Roman Empire and Islam

Abdul Hadi Pasha

Banned
Leo Caesius said:
Turks (at least the Anatolian Turks) are also quite serious about shaving off all body hair (with the exception of the moustache). A friend of mine was once turned away from a bathhouse because he was not properly unshaven (they could care less about my body hair, being a western barbarian). I guess that's what happens when your society is dominated by Asiatics for several centuries.
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??? Are you sure about that? I have never heard that. How would they have shaved off all their body hair before modern times? And pity the Armenians - shaving their women would be a full-time occupation.

If your friend has a scraggly beard a staunch Republican bathouse owner might refuse him admittance, and I guess some of the Turkish wrestlers must trim their hair, it seems hard to imagine everyone doing this.

BTW, mustaches are FINALLY going out, at least in the urban centers, which is a huge relief to me.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
Abdul Hadi Pasha said:
??? Are you sure about that? I have never heard that. How would they have shaved off all their body hair before modern times? And pity the Armenians - shaving their women would be a full-time occupation.

If your friend has a scraggly beard a staunch Republican bathouse owner might refuse him admittance, and I guess some of the Turkish wrestlers must trim their hair, it seems hard to imagine everyone doing this.

BTW, mustaches are FINALLY going out, at least in the urban centers, which is a huge relief to me.
Click to expand...
The Egyptians also shave everything (and I do mean everything) and it's apparently an Islamic custom - and specifically Hanafi - so perhaps it is not Asian in origin. They have been doing it for a couple of centuries at least.
The Hanafi branch of Islam, which includes the Sunni Turks, demands
that every part of the body - every part! - be free from hair.
Therefore, at each hamam visit, women waxed their body with waxes made
of sugar and various herbs. Men preferred razor blades and
hair-removing ointments (the most popular ointment is called "rusma"
in books. The instructions carried special warnings as it included
arsenic). During the Ottoman period, removing body hair was more
important to Moslem men and women than it is in the modern world.
Hair-removal and massage for women was done by a female concubine.​
The parts that offended the bathhouse owner were my friend Selim's pits and his chest. He was visiting his hometown (Samsun) and his father was so shamed that he forced Selim to shave himself immediately.

Among the more westernized Turks, it is increasingly rare to find men who shave their bodies (not that I've been looking :p ).

As for the Armenians, I've always thought the route to quick riches involved a detour through Yerevan to open an electrolysis clinic.
 

Paul Spring

Well, the Eastern Empire was apparently only superficially attached to Christianity judging by the speed with which it converted to Islam.

Islam more or less IS a flavor of Christianity. Muslims accept most Christian dogma, including the Virgin Birth, just not the divinity of Jesus.

It's not like everyone in the Eastern empire became Islamic within a few generations. I think that it took centuries for some parts of Syria, Iraq, and Egypt to become majority Islamic. Some areas still had largely Christian populations at the time of the Crusades, after almost 500 years of Islamic rule. When you consider that Christians were tolerated but were second-class citizens in some respects - they had to pay more taxes, they couldn't proselytize, they had to get special permission to build new churches, in some areas they weren't allowed to carry weapons and had to wear distinctive colors of clothing - that's actually pretty durable.

Islam and Christianity certainly do have a lot in common, just as both do with Judaism, but the divinity of Jesus is a pretty big issue. Actually, it seems to me that from a theological point of view Judaism and Islam have more in common and Christianity is kind of the "odd one out" among the 3 major monotheistic or "Abrahamic" religions.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
Paul Spring said:
Islam and Christianity certainly do have a lot in common, just as both do with Judaism, but the divinity of Jesus is a pretty big issue. Actually, it seems to me that from a theological point of view Judaism and Islam have more in common and Christianity is kind of the "odd one out" among the 3 major monotheistic or "Abrahamic" religions.
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But remember that not all denominations of Christianity in this period believed that Jesus was divine. The Arians maintained the doctrine of the virgin birth but disputed his divinity, a doctrine substantially similar to the Islamic position. Appollinaris of Laodikea (in Syria) preached that Christ had a human body but a divine mind, which was not entirely incompatible with Islam. Undoubtedly some of their followers, and the followers of other similar sects, were still bumming around the Middle East when Islam first burst upon the scene.

In fact, it's doubtful that many Near Easterners would have seen anything "new" in Islam but merely more of the same. Like Christianity but unlike Judaism, Islam was not tied to any ethnicity. Thus it is likely that many of the Christian rank-and-file (for whom these doctrinal squabbles were at best relatively unimportant and at worst an extreme nuisance) would have had no qualms about professing Islam and going on with their lives.
 

Paul Spring

In fact, it's doubtful that many Near Easterners would have seen anything "new" in Islam but merely more of the same. Like Christianity but unlike Judaism, Islam was not tied to any ethnicity. Thus it is likely that many of the Christian rank-and-file (for whom these doctrinal squabbles were at best relatively unimportant and at worst an extreme nuisance) would have had no qualms about professing Islam and going on with their lives.

That reminds me a little of an explanation that I once gave my to my brother, who occasionally asks me puzzling historical questions even though he is studying computer programming. I said that it's possible that one of the attractions that Islam had was that it was theologically more straightforward than Christianity. Arguments about questions like the existence and nature of the Holy Trinity and the divine and human natures of Jesus require a fair amount of mental gymnastics that were probably exasperating and difficult to follow for believers who didn't have a theological education. When Islam came, it must have seemed to many Christians like a religion that worshipped the same God and honored many of the familiar names from the Old and New Testaments, but that your average man on the street could understand and follow more readily than the conflicting varieties of Christianity.
 

Abdul Hadi Pasha

Banned
Wow, I learn something new every day. I wonder what could be behind that. I knew the ancient Egyptians removed ALL body hair, but I did not know the Turks did it.

I wonder what is behind this? Maybe the Turks as Mongoloids wanted to keep distinct from the hairy people they began to interact with in their conquests?

Leo Caesius said:
The Egyptians also shave everything (and I do mean everything) and it's apparently an Islamic custom - and specifically Hanafi - so perhaps it is not Asian in origin. They have been doing it for a couple of centuries at least.
The Hanafi branch of Islam, which includes the Sunni Turks, demands
that every part of the body - every part! - be free from hair.
Therefore, at each hamam visit, women waxed their body with waxes made
of sugar and various herbs. Men preferred razor blades and
hair-removing ointments (the most popular ointment is called "rusma"
in books. The instructions carried special warnings as it included
arsenic). During the Ottoman period, removing body hair was more
important to Moslem men and women than it is in the modern world.
Hair-removal and massage for women was done by a female concubine.​
The parts that offended the bathhouse owner were my friend Selim's pits and his chest. He was visiting his hometown (Samsun) and his father was so shamed that he forced Selim to shave himself immediately.

Among the more westernized Turks, it is increasingly rare to find men who shave their bodies (not that I've been looking :p ).

As for the Armenians, I've always thought the route to quick riches involved a detour through Yerevan to open an electrolysis clinic.
Click to expand...
 

Abdul Hadi Pasha

Banned
Paul Spring said:
Well, the Eastern Empire was apparently only superficially attached to Christianity judging by the speed with which it converted to Islam.

Islam more or less IS a flavor of Christianity. Muslims accept most Christian dogma, including the Virgin Birth, just not the divinity of Jesus.

It's not like everyone in the Eastern empire became Islamic within a few generations. I think that it took centuries for some parts of Syria, Iraq, and Egypt to become majority Islamic. Some areas still had largely Christian populations at the time of the Crusades, after almost 500 years of Islamic rule. When you consider that Christians were tolerated but were second-class citizens in some respects - they had to pay more taxes, they couldn't proselytize, they had to get special permission to build new churches, in some areas they weren't allowed to carry weapons and had to wear distinctive colors of clothing - that's actually pretty durable.

Islam and Christianity certainly do have a lot in common, just as both do with Judaism, but the divinity of Jesus is a pretty big issue. Actually, it seems to me that from a theological point of view Judaism and Islam have more in common and Christianity is kind of the "odd one out" among the 3 major monotheistic or "Abrahamic" religions.
Click to expand...

Not really. Mountainous or other inaccessible regions like Lebanon had Christian populations, but the region was substantially Muslim by the Crusades.

As Leo pointed out, the divinity of Jesus was still up in the air in much of Christianity. The distinctions were certainly not as rigidly drawn as they are today. Many Syrians probably just saw Islam as yet another sect, that had the advantage of lower taxes and less persecution.
 

carlton_bach

Abdul Hadi Pasha said:
Wow, I learn something new every day. I wonder what could be behind that. I knew the ancient Egyptians removed ALL body hair, but I did not know the Turks did it.

I wonder what is behind this? Maybe the Turks as Mongoloids wanted to keep distinct from the hairy people they began to interact with in their conquests?
Click to expand...

It may simply be local custom that got taken over. The upper classes in Greco-Roman society all removed their body hair (except, at times, for some pubic fuzz). Not to do so was the mark of a barbarian. When the Seljuq and Ottoman Turks took over the for,mer Byzantine territories they may simply have adopted the practice.

What about the Persians, btw? They were a major influence on Central Asian cultures. Did they remove their body hair? I think yes, but I'm not sure.
 

Faeelin

Scarecrow said:
okey dokey, how does a surviving ROman Empire deal with Islam? could be a Christian Roman Empire, but i would prefer one where there are alot of different religions
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So you want, in other word,s some sort of Holy Roman Empire?
 
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