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Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Ancient Egyptians BECAME Romans then BECAME Byzantines then BECAME Arabs.

Just like Byzantines BECAME Arabs and Turks.

Arab is a linguistic designation, not a racial designation.

This is what gets me about the 'Islamic Golden Age' that 'saved' Greek history, while Europe was backwards and didn't. Like, how many Greek cities, with historic Greek libraries, were in backwards Germany and Great Britain were destroyed? Now how many Greek people, who spoke and read Greek, and had access to historic Greek libraries, were 'saved' by the Islamic invaders versus how many Islamic libraries, created solely by Islamic invaders, were created from texts possessed by Islamic invaders and not texts from lands that they conquered? Seems more like a 'Middle Eastern Golden Age' of the indigenous people would be a better name than to label it after the regions conquerors.

Yes, this is true to a large extent; the "golden age" thinkers are very often Persians, Greeks, Berbers, etc. returning to the status quo before the disaster of the conquests. There aren't all that many Arab figures represented in the Golden Age, for whatever reason - maybe something to do with the culture around conquest...?

> Seems more like a 'Middle Eastern Golden Age' of the indigenous people would be a better name than to label it after the regions conquerors

That's all of history in a nutshell. Ever heard about the Siege of Syracuse and the Achaean Wars?

"Islamic" Golden Age didn't mean "Arab" the ethnicity - which only became a formal identity in the 19th century. While Arabic was used as the lingua franca, the ethnic origins of the various thinkers were well known in their names (eg. Al-Khwarizmi the creator of Algebra from Khwarazm/Khorasan, Al-Biruni the sociologist from Beruniy/Беруний in what's now Uzbekistan, etc). The main thing was all these thinkers were Muslim.

History is brutal and dark, and while we should look at it to remember our pasts, we should not idealize it.

If by “formal identity” you mean that Arab nationalism didn’t exist until the late 1800s/early 1900s, no quibbling from me, but the Arabs certainly understood themselves, and the outside world understood them, as an ethnic group for thousands of years prior. This is the same as saying Germans didn’t exist as a formal identity prior to the 19th century; it’s true in a certain sense but it’s important to be clear.

I think GP is complaining the credit seems a little weird; the religious conversion happened due to violent conquest, not peaceful proselytizing. The name implies to him the religion deserves credit when the conquests a few centuries prior really brought the region into a dark age out of which the “golden age” was merely a moderate recovery. It’s certainly true that large areas of the MENA never again regained their wealth and fame again, and some ancient centers of learning were permanently deserted at this time.

> If by “formal identity” you mean that Arab nationalism didn’t exist until the late 1800s/early 1900s, no quibbling

That's what I'm saying.

If UAE special services (some of whom are Baloch) are on here, yk. I got into a fist fight with an ethnic Baloch al-Nahyan bouncer a couple years ago in Novella (Iykyk)

But Islam was the first form of psudeo-globalism in the 8th century (along with the Tang Empire).

I agree with you that it was is Ajams that powered the "Islamic Golden Age" but that detracts from the fact that before the 19th century, Identity was inherently ephemeral.

But that does NOT mean Islam is inherently Arab. Say that shit and you will get a bullet in your jet in most areas

> I think GP is complaining the credit seems a little weird; the religious conversion happened due to violent conquest, not peaceful proselytizing

No argument there, but based on GP's history, it's just racism morphed as Islamophobia.

History was bad, and for some ethnic groups, "Muslims" were bad. No argument there from a Pahari/Koshur Hindu (I have Hindu/Sikh that died in the 1990s and 1947, but also protected Muslims in both decades - shit's tough)

But that's a statement for all fundamentalists. Doesn't matter what diety your rever - it's the -ism aspect that makes you a fundamentalist

What are you talking about? Germany and Britain never had “Greek cities” or even experienced cultural Hellenization. Germany wasn’t even part of the Roman Empire.

During the Middle Ages, “Greek people, who spoke and read Greek”, still had an empire—actually, it was the Eastern Roman Empire, but without the Western half it had become increasingly Hellenized, with the emperor’s title changing from the Latin “Augustus” to the Greek “Basileus”. And they spent much of that time at war with the Islamic conquerors, only falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. I can assure you they did not greet the Turks as liberators or saviors.

> Like, how many Greek cities, with historic Greek libraries, were in backwards Germany and Great Britain were destroyed?

How many of those existed there in the first place? You can't destroy something that did not exist.

They became Greeks before that. The Ptolemaic pharaohs were Macedonians. Alexandria, Egypt, the second greatest city, was founded by Alexander the Great and was 35% Jewish.

I mean yes, the ruling class was Macedonian for a while, but saying "Egyptians became Greeks" is broadly not true.

Arabic and Coptic Egyptians are genetically distinguishable.

That’s an oversimplification. Migration and intermarriage means that modern Egyptians will have ancestors from all over North Africa and the Middle East, and to a lesser extent from Europe. They’re not all descended from ancient Egyptians.

None of these conversions were absolute. Moreover, you missed a rather important one: the Hellenic/Greek era of the Ptolemaic dynasty, from which we get the still-spoken Coptic language, which was formed from a mix of Ancient Greek and the indigenous Demotic Egyptian language.

Language is not race, but it is strongly intertwined with ethnicity and culture in most parts of the world.

I pointed out Roman for that reason, as middle-late Roman culture itself was largely derived and built on top of Hellenic influence. Just look at how different Etruscan and early Roman civilization was compared to Rome after the Macedonian and Achaean wars

The Greeks had a lot of influence over the Romans, and the Romans even conquered Greece, but Hellenic Egypt was not the same thing as Roman Egypt. The rather tumultuous transition alone is one of the most famous historical events, though most people know the names (Cleopatra, Antony, Caesar) more than the context.

This seems like a bizarre statement, or at the very least your thesis does not seem supported by your example. There is no particular reason to think that Roman civilization should be the same after the passage of 500 years since the supposed founding of Rome. Ascribing that in any significant sense to Hellenic influence seems ill-founded; there was a massive difference in fighting style, and hence military virtues, in societies where military virtues were all-important. Also, as far as I know (which is admittedly not a great deal), early Roman combat and armament was more similar to the hoplite armies than later periods. Perhaps you can allay my ignorance here.

"became" - a nice euphemism for concurring and genocide, especially about Byzantine - like they had any choice.

If it was not clear enough then the comment was about genocide of Greek and Armenians in Turkey - https://twitter.com/ShoahUkraine/status/1790379314061398276 they were either murdered or forced to leave.

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