The [Eastern Roman] Empire was faced by a triple threat to its existence. There were the northern barbarians. There was militant Islam in the south. There was an internal collapse of population. Each of these had been brought on by changes in the climate that no one at the time could have understood had they been noticed. It would not be until after 800 that the climate would turn benign again. In the meantime, any state to which even a shadow of Lecky’s dismissal applied would have crumpled in six months. Only the most courageous and determined action, only the most radical changes of its structure, could save the Empire. And saved the Empire most definitely was.
The reason for this is that the Mediaeval Roman State was directed by creative pragmatists. Look for one moment beneath its glittering surface, and the Ancient Roman Empire was a ghastly place for most of the people who lived in it. The Emperors at the top were often vicious incompetents. They ruled through an immense and parasitic bureaucracy. They were supreme governors of an army too large to be controlled. They protected a landed aristocracy that was a repository of culture, but that was ruthless in its exaction of rent. Most ordinary people were disarmed tax-slaves, where not chattel slaves or serfs.
The contemporary historians themselves are disappointingly vague about the seventh and eighth centuries. Our only evidence for what happened comes from the description of established facts in the tenth century. As early as the seventh century, though, the Mediaeval Roman State pulled off the miracle of reforming itself internally while fighting a war of survival on every frontier. Much of the bureaucracy was shut down. Taxes were cut. The silver coinage was stabilised. Above all, the senatorial estates were broken up and given to those who worked on them, in return for service in local militias. Though never abolished, chattel slavery became far less pervasive. The civil law was simplified, and the criminal law humanised – after the seventh century, as said, the death penalty was rarely used.
The Mediaeval Roman Empire survived because of a revolutionary transformation in which ordinary people became armed stakeholders. The inhabitants of Roman Gaul and Italy and Spain barely looked up from their ploughs as the Barbarians swirled round them. The citizens of Mediaeval Rome fought like tigers in defence of their country and their Orthodox faith. Time and again, the armies of the Caliph smashed against a wall of armed freeholders. This was a transformation pushed through in a century and a half of recurrent crises during which Constantinople itself was repeatedly under siege. Alone among the ancient empires in its path, Mediaeval Rome faced down the Arabs, and kept Islam at bay for nearly five centuries. Would it be superfluous to say that no one does this by accident?
Sean Gabb, “The Mediaeval Roman Empire: An Unlikely Emergence and Survival”, SeanGabb.co.uk, 2018-09-14.
August 20, 2022
QotD: The improbable survival of the Byzantine empire
June 3, 2022
The Crusades: Part 10 – The End of the Crusader Kingdoms
seangabb
Published 27 Mar 2021The Crusades are the defining event of the Middle Ages. They brought the very different civilisations of Western Europe, Byzantium and Islam into an extended period of both conflict and peaceful co-existence. Between January and March 2021, Sean Gabb explored this long encounter with his students. Here is one of his lectures. All student contributions have been removed.
(more…)
May 20, 2022
The Crusades: Part 7 – The Third Crusade
seangabb
Published 5 Mar 2021The Crusades are the defining event of the Middle Ages. They brought the very different civilisations of Western Europe, Byzantium and Islam into an extended period of both conflict and peaceful co-existence. Between January and March 2021, Sean Gabb explored this long encounter with his students. Here is one of his lectures. All student contributions have been removed.
(more…)
May 17, 2022
The Crusades: Part 6 — The Loss of Jerusalem
seangabb
Published 27 Feb 2021The Crusades are the defining event of the Middle Ages. They brought the very different civilisations of Western Europe, Byzantium and Islam into an extended period of both conflict and peaceful co-existence. Between January and March 2021, Sean Gabb explored this long encounter with his students. Here is one of his lectures. All student contributions have been removed.
(more…)
May 14, 2022
The Crusades: Part 5 – The Role of Women
seangabb
Published 19 Feb 2021The Crusades are the defining event of the Middle Ages. They brought the very different civilisations of Western Europe, Byzantium and Islam into an extended period of both conflict and peaceful co-existence. Between January and March 2021, Sean Gabb explored this long encounter with his students. Here is one of his lectures. All student contributions have been removed.
(more…)
May 10, 2022
Canadian Armed Forces considering banning Islamic, Jewish, and Christian chaplains for their racist, misogynistic, and bigoted beliefs
When an organization goes woke, there’s no halfway measures … it’s all-woke, all the time. Recently the Canadian Armed Forces received a report that could result in current chaplains being forced to resign their commissions because their religious beliefs “are not aligned with those of the Defence Team”. One wonders how future recruiting efforts will go with believing members of those faith-based communities who are potentially going to be explicitly described as “racist, misogynistic, and bigoted”:
Calling other parties racist in the House of Commons is bad. Calling whole religions and their adherents racist, misogynist and bigoted is worse
And yet, this government is being called to support one of the most egregious examples of anti-religious sentiment I have ever seen in Canada, and it was published by the Minister of National Defence Advisory Panel on Systemic Racism and Discrimination. This document is supposed to advise the Canadian Armed Forces on racism and discrimination in the military and, if the government were to follow through on its recommendations, it would effectively disqualify chaplains from Canada’s largest faith groups.
In its final report, this panel recommends that the military should “not consider for employment as spiritual guides or multi-faith representatives Chaplaincy applicants affiliated with religious groups whose values are not aligned with those of the Defence Team.”
As you read the document, it quickly becomes clear that their understanding of “values” appear to be completely ignorant of the actual practice of the very religions they defame. Yet the report would disqualify clergy from — at the very least — the three major Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) under the grounds that these faiths are inherently discriminatory.
Not content to deal with actual cases of misogyny, sexism and discrimination, the government’s panelists have taken a go at determining which beliefs and philosophies are acceptable in Canada’s new modern military.
“The Advisory Panel has observed that there are varying degrees of misogyny, sexism, and discrimination woven into the philosophies and beliefs of some mainstream religions currently represented in the cadre of chaplains in the CAF,” the report says.
Then it gets worse.
The Crusades: Part 4 — Life in Outremer
seangabb
Published 11 Feb 2021The Crusades are the defining event of the Middle Ages. They brought the very different civilisations of Western Europe, Byzantium and Islam into an extended period of both conflict and peaceful co-existence. Between January and March 2021, Sean Gabb explored this long encounter with his students. Here is one of his lectures. All student contributions have been removed.
(more…)
May 7, 2022
The Crusades: Part 3 — The Crusader States
seangabb
Published 6 Feb 2021The Crusades are the defining event of the Middle Ages. They brought the very different civilisations of Western Europe, Byzantium and Islam into an extended period of both conflict and peaceful co-existence. Between January and March 2021, Sean Gabb explored this long encounter with his students. Here is one of his lectures. All student contributions have been removed.
(more…)
May 3, 2022
The Crusades: Part 2 – The First Crusade
seangabb
Published 5 Feb 2021The Crusades are the defining event of the Middle Ages. They brought the very different civilisations of Western Europe, Byzantium and Islam into an extended period of both conflict and peaceful co-existence. Between January and March 2021, Sean Gabb explored this long encounter with his students. Here is one of his lectures. All student contributions have been removed.
(more…)
April 26, 2022
The Crusades: Part 1 – The Long Prehistory
seangabb
Published 23 Jan 2021The Crusades are the defining event of the Middle Ages. They brought the very different civilisations of Western Europe, Byzantium and Islam into an extended period of both conflict and peaceful co-existence. Between January and March 2021, Sean Gabb explored this long encounter with his students. Here is one of his lectures. All student contributions have been removed.
(more…)
March 16, 2022
QotD: Muslim views of western culture
a collection of casinos, supermarkets and whore-houses linked together by endless highways passing through nowhere. All that money, all that effort all those resources that are wasted so that idiotic women and shallow men can prolong their lives … You see ancient women who refuse to die at a normal time and who continue to paint themselves and crave youthful lovers right to the edge of the grave … To eat tons of hamburgers and popcorn, to imbibe oceans of Coca-Cola and whisky, to watch hundreds of hours of stupid television, to copulate mechanically a few hundred times, to be on guard minute against being robbed, raped or murdered. That is the American way of life.
Our civilisation is regarded as evil, and its destruction is taken as a sacred duty for reasons both defensive and offensive.
Defensive
There can be no doubt that Khomeini was a firm anti-communist. But, unlike the timid monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula, he saw quite clearly where the true threat to Islam lay. Throughout his reign, the Russians presented at least a potential threat to the northern borders of Iran, But this was as nothing to the actual ideological threat of the west, Marxism in Iran had converted its tens of thousands, and influenced its hundreds of thousands. But western civilisation — with its clothing fashions, its films, its music, its enshrinement of individual happiness, its secular knowledge — had captured its millions. There was a “Great Satan” devouring Islam; and its body was not communism, but the West; and its head was not Russia, but America, “We must break those pens” he wrote, “that teach people there is something other than divine law. We must smash those mouths that tell the people they are free to say whatever they please, regardless of right and wrong in accordance with the commands of the Almighty”. On this reasoning, to carry the fight from Iran, or wherever, into the west, is the equivalent of turning from the periphery to the centre of an infection.
Offensive
In one of his occasional attempts at humane argument, Khomeini justified a war of extirpation against the west on the following grounds:
If one allows the Infidels to continue playing their role of Corruptors on Earth, their eventual moral punishment will be all the stronger. Thus, if we kill the Infidels in order to put a stop to their [corrupting] activities, we have indeed done them a service. For their eventual punishment will be less.
For the most part, however, it is conversion to Islam that is desired of people in the west. Only those refusing to convert are to be slaughtered. In the first instance, all those areas of the world that were once Islamic, but have since been lost, are to be restored; and all those areas that contain sizeable Moslem minorities are to be Islamised. In 1982, a new map of the world was presented to Khomeini by the Cartological Society in Teheran. It was divided into three regions, distinguished by three colours. First, in green, came the House of Islam — this being the 41 member states of the Islamic Conference, together with soviet central Asia, southern Spain, Malta and Lampedusa, Albania, part of Yugoslavia, north eastern China, parts of Siam, Burma, the Philippines, and most of Africa. The remaining areas, the red and black, were divided between communism and the west. But the final state of affairs is to be a totally Islamic world. No part whatever is to be left in the hands of the “Cross worshippers”, as the Christians are contemptuously termed. Moslems in Great Britain at the moment comprise barely three per cent of the population. Nonetheless, “[t]hose Moslems” says Dr Shabbir Akhtar of the Bradford Council of Mosques, “who find it intolerable to live in a United Kingdom contaminated with the Rushdie virus need to seriously consider the Islamic alternatives of emigration (hijira) to the House of Islam or a declaration of holy war (jihad) in the House of Rejection. The latter may well seem a kind of hasty militancy that is out of the question, though, with Allah on one’s side, one is never in the minority. And England, like all else, belongs to Allah.
January 5, 2022
History Summarized: The Ottoman Empire
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 5 Oct 2018Leave it to the furniture boys to pioneer a Comfort-First attitude towards Imperialism.
Join Blue in investigating the history of the Ottoman empire, and find out why “The Sick Man of Europe” is more than their nickname implies.
Further reading: Osman’s Dream by Caroline Finkel
Famous Turkish Song — Gunduz Gece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UcbH…
PATREON: www.patreon.com/OSP
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Shirts – https://overlysarcasticproducts.threa…
All the other stuff – http://www.cafepress.com/OverlySarcas…Find us on Twitter @OSPYouTube!
December 22, 2021
The Nazi-Islam Alliance? – Amin al-Husseini – WW2 Biography Special
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.
(more…)
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.
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!
