Beautifully written! A truly unfortunate state that Muslims find themselves in today is one which has almost intentionally decapitated itself from its historical lineage. Perhaps as a result of the colonization of both our cities and minds, we’ve relegated our entire positive history to the Umayyad and Abbasaid empires and ascribed everything following it up to the 19th century as a regressive stain, serving as the principle cause of our intellectual and military stagnation which therefore needs be forgotten of. In a form of collective apathy, we’ve become foreign to our own selves.
Very interesting. I like that this is continuing the theme from the first article on 19th-20th century Muslim society of challenging common historical conceptions. I admit I didn't know a lot of the positive contributions the Mongols made. So apparently the very negative characterisation of them came from both contemporary Muslim historians who had apocalyptic paranoia, which made them tell exaggerated horror stories, and from Orientalists who as usual had biasd and innaccurate understandings of Muslim history. I wonder if modern Arab nationalists also had a hand in spreading this, cause they commonly say that only the Arab empires had any good and the foreign ones are to blame for ruining things.
While the Mongols committed a lot of destruction and atrocities in their time, it's important to realise 2 things:
1. Historiography has largely been biased and inflated the Mongol destruction to apocalyptic levels
2. Much of this historiography is not just from contemporary sources, but 19th-20th century nationalist accounts that sought to repurpose history to create new national stories for new nation-states
Arab and Persian historiographers played a key role in re-casting Mongol and Turkic influences on Arab and Persian culture and civilisation as a nearly entirely negative force.
Very nice. revivals are not a onetime linear matter, apropos the islamicate civilizations they are a manifold of manifestations, Yana did an amazing job here.
Beautifully written! A truly unfortunate state that Muslims find themselves in today is one which has almost intentionally decapitated itself from its historical lineage. Perhaps as a result of the colonization of both our cities and minds, we’ve relegated our entire positive history to the Umayyad and Abbasaid empires and ascribed everything following it up to the 19th century as a regressive stain, serving as the principle cause of our intellectual and military stagnation which therefore needs be forgotten of. In a form of collective apathy, we’ve become foreign to our own selves.
amazing!!
Very interesting. I like that this is continuing the theme from the first article on 19th-20th century Muslim society of challenging common historical conceptions. I admit I didn't know a lot of the positive contributions the Mongols made. So apparently the very negative characterisation of them came from both contemporary Muslim historians who had apocalyptic paranoia, which made them tell exaggerated horror stories, and from Orientalists who as usual had biasd and innaccurate understandings of Muslim history. I wonder if modern Arab nationalists also had a hand in spreading this, cause they commonly say that only the Arab empires had any good and the foreign ones are to blame for ruining things.
While the Mongols committed a lot of destruction and atrocities in their time, it's important to realise 2 things:
1. Historiography has largely been biased and inflated the Mongol destruction to apocalyptic levels
2. Much of this historiography is not just from contemporary sources, but 19th-20th century nationalist accounts that sought to repurpose history to create new national stories for new nation-states
Arab and Persian historiographers played a key role in re-casting Mongol and Turkic influences on Arab and Persian culture and civilisation as a nearly entirely negative force.
Very nice. revivals are not a onetime linear matter, apropos the islamicate civilizations they are a manifold of manifestations, Yana did an amazing job here.
Thank you!