Cito Pelon
06-20-2007, 10:20 PM
I figured I'd start this thread for the heck of it. I was just rereading "The Road to Oxiana" and "A Secret Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina". They reminded me that the region was once very fertile, with thriving civilizations for that time. The region was one of the most progressed on the planet. Until the Mongols came.
To me, if you want to understand how the "Middle East" became such a desolate region, all you have to do is understand what the Mongols did to that region in the 13th Century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Baghdad_(1258)
They destroyed every bit of civilization, murdered every scholar, murdered every male over the age of 13 in many places, destroyed the extensive irrigation systems that had been used for millenia. They really did some horrible things. Why I don't know. When they swept out of Mongolia into China proper, they were not so extensively destructive.
Those Mongols were something. They seldom get a lot of play in history books, but they sure had a lot of impact on history. They started out way up there north of the Great Wall, and proceeded to wipe out an initial Russian civilization, threatened Europe from the north in Poland, occupied all of modern Turkey and the Balkans, not to mention what they did in Persia, Iraq, the coasts of the Persian Gulf. They laid waste to Hungary. Attacked Japan twice and failed from whence comes the Japanese Kamikazai, or "Divine Wind", a typhoon that destroyed the Chinese fleet the Mongols appropriated for the attack on Japan.
http://www.budapesttimes.hu/?do=article&id=2371
The Mongols had quite an impact on Europe by the fact that Northern and Central Europe had to mobilize to combat them, meanwhile the Renaissance was gaining steam in Italy, protected by the Alps and by sea, which the Mongol horsemen were not so embracing of.
Ok, history lesson over. Carry on.
To me, if you want to understand how the "Middle East" became such a desolate region, all you have to do is understand what the Mongols did to that region in the 13th Century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Baghdad_(1258)
They destroyed every bit of civilization, murdered every scholar, murdered every male over the age of 13 in many places, destroyed the extensive irrigation systems that had been used for millenia. They really did some horrible things. Why I don't know. When they swept out of Mongolia into China proper, they were not so extensively destructive.
Those Mongols were something. They seldom get a lot of play in history books, but they sure had a lot of impact on history. They started out way up there north of the Great Wall, and proceeded to wipe out an initial Russian civilization, threatened Europe from the north in Poland, occupied all of modern Turkey and the Balkans, not to mention what they did in Persia, Iraq, the coasts of the Persian Gulf. They laid waste to Hungary. Attacked Japan twice and failed from whence comes the Japanese Kamikazai, or "Divine Wind", a typhoon that destroyed the Chinese fleet the Mongols appropriated for the attack on Japan.
http://www.budapesttimes.hu/?do=article&id=2371
The Mongols had quite an impact on Europe by the fact that Northern and Central Europe had to mobilize to combat them, meanwhile the Renaissance was gaining steam in Italy, protected by the Alps and by sea, which the Mongol horsemen were not so embracing of.
Ok, history lesson over. Carry on.