these sects were almost identical in applying the Jewish daily rituals or the Jewish 650 laws of “correct” conduct.
What separated these sects were abstract concepts that did not harm their peaceful coexistence in separate communities of believers: they never attacked by force one another. Actually, they tended to isolate their community from “outside” influence
Military persecutions started when the Church acquired central power in Constantinople; and entire “heretic” sects and entire communities had to flee to safety.
The Mighty Wall was erected after 325 AC when Byzantium Empire decided to adopt Christianity as the main religion of the Empire.
Thus, the central power concept of the Empire dictated that church should be centralized. Instead of focusing in negotiating on the details that split the various sects an upper abstract superstructure on concepts was imposed.
Concepts such as the dual nature of Christ, the deity of the threes (the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit), the virginity of the mother Mary and on. This time around, the sects were to join the Orthodox Church by force if need be: a central Empire cannot permit disunity, even on totally nonsense abstract conjectures!
Consequently, the labeled “heretic” sects had to flee beyond the eastern shores of the Euphrates River (to the Persian Sassanid Dynasty).
The Nestorian sect reached China and translated “their” Bible into the Chinese language. Many other “heretic” sects settled in the Arabian Peninsula.
The Christian-Jewish “Ebionite” sect was firmly entrenched in Mecca. The uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, Ain Warkat, was the Patriarch of this sect and Muhammad learned to read in the Aramaic Ebionite Bible.
Muhammad aided his uncle in the translation of this specific Bible into the Arabic slang of Mecca. Thus, Islam is originally a common denominator “heretic” Christian sect, one of many Christian sects in the Arabian Peninsula. The Prophet had to delete all the abstract notions to unite the sects; it was named Islam or the belief in the One and only God.
The strong animosity of the Catholic Church of Rome against Islam was not directed at a religion such as Buddhism or Mazdean but at a new “heretic” Christian sect usurping its central power in the Near East, the Orthodox Church .
The Orthodox Church in Constantinople was more lenient with Islam because it understood its genesis and the causes for the need of this new “heresy”: for Constantinople, Islam was the oriental counterpart of Protestantism to Rome when Islam became the dominant religion in the region.
It is said: “the enemy of my enemy is my ally”; this Machiavellian principle was lost to obscurantist Catholic Church. Rome was too far away and fought Islam with the ignorance of abstract concepts.
For the Catholic Church in 1,000 AC, Islam was doubly “heretic” instead of just the counterpart to the central Orthodox Church of the Byzantine Empire: it failed to realize that if Islam spread so fast and so widely it is mainly because most the labeled Christian heretic sects quickly converted to Islam as representing their system of belief against the monopole of Constantinople.
Second case:
The other case is the concept of a Syrian Nation with well delimited natural borders including Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and part of Iraq to the west of the Tiger (Dujlat) River.
This concept was highly widespread among the people of the region as the Ottoman Empire was dying during WWI. It was still even more alive during the mandate of France and Britain to the region (Near East) after WWI.
The people in the Syrian Nation speak one language and have the same customs and tradition. This nation was as natural as ABC; the immigrants were first called Turks during the Ottoman Empire and then they were all called Syrians regardless of location or religion.
The main problem is that the political parties spent two critical decades proving the evident (according to the newer definitions of the West for a Nation) instead of making the effort to developing draft detailed programs on the type of political administrative structure for this nation, the social representation, and election laws.
( For example, is it a Federal structure like the USA where each mandated State is fully autonomous with local government and local parliament, or provinces tailored made to religious, ethnic, and sectarian majorities, or loosely united States with open borders, common money, central army, or centralized foreign affairs; is Syria to be a monarchy and what kind).
Instead of discussing detailed programs, political parties mushroomed with abstract concepts not based on facts or pragmatic long-term goals.
The colonial “mandated powers” of France and England had field days of “dividing to rule”.
Every sect established its political party in every potential State claiming either total independence, or seeking a pan-Arabic Nation of Arabic speaking majorities in States, or Islamic Nation.
We watched the emergence of communist parties disclaiming the notion of affiliating to a nation, to sectarian parties claiming democracy, socialism, and progressive. The worst propaganda that was encouraged by the colonial powers is to incite citizens against the Syrian people with the objective of discrediting the word Syria and giving it a bad connotation.
Natural borders of chain of mountains, desert, or large rivers do not necessarily protect from invasions; natural borders certainly encourage people to trade and interact inside the borders. It is the internal rough geography and terrain that protects from outside military incursions.
Once a force crosses the border then Syria is an open land all the way to Egypt. Syria, or the Near East, was continuously occupied by foreign armies: these foreign invaders had to retreat quickly or get absorbed culturally.
Whatever monuments, constructions, temples, sport arena, or scholarly works that were attributed to invading nations (Persia, Egypt, Greek, Rome, or Arab) are basically the work of the Near Eastern civilization, their scholars, their craftsmen, and their adventurous business acumen.
The City-States in the Near East (Tyr, Sidon, Byblos, Ugarit, Mary …) competed in commerce and trade but never attacked one another militarily. In Greece, City-States frequently waged military wars against one another. The Near Eastern people adopted defensive strategy; even Carthage in its apogee refrained to antagonize Rome militarily.
Egypt and Persia frequent invasions in the Near East did not last long.
The Greek were absorbed: what Europe claim as Greek civilization is nothing less than the civilization of the Greek translating Syrians authors who spoke Aramaic.
Rome was finally absorbed: the Roman Laws are of the legal minds from the school of Beirut and the latest Emperors were born, raised, and educated in Syria.
The Byzantine Empire was fundamentally a Near Eastern Empire. The Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula were absorbed when Damascus was selected as Capital during the Umayyad Dynasty.
The “Arabs” were absorbed by the Persian civilization when the capital shifted to Baghdad.
The Mogul retreated quickly but established long lasting Empires in India and Afghanistan.
The Ottoman conquered this land and could not be absorbed: the Syrian people were already exhausted from many years of successive invasions, religious obscurantism, and immigration by scholars to greener pastures.
France and England retreated “officially” within two decades but kept deep footprints in the laws and the administration structure.
Implanted colonial Israel failed to retreat on time and is now being absorbed as Near Eastern State in social behavior, regardless of Israel propaganda attempts to seeking European image.
Consequently, failing to writing a draft on a possible administrative program for the Syrian Nation opened the door to abstract concept instead of working out negotiation and dialogue on pragmatic matters that concerned the people.
“Turkey Erdogan PM: You must read Byzantium civilization. You have got no excuses” by Bishop George Khodr
Posted by: adonis49 on: September 27, 2011
“Turkey Erdogan PM: You must read Byzantium civilization. You have got no excuses” by Bishop George Khodr
Turkey Erdogan PM delivered a speech in front of Arab foreign ministers in Cairo last week. He said that “Turkey shares with the Arabs the same ideology, culture, and set of values. In 1453, Mohammad II captured Constantinople and put an end to the Byzantium Black civilization…”
Orthodox Bishop George Khodr reacted and responded in the Lebanese daily Al Nahar on Saturday Sept.24. I am translated from Arabic a large portion of the article, taking a few liberty. Khodr wrote:
“What was so black in Byzantium civilization that the Ottoman Empire managed to whiten? What Erdogan means by ideology is Islam. Are the 12 million Christians in the Arab World excluded from sharing in that ideology? Erdogan said that a rebirth of civilization was erected on the ashes of Byzantium Black Civilization.
Byzantium civilization was the cornerstone for Europe Renaissance and the diffusion of scientific reasoning and investigation. Byzantium was the leading civilization for 4 centuries before the Arabic Empire and two centuries afterward. Byzantium disseminated public health and hospitals, primary and secondary schools, instituted universities… Byzantium was leading in medical fields such the eye, teeth, animal medicine…Byzantium spread philosophy, rhetoric, knowledge of public administration, translation of Greek works to Latin…
The Greeks of Byzantium immigrated to Europe and aided in establishing modern societies. In the first century of Arabic Empire, located in the Capital Damascus, the Omayyad dynasty focused on translating the Greek works (Math, engineering, music, cosmology, medicine, natural sciences…) into Arabic via the Aramaic language (Syriac) before it expanded and lead the world civilization in all fields till the 15th century…Erdogan PM: You must read Byzantium civilization. You have got no excuses”
The article expanded also on religious topics, which are out of the domain of my blog to disseminate. Fact is, it was during Byzantium Empire (325 AC to 1453) that Christianity started persecuting other Christian sects (named heretics) on the ground of not bowing to the State proclaimed religion. This centralized tradition in religious affairs was transmitted to Catholic Rome, which imposed the Dark Age in Europe ( particularly the Inquisition) from 400 AC to way after the 17th century. Catholic Rome prohibited sciences and tamed all kinds of rational thinking and expression of opinions…
Fact is, it was during the Byzantium Empire that Christian sects in the Middle -East suffered the largest waves of immigration to Empires that didn’t persecute on religious ground such as the Persian Sassanian Empire, and even reached China (the Nestorian sect, which translated their Bible into Chinese). (See note 3)
Note 1: If it were not for the nascent Arabic Empire of the Omayyad dynasty in Damascus, which translated the Greek works into Arabic, most probably Europe would have not found any Greek work left to boast being descendent from…You know, democracy, rational thinking, and all that mythical stuff. Fact is, it was the Christian scholars in the Near -East who undertook the task of the translation, either directly from Greek or via the language of the land Aramaic (later called Syriac)
Note 2: You may read https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/modern-europe-re-defines-christianity/
Note 3: Good background to the genesis of Byzantium and State Christian religion https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/christianity-from-total-persecution-to-state-religion-what-happened/
The written language has been invented seven thousand years ago in southern Iraq and the kingdoms of Sumer, Babylon, Akkad and Assyria managed to have sophisticated administrative systems, precise calendars, and astronomic knowledge. The alphabet was discovered five thousand years ago in the City-State of Byblos (Phoenicia, and current Lebanon).
The Phoenicians instituted a maritime civilization and were the masters of the Mediterranean Sea for over 6 centuries (1300 to 600 BC) in trades, commerce and artisanal skills; they established “democratic” City-States where the City-State inhabitants would elect representatives in the noble and aristocratic classes. The Phoenicians built trading centers or villages along the coasts and in all the Islands.
The Canaanites, of which the Phoenicians were the maritime branch, had established City-States along the main rivers (Euphrates and Al Assy rivers) such as Marie, Homs, Hama, Jerusalem, Antiochus…The Phoenicians built Thebes in Greece, centuries before Athens existed. Alexander would completely destroy Thebes before leading his army to current India’s borders.
Pre-Socratic philosophers immigrated from the eastern part of the Mediterranean City-States (current Turkey, Syria, and lebanon) to Athens in order to educate its noble citizens to the art of rhetoric, dialectic, and math in order for the aristocratic class to having an edge for successfully running to political positions. They were paid handsomely as teachers and that is why they flocked to Athens: Democratic Athens had high demand of the intellectual and administrative skills of the Phoenicians.
In China, Confucius was instituting his moral system for good governance and the raising of the “good man”: “Practice good morality in society before studying sciences and acquiring knowledge.”
Socrates battled with the sophism (wise attitudes) of these teachers who turned philosophy into an art of rhetorical clever communication; Socrates instituted a school of rational dialogue. Platon, a disciple of Socrates, transcribed the dialogues and instituted his own school of philosophy in Athens. Aristotle, was a student at Platon’s school for 18 years and he established the experimental method (empiricism) for rational investigations (into cause and effects phenomena and categorized matters and scientific fields of studies, backed by advances in arithmetic and geometry.
Aristotle’s works would have gone into oblivion, as so many manuscripts of famous scholars, if not for the Phoenician scholars who translated, commented, interpreted Aristotle’s works into their Aramaic language (spoken by Jesus), later called Syria. The newly built city of Alexandria became a lighthouse of knowledge; scholars translated scientific, religious, and philosophical manuscripts and invented new fields of sciences.
In India of the 3rd century BC, the monarch Asoka ruled for 35 years and sent missionaries and delegates to all the known civilized world such as Syria, Egypt, Greece, and Persia and resurrected the Buddhist religion that was verging into oblivion amid the Hindu continent. Asoka chiselled in 84,000 huge stone columns the principles and laws of Buddhism and his laws (dharma) dispersed thousands upon thousands of these columns at every major road intersections. The island of Sri Lanka became Buddhist at that period.
Hundreds of Christian sects dominated the landscape of the Near East, from Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Turkey, and Greece. Every sect had its particular religious books for sources of belief and a style of living. Mostly, they relied on the Jewish laws and differed on the nature of Jesus. The Virgin Mary was rarely mentioned as source of devotion or as a saint.
In Alexandria around 320, a priest known as Arius explained that Jesus is a distinct entity than God and that the Holy Ghost proceeds only from God. This line of theology is accepted by the Goths, the Ostrogoth, and all the people in Germany and in Eastern and central Europe.
In 325, Emperor Constantine decided that Christianity (barely representing 10% of the population) should be the official religion of the Byzantium Empire, though he remained pagan. The New Christian Church was modified to include three Gods (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost for Virgin Mary) as the pagans were accustomed to worshiping trinity of Gods. The pagan symbolism and pageantry were included in Catholicism after the conclave of Nicaea.
Since this conclave, the Roman/Byzantium Empire was wracked in civil wars among dozens of Christian sects or schisms known as heretics and supported by various monarchs and princes. Among those sects we have the Homeans, the Anomoean, the Monophysitism, the Nestorians (that would advance with its message into China and translate its version of the New Testaments into Chinese), … One of the schism settled in Mecca (Arabic Peninsula); the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad was the Patriarch of the sect and Muhammad was his closest assistant. The Roman/Byzantium Empire would wage internal religious/political battles ways into the 13th century. Frequently, two Popes would be elected, backed by a coalition of monarchs. Then another cycle of internal religious wars would restart in the 16th century with Protestantism, Calvinism, and Huguenot.
In the 6th century AC, the Roman scholar and politician Anicius Boethius (Boece) translated and commented Aristotle’s works into latin. Aristotle’s works had to wait the Arab/Islamic Empire to settle in Damascus (around 660) before his works are resurrected from oblivion. Why?
Prophet Mohammad had encouraged and demanded that Moslems seek knowledge, even from China. Muhammad said that many verses in his message are confusing and needed the interpretation of scholars. Muhammad said: “Science is more meritorious than prayer. A single man of science has more power over demon than a thousand devotees. Among the servants of God, only scholars fear God.” Thus, Moslem scholars undertook to translate available knowledge into the Arabic slang of Mecca from the Syriac manuscripts relying heavily on the “Syrian” scholars and later, on the persian scholars during the Abbassid dynasty.
There is this anecdote told by Calif Al Maamun: “I met Aristotle in my dream and I ask him “What is considered good?” Aristotle replied: “What is good to reason.” I asked: “And after reason? He replied: “What is shown as good in revelation” I said: “And after?” He replied: “Good is what consensus agrees on” I said: “And after?” Aristotle said: “There is no more of what after.”
The Syrians, Christians and Moslems, endeavored to translating the works of Platon, Aristotle, Galen, Plutarch, and Plotin (the Enneades that summarize Aristotle’s theology). Geometry of Euclides, astronomy and medicine are taught in freshly built Arabic universities. In the 7th century, Al Kindi wrote: “Though the Greek scholars fell short in sciences, they opened up the instruments for acceding to multiple types of knowledge.” Al Farabi insisted on the necessity of separating intellectual speculation from rational reflection. Ibn Sina (Avicenna) wrote in the 10th century, 300 manuscripts, of which 50 are in scientific fields and 40 in medicine; one particular medical book, the “Canon of medicine” was taught in western Europe as a fundamental course till the 18th century. The physician Ibn Zhur (Avenzoar), living in Andalusia, is reputed in all Europe. The geographer Al Idrissi is considered in Europe as the “geography professor”. Ibn Bajja made the apology of sciences and learned people; he said: “Ignorant people see the world as if they lived in a cavern and the only light they received was a diffused one: They could discriminate among colors, and thus, have no coherent knowledge of the real nature.”
In the 12th century, many tribes in Central Asia and the Caucasus converted to Islam and were the backbone of the Islamic army by then. These new converts believed literally in the Koran and refused any rational interpretations or commentaries. Islamic civilization started its steady decline since then, except in Iran and Andalusia (Spain).
Papal Rome, backed by rich merchants, galvanized the Christians into a series of crusading campaigns in the Near East. The official purpose was to liberating Jerusalem from the Moslem “infidels”; the tacit goal was capturing Egypt for direct maritime route for the spice and aroma trade coming from Far Eastern Asia Islands. The rich merchant families and nobility in Europe got addicted to spices and aromatic products and prices were increasing by frequent wars along the land caravans in Moslem Kingdoms. Three targeted campaigns to invading Egypt failed and the merchants were reluctant to investing in the established mini Christian Kingdoms in the Near East. The fourth crusading campaign in 1204 sacked Constantinople and reduced the Byzantine Emperors to figure heads.
Then Ibn Rushd was born in the 12th century in Cordoba (Islamic Andalusia) and wrote: “Have no fear searching for truth in sciences. Truth cannot contradict truth; sciences is in accord with God’s revelations; God has nothing to fear when you use your rational intelligence to discovering the universe and the causes of phenomenon”: That is basically what Ibn Rush (known as Averroes) tried to convey to civilization through his abundant writings in medicine, sciences, astronomy, philosophy, jurisprudence, and theology. Ibn Rush, known as “Al hafid” (the grandson of the famous judge of the city) published abundant books; among them, 88 volumes on Aristotle’s works in 20,000 pages supplied with commentary and interpretation.
Moise ibn Maimuna (Maimonides), 12 years younger than Ibn Rushd and originally from Cordoba, was at the period settled in Cairo and was the official physician of the Caliph. Maimonides was the direct beneficiary of Ibn Rushd rational and scientific works. He wrote: “We may dispense of Platon’s works: Aristotle’s works suffice since they are the foundations and roots of scientific rational methods. Aristotle’s works cannot be comprehended without the commentaries of Ibn Rushd.”
In 1497, Papal Rome encouraged the institution of a university in Padoua (Italy) to teaching Aristotle’s works and be translated directly from ancient Greek. It was a strategy of ignoring the influence of Islamic culture that was spreading in Catholic Europe. The Renaissance scholars dared not communicate the sources and references of their knowledge and learning. Since then, European scholars have continued this custom of deliberately ignoring seven centuries of Islamic civilizations when accounting for western Europe civilization.
What expert on the Orient: Lev Nussimbaun?
Posted by: adonis49 on: July 21, 2010
Liova or Lev Nussimbaum (1905-1942), also known as Leo, or Kurban Said, or Essad Bey,wrote in German over 15 books and over 200 articles in several dailies and periodicals within 12 years. He died in Italy at the age of 36 but he looked as old as a 70 years old man.
Among his books are “Blood and oil in the Orient”, “Ali and Nino”, “The daughter of the Golden Horn”, “Twelve secrets of the Caucasus”, “Muhammad”, “History of Guepeou”, “Soviet Union secret police”, “Stalin”, “Lenin”, “Tsar Nicholas II”, “Allah is Great”, “Epic of oil”, “White Russia: People without a land”, “Russia at a crossroad”, “The Caucasus: Mountains, people, and history”, “Reda Shah” and many other books. He mostly signed his books under Kurban Said. Lev’s agent, Werner Schendell, asked Lev to ease up on publishing so often and to focus on publishing one book a year, at no avail.
Kurban Said was known in Germany of the 1920′s as Essad Bey (Assad is Lion in Arabic, just as Leo refers to Lion) after he converted to Islam by the Imam of the Ottoman Embassy in 1923. He was the first to describe Stalin and Lenin in details and accounted for the tormenting period of Baku (Capital of Azerbaijan on the Black Sea or the “Zarathustra” land).
Lev was a Jew born in Baku of a rich oil baron living in Baku (Abraham was born in Tbilisi in Georgia) and a mother (Berta Sluzk, originally from Kiev). Berta had left Zürich, headquarters of Russia revolutionaries, and ended up in a Baku prison. Lev’s father noticed Berta who was serving a prison sentence at the Baku prison and arranged for her to be set free and married her. Berta resumed her “revolutionary” activities and extended money to the revolutionary groups (that will later be called Bolshevik) between 1905 and 1912. Berta committed suicide by poison after she was found out of communicating with the revolutionary gangs and then, she became an embarrassment to her family. Lev was then 9 years old.
Lev was mostly forced to be secluded in his home and his large library because of the dangerous conditions outside. In the rare outings, Lev was surrounded with body guards and a nurse: He was considered of fragile health. Lev and his father fled Baku in 1917 during the First World War: the armies of Tsar Nicholas II were defeated by Germany and Baku was becoming a hotbed for instability and chaos. They crossed Turkmenistan and then Iran and had many adventures.
Father and son returned to Baku as the Turks and Germans occupied it briefly before the English returned. Azerbaijan experienced independence for less than a year before the Bolshevik returned in 1920 and Azerbaijan became part of the Soviet Union. Father and son managed to flee Baku, separately, in order to avoid close surveillance.
Lev spent some time in Tbilisi (Capital of Georgia) and then, boarded an Italian boat with his father in 1920 to Constantinople( Istanbul). Istanbul was big and cosmopolitan and Lev fell in love with this city. The French, English, Italian, and Japanese troops had headquarters in different quarters of Constantinople. Father and son boarded an Italian boat and wandered a few months in Italy before landing in Paris. A year later, Lev was sent to a boarding school on an island in Northern Germany and then they settled in Berlin by 1922.
Lev was attending university courses on the orient history, geography and literature while finishing his high school in a Russian school in Berlin. Berlin was nicknamed the second Russian Capital because most Russian refugees ended up in that city after Lenin and Bolsheviks took over power. Willy Haas of the famous magazine “Literarische Welt” hired Lev as an expert of the Oriental matters at the age of 24. Lev also published articles in the dailies and magazines of “Deutsche Allgemeine”, “Prager Tageblatt”, “Asia”, “The living age”, and “Saturday Review of literature”. Lev wrote about most monarchs and princes who visited Germany between the two wars, and the history , geography, and literature of the Oriental countries. He wrote articles about Resa Shah (father of Shah of Iran), Ibn Saud and the Wahhabi sect, on Egypt, on Afghanistan, and mostly on Russia and the Caucasus region. You may have more details on Lev’s life in my post: https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/%e2%80%9cthe-orientalist%e2%80%9d-by-tom-reiss/
Note: This biography is extracted from “The Orientalist” by Tom Reiss.
Warlord Tamerlane saved Europe Renaissance
Posted by: adonis49 on: July 2, 2010
Did Tamerlane (Timor Lank) Create Empires?
There is this army commander of the 14th century who kept his army on the march longer (for over 25 years) and crossed more lands than Alexander, Genghis Khan, or Attila and conquered more Empires and was never defeated and slept in his tent, outside city-limits, even in his Capital Samarkand (in current Uzbekistan).
The Persian gave him the nickname Lank because he was slightly lame in one leg. This is Timor Lank who was not the son of any Monarch, prince, or even a tribal leader.
Timor Lank was from the Caucasus region (probably around the region of Azerbaijan and Chechnya (I get pretty upset when history authors fail to located current geographical areas and just paste the ancient names).
He was a Moslem and veneered Imams and clerics claimed to be descendants of the Prophet Muhammad’s family, and who wore the black turban.
Otherwise, he didn’t give a hoot about Moslems when conquering lands and people. He killed mostly Moslems since the vast area of his operations were mostly Islam Land.
For example, he built pyramids of skulls: 60,000 heads in Asfahan (Iran), 3,000 in Aleppo, and many other skull pyramids in India…
First, Timor Lank chased out the Tatar “Golden Hordes” (led by a descendant of Genghis Khan) along the Volga River (current Russia) and burned and sacked all their cities and villages. He did not resume his operations, but by the end of his war, the Golden Hordes were weakened and displaced. It was the fate of the Russian Tsar, Ivan the Terrible, to finish off the job against the Tatars in the 16th century and expand his Empire. You may claim that Tamerlane ultimately created current Russia.
Timor Lank captured Samarkand and made it its Capital.
He descended on Persia and conquered this Empire and beheaded over 60,000 of the population in Isfahan and piled up the head in shapes of pyramids. This city surrendered peacefully and Timor Lank had no plans to occupy it; he was just crossing!
It happened that for a few cases of rape within the city by Timor Lank’s garrison of 500 soldiers, the inhabitants slaughtered the soldiers. Timor Lank was camping outside city limit, always in his tent. And the reaction was a nightmare on the city inhabitants.
The commander moved on toward Turkey in 1400. The Turkish Sultan army was completely demolished and the Sultan was put in a tiny cage so that Timor Lank could use it as a stool to mount his horse. This commander could have conquered all of Turkey, but instead he headed south to enter Aleppo and Damascus in Syria.
If Timor Lank had not vanquished the Turkish army then the Byzantium Capital of Constantinople would have fallen 50 years earlier along with most of Europe.
There would be no Western Europe or the Renaissance: at that time, the enmities between Genoa and Venice was at its zenith, the Kingdom of Poland was weak, there was no Russian Empire, and the King Henry of Portugal had not begun challenging the high seas to discover new routes to India and the Far East.
And the King of France Charles 8 would not have entered and ruined Rome and displaced the skilled artisans and thinkers, located and concentrated in Papal Rome, to all over western Europe that started the Renaissance.
In the 13th century, the Mameluke Sultan of Egypt had moved out from Egypt with his army and defeated the Mogul army of Hulagu in Palestine around 1250. This time around, the Mameluke Sultan did not venture to come out to rescue his vassals in Syria.
Damascus put up a serious fight, but Timor Lank tactics were always to destabilize any city before setting siege. The skilled people in Syria and Palestine were sent to build and develop Samarkand. (That is the story of the Levant since antiquity: armies conquer The Levant to capture its skilled workers.)
The Ottoman Sultan would later defeat the Mameluke Sultan in the 16th century and conquer Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and all North African countries.
Timor Lank conquered Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
One of Timor Lank offspring would establish the Mogul Empire in India (the Punjab) that lasted over 5 centuries. The British Empire would finally take over all of India by the end of the 19th century, but failed to retain Afghanistan after two bloody massacres of its troops.
The British had drawn the current borders among Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Kashmir. As well as drawing many other borders in the Middle-East and Africa with colonial France
This ruthless commander Tamerlane was getting ready to march on China when he died at the age of 63.
Note: My published novel on wordpress.com “Rainbow over the Levant” is set in that time period.
Part 2: Turkey’s Strategy
Posted by: adonis49 on: June 29, 2010
Turkey’s Strategy
In part one, I explained the many problems that Turkey resolved with its neighboring States such as Greece, Armenia, Cyprus, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. The long-term strategy of the Turkish State in the coming two decades is to be at a par with Italy, France, and Spain in deciding for the Mediterranean Sea peace, security, and development. To be able to be a credible partner and valued mediator Turkey has, in the mean time, to iron out all its historical and current difficulties with its global neighboring regions such as the Balkan States (such as Bulgaria, Romainia, Albania, and Serbia), the Caucasus States (such as Armenia, Azerbajan, Georgia, and Tchechnia), the Central Asian States (such as Tajikistan, and Uzbakistan), the Middle East States (such as Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan), the Near East States (Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine), the major north African States (Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco), and the Arab Gulf States.
The Balkan States have over four centuries of interactions with the Othoman Empires. Even in the 15th century, most princes in the Balkan States were vassals to the Turkish Prince who later will be called Sultan and the Caliph of Moslem after defeating the Mamelouk Sultan of Egypt in the 16th century. Even the Byzantium Emperor was a vassal, paid tribute, and had to join the Turkish Prince in his expansion wars. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, (the Turkish Prince had build a navy and blocked any sea entrance to Constantinople for sea supplies and secour by Genoa and Venice), the Othoman Empire expanded to all Central Europe and the Caucasus region.
The Othoman Empire set siege twice to Vienne (later the Capital of the Habsburg Empire) and Vienna suffered famine and was saved at the nick of time. At that time, there was no Russian Empire and the only Kingdom that could come to the rescue was the Catholic Kingdom of Poland that included current Belorussia and Ukraine. Obviously, Greece was also part of Othoman Empire and the dividing line between Turkey and the rest of Europe was the Danub River (the eastern part of Hungary was under Othoman domination.)
Emperess Catherine of Russia in the 18th century expanded the Russian Empire toward the Caucasus and Central Europe. The Balkan States were freed from the Othoman occupation but were vassals to various European Nations such as France, England, Russia, and mainly Austria (that was desintegrated after WWI) as the Othoman Empire (allied to Germany) was then defeated. Communist Russia or the Soviet Union set claim to most of the Caucasus States and a few Central Europe States.
The Caucasus region and many Central European States share many cultural, customs, linguistic, and culinary traditions (even among the Orthodox Christians) with the Turkish traditions. It seems that Turkey managed diplomatic and political entente with most of these States and the oil pipelines crossing Turkey from the oil production sources in Azerbajan and the Ural region of Russia are vital economic relief to all these regional States. Turkey managed a peaceful settlement of the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabach within Azerbajan.
During the Cold War, the military regime in Turkey sided with the USA against Communist Russia and Turkey was included in the OTAN. As West Germany was the main buffer Zone to the remaining Western European States, Turkey was the main buffer zone to the effective expansion of the Soviet Unions in the Middle East. Israel was but a secondary ally and a typical mercenary State that the Western Powers supplied financially, militarily, economically, and politically so that the Israeli Jewish soldiers pay the price for believing that they were building their ancestral mythical State (that never existed historically but in stories in their Bible). Fact is, most Arab States had sided with the US who purchased oil and supported the Arab monarchies and dictators.
The Soviet Unions extended defensive arms to the Middle East States because it refused to witness a reverse immigration of the Russian Jews. Egypt was the main State that received substantial economic and financial aid from Soviet Unions, not because Egypt was viewed as the largest Arab State but mainly because Egypt did not consider itself directly concerned with the Israeli/Palestinian cause until the invasion of Israel, France, and England in 1956 on the Suez canal.
Turkey and Iran have a long history of interactions since antiquity. Fact is, most of the Persian dynasties were Turkish in origine. In the 18th century, the Persian Safafid dynasty was indeed a Turkish tribe and then, it turned to Chiaa Islamic sect and expanded its territory all the way to Afganistan and Central Asia. Then, as it wanted to expand westward, the Othoman Sultan defeated badly the Safafid monarch and the current borders between the two nations were drawn at that period and remain intact since then. Thus, the Othoman Sultan got control of Iraq and the Arabic Peninsula (current Saudi Arabia).
As the tribe of Seoud in the Hijjaz reverted to a fundamentalist Wahhabit sect and expanded in the Arabic Peninsula then, the Othoman Sultan dispatched one of his generals Muhammad Ali (Albanian of origine) to crush the Wahhabit revolts. Muhammad Ali was very successful and destroyed the Seoud tribe Capital. Thus, Muhammad Ali was appointed governor of Egypt and then, turned against his master and established his own dynasty in Egypt. Consequently, the political relationship between Turkey (OTAN) and Egypt of Gamal Abdel Nasser (who had no option left but to side with Russia for military hardware and economic development) were mainly cold for over 35 years. Turkey is attempting to warm up with Egypt, but the current Mubarak political regime in Egypt is viewing the growing power of Turkey with suspicion since it supplanted Egypt as the main power broker in the Middle East with the Western nations.
Modern Turkey is no longer an Othoman Empire but its rapid strategy, in the last two decades, to link up with all its regional States that were part and parcel of its vast Empire for over 4 centuries is giving ammunition to the so-called “moderate” isolationist and defeatist States in the Arab World (such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Morocco) that refuse to reform and plan for the future.
Fact is, Turkey is the cornerstone State for the larger alliance among Iran, Syria, and Iraq for a stronger and much more stable Middle East political climate.
Is religion bunk? Case of Byzantium Empire
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 18, 2010
- In: Christianity | cities/geography | Essays | philosophy | political Artical | religion/history | sciences | social articles | women
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Is religion bunk? Case of Byzantium Empire; (Apr. 18, 2010)
I read a couple of days ago the history of the Byzantium Empire and the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
This historical account of the rise and demise of a “Christian” Empire got me into thinking about this ridiculous infighting based on religious dogma.
I learned that the emperors of the Byzantium Empire were relegated to vassals to the Ottoman Sultans since 1350. The Byzantine Emperor paid tribute and could be summoned anytime to join the Ottoman Sultan in military campaigns against “Christian” regions and cities.
Many Byzantine Emperors travelled to Europe and extended their stay for years drumming up support for the Empire in the Orient and were turned down for discordance on religious dogmatic positions.
The Catholic Church based in Rome demanded first the unification of the Catholic and Orthodox sects before financial or military support are extended to Constantinople. For example, the Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople came up with a consensus stating that the two natures of Christ share a common energy. Papal Rome refused this gimmick.
The Orthodox Church offered another alternative “The two natures of Christ share common will” and this proposition didn’t fly well.
The orthodox Church came back with this idea “The Holy Ghost emanates from God through his son Jesus“; Papal Rome insisted that this ghost emanates from the father And the son…
Irrelevant divergences that had nothing to do with religion but political power and dominion. The two sects agreed on the message of Jesus and that he resurrected; then what is all this fuss about?
Actually, Constantinople was basically reduced to a City State since 1350: the Ottoman Sultans had conquered Serbia, Bulgaria, and Albania, and the northern regions of Greece. Constantinople managed to survive and sustain 4 sieges simply because the Ottoman Sultans had not yet built a naval power to block the maritime entrance in the Golden Horn estuary for supplies.
The wealthy maritime powers of the City Republics of Venice and Genoa were at war most the 14th century: When Venice came to the rescue for a price, Genoa plotted to deprive Venice from any concessions by using and abusing of contending Emperors in Constantinople.
In 1402, Constantinople had an extension on its life because the Mogul Tamerlane (Timor Lank) of Samarkand had defeated the Ottoman army and cut it to pieces. Otherwise, the Ottoman Sultans could easily conquer most of Europe, including Italy 50 years earlier.
By 1450, Constantinople had barely 50,000 inhabitants and 7,000 valid individuals to defending the city walls extending to 22 kilometers. The plague had stricken several times and prosperous merchants had immigrated to southern Greece.
Religion is not even an ideology: it just permeates all aspects of life and is a prime factor in political problems.
Political professionals use and abuse of religious inclinations as a cover to mobilize energies for exercising extensive power.
What variants of democratic systems managed to do was to establish institutions and laws that counter, prohibit, and occasionally punish political professionals and civil administrators from using religion for State interests and programs.
Nietzsche wrote: “God is dead but mankind is always locating God’s Shadows in caverns. Mankind has still got to vanquish the Shadows.”
Religion potency is that it survives and is implicit in political programs: religion is used as the omnipresent symbol for any kinds of changes or the continuation of statue quos.
Although science in modern time has somewhat supplanted religious dogmas, even the rational scientists are profoundly contaminated by religion in many aspects of their research. Faith is still a catalyst to rational understanding and frequently the engine for reasoning.
Scientists thrive to homogenize their theories (as religion does) and impose concepts by consensus until a few bold minds disturb the consensus (paradigm shift).
So far, science has prolonged the period of mankind ignorance because it refuses to be based on relevant cultural meaning: Science is neutral! Maybe this void of cultural basis in science is mainly the consequences that modern scientists are no “Renaissance Men” and lack essential human knowledge to communicate and interact with common people.
Fact is, most researches are financed by institutions with explicit purposes and implicit ideologies.
Is religion bunk?
Religion impresses kids and the elderly. Kids are ignorant and elderly are eternally scared of the next eternal unknown.
It is better for kids to learn and be instructed on the UN Charter with all its supra-laws corresponding to all kinds of human rights.
As for the elderly, it is good to remind them of the dictum of US diplomats: “When dealing with the US institutions then you better not put all your eggs in one basket”.
I suggest to the elderly and terminally ills not to put all their eggs in a single religious dogma.
Islam is one of the “heretic” Christian-Jewish sects: A challenge…
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 24, 2010
Islam is one of the “heretic” Christian-Jewish sects,(Feb. 23, 2010)
A challenge to all theologians and social scientists
Before Emperor Constantine, who established Constantinople as Capital for the Roman Empire in the Orient (called Byzantium Empire) around 315 AC, there were hundreds of Christian sects in the Middle East. Each sect had its dogma and its Bible (there were hundreds of versions).
The belief systems of these Christian sects differed greatly in the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection, the Holy Spirit, the status of the Virgin Mary (many would not even mention her name since women were considered impure), the status of Judas Iscariot, the rites, the language, the daily rituals, the status of the Old Testament, the communion of the flesh, the age to baptizing new converts, and to which race to focus on.
Many sects obeyed the laws of the Old Testaments in their integrity and many refused to adopt the Old Testament as part of their belief systems.
The Council of Nicaea (on the shore of Turkey) in 325 made things even worse: Constantine wanted to unify all the Christian sects into a religion of the Empire. The notion of three Gods into one (Father, son, and Holy Ghost) were forced upon the sects as well as the Sanctity of Mary and many abstract concepts wrapped into the Credo.
Any sect that refused the unified Orthodox dogma, of the Emperor in power at the time, was labeled “heretic” and was persecuted. It turned out that, for over 70 years, successive Emperors were in favor of one or another “heretic” belief system, and a few emperor reverted to paganism.
Around the year 400, another Emperor reverted to the Orthodox dogma and the persecutions resumed and even intensified. The heretic sects fled to beyond the Euphrates River under the dominion of Persia Empire and spread to the Arabic Peninsula and reached India and China.
Prophet Mohammad was from a clan that believed in one of these Christian-Jewish heretic sects that were established in Mecca; the father of Mohammad was a convert and his uncle was the Patriarch of the Christian sect.
In the year 1000, another schism took place between the Bishop of Rome (Catholic) and the Bishop of Constantinople (Orthodox) and another wave of persecution of heretic sects got under way.
The various Protestant “heretic” sects in the 16th century are but the latest in the variety of Christian sects and offshoot of ancient heretic Christian sects.
All that Prophet Muhammad did was to drop the abstract notions in the Orthodox dogma and to adopt the common denominator belief system of the various heretic Christian-Jewish sects in the Arabic Peninsula, Syria, and Iraq.
Thus, Islam combined the Old Testament integrally and the version of New Testament read by the Jewish-Christians sect, the Ebionites, of Mohammad’s tribe in the Mecca: the Patriarch of this sect was one of Muhammad’s uncles.
The Ebionites sect was fundamentally a Jewish sect that attached the teachings of Jesus (another Prophet) to the Old Testament. This sect considered St.Paul as a heretic because he opened the religion to the “gentiles”.
Historical facts prove that the early Christians, and particularly the illiterate disciples lead by Jack, the eldest brother of Jesus, who conglomerated in Jerusalem were very conservative Essenism Jews: Jesus was their Rabbi and they tried to follow his message.
When Peter finally marched out of Jerusalem it was to follow on the trail of Paul in order to dismantling Paul’s Christian communities and converting them to the Jewish laws. Paul had to tone down his discourse and adopt a few Jewish social laws in order to counter the vehement practical attacks of the “Jerusalem sect of Christians“.
Islam became the unified Christian-Jewish heretic sect opposing the Orthodox Christian Church in Constantinople. It is no surprise that the heretic Christians in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Palestine rallied and supported Islamic troops against Byzantium and Persia.
After Constantinople fell in around 1450 to the Ottoman Empire, many of the non-Moslem Christian sects united politically to the Catholic Church in Rome, even though their dogma did not mesh nicely with the Catholic Credo.
Islam means submission (to God, the one and only). I submit a challenge to all theologians, religious researchers, and philosophers of all religious denominations (monolithic or not).
My hypothesis is: The religious message of the Prophet Muhammad, during the first 13 years of proselytizing in Mecca, is identical to one of the Christian-Jewish sects. Let me suggest the following procedure or protocol:
First, select all the religious Christian sects till the Council of Nicaea in 325; and then select the Christian sects after Nicaea until the year 400.
Continue the selection process of the sects after the split between Rome and Byzantium around the year 1000, then go over the Christian sects that were formed between 1000 to the Martin Luther schism, all the way to the modern Christian sects from Protestantism, Calvinism, Baptism, Methodism, Episcopalian, Armenians (Catholic and Orthodox), and all the sects in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere.
Second, develop taxonomy of attributes in order to categorize all these Christian sects.
Third, allocate all the sects to one of six categories or more if need be.
Fourth, select the verses in Islam that correspond to the period of 13 years in Mecca, before the flight of the Prophet Muhammad to Medina (Yathreb) and the establishment of the first City-State of Islam
Five, assign each verse in that period to the taxonomy of step two.
Six, allocate the message of the prophet Muhammad in one of the categories chosen in step three.
The foundation to my hypothesis stems from reading a manuscript titled “Islam in its two messages: Christ and Muhammad.”
The author of the book is late Antoun Saadeh, a Lebanese of Christian Geek Orthodox denomination. The book was written in 1942 and Saadeh proves that Islam is almost identical to the message of Christ when we analyze the verses of the Koran pronounced during Muhammad proselytizing of his message before the legislation period for the new community in Medina.
Since Christianity is an amalgam of many sects that split into schisms in the last two thousand years, I figured that, from a scientific perspective, it would be more appropriate to differentiate Christianity according to sects.
It would also be fitting to study Islam by analyzing the various Moslem sects; though the variations would be based more on the legislation (Chari3a) and Hadith (stories on Muhammad) than the fundamental spiritual content during the first 13 years of the message in Mecca.
I suggest to start with four broad categories: Catholic, Orthodox, Christian-Jews, and Jewish-Christians. The basic differences are in the adoption of the Old Testament as act of faith and social regulations to follow.
There are Christians who do not adopt the Old Testament in their act of faith neither intrinsically or even using it in preaching and its myths in rhetoric; other use Old Testament as act of faith but do not adopt the Jewish laws for daily rituals; others adopt the Jewish laws either partially or entirely.
For example, Islam and Jehovah Witnesses may be allocated within the Jewish-Christian category because they abide by the nomadic Jewish laws for daily behaviors.
Note: I find many resemblance between St.Paul and the prophet Muhammad. Both avatars of God had apparitions and revelations and did what they had to do to spreading the message. Their message was to be universal:
1. Paul disseminated monotheism to the Mediterranean Sea basin (Roman and Byzantium Empires) and Mohammad spread monotheism to all of Asia (India, China, and Indonesia).
2. Paul’s method took 300 years to grabbing 10% share of the population; Mohammad’s method was more efficient, and rallied millions in just two decades.
What’s with ancient Athens?
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 11, 2010
What’s with ancient Athens? (Feb. 10, 2010)
There is this Western civilization tendency of focusing mainly on ancient city-state Athens as the roots of its knowledge (with extension to all kind of knowledge and everywhere!). The European and northern America civilizations insist that the “Greek miracle” between the 6th and 5th century BC was the cornerstone for dissemination of knowledge and the improvement of human cultures. Worse, this tendency would like you to believe that enlightenment of city-state of Athens is a unique experience that was never witnessed before, later and in nowhere else at any periods of history!
Based on that comforting assumption, most scholars gave up attempting to explain this phenomenon and just applied to describing this status as fact. First, we can explain it pretty rationally. The City-Sates of Byblos, Sidon, Tyr, and countless other eastern Mediterranean cities preceded Athens in enjoying their Golden Ages at least one thousand years before Athens was built. Competition among the City-states for dominance in trade, industry, and schools of learning, and mastery of the seas was the main factor for the changes in their political-economic structures that shifted from monarchy, oligarchy, or democratic systems within the City-State limits. The constitutions were valid for the City-State residents.
It happened that before Athens’ Golden Age the Phoenician city-states were subjugated by one of the Persian kingdoms. Scholars and traders immigrated to Athens and transmitted their know-how in trade, learning, forms of governments, and schools of thoughts to the Athenians. The pre-Socratic philosophers and the sophist teachers were the founders of rhetoric and sciences among the aristocratic Athenian classes who were required to be eloquent and learned in order to vying for political positions.
This is the same process that occurred to many other Golden Age cities and nations. For example, Venice and Genoa captured the scholars and artisans fleeing or emigrating from Constantinople after the sack by the second European crusaders. It is what happened to Germany when the French armies sacked Rome and scholars bolstered the Reformist movement of Martin Luther and disseminated the Bible in the German language and encouraged printing. It is the same when the French aristocracy fled France to London during the French Revolution and carried with them their knowledge and money and started a new era for the coming industrial revolution.
Christianity: From total persecution to State religion: what happened?
Posted by: adonis49 on: November 3, 2009
Christianity: From total persecution to State religion: what happened? (Nov. 2, 2009)
By the beginning of the fourth century, Christians in the Roman Empire were no longer persecuted as a sect behaving contrary to the Roman values. The Christians have suffered one of the worst waves of persecutions from 303 to 311.
The father of Constantine persecuted the Christian mercilessly and Constantine witnessed the massacres. Constantine inherited England and France as co-Emperor, one of three other co-Emperors to the Roman Empire that dominated the Mediterranean Sea.
This article is not about the fictitious story or not of Constantine seeing the symbol of the Christians at night or in a dream before the battle to capturing Rome from Maxence in 312. This post intends on explaining the moratorium on Christian persecutions as this sect reached the threshold of a minority of 10% of the total population.
At that period, a Christian was not born a Christian: he was not baptized a week or longer after birth. A Christian had to prove that he believed in Christ as the Redemptor of our sins, that Christ resurrected from death and that God is the creator of man and the universe and that God is One and all powerful, and all our actions were to be offered in honor of Him.
The intellectuals and educated leaned toward this concept of a unique God, an abstract God who is not emulated on earthly natural powers or actual planets and Sun: it was the cultural rage of the time. The high ranked in the Roman caste system didn’t have to proselytize or proclaim their conversion; this task was relegated to the poorer Romans in the caste system so that the Christian religion spread its tenants with example of persecutions in arenas for the pleasure of the Romans.
The four co-Emperors needed stability in their respective allocated Empires and they needed the Christians support in the highest administrative jobs. If the Christians were about 10% of the total they constituted a much higher ratio in the Orient and in Africa. After Constantine won the Orient he was left with only one co-Emperor Licinius in Africa.
Emperor Constantine who build Constantinople (later to be named the Byzantium Empire) converted to Christianity and was both pragmatic toward the vast majority of pagans and an intolerant Christian who wanted to unite all the Christian sects in his empire, a sort of centralized orthodox church with a dogma that suited a newly converted Emperor.
Christianity was Not a new ideology to Emperor Constantine; that would be the case a century later. The people were born in the rituals to being “patriotic” to the Roman Empire and to obeying the reigning Emperor. The people were not dupe: not a single ex-voto (in Greek or Latin) to an Emperor (living or dead) was found. People asked and demanded from their Gods to be cured or saved from calamities.
The temporal sovereign was considered a need to safeguard the peace and continuity of the communities; as long as no new heavy taxes were imposed the Emperor could be labeled “The so good and beloved monarch”. The luxurious way of life of the monarch was accepted as a right that fit the position: the monarch didn’t have to abuse of pageantry to impress upon the people, it was not a sort of propaganda to remind the people of his role and power. It was simply a right attached to the position of power. All that an Emperor had to do is to occasionally speak on the virtue of the existing rituals so that to clear the void and the silence in the kingdom.
In 325 Emperor Constantine summoned all the Bishops to a conclave in Nicaea (Turkey). The conclave dragged on for four months and ended with a slight majority agreeing to a new abstract dogma of the Trinity of Father, Son, and the Virgin Mary, the Holy Ghost and the Credo. The dissenting Christian sects were labeled “heretics” because they wanted to believe in One God and not bestow divinity on Jesus and much less on Mary.
Ten years later Emperor Constantine defeated Licinius and became the sole Emperor to the Mediterranean Sea Empire. Persecution of the heretic Christian sects started in earnests and they had to flee to the eastern shores of the Euphrates River, a kingdom under the Persian Sassanide Empire.
Apparently, Emperor Constantine was never defeated in military battles; if he were he might have had a second thought about his all powerful protector new God; at least he might have listened more seriously to the heretic Christian Unique God. Two years before his death, Emperor Constantine defeated the Germans and wrote to the Bishops meeting in conclave in Tyr (Lebanon) “The Germans are converting to Christianity; they are convinced that our God cannot be defeated or vanquished.”
Constantine died in 337.
From this year to 400 Christianity could have easily lost its supremacy as the Emperor religion. Emperor Julian reverted to paganism but died two years later; he could have easily converted the whole Empire to paganism which was the vast majority. Several Christian Emperors were elected by factional armies not on religious ground but for many other reasons.
One main reason that Christian Emperors succeeded to the throne in the next 60 years was because the paganism was flexible, indifferent, and tolerant, while the Christian Church was exclusive (once converted then you are sucked in) and it grabbed tightly at any rights it gained. The minority Church used to the hilt the temporal power of the Emperors to affirm its positions.
In 394, Emperor Theodosius managed to defeat the pagan German General Arbogast in Slovenia. This defeat was a pure fluke of nature: a violent wind blew in the face of the combined more powerful Roman/Germanic army. Arbogast had reigned in Rome and installed a figure head Emperor Eugene; he re-confirmed paganism in Rome and for six years paganism was master in the western provinces. Also, two years earlier to the definitive battle, Theodosius had banished all public pagan rituals in the Orient in reaction to Arbogast attempts to restore paganism.
This military defeat had set the stage for the supremacy of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Thus, in the 5th century, the number of bishops jumped drastically; from around 6 to 50 in North Italy, from 20 to 70 in France (Gaul), and in North Africa the number tripled. The pagans transformed Christianity into paganism rituals of visiting every new sanctified Saint or shrines where miracles were invented and propagated. Pictures and statues of Saints and the Virgin Mary proliferated much quicker than churches.
When Islam conquered the Near East by defeating Heracles in the battle of Yarmouk, the heretic Christian sects (the true monolithic sects) converted to a religion that coincided with their belief system in One and Unique God and that accepted all the Jewish and Christian Bibles as forming integral part of Islam’s fundamental doctrine. If the Byzantium Empire had selected the Christian heretic dogma instead of the Trinity Islam would have never emerged to fill this vacuum since the Prophet Muhammad was initially a convert to one of the Christian-Jewish sects in Mecca.
There are two distinct civilizations around the Mediterranean Sea.
The main difference is in the transmission of rituals and traditions among the people. The Oriental civilization accepts a temporal sovereign who appoints the religious clergy of bishops and Imam (a decentralized religion) and the western civilization was comfortable with the cast of the clergy using the temporal power to expand its dominion over the people (a centralized religious power in Rome); that was the case after the year 400 in pagan Rome.
The Christian religion emulated the trend of former civilizations and a major schism occurred in 1000 between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches based on the perception, power, and the rights of the temporal power. In fact, Emperor Theodoric of Constantinople exerted pressures on Pope Gelase 1st to submit to the temporal rights of the sovereign; then, the Pope created the theory of separation of the spiritual and temporal powers in order to appease the Emperor.
While the Orient experienced a resurgence of the sciences and rational thinking in the 7th century, Europe was engulfed in the Dark Age till the 15th century because the Catholic Church prohibited any rational challenges to its authority.
Adonis Diaries 