World War Two
Published 21 Dec 2021Amin al-Husseini is one of the leading figures in global Islam. He’s an Arab nationalist, an anti-Semite, and anti-Zionist. But he’s also willing to work with imperialist powers if it suits him. He’s been loyal to the Ottomans and the British. In 1941, he throws his lot in with Hitler and the Nazis.
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December 22, 2021
The Nazi-Islam Alliance? – Amin al-Husseini – WW2 Biography Special
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December 7, 2021
The Byzantine Army, Dark To Golden Age
Epimetheus
Published 22 Mar 2019The Byzantine army, Dark to Golden age
This video was sponsored by Skillshare
Sources
Romano-Byzantine armies 4th-9th Centuries (David Nicolle)
Larousse Encyclopedia of Ancient and Medieval History (Marcel Dunan)
The Late Roman Infantryman (Simon MacDowall)
Byzantium Beyond the Golden Gate
Fall of the West (John Lambshead)
The Late Roman Cavalryman (Simon MacDowall)Tags:
Byzantine history, Byzantine, Byzantine documentary, Eastern Roman, Byzantine army, ancient history, Byzantine Cataphract, Byzantine Roman, history, Bulgaria Byzantium, Byzantine military, Byzantine legion, Byzantine empire, fall Byzantine, ancient, Rome, Constantinople, Byzantine empire documentary, crash course Byzantine empire, Byzantium, Byzantine army structure, Byzantine vs Roman, theme system, theme Byzantine, Roman tactics, Byzantine tactics, eastern Roman empire
From the comments:
Epimetheus
2 years ago (edited)
Notes/additional info:1. Should the empire be called Byzantine, Roman or Greek? I see people arguing for each of these in the comments and there is merit to each of these; but it is important to note that they called themselves Roman, they were majority Greek in population and language spoken, and the term Byzantine is useful in differentiating the time period and has been colloquially used for a long time (although not during the empire) Being a reference to the earlier name of Byzantium for the city of Constantinople.
2. When I refer to “native troops” this includes many other ethnic groups living within the empire, notably the Armenians who lived in Anatolia for hundreds of years and had assimilated in many ways but maintained different views on aspects of the Christian faith which was the most striking differentiating factor between them and the rest of the population of the empire.
3. The Strategos and Domestikos label should be switched on the captions at 6 mins 17 secs in. A Strategos led a Thema(ta) and a Domestikos led a Tagma(ta). Unfortunately I switched those by accident and stared at the screen for a while and did not notice that … sorry guys ;(
4. The Varangian Guard was a personal bodyguard unit to the emperor which are pretty cool, they were mostly comprised of Norsemen (Scandinavians), Rus and Saxons. They are the unit I refer to when I mention a Scandinavian unit.
5. The coolest unit (in my opinion) that I did not mention was the Akritai which were kinda like the Cossacks in that they were a loosely controlled border guard on the eastern side of the empire; and were the subject of much folklore and poems and such.
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November 29, 2021
A Historical Tour of Hagia Sophia
toldinstone
Published 28 Nov 2020You’ve heard about Hagia Sophia‘s famous dome. But what about the miraculous column, the Viking graffiti, and the portrait of Byzantium’s worst emperor?
For more on Roman art and architecture, check out my book Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants: Frequently Asked Questions about the Ancient Greeks and Romans.
https://www.amazon.com/Naked-Statues-…
If you’re so inclined, you can follow me elsewhere on the web:
https://www.patreon.com/toldinstone
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorian…
https://www.instagram.com/toldinstone/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show…Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:49 Justinian and his church
2:55 Construction of Hagia Sophia
4:11 Exterior
4:49 Exonarthex
5:14 Narthex
5:51 Vestibule of the Warriors
6:36 Imperial Gate
7:53 The Nave and Dome
10:37 Omphalos
11:12 Apse Mosaics
12:00 Column capitals
12:25 Weeping Column
13:07 Galleries
13:42 Gates of Heaven and Hell
14:01 Deësis mosaic
14:29 Tomb of Dandolo
15:14 Imperial mosaics of the South Gallery
17:28 Nordic runes
17:50 Alexander mosaic
18:26 ConclusionThanks for watching!
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October 5, 2021
Lars Vilks, RIP
Mark Steyn remembers Swedish artist Lars Vilks, best known for his defence of free speech rights after coming under (literal) attack by Islamist terrorists enraged that he drew a cartoon of Mohammed:
Lars Vilks, 1946-2021.
Cropped from a larger image by OlofE via Wikimedia Commons.
Yesterday, Sunday afternoon, he was being driven in a bulletproof car by two of his protection officers when there occurred what Swedish police regard as a freak collision with a truck. An almighty fire ensued and neither Lars nor the policemen survived; the driver of the other vehicle is seriously wounded and in hospital. This all happened near Markaryd, about an hour north-east of Helsingborg, where Lars was born. Helsingborg, like many Swedish cities, is utterly transformed, which is why Lars Vilks ended his life in an unmarked car being driven home under police protection from a guarded lunch with an old friend.
[…]
Lars was very funny about his newfound celebrity: He carried with him a picture of a Pakistani mob that had been whipped into a frenzy by somewhat inaccurate intelligence, so they were all jumping up and down in the streets demanding “DEATH TO LARISH”. And for a while that day in Copenhagen we all called him Larish: “Hey, Larish, another beer?”, etc.
Larish was likewise a hoot about two of the first jihadists sent to dispatch him. He came home one night to find that a couple of Kosovars had set his kitchen alight. As they escaped across the snowy field heady with the warm glow of their glorious victory over the infidel, they chanced to glance down and noticed that that warm glow was because they’d accidentally set their trousers on fire. After some effort to extinguish the blaze, they were forced to abandon their flaming pantaloons and scamper off into the chill night in their jihadist BVDs. Alas, the best-laid plans and all that: in addition to being trouserless in a Nordic winter, they had neglected to remove from their smouldering pants the charred driving licenses and other identifying documentation. Police were able to track them down rather easily, not least because they were the only two men in Scandinavia taking a late-night stroll in their Y-fronts.
When Lars told this story in Copenhagen, the whole room was roaring with laughter. Afterwards we all went to dinner. And news came to us somewhere between the soup and digestifs that a one-legged Chechen from Belgium, seething with resentment at Lars and the rest of us infidels, had prematurely self-detonated in his Copenhagen hotel room while assembling his package and preparing to hop into Paradise. And we all had a grand laugh about that, too. As I put it that day, Islamic terrorists are like Yosemite Sam, forever shoving the stick of dynamite in their own pants – until one day Yosemite Ahmed manages to get it right. After the bombing of the Conservative Party conference in 1984, the IRA taunted Mrs Thatcher: “You have to be lucky every day, we only have to be lucky once.”
Those jihad incompetents with the smoking trousers would modify the line: We only have to be competent once. Al-Qa’eda had put a six-figure bounty on Lars’ head, and there was no shortage of takers. In Ireland, the gardai arrested four men and three women from Waterford and Cork for a well-advanced plot to fly to Stockholm and kill him. At the height of the so-called “Troubles” you’d have been hard put to find five men in Waterford willing to travel to London to kill Mrs Thatcher or Willie Whitelaw. But an obscure artist in southern Sweden? Pas de problème!
As the report in the Daily Mail shows, the circumstances of Vilks’ death are at the very least, suspicious:
Swedish police investigating the car crash death of a controversial artist who had survived multiple assassination attempts after drawing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed cannot explain why his car was travelling so fast.
Lars Vilks, 75, was killed on Sunday when the police car he was travelling in veered onto the wrong side of the road and collided with a truck in Markaryd, in the Swedish province of Kronoberg.
Both vehicles caught fire and the truck driver, 45, was taken to hospital with serious injuries, while the two police protection officers and Vilks were killed.
Investigators believe there were no external influences that led to the deaths and say the crash may have been caused by a burst tyre.
However, they are unable to explain why the car was travelling at around 100mph, according to witnesses, in a 68mph zone.
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October 4, 2021
History Summarized: Sicily
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 1 Oct 2021The plot twist of Medieval Italian History is that the main event was happening in the South — In the centuries before the Renaissance, Sicily and southern Italy were sporting one of the most spectacular cultures in the world, combining the greatest hits of Mediterranean history in one place. It’s way cool, you guys.
SOURCES & Further Reading: Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History by John Julius Norwich, The Great Cities in History by John Julius Norwich, Great Courses Lectures “Muslims in the Court Of Roger II – 1130” from Turning Points in Middle Eastern History by Eamonn Gerron and “Renaissance Italy’s Princes and Rivals” from Renaissance: The Transformation of the West by Jennifer McNabb
This video’s topic was requested by our patron Salvatore Corasaniti. Thank you for supporting our channel!
Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.
PATREON: https://www.Patreon.com/OSP
PODCAST: https://overlysarcasticpodcast.transi…
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From the comments:
Overly Sarcastic Productions
2 days ago
I can’t even begin to describe how much Ancient Sicily Content™ I had to cut for time.
Fear not, Magna Graecia will get the spotlight it deserves in another video.
-B
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September 20, 2021
History-Makers: Maimonides
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 17 Sep 2021“From Moses to Moses, there was none like Moses.” Jump into 1100s Cordoba & Cairo as we take a look at the life of one of the Medieval world’s most boundary-breaking History-Makers: Moses Maimonides!
SOURCES & Further Reading: Great Courses lectures “Jewish Scholar in Cairo: Moses Maimonides” from The History and Achievements of the Islamic Golden Age by Eamonn Gearon and “Maimonides and Jewish Law” from Great Minds of the Medieval World by Dorsey Armstrong. Britannica “Maimonides” https://www.britannica.com/biography/…, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy “Maimonides” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ma…, The Guide For The Perplexed, Mishne Torah and Commentary on the Mishnah by Maimonides
Special thanks to Yellow/LudoHistory for his assistance in checking over my script. You can check out his livestreams playing historically-inspired videogames over at https://www.twitch.tv/ludohistory
Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.PATREON: https://www.Patreon.com/OSP
PODCAST: https://overlysarcasticpodcast.transi…
DISCORD: https://discord.gg/osp
MERCH LINKS: http://rdbl.co/osp
OUR WEBSITE: https://www.OverlySarcasticProductions.com
Find us on Twitter https://www.Twitter.com/OSPYouTube
Find us on Reddit https://www.Reddit.com/r/OSP/
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September 9, 2021
QotD: Terrorism
Others among the influential for a moment after the retaliatory strikes of October 7, 2001, talked of moral equivalency — the conventional wisdom that American precision targeting of an enemy in time of war carried the same ethical burden as the terrorists’ deliberate mass-murdering of civilians at peace. But billions worldwide knew that the selective wreckage of al-Qaeda safe houses in Kabul was not comparable to the smoldering crater that was once the World Trade Center. Why else were terrorists and the Taliban hiding in mosques and infirmaries to avoid American bombs while their own manuals instructed killers to commit mass murder in Jewish hospitals and temples? So the reality that average folk viewed on their televisions made them question the bottled piety of the last decades that they heard from a powerful and influential few. And in that moral calculus, September 11 shocked an affluent and at times self-satisfied American citizenry into confessing that it was no longer either too wealthy, too refined, or too sensitive to kill killers.
Victor Davis Hanson, Ripples of Battle, 2004.
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August 3, 2021
History Summarized: Abrahamic Religious Philosophy
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 12 Jun 2017Alrighty, here goes nothing. With three religions’ individual histories in the bag, and one campaign each by the Muslims and Christians covered on this channel, let’s see if we can find a way to all get along.
RELEVANT LINKS:
History Summarized: Islam: https://youtu.be/Uvq59FPgx88?
History Summarized: Christianity: https://youtu.be/A86fIELxFds?
History Summarized: Judaism: https://youtu.be/aKB6WduDwNE?
History Summarized: Christianity, Judaism, and the Muslim Conquest https://wp.me/p2hpV6-gQv
History Summarized: The Crusades: https://youtu.be/wZhyDIIkeLoPATREON: www.patreon.com/user?u=4664797
MERCH LINKS:
Shirts – https://overlysarcasticproducts.threa…?
All the other stuff – http://www.cafepress.com/OverlySarcas…?Find us on Twitter @OSPYouTube!
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July 27, 2021
History Summarized: The Crusades
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 11 Jun 2017Making a video exclusively about the crusades? That’s a bold strategy, Blue, let’s see how it pays off.
RELEVANT LINKS:
History Summarized: Islam: https://youtu.be/Uvq59FPgx88
History Summarized: Christianity: https://youtu.be/A86fIELxFds
History Summarized: Judaism: https://youtu.be/aKB6WduDwNE
History Summarized: Christianity, Judaism, and the Muslim Conquest https://wp.me/p2hpV6-gQv
History Summarized: Venice (Part 2): https://youtu.be/byMleAJ5kRs
History Summarized: Byzantine Empire: https://youtu.be/-ucHQVu8Dw0History Summarized: Abrahamic Religious Philosophy: https://youtu.be/B7myRRt0Mn8
PATREON: www.patreon.com/user?u=4664797
MERCH LINKS:
Shirts – https://overlysarcasticproducts.threa…
All the other stuff – http://www.cafepress.com/OverlySarcas…Find us on Twitter @OSPYouTube!
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July 25, 2021
The plight of the Uyghurs in China
In this week’s excerpt from his full Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan considers the Chinese government’s ongoing suppression of the Uyghur minority:
There’s a story in a recent Atlantic memoir by a Uyghur refugee that lingers in the mind. The Chinese authorities in Xinjiang Province now regard the possession of any religious literature, including the Koran, as prima facie evidence of terroristic activities. Terrified Uyghurs in Urumqi, the regional capital, have learned these past few years to quickly dispose of any such items — some throwing out books into the streets overnight so they could not be traced to their households. But one old man in his seventies forgot about a Koran he had possessed, and, coming upon it late, was too scared to hand it over, so threw it into a river. Alas,
the authorities had installed wire mesh under all bridges, and when the mesh was cleaned, the Quran was found and turned over to the police. When officers opened it, they found a copy of the old man’s ID card: In Xinjiang, the elderly have a habit of keeping important documents in frequently read books, so that they are easily found when needed. The police tracked down the old man and detained him on charges of engaging in illegal religious activities. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.
The “prisons” this elderly, devout Muslim was shipped off to now have a capacity of around one million people. They have been built at breakneck speed. Buzzfeed News has found “more than 260 structures built since 2017 and bearing the hallmarks of fortified detention compounds.” The more recent building suggests they are going to become permanent parts of a bid to wipe Uyghur culture from the face of the earth.
The Atlantic story helps you understand how eerily reminiscent this campaign is to the early Nazi-era treatment of Jews, all the way down to the initial disbelief that the genocidal campaign was beginning, to the slow creeping oppression, the sudden new checkpoints and security procedures, the separation of Han and Uyghurs, knocks on the door at night, the attempts of some to escape without detection, and the sudden disappearances of friends, relatives, co-workers — never to be heard of again.
We cannot know for sure what happens inside the camps, but reports from survivors include torture, starvation, force-feeding, solitary confinement, and brainwashing. And in some ways, the entire region is now an open-air prison: security cameras are everywhere, the imprisoned are pressured to incriminate others, police go house to house searching for illicit materials, mosques and neighborhoods are razed, Uyghur language is banned, phones monitored, face recognition technology is ubiquitous. Family members, waiting for their turn to be arrested, leave notes like this one from a husband to his wife:
If they arrest me, don’t lose yourself. Don’t make inquiries about me, don’t go looking for help, don’t spend money trying to get me out. This time isn’t like any time before. They are planning something dark. There is no notifying families or inquiring at police stations this time … I’m not afraid of prison. I am afraid of you and the girls struggling and hurting when I’m gone. So I want you to remember what I’m saying.
It’s important to note that the concentration camps for Muslims in China are not extermination camps. (At least not yet. “They are planning something dark” is not a sentence one ever wants to read.) But it is the greatest, systematic detention of a religious minority since the Second World War, championed by a newly emerged dictator-for-life, Chinese President Xi. And it is not going to stop any time soon.
July 20, 2021
Kurt Westergaard, RIP
Mark Steyn on the life and work of cartoonist Kurt Westergaard:
Kurt Westergaard and I were successive winners of the Danish Free Press Society’s Sappho Award. I was very flattered to find myself in his company, but couldn’t honestly say I deserved to be. Kurt was one of the bravest men of our time – not because he was inclined to bravery, but simply because, when it was required, he met the challenge and never backed down.
Sixteen years ago Flemming Rose of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten decided to conduct a thought experiment in public after an author casually revealed that he couldn’t find any Danish artist willing to illustrate his book about “the Prophet Mohammed” (as the BBC now routinely styles him). So Flemming called twelve cartoonists and invited them to depict the late Prophet. Kurt Westergaard’s cartoon was the memorable one, and the one you recall as the years roll by. It was a pithy visual jest: Mohammed’s turban as a bomb with a lit fuse. See picture at top right.
“I attempted to show that terrorists get their spiritual ammunition from parts of Islam, and with this spiritual ammunition, and with dynamite and other explosives, they kill people,” Kurt told my old newspaper The National Post a few years back. “I showed this in a cartoon and what happened? They want to kill me, so I think I was right.”
An otherwise courtly, cultured Dane, Kurt Westergaard had a somewhat arresting dress code, preferring le rouge et le noir, the colors of anarchists, although, as a practical matter, it’s hard for a man of advanced years to carry off red trousers, whatever his motivation. He would qualify his pantaloons by explaining that he was not a political anarchist but a cultural one. Still, one can gather from the garb alone that Westergaard was no “right-winger”. Like most of the men and women I have shared a stage with in Europe this century, he was an old Sixties radical sufficiently principled to think the same kind of jokes he’d applied to church, monarchy, parliament and every other societal institution should also be applied to Islam. He never wanted to be a “free speech hero”, but gamely bore the burthen once it had been dropped on him. He certainly never wanted to be world-famous, albeit more so in Mogadishu than Manhattan and Lahore than Los Angeles. It cost him a comfortable retirement, weakened his health, and an ever more craven culture denied him the consolations of monetary exploitation. When I expressed sympathy, he laughed and said he’d do the same cartoon all over again even knowing what he was in for.
The blood lust began with a trio of imams on the make shopping the twelve cartoons (plus three cruder fakes) round the Muslim world, and leaving it to the usual Islamonutters to take it from there: In nothing flat, over two hundred people were dead – which meant that CNN & Co were obliged to cover the story. They did so by modifying Westergaard’s cartoon, with Mohammed’s face pixilated, as if he’d entered the witness protection programme. If only. In reality, it was that dwindling band of people who believe in free speech – and, indeed, free speech itself – that found itself in the witness protection programme.
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History Summarized: Christianity, Judaism, and the Muslim Conquest
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 10 Jun 2017It’s all coming together now. With the individual histories of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism covered, Blue puts it together to summarize how the three interacted in the centuries leading up to the Crusades. The next video will cover the Crusades. Hype.
RELEVANT LINKS:
History Summarized: Islam: https://youtu.be/Uvq59FPgx88
History Summarized: Christianity: https://youtu.be/A86fIELxFds
History Summarized: Judaism: https://youtu.be/aKB6WduDwNEHistory Summarized: The Crusades: https://youtu.be/wZhyDIIkeLo
History Summarized: Abrahamic Religious Philosophy: https://youtu.be/B7myRRt0Mn8PATREON: www.patreon.com/user?u=4664797
MERCH LINKS:
Shirts – https://overlysarcasticproducts.threa…
All the other stuff – http://www.cafepress.com/OverlySarcas…
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July 15, 2021
Goodbye Lenin, Hello Jazz! | B2W:ZEITGEIST! I E.22 Winter 1924
TimeGhost History
Published 14 Jul 2021The winter of 1924 sees the death of not only Vladimir Lenin but also the Ottoman Caliphate. However, it also sees something fresh and completely unique enter the American mainstream. George Gershwin has given the Jazz Age a soundtrack.
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July 3, 2021
Who were the Mughals? Rise and Fall of the Mughal Empire explained
Epimetheus
Published 20 Oct 2019Who were the Mughals? Rise and Fall of the Mughal Empire explained (Documentary)
The Mughal empire’s history from Babur to the fall in 1857.
This video and others like it are sponsored by my Patrons over on patreon.
https://www.patreon.com/Epimetheus1776
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June 29, 2021
History Summarized: Rise of Islam
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 16 Nov 2016Note to viewers: This video contains images of the *Blue Mosque* in Istanbul, which is Not the Hagia Sophia. The Hagia Sophia was a church, later converted into a mosque, but the Blue Mosque, which, to be fair, looks fairly similar to the Hagia Sophia, is a totally different building, and was built by the Ottomans.
HE LIVES! … by at least a few medical metrics. Blue went on a huge training montage for the entirety of Autumn and is back to talk about the history of Islam!
If you have any questions about anything in the video and would like to learn more, leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer!
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Shirts – https://overlysarcasticproducts.threa…
All the other stuff – http://www.cafepress.com/OverlySarcas…Follow us on Twitter @OSPYouTube!
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