Timeline for Were the living standards in Medieval Europe a lot worse than in the Muslim world?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
19 events
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| Feb 23, 2017 at 7:14 | comment | added | Sakib Arifin | Also, slaves could free themselves. | |
| Feb 23, 2017 at 7:13 | comment | added | Sakib Arifin | "Overall, life would have been more enjoyable in the Muslim world during the European Middle Ages. Assuming of course that you were lucky enough to be born a free man, which applies throughout History." -- During the first caliphates, slaves probably had more rights than Europeans peasants and women. Slaves could only be acquired by war or trading. Slaves mostly went in not out cause it was illegal to enslave any free citizen. And about women, Muslim women mostly lost their right to inherit during this period. | |
| Feb 23, 2017 at 2:08 | comment | added | Sakib Arifin | Relevant: "The concepts of welfare and pension were introduced in early Islamic law as forms of Zakat (charity), one of the Five Pillars of Islam, under the Rashidun Caliphate in the 7th century. The taxes (including Zakat and Jizya) collected in the treasury of an Islamic government were used to provide income for the needy, including the poor, elderly, orphans, widows, and the disabled." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayt_al-mal | |
| May 29, 2014 at 4:33 | vote | accept | Graviton | ||
| May 25, 2014 at 1:37 | comment | added | Sufian | Very good write up. It's hard to find an unbiased writing these days. +1 :) | |
| May 22, 2014 at 14:44 | history | edited | Juicy | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 22, 2014 at 13:45 | comment | added | jwenting | @pugsville in both areas a large portion of the population lived in effective slavery, unable to leave the lands of their overlords because of various rules and regulations even if they were technically free. Same as the population of modern North Korea isn't technically enslaved, yet have no freedom of movement either socially nor geographically. | |
| May 22, 2014 at 10:43 | comment | added | Steve Jessop | For what it's worth, by some modern standards (United Nations 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery) serfdom was in any case a form of slavery, so European peasants below freemen lived under broadly slave-like conditions even if they weren't actually bought and sold. Establishing whether a typical European serf had better or worse freedoms and standard of living than a typical slave (or serf-analog where applicable) in the Muslim world might be a pretty huge project, not least because you'd have to start by defining "typical" across a thousand years and a continent :-) | |
| May 22, 2014 at 7:53 | comment | added | pugsville | I don't think slaves formed a large segment of the population. Slave soldiers were part of the economically privileged en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamluk | |
| May 22, 2014 at 7:11 | comment | added | vsz | Don't forget about slavery in the muslim world. While European peasants weren't completely 100% free to do as they wished, they had somewhat more liberties than slaves. | |
| May 21, 2014 at 8:44 | history | edited | Juicy | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 21, 2014 at 8:06 | history | edited | Juicy | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 21, 2014 at 7:48 | comment | added | pugsville | Would not the vast majority of the population in europe and the muslim world been peasants as opposed to city duellers? The Cultural Elite of city dwellers would not have affected the overall living standards. So were the peasants better off? | |
| May 21, 2014 at 7:46 | history | edited | Juicy | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 21, 2014 at 7:18 | history | edited | Juicy | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 21, 2014 at 6:45 | history | edited | Juicy | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| May 21, 2014 at 6:39 | comment | added | Juicy | @Anixx Yes perhaps my tone is not suited to SE:History, I apologize. What I was trying to illustrate is that the standard of living for the nobles was higher in the Arab world during that time. In my defense I do feel the down-vote was not justified :) As for the peasants, you're entirely right, conditions were likely bad for them everywhere at that time. I thought I said that in my post. | |
| May 21, 2014 at 6:34 | comment | added | Anixx | How sitting in a stone building makes your life worse? And were they really always just sitting? Also consider that mast of peasants in Europe were living in wooden houses while most of muslims were living in clay/stone houses. | |
| May 21, 2014 at 6:31 | history | answered | Juicy | CC BY-SA 3.0 |