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Comment by nemo | Hacker News Reader

>in Egypt, the Great Pyramid was once covered with gleaming white limestone, but this was removed and used to build mosques

This is a very misleading distortion of history. The limestone casing on the Great Pyramid was destroyed in an earthquake in 1308 CE. The limestone rubble was pulled from the base of the pyramid and repurposed for building though much of it was also burned in kilns for lime like the marble of many ancient buildings and temples from the ancient world all around the Mediterranean by people of many and various religions and nationalities.

>When the Arab armies conquered North Africa, it was one of the richest and most developed areas in the Mediterranean. After the Arab conquest, it became a backwater and never achieved the prominence it had before.

You really ought to read up on the Islamic Golden Age.

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If that "Golden Age" includes the destruction of Nalanda[1], then forgive me if I agree with the person you're replying to, it was an incredibly destructive empire that aggressively expanded and destroyed anything that deemed heretic. As such, it's not exceptional in either sense.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda#Decline_and_destructio...

Edit - As I can't reply to stuff like this (it deserved to die) but in case I get anything more like it:

> Find me an "empire" that wasn't destructive. You're disingenuous, and likely racist as all hell. Fuck off.

I'm making that exact point, all empires are destructive, hence the it's not exceptional in either sense. Thanks to all those who can read and all those who don't go around calling others racists for no good reason.

This thread was at one point about Arabs and the scope of the Islamic Golden Age usually does not include the Turkic people who sacked Nalanda.

The Arab world, and Arabic history, is not homogenous. Some Muslim nations were very progressive, others were very backwards. Just like non-Muslim nations, really.

There was definitely a period when western Europe was very backwards whereas a lot of meaningful and important progress was made in Muslim countries. There have been Islamic empires that were relatively tolerant about differences, and certainly didn't destroy everything they deemed heretic.

We have a strong tendency to generalise: everything that's a bit distant from us has to be either one thing of the other thing. We're terrible at nuance, yet it's vital in order to understand history.

This comes across a little patronizing. The poster is making the point that North Africa had been part of a civilized empire for centuries, and full of wealthy cities, some famous for their learning. Some of history’s greatest minds lived in Roman North Africa.

These cities were conquered. Some were sacked and destroyed. There was major loss of life, economic destruction, and loss of property, including written works. The conquerors, at the time, did not much appreciate the value of what they were destroying.

The fact that the region later somewhat recovered does not take away from the fact that, if we’re talking about setbacks for human progress, the early Muslim conquests were one. Yes, there was a great reawakening where the conquerors began to appreciate the legacy that remained, and began translating and building on the works that escaped their destruction. That doesn’t make the intervening period better. And certainly the poster is correct that cities like Alexandria and Carthage never again achieved their old prominence.

Your understanding of the region is not an accurate account. Not at all. There have been various sophisticated civilizations in the region, among them various Islamic states. The rises and falls of various sophisticated civilizations came about for a variety of reasons, most of which were prior to the Islamic world existing. The Islamic Golden Age brought Alexandria back from being a declining backwater with its schools closed by late Rome's Christian emperors to returning to a center of learning, one that helped preserve important classical texts that were lost in the West, esp in mathematics and the sciences, and where they were significantly further developed.

Nobody is disputing the existence of the Islamic Golden Age. We are talking about the intermediate, bloody and chaotic period caused by the Muslim conquests that rapidly spread from the Arabian peninsula and overcame the Persian Empire and most of the Roman Empire. These empires didn’t go away for a “variety of reasons”, they went away because they were violently conquered by invading force in the name of religion.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests

As for your claims about Alexandria:

> Following the Arab conquest of Egypt in AD 641, the city was plundered and lost its significance before re-emerging in the modern era

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria

Once can also hardly read accounts of the conquest of Alexandria and think “my, what an improvement.” A lot of people died. Parts of the city burned. You are also wrong that the schools were closed prior. That was certainly not the case. Alexandria was a major center of learning up until the conquest.

Carthage was sacked and deliberately destroyed to prevent it from being retaken.

Look, yes, there’s a group of people out there that understates they Islamic Golden Age. But that doesn’t take away from the reality that the early Muslim conquests were absolutely ruinous. People were still writing those “important classical texts” you mention when they were killed and their texts burned. I doubt they would have much appreciated that the conquerors much later translated what survived the flames.

About the "schools being closed" thing, I had a chance to compare notes (so to speak) with a few friends that grew up in north african muslim countries. I remember they had a few interesting takes that showed a VERY distorted perspective on a few aspects of medieval history (we all do, history books are written by whoever runs the schools), a little beyond the self congratulatory takes I experienced in European schools. I still remember vividly an Egyptian friend of mine that was dead sure Egypt won the Six Days War against Israel to mention one of the most obviously wrong things he believed.

Similar as with Russians.

It might be a good idea to state your definition of North Africa. Though the Wikipedia page says that the most accepted definition is one where Egypt is part of it; I've been of the idea that it's not (but that might be because of the french influence ;) )

you studied classics in grad school but you should have also studied debate. As it is abundantly clear to the posters before me and those who replied above, no one except you contended that the islamic golden age did not exiat.

What your classics academia instruction seems to have short changed you is in the entire period of history where arab conquest reduced most mesopotamian and north african development to rubble, mostly in the name of religion.

>As it is abundantly clear to the posters before me and those who replied above, no one except you contended that the islamic golden age did not exiat.

Happily since I was a philosophy undergrad, I am easily able to spot a straw man. The claim was that the Arab Conquest transformed N Africa from a wealthy region to a backwater. This is was really what I was more responding to. During the Arab Golden Age N. Africa was far more prosperous than during the collapse of late Western Rome. If you learned about the history of the region you could discover how inaccurate the premise is as well as the conclusion. Anyway, this conversation ended yesterday so research if you'd like to learn, but I'm out.

The region never recovered post-Carthage. I live here, so if you are talking about a powerful civilization, then there is only Carthage. After that it was mostly trading cities going through boom-bust which are setup by other civilizations (Rome/Byzantium/Caliphates/Ottoman...)

> These cities were conquered. Some were sacked and destroyed. There was major loss of life, economic destruction, and loss of property, including written works. The conquerors, at the time, did not much appreciate the value of what they were destroying.

It's just life. North Africa was just a bunch of tribes/cities. It is easier for an invader to tackle them one city at a time than taking a full united civilization.

Much of Roman Africa was in a state of deterioration due to Christan invaders like Visigoths(I think) who overrun the Roman African provinces towards the decline of the Western Roman Empire.

At the time of the expansion of Islam, there was no longer even a Western Roman Empire.

I should have said Vandals instead of Visigoths. The Vandals ruled over Africa during and after the end of the Western Roman Empire.

Later in one of the most dashing military campaigns, the Eastern Roman Empire(Byzantines) forces under Belisarius captured most of the territory of the former Western Roman Empire, including the African provinces after defeating Vandals. The African provinces were then organized into the Exarchate, which is what Muslim armies eventually overcame in the 690s AD.

Any recommendations for fun-to-read books about this period?

I read these on holiday in Morroco a couple years ago and thoroughly enjoyed them. Not necessarily the correct period so I'm open to see other people's suggestions too.

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/878061.Moorish_Spain

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/336859.The_Golden_Trade_...

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4398835-the-berbers-and-...

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