Talk:Ottoman Empire
From the Quicksilver Metaweb.
Shouldn't we add the far roaming Barbary Pirates?
http://voyer.crosswinds.net/Piratical/pirate%20pages/barbary.htm has ton of links ...
Worth noting for its difference is vis a vis Christendom vs the 'Orient':
ISBN 0345430816 Tim Powers' The Drawing of the Dark though I think Enoch has a bit of Merlin in him.
Hmm....... Orientalism. Read Edward Said on this!
External links: http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Orientalism.html
ISBN 039474067X is Said's very classy book, he now teaches at Columbia University.
Actually, he's now dead. But I'm sure that doesn't bar one from being taken seriously. ;-)
In addition we should point out that modern owes a tremendous debt to the Moslems who kept the lights in during the Dark Ages in Europe.
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/islam12.html --worth a look
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/islam.html -- looks at sources Sparky 04:08, 30 Oct 2003 (PST)
This much preceded the Ottoman era, which many think were the Muslim "dark ages". The Muslims did indeed "keep the lights on" from Muhammad to the fall of Muslim Spain. here are some worthy references:
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muqadimmah - Ibn Khaldun's historical methods book - the idea of 'fair history' really emerges only from Islamic methodology. Same with scientific citation http://wikipedia.org/wiki/isnad
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/early_Muslim_philosophy (best on this issue, links to many specific phenomena)
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/guild - outlines the commercial structure that first evolved among Muslims
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Asharite and http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutazilite - the warring schools!
The negative influence of Ottomans was here: http://wikipedia.org/wiki/fiqh
Most marked was medicine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_medicine - most influentially, Ibn Sina's text The Canons of Medicine was required reading in Europe right up to The Enlightenment, and any Baroque doctor would know his name and that of Al-Razi. (Note "Al-" is just Arabic "the", "Ibn" is a Persian form used by Ottomans sometimes and revived in Iran, and there are Latin forms of all these names, e.g. Ibn Sina == Avicenna). The circulatory system was well mapped by Ibn Nafis (d. 1288). William Harvey only took the credit. There are lots of stories like this.
Some also credit Al-Kindi with the essential influence on Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton in optics. Al-Kindi, Rene Descartes and modern off-mainstream investigators like Rupert Sheldrake have surprisingly similar ideas about this. The moderating figure is George Berkeley who was a fierce critic of Kepler and Newton for inventing a whole ontology based on "what they could see". This was considered radical and extreme at the time and wasn't really accepted until The Enlightenment put everything in man's grasp. This was exactly the old Muslim Mutazilite ("philosopher")/Asharite ("engineer") argument in a new form. Some people think the West went wrong at this point. Certain modern Muslims are exploring this: http://wikipedia.org/wiki/modern_Islamic_philosophy and http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamization_of_knowledge
Agreed, I was looking at where the intact libraries were. And thinking who benefitted from them.
There were 36 public libraries in Baghdad when the Mongols sacked it in 1258. And a lot in Muslim Spain that Boabdil refused to risk, by giving up without a fight. King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of course burned a lot of the manuscripts anyway, but some survived.
Also the Irish monks played a major role in gathering up manuscripts and copying them, it was them that actually started the monasteries of Europe. There was NO interest in preserving Greek/Roman learning in the 6th century to 10th century in the Church proper. The monastic hierarchy built itself under the guidance of the Irish Celts, many say Druids brought their own traditions in to Christianity in this way, and was only later brought under full Church control. But note: Martin Luther was a monk, not a priest... the Celts got their revenge in the end!