hinduwoman

Toto, I think you mean that people living in the West do not consider Eastern Roman empire as Roman empire. Byzantines definitely did.

Tyler Durden

Round 2

Much fun will be had by all! i am currently working on a response....

Answerer

I think the fall of Roman Empire began when the Pope held more power than the emperor did.

Tyler Durden

Actually archaelogist state that Rome actually dated around to 750 BC over at Palatine Hill. Whereas the actual "legendary" rome was claimed to be founded on April 21st, 753 BC.

Who is that “archaelogist?”

Of course, if you use "Emperors" as a measuring stick, your numbers would be off by 500 years, starting with Augustus, which is aroudn 27 AD. [Ceasar types]

Correct, however, the republic was founded in 509 BC, true or false? Note that I did not write ‘roman empire,’ but ‘the founding of republic.’

and ending with Western Empire under Romulus Augustus and Zeno. .which basically both ended at the date you stated 476 AD. [They're not Caesare types, but Augusti types] So essentially. . only 400 or so years. . therefore. .couple of centuries.

Formally, the word ‘couple’ means two. Being as precise as possible is called good scholarship.

Fool, at the time, the only known world at that time was essentially every "continent". I should have put down "known worlds" as a clarifying point. You should have at least caught onto that rather than going on a wailing tantrum.

It isn’t my responsibility to read your mind, guess at your intentions, and avoid taking you literally.

*sigh* fool. Did you actually think that Islam existed solely because of Muhammad?

Yes, most historians seem to think so.

it existed way before he did.

Evidence, please. Or at least, cite a credible historian who backs this half-baked assertion. Otherwise, assertions by amateurs will not fly here.

He's the final stamp that unified the entire Koran.

Then explain why do most historians attribute the origin of Islam to Mohammed? Are they all part of a global conspiracy? Even the entry of Islam in my philosophy encyclopedia dates the religion to Mohammed.

Try reading up on some Islam history besides relying on your babyphatwhateverhername is.

What does babyphat have to do with this? Non-sequitur #1.

Have you ever heard of the Parathian War?

No, unless I’m being charitable and guess you mean the ‘Parthian’ war. According to this website http://www.livius.org/pan-paz/parthia/parthia02.html , the Parthian war in 114 was a victory for Romans that absorbed Armenia, Mesopotamia and Assyria to the Empire. What does that have to do with anything? Citing the names of wars doesn’t mean Islam existed before Mohammed. NS#2

No? how about the second Parathian War? . .

Non-sequitur #3, again. How is this related to your silly assertion that Islam existed before Mohammed? Where is the connection that a group of people who lived in that region to Islam?

How about Macromannic War?

You are really reaching new lows here with a revolt of the client people along the Rhine and Danube river. What does the Suevic tribe (Germans) have to do with the origin of Islam? The Marcomanni disappeared in the 4th century. #4

No? How about the Persian war?

The struggle between the Persians and the Romans lasted six centuries. http://www.thehistorynet.com/mhq/blromespersianmirage/ Could you be more specific?

The huns pestered them for a little while. However it was germans put the final nail in their damn coffins around 350 AD-467 AD with the "goths!" TRY AGAIN

Hardly a convincing defense of how Islam predates Mohammed. Citing a few battles between Romans and those people who live in the region of what is now the middle east means diddly squat. Is this all?

it wasn't till 260 AD that Rome extended "tolerance" to the christian, so what the hell are you talking about?

And this is in response to… ?

They were boofing them left n right. The decline started roughly around 96 AD at the death of Domitian.

Good, but what is this incidental point for?

As please don't even quote Gibbons till you've read him! He did quote 'em plenty. .it's under Persians! FOOL!

‘em? Who is ‘em? Did Gibbons attribute the fall of Rome to the Muslims? Cite the chapter, verse, and page number. I have his books. And please refrain from speculating on which books I have read.

The only name that I never quite understood the justification for was "barbarians". Who were those fuckers referring to directly? the muslims? or some hacks that shared a similiarity to the Huns?

This question is enough indication that you have not done your homework.

Try again. Islam does not rely on Mohammed,

False.

think of it this way, Mohammed is the equilivalent of Jesus (in concept, not deeds nor words).

False analogy. Jesus did not write anything and was a figurehead of Pauline Christianity. Nobody else figures as much in the Koran as Paul does in the New Testament. Furthermore, Jesus did not come after the rise of Christianity. So your analogy is also bad, on top of being false.

Whereas the Koran itself is not solely based up on Mohammed but hundreds of little books thrown together.

So? The oldest Parchments of the Koran in existence date back to 7th or 8th century. Skeptics and scholars think these traditions were written a couple of centuries after the events they relate to (information about Muhammad, his dealings with Jibreel, his prophethood). Even muslims admit this – the important ‘ahadith’ were compiled by Imam Bukhari, who died 240 years after the alleged period Mohammed lived. Unless you’re going to tell me that these writings, on account of predating Mohammed, predicted the life of Mohammed…

I suggest you read the "reader of the travellers". . an excellent backdrop to Islamic Religion.

I could not locate it on amazon. Is the title spelled right? Who wrote it?

mohammed's date has nothing to do with Islam nor the fall of Rome. .he's irrelevant.

False. Unless you can persuade me why you’re right and most historians of religion are wrong, why should I agree with you? You are not even an expert on this topic, and you already confessed that you have a grudge against Islam.

Just as jesus didn't write the bible, he was the cumilation of the different writers.

Yes, but that is neither here nor there.

not quite "helluva lot older". . Koran was just an evolving text. .not something instantenous gave to the Prophet Mohammed. Of course, that's blasphemy in the Islamic world. .but that's the way it is.

Then what did the Koran evolve from? What other text did it adopt, then? Please be specific, because these hazy assertions are unpersuasive and weak.

did u even bother updating yourself on current events? Sigh. .that's why You have me. .i guess. . Bush backtracked and pedaled incredibly hard to reword what he said about "crusade" and called it a "war" instead. He never justified it after using it, he totally threw it away.

Oops, my bad. I thought conservatives did not bend backwards to the wishes of sensitive liberals?

Grizzly

Hello all,

I don't think this thread belongs in NARP. I'm moving it to GRD.

Grizzly

pz

OK, I'm totally confused by this guy's line of reasoning, as well as his butchery of the facts.

Augustus had been dead for 13 years in 27 AD. His reign began, more or less, in 31 BC.

The decline started in 96AD? What about the Five Good Emperors? The seeds of rot may have been there, but in many ways the empire reached its peak after that date, and it was really after the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180AD that things really started falling apart.

I don't know what he's talking about with this "augusti/caesar types". Those were titles taken from family names that became progressively associated with specific imperial roles.

I don't see how he can claim Parthians/Persians were muslim. They weren't. The Persians encompassed a huge ethnically and religiously diverse empire.

I hope he isn't thinking the Goths had some pre-Islamic influence -- they were Arian Christians.

As far as I can recall, Gibbon (who is not the final authority, anyway) did not blame the fall of Rome on the Persians. He listed multiple causes: the division of the empire into east and west, the excesses of prosperity which sapped the discipline of the state, unity and uniformity which simplified the process of conquest, the growing vigor of barbarian nations which were also learning from Rome, and also...christianity. He partially blamed the inward-looking, draining influence of those early squabbling christian sects and their bishops, with their constant petty feuds, for the decline of the empire.

I'm just wondering if this guy thinks christianity predates Jesus and Paul.

paul30

The Roman Empire was pretty much over by A.D. 400.

It was most definitely over (in all but name) by A.D. 600.

Mohammed didn't found Islam till 30 years later.

Don't think Islam
can possibly be the culprit; the victim was dead before the suspect was born.

Kalvan

Interesting thread. I don’t know if anyone is still interested in this but I’ll toss in my 2 cents. As to the basic question, “Was the fall of the Roman Empire caused by Islam?”, the answer is yes, in a significant sense it did. One problem in understanding this process is that Rome and its empire evolved and changed so much over a period of two millenia that in some ways in its various phases it is not recognizable as the same thing. Another difficulty is that in modern times we tend to have fairly exact dates – America won its Revolution on a specific date; Napoleon was exiled on a specific date; the Third Reich and the USSR fell on specific dates. In terms of the Roman Empire and its fall things are not so clearly delineated. Rome was founded in the mid-8th Century BC, the date of 753 BC being generally accepted. It was initially ruled by kings and the rule of Etruscan kings in the latter part of this period was so odious that the Romans threw them out in 509 BC and found the Republic shortly thereafter. The Roman “Empire” (the word comes from the Latin word imperium, meaning “dominion” or “supreme power”) was actually created during the period of the Republic. Under the Republic the Romans conquered all of Italy, Spain, France, Greece, North Africa, Asia Minor (modern Turkey), Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. (Britain, Dacia (Romania), and parts of Germany and Mesopotamia were added under the Empire.) At the end of the 1st Century BC, after his victory over Marc Antony ended the period of Republican Civil Wars, Augustus became “emperor” (he actually referred to himself as princeps). As has been pointed out there were a number of factors leading to the “Fall”, but it is noteworthy that by as early as the mid-3rd Century AD the Empire was starting to become enervated and having problems with barbarian incursions. One problem, command and control, was addressed by splitting the empire into East and West, with an Emperor for each half. Briefly reuniting the two halves in the early 4th Century AD, Constantine (the first Christian emperor) made Byzantium the capital of the Empire and renamed it Constantinople. As time went by the Romans began to hire barbarian mercenaries to fight the barbarian invaders, and eventually the army was composed largely of barbarians. Not only that, but the commanders were eventually “Romanized” barbarians. In 475 AD one of these generals named Orestes (who was half Roman) who had been appointed to command of the army of the Western Empire by the Emperor Julius Nepos, deposed Nepos and placed his (Orestes’) son, Romulus Augustulus, on the throne. Nepos fled to a remnant of territory he controlled on the other side of the Adriatic in Illyria and Emperor Zeno in the East continued to recognize him until he died in 480. In September of 476 AD a German general, Odoacer, deposed Romulus Augustulus. This is the date usually taken as the “fall” of the Western Empire. Odoacer might have placed another puppet on the throne, but Nepos was still alive, so Odoacer sent the imperial regalia back to Zeno and asked to be confirmed as dux of Italy. Zeno did this and raised Odoacer to patrician status. Odoacer was later overthrown by Theodoric the Ostrogoth who made Italy an Ostrogoth kingdom while retaining many of the Roman forms (the barbarians generally wanted to be part of and enjoy the advantages of Rome, not destroy it). Now through all of this the barbarians had been acknowledging Zeno as emperor, the Senate continued to meet in Rome, etc. IOW, the locals were unaware that the empire had “fallen”. Early in the next century the Emperor Justinian I decided to retake control over some parts of the Empire and his generals reconquered eastern Spain, Carthage, and Italy. Roman authority was restored to the city of Rome in 536 and to Ravenna (often the capital of the Western Empire) in 540. Spain was lost again pretty quickly and sizeable chunks of Italy were soon lost to the Lombards, but the central part of Italy known as the Exarchate of Ravenna, including Rome and Ravenna, remained under the control of the Eastern Roman Empire until it was finally overrun by the Lombards in 751 AD. In the meantime things had been happening in the East. Along with the Exarchate of Ravenna, the East Romans controlled Carthage, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Anatolia, Greece and parts of Mesopotamia. So the “Roman Empire” was still very much a going concern when Mohammed was born 571. The rival of Rome for centuries in the area of Mesopotamia had been the Parthians and the later Sassanid Persian Empire. In the early 600’s the Romans suffered some major reverses after the Emperor Maurice was murdered in 602 and the Persians occupied Syria and Palestine for thirty-odd years until a new emperor, Heraclius, was able to eject them from those areas. Both of the empires were exhausted after decades of war. It was at that moment, when Heraclius had not yet been able to reconsolidate his hold on the area and regain his strength, that Islam boiled up out of Arabia. At the Battle of Yarmuk in Syria in 636 the Moslems decisively defeated Heraclius and the Empire lost Syria and Palestine immediately and forever. A little later they took Egypt and Carthage. They also moved east and conquered the Persians completely. For the next eight centuries the Eastern Roman Empire shielded Eastern Europe from Islam, in spite of being weakened again by their catastrophic defeat by the Moslem Turks at Manzikert in 1071 and again in 1204 when fellow Christians of the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople. The much reduced Eastern Empire finally fell in 1453 when Constantinople was captured by the Moslem Turks (or 1461 if you want to count the Empire of Trebizond, a Byzantine remnant along the southern coast of the Black Sea). Now it has been stated that this wasn’t the “Roman” Empire in the East but the “Byzantine” empire. The term Byzantine was not used until the 1700’s. Though they were Greek-speaking Christians ruled by autocrats and bore little resemblance to the pagan yeomen of the Roman Republic, they thought of themselves as “Roman”.

Clara Listensprechen

Ummmm, really surprised that an admin person moved the topic of Islam, an Abrahamic religion, to a non-Abrahamic religion section, because it is an Abrahamic religion fer crying out loud. MODERATOR, YOUR TOPIC MOVE TO NON-ABRAHAMIC IS OFF TOPIC!!
==========================================

Yes, there's an amateur historian in the house. Allow me to address each point...

He doesn't specify WHICH Roman Empire at the height of which power. There were a number of different eras of Roman Empires, beginning with the pagan Republic and ending with a fragmented Christian, suffering expansions and contractions along the way and not just from Muslims alone. There were Vandals, Goths, Visigoths....etc..etc... One could easily make the case that the height of the Roman Empire was during its Republic years under pagans, that Christianity was adopted out of political weakness due to a fragmentation already well in progress. SEE ALSO Praetorian Guards.

Not only was "The Roman Empire" a very big one, it was also a very long one, not all of which was Christian and not all of which was a uniform size throughout its history.

Which one? There were several Crusades, some had successful campaigns and some had unsuccessful ones, particularly in the last one when the Crusaders had Saladin to go up against...but by the time Saladin showed up, notice was already out in the Arab world that fighting 'em off would be necessary. Look to Saladin as the originator of European chivalry and Knights Templar, later to be called Freemasons. They got their funny hats and Arabic language borrowings from somewhere, ey?

Now, this is an outright baldface fallacy. Rome had power over Greece and Greece was just as pagan as Rome was. Perhaps it's infered we're talking about post-Constantinian Roman Empire. That, as I'd said earlier, was already seriously fractured and main reason why Constantine got the hell outta Dodge (Rome) and moved his butt to safe ole Constantinople, taking Roman HQ with him. You guessed it--Praetorian Guards, who had turned themselves into whimsical emperor-makers (and breakers).
And Judaism is older than Christianity. And paganism is older than Judaism. His point.......?????????
More bull. Under Rome, Palestine was a mix of pagans, Jews, and Christians. Rome really didn't care what deities anybody believed in so long as the religion wasn't perceived as a threat to the Empire, as both Judaism and Christianity were percieved. When Islam came to the region, the then-city/state of Jerusalem fell bloodlessly to Calif Omar by treaty in 637 A.D., and primarily because this was percieved as being an improvement on the overtaxing Roman regime.
Crusader, Salahedeen, no difference. Both "crusade" and "jihad" in a political sense are inflammatory either way. Both in political context are to be avoided in this modern day and age.
The bigger shame is that's how he was taught from someone else who believed that this biased form of history is the "true" history, and anyone who comes up with the hard real facts are declared to be "revisionist".

Ignorance = Bliss?? I wonder, sometimes....ignorance like this on two warring sides in this nuclear day and age could be fatal to the entire planet.

Clara Listensprechen

SAY--ain't religiion the poorest excuse in the world to go nuclear???