chaos
Buzzfeed Editor
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I've been listening to the History of Byzantium podcast lot trying to get caught up, and there are some things that keep bothering me. I know there are some people here who are well read or history buffs so I was hoping you could help out or point me in the right direction for answers.
I'm up to the mid 700s in the podcast timeline and I'm having trouble understanding the emergence of the muslim powers. He explains this a bit in the podcast, but not really. I get the demographic shift and the huge impact the plague and Persian wars had on the Roman ability to field an army or raise funds for war. But what I specifically don't get is the arab tribes.
So the arabs are out there in the desert, fucking around for hundreds of years, while Rome is dominating the West. Then at some point after the plague decimates the Western population centers, the tribes unite and become a nation centered around a Caliphate. I don't understand how they get the numbers to challenge even a diminished Roman state. And then, with Rome having like a thousand years of martial tradition, how did they come up with the technology and tactics to beat them? It really seems just kind of glossed over like "oh, suddenly there was a Caliphate, and they went from kooky tribesmen to the greatest military power in the West, maybe the world."
One thing he does specifically talk about in the podcast is how the muslim historians are full of shit, their answer to everything is basically "allah wills it" so there's no real reason to pursue that as a source.
I'm up to the mid 700s in the podcast timeline and I'm having trouble understanding the emergence of the muslim powers. He explains this a bit in the podcast, but not really. I get the demographic shift and the huge impact the plague and Persian wars had on the Roman ability to field an army or raise funds for war. But what I specifically don't get is the arab tribes.
So the arabs are out there in the desert, fucking around for hundreds of years, while Rome is dominating the West. Then at some point after the plague decimates the Western population centers, the tribes unite and become a nation centered around a Caliphate. I don't understand how they get the numbers to challenge even a diminished Roman state. And then, with Rome having like a thousand years of martial tradition, how did they come up with the technology and tactics to beat them? It really seems just kind of glossed over like "oh, suddenly there was a Caliphate, and they went from kooky tribesmen to the greatest military power in the West, maybe the world."
One thing he does specifically talk about in the podcast is how the muslim historians are full of shit, their answer to everything is basically "allah wills it" so there's no real reason to pursue that as a source.
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