AHC: Have Norman Sicilly convert to Islam

@Nothing Exists! Can you give an example other than Europe on this point you propose? I would like to test your theory some.


@Nothing Exists! Can you give an example other than Europe on this point you propose? I would like to test your theory some.

I found my book, numbered by chapter.

Chapter 2. Exogamous Community Family:
a. Spouse selection: Parents, prohibition of marriage between the children of two brothers.
b. Inheritance: Egalitarian - equality between brothers established by inheritance rules.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of married sons with their parents.
d. Representative Nations, Regions: Russia, Yugoslavia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland, Albania, central Italy, China, Vietnam, Cuba and north India.
e. Representative Ideology: Communism, Socialism.

Chapter 3. Authoritarian Family:
a. Spouse selection: Parents, little or no marriage between children of brothers.
b. Inheritance: inequality of brothers laid down by inheritance rules, transfer of an unbroken patrimony to one son.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of the married heir with his parents.
d. Representative Nations, Peoples, Regions: Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Bohemia, Scotland, Ireland, peripheral regions of France, northern (Basque) Spain, northern Portugal, Japan, Korea, Jews, Romany Gypsies.
e. Representative Ideology: Fascism, various separatist and autonomous (anti-universalist) movements.

Chapter 4a. Egalitarian Nuclear Family:
a. Spouse selection: Free, no marriage between the children of brothers.
b. Inheritance: Equality of brothers laid down by inheritance rules.
c. Family Home: no cohabitation of married children with their parents.
d. Representative Nations, Regions: northern France, northern Italy, central & southern Spain, central Portugal, Greece, Romania, Poland, Latin America, Ethiopia.
e. Representative Ideology: Christianity (Catholicism); the "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" form of Liberalism.
Chapter 4b. Absolute Nuclear Family:
a. Spouse selection: Free, no marriage between the children of brothers
b. Inheritance: Indifference - no precise inheritance rules, frequent use of wills.
c. Family Home: no cohabitation of married children with their parents.
d. Representative Nations, Peoples, Regions: Anglo-Saxon world, Holland, Denmark.
e. Representative Ideology: Christianity, Capitalism, `Libertarian' Liberalism, and Feminism.

Chapter 5. Endogamous Community Family:
a. Spouse selection: Custom, frequent marriage between the children of brothers.
b. Inheritance: Egalitarian - equality between brothers established by inheritance rules.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of married sons with their parents.
d. Representative Nations, Peoples, Regions: Arab world, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan.
e. Representative Ideology: Islam.

Chapter 6. Asymmetrical Community Family:
a. Spouse selection: Custom, prohibition on marriages between the children of brothers, but a preference for marriages between the children of brothers and sisters.
b. Inheritance: equality between brothers laid down by inheritance rules
c. Family Home: cohabitation of married sons and their parents.
d. Representative Regions: southern India.
e. Representative Ideology: Hinduism

Chapter 7. Anomic Family:
a. Spouse selection: Free, but without obligatory exogamy; consanguine marriage possible and sometimes frequent.
b. Inheritance: Indifference - uncertainty about equality between brothers, inheritance rules egalitarian in theory but uncertain in practice.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of married children with their parents rejected in theory but accepted in practice.
d. Representative Nations, Peoples, Regions: Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines
e. Representative Ideology: Buddhism, Christianity, and Communism, but potentially anything.
 
I can't judge his works that well but from what I gather, the idea that East Europe or some regions were communist because of some sort of "family types" is frankly not only false but also insulting, it doesn't require a genius to see how inaccurate stuff this is(Islam=Endogamy, communism=communitarian family, English=nuclear,Dravidian=assimetircal, South East Asia = assymetrical, Africa=Africa):


It recks of pointless determinism and seems awfully dated.

Your right; you can't judge by not reading them. Thank you for demonstrating that.
 
Of course, technically even a "jump" from Islam to Christianity isn't that big of a deal, since they're both Abrahamic anyway. It'd be like going from Windows 95 to Windows Vista, or something like that.

A truly radical course would be moving over your operating system to Linux, or its 90s equivalent (did Linux exist back then?)

Your metaphor kind of breaks down when you consider all the polytheistic people in Eurasia and Africa who converted to Islam and Christianity, which would surely be a bigger leap.

But yeah, back to Sicily. If there was ever a place where this could happen, it's a good choice. What about severing the connection between the Normans and the Italian mainland, somehow? Say, a Byzantine conquest of southern Italy (but not Sicily)? They tried this in the 1150s I believe. If they had won, maybe this would give us what we need. With Sicily cut off from the mainland and isolated, perhaps the rulers would eventually assimilate. Although in that case, there's an equal chance that they might convert either to Islam, or to Greek Orthodox Christianity. I'm not sure which, but perhaps Islam is more likely, because that would be a useful way to counter the Byzantine enemy...

I was thinking something like that. Say the Normans are able to hold onto North Africa but lose southern Italy. Over time the court relocates to Tunis and the King eventually decides go native and embrace Islam in order to secure allies from Africa.
 
Your right; you can't judge by not reading them. Thank you for demonstrating that.
I'm not going to invest my time reading something that sounds so dumb, I'm quite sure that if it's a credible theory there should be some newer stuff on it. Not my fault his research is so poor as to get results like the one shown in the map, apparently only Europe and France specifically gets the privilege to have a more granular family composition.
 
I found my book, numbered by chapter.

Chapter 2. Exogamous Community Family:
a. Spouse selection: Parents, prohibition of marriage between the children of two brothers.
b. Inheritance: Egalitarian - equality between brothers established by inheritance rules.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of married sons with their parents.
d. Representative Nations, Regions: Russia, Yugoslavia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland, Albania, central Italy, China, Vietnam, Cuba and north India.
e. Representative Ideology: Communism, Socialism.

Chapter 3. Authoritarian Family:
a. Spouse selection: Parents, little or no marriage between children of brothers.
b. Inheritance: inequality of brothers laid down by inheritance rules, transfer of an unbroken patrimony to one son.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of the married heir with his parents.
d. Representative Nations, Peoples, Regions: Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Bohemia, Scotland, Ireland, peripheral regions of France, northern (Basque) Spain, northern Portugal, Japan, Korea, Jews, Romany Gypsies.
e. Representative Ideology: Fascism, various separatist and autonomous (anti-universalist) movements.

Chapter 4a. Egalitarian Nuclear Family:
a. Spouse selection: Free, no marriage between the children of brothers.
b. Inheritance: Equality of brothers laid down by inheritance rules.
c. Family Home: no cohabitation of married children with their parents.
d. Representative Nations, Regions: northern France, northern Italy, central & southern Spain, central Portugal, Greece, Romania, Poland, Latin America, Ethiopia.
e. Representative Ideology: Christianity (Catholicism); the "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" form of Liberalism.
Chapter 4b. Absolute Nuclear Family:
a. Spouse selection: Free, no marriage between the children of brothers
b. Inheritance: Indifference - no precise inheritance rules, frequent use of wills.
c. Family Home: no cohabitation of married children with their parents.
d. Representative Nations, Peoples, Regions: Anglo-Saxon world, Holland, Denmark.
e. Representative Ideology: Christianity, Capitalism, `Libertarian' Liberalism, and Feminism.

Chapter 5. Endogamous Community Family:
a. Spouse selection: Custom, frequent marriage between the children of brothers.
b. Inheritance: Egalitarian - equality between brothers established by inheritance rules.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of married sons with their parents.
d. Representative Nations, Peoples, Regions: Arab world, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan.
e. Representative Ideology: Islam.

Chapter 6. Asymmetrical Community Family:
a. Spouse selection: Custom, prohibition on marriages between the children of brothers, but a preference for marriages between the children of brothers and sisters.
b. Inheritance: equality between brothers laid down by inheritance rules
c. Family Home: cohabitation of married sons and their parents.
d. Representative Regions: southern India.
e. Representative Ideology: Hinduism

Chapter 7. Anomic Family:
a. Spouse selection: Free, but without obligatory exogamy; consanguine marriage possible and sometimes frequent.
b. Inheritance: Indifference - uncertainty about equality between brothers, inheritance rules egalitarian in theory but uncertain in practice.
c. Family Home: cohabitation of married children with their parents rejected in theory but accepted in practice.
d. Representative Nations, Peoples, Regions: Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines
e. Representative Ideology: Buddhism, Christianity, and Communism, but potentially anything.
That seems absurd, why is Cuba in a different category than the rest of Latin America? I suspect the reason is because the author didn't really study all these countries and assumed their social-familiar estructure based on their current political system or their political history in the modern era. Because there is no reason why Cuba would have a different family estructure then the rest of Latin America.
 
An interesting concept but I can't think of any country that has ever converted in either direction.
Chechnya traded Christianity for Islam, though Christianity had only been adopted to secure an alliance with Georgia, and had made little headway into the country itself (especially with the Mongols destroying much of the Church's infrastructure).
 
That seems absurd, why is Cuba in a different category than the rest of Latin America? I suspect the reason is because the author didn't really study all these countries and assumed their social-familiar estructure based on their current political system or their political history in the modern era. Because there is no reason why Cuba would have a different family estructure then the rest of Latin America.

Well not all ‘Latin American’ nations are the same, especially in an ethnic sense. Though I don’t agree with this assessment made by @Nothing Exists! .
 
Well not all ‘Latin American’ nations are the same, especially in an ethnic sense. Though I don’t agree with this assessment made by @Nothing Exists! .
As far as I know, in Hispanoamerica the only places where family estructure deviates from the spanish one is the indigenous communities specially where they are more numerous like in Perú and Bolivia. But Cuba has no surviving indigenous people and black people are assimilated into the spanish descended culture so there is no reason for a different familiar type.
 
I found my book, numbered by chapter.
...
Snip
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d. Representative Nations, Regions: northern France, northern Italy, central & southern Spain, central Portugal, Greece, Romania, Poland, Latin America, Ethiopia.
e. Representative Ideology: Christianity (Catholicism); the "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" form of Liberalism.
I think Representative Ideology should be ignored. It dated and many times wrong.
 
As far as I know, in Hispanoamerica the only places where family estructure deviates from the spanish one is the indigenous communities specially where they are more numerous like in Perú and Bolivia. But Cuba has no surviving indigenous people and black people are assimilated into the spanish descended culture so there is no reason for a different familiar type.

I am not sure you can be so broad with saying this or that group’s identity is the Spanish culture. It further denies their unique experiences, cultural story of oppression, etc etc...
 
I am not sure you can be so broad with saying this or that group’s identity is the Spanish culture. It further denies their unique experiences, cultural story of oppression, etc etc...
I am argentinian and apart from groups like the aimara or the wichis I have never hear of Latinoamerican countries being different from each other in something so fundametal as the type of family structures the post describes. The dude lumped different latinoamerican countries in different groups following their cold war alignment.
 
I am argentinian and apart from groups like the aimara or the wichis I have never hear of Latinoamerican countries being different from each other in something so fundametal as the type of family structures the post describes. The dude lumped different latinoamerican countries in different groups following their cold war alignment.

You may be unaware of other groups though. Also the indigenous element is present in all countries, certainly more so than Argentina, thus it is appreciated to not mention their existence in passing.
 
You may be unaware of other groups though. Also the indigenous element is present in all countries, certainly more so than Argentina, thus it is appreciated to not mention their existence in passing.
But really there is no surviving indigenous people in Cuba, they died pretty early in the colonization process, under the horrors of slavery and abuse. There is obviously a Cuban culture just like any country in our region but there is no way to explain why you would thought they have the same family estructure as Russia or China (and this two also have the same family type? What?) instead of the family type of their cultural region of which they had been a political unite for more time then not.
 
If Egypt took something like four hundred years to become Majority Muslim, I'm doubtful that it took only two hundred in Sicily, especially with such a strong Christian current coming from the Peninsula and from the Byzantines

The circumstances weren't the same in Egypt and Sicily. Egypt was one of the very first Islamic conquests and the Arabs were initially not that dedicated to mass conversion, especially since a lot of Copts had supported them politically.
 
The circumstances weren't the same in Egypt and Sicily. Egypt was one of the very first Islamic conquests and the Arabs were initially not that dedicated to mass conversion, especially since a lot of Copts had supported them politically.
We have no evidence that Sicily was majority Muslim honestly, why assume that?
 
I was wondering about the prospects for Norman Sicily doing that.
The prospects are almost none existent. The Normans were already heavily involved in Papal and Imperial politics and it converting to Islam would be a disaster for Robert Guiscard or his sons that would almost certainly see one of the other Norman leaders rally behind someone like Jordan I of Capua of one of Robert's sons that stayed Latin Rite. Hell, if Robert converts to Islam it might force Gregory to make peace with the Emperor so long as he supports his planned proto-Crusade.
 
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