Would Islamic hegemony in Europe prematurely abort the dark ages?

Totally possible, though I always just assumed it was because pork in general carries so many diseases if improperly cooked (as do some sea-fish, hence their prohibition as well) that it's easier to just blanket-ban them than deal with the consequences.

(By the way, reading about how pig-borne diseases killed huge numbers of Indians in de Soto's wake got me wondering if a similar holocaust happened in the Middle East before ancient Israel was established, thus leading to the Judeo-Islamic prohibition of pork...)
 
Totally possible, though I always just assumed it was because pork in general carries so many diseases if improperly cooked (as do some sea-fish, hence their prohibition as well) that it's easier to just blanket-ban them than deal with the consequences.

Islam, at least mainstream Islam, allows all sea food actually. So far it seems to me it was more about the danger of pig farming to the fragile vegetation that has been Middle east, rather than about the diseases. Though most likely diseases contributed also.
 
Islam, at least mainstream Islam, allows all sea food actually. So far it seems to me it was more about the danger of pig farming to the fragile vegetation that has been Middle east, rather than about the diseases. Though most likely diseases contributed also.

If that's true, they should have banned sheep instead.
 
Islam is very much an 'arid / warm' climate religion... Any penetration of Islam into Central and Northern Europe, let alone Russia, is going to have to jettison a lot of strictures and incorporate a good deal of the diet and bend with the practicalities... Rome had middling success... I find it hard to believe someone in Baghdad who hasn't ever seen a snowflake outside of an etching will know/understand the situation the Franks/Germans/Slavs and certainly not the Norse have to put up with for half a year or more...

I find your comment very interesting and whilst I don't know enough on this topic to add anything, I think the cultural implications both for Europe and Islam are quite interesting.

Notwithstanding the varying nature of Islam in different regions of the world OTL, Islam tends to carry more 'cultural content'* from pre-Islamic Middle-Eastern culture, than Christianity had done. So (and we are speaking in a purely COMPARATIVE way here), there is more cultural similarity in the practice of Islam in Morocco and Indonesia, than there is in the practise of Christianity in the USA and Kenya.

An interesting thing to discuss would be the extent to which in this ATL, Europe becomes 'Middle-Easternised/Arabised', with regards to various dietary and other lifestyle customs, etc.




*'Cultural content' meaning strictures about diet, circumcision, etc, being important parts of Islamic practise, whereas early Christianity made a distinction between 'ritual laws' and 'moral laws' (or terms to that effect).
 
Weren't Europeans actually quite clean in the Middle Ages, with the stereotypical lack of washing actually much more characteristic of the early modern era (because of Peak Wood more than any other factor)?
Don't know precisely, but I do recall reading somewhere that some monastic orders had to bathe n times a week.
 
While they may avert the loss of classical knowledge, is it possible that the influence of Islam would delay the advent of the Renaissance? I believe a portion of the Renaissance's success could be attributed to easy and pervasive dissemination of knowledge through cheaply printed books (courtesy of moveable type and printing presses). I know that the Ottomans discouraged printing presses because it was considered an affront and threat to the art of Islamic calligraphy (which was both religiously significant and a large source of employment for many artisans and scribes).
 
Weren't Europeans actually quite clean in the Middle Ages, with the stereotypical lack of washing actually much more characteristic of the early modern era (because of Peak Wood more than any other factor)?
Yeah, the short version is they ran out of wood to heat water for the bath houses and so they stopped using them. In Spain for instance (since of course I've studied that country the most) there are regular bath house municipal records and each religion gets designated days of the week. There were also laws about segregating bath houses. In fact, as I've said before, analyzing skeletons of the period shows that average height for High Middle Ages Europeans is something like an inch shorter than modern height.

Then the plague+lots of wars hit. By the Early Modern Period the Church said "bathing so much means you love the flesh, being dirty shows you care about the spirit" so that reduced it some. Also bathing together with sickness means you spread it to all your buddies in the bathhouse so that was right out.
 

Keenir

Banned
While they may avert the loss of classical knowledge, is it possible that the influence of Islam would delay the advent of the Renaissance? I believe a portion of the Renaissance's success could be attributed to easy and pervasive dissemination of knowledge through cheaply printed books (courtesy of moveable type and printing presses).

wasn't that a century and a half after the Renaissance?

I know that the Ottomans discouraged printing presses because

the only place to get them from, was from the enemies of the Ottomans. that put a cold shower on thoughts of getting them.

it was considered an affront and threat to the art of Islamic calligraphy (which was both religiously significant

never heard that excuse.

and a large source of employment for many artisans and scribes).

same in Christendom in OTL.
 
And the Ottomans were enemies with every other Western Eurasian nation? What about France?

What about...oh hell, what does the fact that the HRE/Austrian Habsburgs are the enemy have to do with anything?

Speaking as a Byzantoroman imperialist (like a nationalist, but towards the empire), no self-respecting successor state (or claimant thereof) should be afraid to borrow a good idea from the enemy. Hell, no self-respecting empire, period. A good idea is a good idea.

If they could get cannon makers from the West, they can get printers.
 
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While they may avert the loss of classical knowledge, is it possible that the influence of Islam would delay the advent of the Renaissance? I believe a portion of the Renaissance's success could be attributed to easy and pervasive dissemination of knowledge through cheaply printed books (courtesy of moveable type and printing presses). I know that the Ottomans discouraged printing presses because it was considered an affront and threat to the art of Islamic calligraphy (which was both religiously significant and a large source of employment for many artisans and scribes).

Probably. An Islamic conquest would secure an early end to the Dark Ages, but it could possibly retard technological progress for quite some time.
 
never heard that excuse.
There was opposition to printing from the clerical class, but that wasn't the main reason.
Printing had had a chequered history in the Ottoman Empire. Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal had brought this relatively new technology with them when they settled in Istanbul and elsewhere in 1492, but according to contemporary Jewish sources, Sultan Bayezid II soon banned all printing and his order was reiterated by Sultan Selim I in 1515 -- the crime was punishable by death.

...

Jesuit missionaries in Istanbul banned the operation of a press run by a Cephalonian bishop in Istanbul, while in 1698 an Armenian press was destroyed by the Janissaries.

...

The innovation of printing in Arabic characters had mixed fortunes after a promising start. .... The [demise of the] Muteferrika press... seems not to have been a consequence of over opposition to printing in Arabic Characters but rather to a lack of interest among the small number of those who could read, who seem to have preferred the more sensuous pleasures of manuscript books.

Finkel, Caroline. Osman's Dream, pp. 366-367.
 
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