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Was the Ottoman empire the ISIS of the 14th century?
Matthew Franklin, Jakub Handlíř and Tomas Rocha Martins are completely correct.
If you’re looking for an equivalent to ISIS in the 13th or 14th century, you’re looking for an agent that is not abiding by the then extant international rules of conduct, and that is reviled universally, by coreligionists and outsiders alike, as being beyond the pale.
The Ottomans started as ghazis, so they were more aggressive about their expansion than Muslims had been recently. But they were not aliens from a different planet, the way ISIS is to everyone else.
ISIS is also small, but I don’t think that’s a useful differentiator. Osman’s emirate of Bithynia started out pretty small too.
The closest equivalent, I’ll suggest, is Genghis Khan.
EDIT: Dimitris Almyrantis is right in comments: it’s the Assassins. And Dimitris, post more about the Kharijy?
The phrase “everyone’s entitled to their opinion” annoys me. What can I do?
There are people on this thread who are calling you a snob, too.
Screw ’em.
You have an aesthetic. You have a grounding for that aesthetic, that you can (I hope) articulate and defend. Hopefully, it’s an aesthetic that’s also aware of its own contingency and situatedness, and has no pretensions of immutable truth.
People like films for their own reasons, and that’s fine. Someone’s got to buy tickets for Transformers and Finding Dory and the ten gajillion different comic book films out there, after all. People are entitled to their own preferences, and their own aesthetics, even.
And you’re still entitled to say you know stuff about how film works, that they don’t. That you can see things going on that they don’t, and that you catch innovations and derivativeness that they can’t. You can still judge art without succumbing to some levelling miasma of “everything is valid, screw your training”.
Seriously. As I’ve posted elsewhere: I had no idea what the local metal music radio show was talking about, when they were saying that group A was brutal and amazing, and group B was derivative and ridiculous. They both sounded like noise to me. But the fact that they could make that discernment reassured me. It confirmed to me that they had an aesthetics, and that its subject matter was art.
“You can’t judge other people’s works of art, man” is not an aesthetics.
And if you’re annoyed by “Everyone’s entitled to their opinion”?
Say what the great wrestler Jerry Lawler once said.
Well, you’re entitled to your opinion.
AND EVERYBODY’S ENTITLED TO MY OPINION!
Who is your favorite musical composer (1500-now)? And why?
I am on a lifelong mission to annoy Victoria Weaver by saying:
MAHLER!!!!
But if I’m to be completely honest, it’s Bach.
Mahler, because of the cathartic emotional extremes, the amazing orchestrations, the largescale forms, the cogent narratives.
Bach above Mahler, because of the sublime joining of intellect and passion, and (I hate to admit) because it can communicate to you even if you aren’t paying rapt attention (which is why I default to it at work).
What do you think when you hear the words, “United States”?
Ambivalence
- Hegemon
- New birth of freedom
- Individualism gone berserk
- Lofty ideals
- Opportunity
- Smugness
- Some of my best friends are American 🙂
- With reference to Rita Jóñer’s answer to What do you think when you hear the words, “United States”? I get stumped by the US states too. In fact, here’s my excuse to expose myself to ridicule:
(And I’m doing a lot better than the average Australian.)
So, who do I got to apologise to?
(Looks it up.)
States I forgot:
- Missouri
- Utah (WOW)
- Kentucky
- Arkansas
- New Hampshire (WOW)
States I misplaced:
- CO
- IO
- NE
- KS (not KA)
- TN
- MN
- VE
Honestly? Better than I expected.
What surprised you about Turkey?
I’ve only been to Istanbul.
What surprised me most was how much like Athens it felt. Especially Kadıköy. The same rickety elevators in apartment buildings, the same scenes of young people hanging out in outdoor cafés, the same traffic chaos. Even the same layouts and typographic excesses in newspapers.
Also:
- How exceptional the food was. As I took to saying: Turkish food is just like Greek food, only good.
- How well Turkey was doing economically. A country that does major infrastructure works like the Marmaray has a lot to be proud of—even if it was branded as being to the Greater Glory of Erdoğan.
- How Turkish tea really was everywhere, and Turkish coffee was invisible. My wife, who spent time as a child in Istanbul, immediately started drinking 10 cups a day of bardaklı çay (as I took to calling it, much to the waiters’ amusement).
I hate going to church, my dad forces me to, and I don’t want to tell him I don’t feel like going, what should I do in church to fight the boredom?
Really does depend on the church, and on your predilections. You have had some great suggestions here, including: Pay attention (so you actually know what you’re rejecting—and I’ll add, so you can still get a valuable cultural grounding); meditate; read stuff.
I’m grateful I was forced to go, but I got bored a lot too. And this was a Greek Orthodox service, where there’s nothing to read (for free; you can buy a missal, and few do), where the service was in Ancient Greek (I was grateful for it; most aren’t), and where audience participation is rare.
If you won’t get anything out of the service, and you can’t get a reasonably covered up distraction, think about stuff. You’re offline in a place without distractions: that is a valuable thing, don’t waste it.
Plan your next Quora answer or three, for example.
What song/music makes you feel euphoric?
I was going to write my own question:
What kind of music makes you want to do a Snoopy Dance?
The answer for me is Dixieland Jazz. Don’t even care what the song is; the Dionysian untrammelled polyphonic joy of it just makes me want to stick my snout in the air, spread my arms, and bob my head from side to side.
Did so in the car yesterday, in fact.
Utterly random instance. I DEFY you to resist doing your own Snoopy Dance.
What is likely on the missing part of the Nixon Tapes?
More of the same. We have Haldeman’s notes of his meeting with Nixon, and we have forensic proof that we aren’t missing any of his notes for the day. Nixon was clearly starting to talk about coverup, but would not yet have elaborated the whole CIA National Security lie.
Nixon didn’t wipe the tape because it was more incriminating than the Smoking Gun tape. He wiped it because it was the first tape he got hold of, and he was defeated by the challenge of wiping them, as a long-standing klutz.
Is Canberra the worst city in Australia?
Aw, come on. No Canberra hate from you people? That’s positively UNAUSTRALIAN!
I admire the methodicality of Ben Reimers in his answer. In fact, do look at it: Ben Reimers’ answer to Is Canberra the worst city in Australia?
The emotive definition of a good city to live in, that OP is presumably after, is not intrinsically about access to a beach. Or at least, I don’t think it is, being not much of a beach-goer. (That’s un-Australian too.) But it is critical mass of population, to sustain a vibrant cultural, entertainment, and gastronomical life; good amenities; and nice landscape.
To some, it needs to be “a good place to raise a family”. Mila Karmacharya has said it, just as many say it about Perth.
That criterion is not necessarily antithetical to “critical mass of population, to sustain a vibrant cultural, entertainment, and gastronomical life”. But, well, if it is, that decides me on it. And decides everyone whole who lives in Sydney or Melbourne on it too.
The way out is to say that Canberra is too small to be a city to begin with. It certainly feels that way. Especially if you’re trying to get a cab in the afternoon, to get to the airport to escape Canberra.
It is true that the restaurant scene has improved radically in the last decade. There are even honest-to-God bars in Canberra now. (I hesitate to say pubs.) And I did see a homeless mission wondering about the CBD at night; so it’s not as Stepford as I’d thought it is.
But of the capitals of states and territories, it is certainly the sleepiest. And that weighs heavily on anyone who lives in Sydney or Melbourne.
What are the top 10 things everyone should know about Melbournians?
Vote #1 Alistair Smith: He’s got the most important stuff. Alistair Smith’s answer to What are the top 10 things everyone should know about Melbournians?
We are coffee snobs, we (well not me) are sports mad. We dress in black, and we wear layers because of the volatility of the weather. We (and I guess South Australia) are more lefty than the rest of the country; right wing shock jocks are much more a Sydney thing.
Alistair did #1–#6. I’ll add these as #7–10:
- We dislike Sydney. This is a fairly commonplace kind of city rivalry, and takes the form of sneering at their lack of culture (yes, they have the Opera House, we try to forget that). The worst thing we could say about the generic sitcom Hey Dad..! was “What do you expect of a comedy filmed in Sydney”. TV stations will try to keep the Sydney origins of most Australian TV shows quiet here.
- We have geographical divides. There is an impoverished West and an affluent East. There is a North of the River/South of the River split. People living in hipster Brunswick (such as, oh, everyone I knew at Melbourne Uni) would never venture any further south than St Kilda. Which is not very far south.
- There is an old stuffy class-conscious elite in Melbourne, though you really have to dig deep to find it. My one experience of it was being introduced to the venerable old historian Geoffrey Blainey, only to be asked by him whether I was related to the Nicholas family of Nicholas Aspro fame. (Australian Dictionary of Biography)
- Then again, Googling for links to them, maybe it’s just as well I’m not: Bloop, bloop, bloop – another one bites the dust.
Didn’t the Nicholas “Aspro” family write the book on the intergenerational pissing away of the family fortune?
- You will learn very little about Melburnians from watching The Real Housewives of Melbourne.
Oh. Vote #1 Alistair Smith.