What was life like here?

Thanks for not using your name this time. That's something.

>

what is interesting about 7-11th near east?
its the same everywhere, just a bunch of dirty muslims fucking each other

antiquity(pre gr**k) near east was much more interesting, everyone was different and was free to do everything they want

>what is interesting about the development of modern medicine and astronomy

If you ACTUALLY want to know what makes the area and period interesting and worthy of study, there are any number of books you could read. But I suspect there is little point in making recommendations or going into the highs of Byzantine, Umayyad and Abbasid culture because the fact that you believe that 'everyone was different and was free to do what they want' to a degree implied to be impossible in later centuries, shows preconceptions too ingrained and ignorance too impenetrable for it to be worth bothering.

You seem to believe (or want to believe) that Islam has been Wahhabist from its beginnings. It would take 5 minutes on Wikipedia to discover this is not the case.

But if you want to deny the cultural and historical riches of the period, the dynamism of 7th-11th century near-eastern politics and society, who am I to stop you?

im not talking about wahhabism, i mean that everyone had the same mindset, same culture, etc

antiquity had more drama and mistery

please stop replying to him and talk about the Crusader States, thank you

> i mean that everyone had the same mindset, same culture, etc

Except that they didn't.

It's likely that the middle east didn't become majority muslim until the 13th centrurt or so, and even now it's like 15% christian
Also, the sunni-shia split is a huge thing in the core middle east

For whom? The "Frankish' nobility? The Greek, Armenian or Islamic population? The local nobility? Farmers? Merchants? Soldiers? Who are we talking about.

Just read Malcolm Barber's The Crusader States.

>what was life like here?
The usual; nasty, brutish and short.

>likely

do you see isis?, 630 arabs were worse than them, how can you think that they werent the majority? just look at sicily, when normans arrived there, most people spoke arabic and was muslim

ok,whatever you say, antiquity was more interesting

>do you see isis?, 630 arabs were worse than them, how can you think that they werent the majority? just look at sicily, when normans arrived there, most people spoke arabic and was muslim
just stop posting

nice argument, i thought you would bring something to proof that in the 10th centure muslism werent the majority

>just look at sicily, when normans arrived there, most people spoke arabic and was muslim

This is categorically untrue, the majority on Sicily remained Byzantine Greeks - there was a small ruling caste of Arab/Berber soldiers and administrators as well as a mercantile presence, but the majority of the population was Greek orthodox when the Normans arrived.

Look in ANY book on the subject (I'd recommend G.A. Loud's books), or better yet look at the help George Maniakes received when campaigning there in the earlier 11th century.

Seriously bud, stop posting. Lurk for a few years, or better, read some fucking books. Then try again.

when the byzantines reconquered parts of northern syria like antioch and cilicia, there were majority christian residents

>do you see isis?, 630 arabs were worse than them, how can you think that they werent the majority?

Also not an argument.

source
still more valid than yours

Warren Treadgold's "A History of the Byzantine State and Society"
I'd love to see you come up with a source that Muslims were a majority in Sicily

Anthony Kaldellis' Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood talks about the 10th century reconquest of Cilicia and northern Syria.

Or you could look at the large amount of archaeological, documentary and linguistic evidence.

But you won't. Because you are wrong, know you are wrong, and rather than admitting it and educating yourself, you've got massively butthurt and are trying to dig in with an un-evidenced proposition.