The Ancient Islamic Empire (History)

[Ishmael]

I just want to say that making these old posts of mine public is highly embarrassing.

Can we please ask me in future if I am prepared for public humiliation?

[Hatty]

When the AEL site was first set up the instructions were to transfer some of the material from the original site to get things off the ground and if necessary to drip-feed the new site from time to time, apologies if the posts are now out of date.

Since AEL's inception the posters have galloped off in various directions so evidently many of the early posts are no longer relevant. Any posts you wish to disown can be deleted!

[DPCrisp]

[DPCrisp]

[Hatty]

[Mick Harper]

Let's not forget that Spain was the only country in Europe that was (for all practical purposes) run as a giant sheep-range.

[Rocky]

[Ishmael]

[Leon]

Just read through this thread.

As usual the vortex of derivations, free associations and both plausible and dubious cross-lingual connexions gets a bit dizzying, as Dan Crisp notes, but the theory Ishmael outlines on the first page seems very sensible - although to tell you the truth I have rather scant information on which to judge.

Certainly if Christianity and Islam were (even if there is another layer of doctrine below the surface) spinoffs from Judaism, as Christianity from everything we know about it must be, and as Islam seems to be since the Qur'n tells so many of the same stories as the Hebrew Bible, then Zoroastrianism could also be.

I don't think that's exactly what you're saying, Ish, but if Jews and Zoroastrianists were associated with the frequency you say, and of course Judaism or at least the Hebrew tradition from which it developed is much older (Zoroaster lived in the 6th C BC, whereas Moses goes back to about 1500 BC and Abraham to the 22nd C, and the Hebrew Bible records events and personages going back to the mid-7th millennium: Adam, first known patriarch, mythologised as the First Man), then the derivation is likely, at least very possible.

Martin Freksa, in Traces of the Atlantic Civilization, states that the closest linguistic affinity of the Phoenicians, founders of Carthage, was with the Hebrews, so the link on the Western end of this presumed pre-Islamic religious movement also seems to make sense. By the way, perhaps Hatty can answer this, when did Judah/Yudah live, the one for whom Judaism is named? (It's good to get informed confirmation of Sfarad = Spain > Sephardic.)

[Leon]

Some years ago, when I learned that it was commonly believed in Europe that Mohammed was a Christian renegade and therefore a schismatic, it occurred to me that even if that is not true, the development of Islam might well have been a reaction on the part of the Arab upper class to the spread of Christianity in Egypt and Arabia and other neighbouring areas, which, since it had been made official in the Roman, or in his time post-Roman budding Byzantine Empire, would have meant the possible encroachment (once again) of that Empire in more than religious terms.

The standard story says that the Arabs at that time were animists or pagans or the like, which doesn't make sense considering the religious history of the area, so if there was a Carthaginian-Zoroastrian set of beliefs there that had grown lax as doctrine and fallen to large degree into disuse, it would have provided a handy basis for a religious revival with a new book to give it a glamorous uptodate air.

I've never actually read the Qur'n, because looking into it it seemed pretty boring, but skipping around in it my impression is that the most frequent theme is Repent! or thou shalt be cast into hell! Does this tally with what any of you know about Zoroastrianism?

[Leon]

And by the way, I don't see any reason to suppose that Jesus and Mohammed are not historical figures, among others normally termed 'mythological'. Someone had to exercise the roles they are said to have played, even if the stories told about them have been embroidered for better literary presentation, or even if, for example, we suppose that Mohammed was the front man for a more corporate sort of upper-middle-classs economic-political-religious movement, so why think the men who played those roles were not named as tradition says?

[Ishmael]

[Leon]

[Leon]

In any case, Ishmael, I still think your Carthaginian/Islamic religion theory has a lot of substance, I'd like to see further developments.

Where I think you went off track was in the question of the 'barbars'. The point is that the people identified by that name didn't call themselves that, so for example a supposed connection between 'barbar' and Hebrew 'bar' has no foundation.

[Leon]