Has there ever been someone who harmed the progress of humanity and caused destruction as much as this faggot? Honestly...

"[The Byzantine Empire] was in a condition of perpetual insecurity. Its general aspect presents a disgusting picture of imbecility; wretched, nay, insane passions, stifle the growth of all that is noble in thoughts, deeds, and persons. Rebellion on the part of generals, depositions of the Emperors by their means or through the intrigues of the courtiers, assassination or poisoning of the Emperors by their own wives and sons, women surrendering themselves to lusts and abominations of all kinds - such are the scenes which History here brings before us; till at last - about the: middle of the fifteenth century (a.d. 1453) - the rotten edifice of the Eastern Empire crumbled in pieces before the might of the vigorous Turks." -- Hegel

"There exists another history, more absurd than the history of Rome since the time of Tacitus: it is the history of Byzantium. This worthless collection contains nothing but declamations and miracles. It is a disgrace to the human mind." -- Voltaire

Hegel, Voltaire and more importantly Gibbon are memers who basically created the "decadent-useless empire" meme (gibbon more than the others). So quoting them is absurd, I can quote Gibbon here and portray Mohammad as a great man, Christianity as cancer and byzantine as a decadent and useless empire.

Modern scholarship disagrees with the bad reputation ERE unfairly received. Do a little search on scihub for scholars who attack this meme or If you have time (for I don't) wait for 7-8 hours when I can search and post you some links of scholars who attack the memes of gibbon

Is it not all the more appalling that the Byzantines had access to the works of the ancient Greeks and could read them in their native language, and yet failed to achieve anything of the same magnitude as the Italians of the Renaissance? And let's not forget the collapse of virtue and vigor that is the chief mark of spiritually diseased people. A civilization that quickly abandoned the largest and most heavily fortified city in the world to an ill-disciplined squadron of deluded and illiterate peasants cannot be in anything but decline.

What did Muhammad invent? You can't really say he "invented" the Quran.

He invented islam

Byzantium was Christian, though.

Did he come up with it in his laboratory?

Yes, he was a infidelologist.

To give them credit ERE produced good scholars even at their decline, but you are expecting too much from an increasingly weak "nation-state" surrounded by an enemy. Still many of them flourished when they arrived to a more stable(although not safe from all wars) and rich (enough to patron the scholars) cities. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_scholars_in_the_Renaissance

and ERE hold it out for more than a thousand year, against very formidable enemies. Surviving until 1204 (or 1453) is an achievement in it itself. Grand Strategy of Byzantine Empire is a good book to read on that subject.

But you are right on greek meme, not only they knew the language but they also had access to a lot of texts that west lost. And when West got them back they began to produce equally or surpassing works. Take a look at rediscovery of aristotle in the west and the brilliant work of Thomas Aquinas, so don't take my word as shitting on "frankish barbarians".

You know all Empires have fallen pretty hard, right? The Byzantine Empire outlasted the Roman Empire and was always ahead in most aspects. Even the British Empire post-WW2 was suffering so many external and internal pressure, that if they clung onto India much longer there would have been a shitstorm

Anyway, I'll tell you what Western Europe would look like had the Romans remained in charge. It would look like Morocco. Judging by the virtue of Byzantine arms before the invading Arabs in practically every engagement with the Muslim armies, not the least of which was the Battle of Yarmouk, Western Europe would have quickly fallen under Islamic rule. There would have been no Battle of Tours or Siege of Vienna to stay the flood of Arabs, Turks, and Berbers.

I don't know famalam, while ERE lost against Yarmouk they hold against islam for centuries, anatolia took 400 and Constantinople took 800 years to fell. Pretty good achivements imho given the fact they lived next to the great caliphates while Franks only had to deal with the less powerful youmadyads

"what if" scenarios are hard to play, we don't know what would Roman empire be like if it was not divided so we are just in the speculation territory. I mean khazars hold against islamic incursion too, maybe if empire fell in the east (or it remained pagan) I would hold against arabic raids better, but again what ifism..

>youmadyads*
of cordoba version, not the great caliphate version in damascus

Which is the point I'm trying to make. The success of Europe for the past 1000 years has been due precisely to the lack of a continent-spanning hegemonic Empire (i.e., Rome). In contrast, China, a civilization in certain at least as impressive as the medieval Europeans, failed to produce an indigenous Renaissance or Enlightenment despite inventing gunpowder and printing hundreds of years before they were known in Europe due to the culturally and economically suffocating control of the mandarins in the heavily centralized imperial bureaucracy. The same things happened in Europe, but the fierce competition among roughly equal powers prevented all of Europe from plunging into decline.

>Thread opened to talk shit about Genghis Khan.
>Immediately gets taken over by assblasted >H>R>E fags.