103
votes
Accepted
What fueled the street lights in 13th-century Cordoba?
I have traced back this claim to its original source. Come along with me on this journey! Let's start with a source which used to be linked on Wikipedia and is commonly cited online:
For ten miles in ...
- 2,399
35
votes
Accepted
Did the Ottoman empire suppress the printing press?
There is some truth in it, but the printing press adoption delay was only a late symptom of an attitude that began much earlier. In short is was more of contempt for the culture and aesthetics of ...
- 80.7k
30
votes
Accepted
Was climate a factor in the spread of Islam?
The question is of course kind of entirely biased, as always when you take a statistical correlation and want to apply a cause on that. However, the question should still be answered. It just means ...
- 6,794
27
votes
Accepted
What is the origin of the names of planets in Arabic?
These are very confusing, even for Latin ones and all are still full of uncertainties and speculation, apparently stemming from quite some influence asserted cross-culturally and confusion among the ...
- 80.7k
14
votes
What is the historical explanation behind the name of the French village Ramatuelle?
No, there is no accepted historical explanation for the name at all — and therefore one should exercise caution to firmly assert that the name "is of Arabic origin". It may be, but it seems ...
- 80.7k
13
votes
What significant regions and countries became Muslim without being first conquered by a Muslim power?
States in West Africa, including Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali and Nigeria
The conversion to Islam in this region happened in a gradual process. Margari Hill's The Spread of ...
- 7,090
12
votes
What significant regions and countries became Muslim without being first conquered by a Muslim power?
Many of the descendants of the Mongol empire (except China, Mongolia and Far East). It is true that they were conquered by the Mongols, but at that time Mongols were not Muslims. At a later period ...
- 38.7k
10
votes
Accepted
History of Moti Masjid
It appears that both are correct. It's just that they are referring to different buildings. The term Moti Masjid simply means "Pearl Mosque".
The Moti Masjid (Agra Fort) "Pearl Mosque" in Agra was ...
- 77.2k
10
votes
Accepted
Women in the Iranian revolution
Iran and Saudi Arabia are both majority Muslim nations in western Asia, with a lot of their external revenue coming from oil extraction. But that's about where the resemblance ends.
Iran is largely ...
- 121k
9
votes
How did Islam spread before the invention of the printing press?
Islam at first mostly spread by the sword. It could rapidly spread because of convenient circumstances. The everlasting border wars between the Byzantine and Sassanid empires hurt both empires ...
- 22.5k
7
votes
Accepted
Where can I find the original Arabic version of bin Laden's 1996 fatwa?
At the 'Combating Terrorism' site at West Point we find:
This document is a declaration of war issued by Usama bin Laden and al-Qa`ida against the United States and the Saudi Arabia regime.
— "...
- 80.7k
6
votes
Why did the island of Bali remain Hindu when most of the rest of Indonesia converted to Islam?
There were several reasons, many of which you listed.
First, Bali was a relatively isolated part of the country, after Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, far from the main trade routes (near today's Malaysia)...
- 104k
6
votes
Accepted
Did any Muslim empire/kingdom have its capital in modern Pakistan except Lahore?
Thatta was the capital for multiple dynasties, including the Muslim Soomra which ruled Sindh from there continuously in 1026–1356.
- 22k
6
votes
Why did Ottoman Sultans prioritize the title of Sultan over that of Caliph?
Well, the word or title, "Caliph" literally means, "Heir"....more specifically, the "Heir" to Muhammad's legacy. For the majority of Muslims worldwide, Abu Bakr, was the ...
- 100
5
votes
How was Christian intermarriage with the Muslim Turks viewed by the Byzantines?
Just a partial answer here to one of the questions posed in the body (not in the title):
"Is it safe to assume that such marriages of marrying off a Christian
daughter resulted in their forced ...
- 3,139
5
votes
Historical examples and numbers for the value of ‘Jizya’ levied by Muslim states
A quick search brings up the book The Mughal World: Life in India's Last Golden Age
By Abraham Eraly, pg 284, which seems to have some figures for this particular time and reign:
Another source, ...
- 40.5k
5
votes
Accepted
The Abbasid ransom for the Black Stone (Hajar Aswad)
Interestingly, the book The eclipse of the 'Abbasid caliphate; original chronicles of the fourth Islamic century, contains a slightly different account, suggesting that a huge ransom of fifty thousand ...
- 77.2k
5
votes
Is it correct that many historical resources about Islam are written by Muslims?
There are primary sources from that period written by non-Muslims, but they are not as detailed or as close to the events in question and have their own issues with bias and misunderstanding (they’re ...
- 439
5
votes
Accepted
Is it correct that many historical resources about Islam are written by Muslims?
No, it is not possible to reach a totally unbiased history of that time, or indeed any time.
There are a lot of people out there who will tell you that information sources being "biased" is ...
- 121k
5
votes
Is Islamic law largely derivative of Catholic canon law?
Not really, no.
For one thing, your postulated point of contact, Al Andalus, was on the order of 6,000 KM overland from the center of the Islamic world in Baghdad. If they wanted to borrow legal ideas ...
- 121k
4
votes
What significant regions and countries became Muslim without being first conquered by a Muslim power?
The Ghana Empire became Muslim in the 1100's. The subsequent fall of the Ghana Empire and the rise of Islam coincided perfectly. Arab tradition states that the Muslim Almoravids conquered Ghana. While ...
- 3,338
4
votes
Accepted
Why was Caliph Suleyman disliked by the noted generals in the Umayyad army?
Other than Suleyman's notorious short temper and tendency to keep grudges against people who caused offence whether real or imaginary, With further reading, it looks like that It wasn't Suleyman that ...
- 8,195
4
votes
Accepted
Did Averroes really try to bury light in an attempt to create gold, or was that invented by Victor Hugo?
Long comment
Alchemy was a "living subject" in Islamic science and philosophy.
See at least Lawrence Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy (2013, The University of Chicago Press), Ch.2 Arabic al-...
- 860
4
votes
Women in the Iranian revolution
Wahhabism, the strictest and most extreme form of Islam, is a founding partner of modern Saudi Arabia. Wahhabism also provided the foundation philosophy for both Al Qaeda (the founder was a Saudi) and ...
- 705
3
votes
Accepted
How did Islamic finance under the early Caliphates profit or take loans if charging interest wasn't legal?
Partly through semantics, by replacing use of "interest" either as a term or calculation by a complete system of "reciprocal gifts". In a sense, there is a bit of willful blindness ...
- 72.4k
3
votes
Accepted
Why did the Umayyads spare some of the male members of the Family (Ahl-al-Bait) after Karbala?
Yazid went by the standards of the day, but went about them in a somewhat twisted way. Women and children were off-limits for killing, but anyone who took up arms against him was killed. Husayn was ...
- 679
3
votes
How did Islam spread before the invention of the printing press?
I focus on: How did Islam end up with a single Qur'an, without variant readings?
In the early years of Islam two key factors ensured the production of a single version, without variants, of a book, ...
- 356
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible