Question by Cowboy Haroon: Why were the Arabs light years ahead of China, India, Afghanistan during the Medieval period ?
They were technologically, musically, culturally advanced than China, India or any East Asian Empire.
The Caliphate also went head to head against European giants and defeated them.
Why are the Arabs more Superior than the rest of East Asia ? Is it Genetics or it was meant to be ?
It was the Arabs who made the first map of stars.
Best answer:
Answer by bayerischer
Are you sure they were more advanced than China?
China during much of the Middle Ages was the Tang Dynasty – the highest point of Chinese civilization and a golden age of cosmopolitan culture.
Printing was invented at that time, and along with the compass, gunpowder and papermarking, it is classified as one of the four great inventions of ancient China
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all my social studies this year and the 2 years before were about Asia, Europe and the middle east, and its true that the were the first to make many things, and Egyptians too had hundreds of achievements, but i dont think that they were superior than china, but the were superior that any other countries. its not something in the genetics because Egypt have some very intelligent people, but there problem is there population, its growing in a very high speed, while money in the countries are decreasing not increasing, wile governments doesn’t give space or opportunity for kids to show there talents and ability to do things. maybe its that there becoming lazy or have to enough economics to get the righ amount of education. but what am noticing is that hundreds of Arabs are now spreading all over the earth, the ones of them with economic abilities are emigrating to many different places than the ones they are living in, because there country didn’t give them the opportunities to be better persons, or to get higher with there knowledge and ideas.
What gives you this erroneous idea? More advanced? How? The Chinese were advanced in what mattered to them. The Moors in what mattered to them, the Eskimos in what mattered to them. How can one be more advanced then the other? Using current, Western, ideas is no good. It is not one world where all can be judged or appraised by our wants and needs.
Did you know that Bedouins are Arabs? Did you know that they road camels into battle against the Germans? No? Well then your entire question lacks credibility and smells of Muslim propaganda.
Your premise is contestable.
The Arabs during the Middle Ages prospered because they occupied a territory that served to bridge the ancient trade route from China to the Western world. China has always been the source of new inventions and fabulous consumer goods that were much appreciated in the West. These goods were transported west by caravans that plied the mountain passes of northern India to the perilous passes of Afghanistan and into the Middle East. This trade route had been set in place during the late Roman Empire and when the Tang Dynasty was on the Dragon Throne. When the Arabs came pouring out of the Arabian desert with the newly-minted Islamic religion, they took over from the old mercantile kingdoms that dotted the trade route. They- like the Abbasid Caliphate – not only came in contact with the ancient body of knowledge of the Graeco-Roman world( still available at that time while the West languished because ancient books were largely destroyed there by the barbarian invasions), they made use of it and appropriated these as their own. Furthermore, the Arabs of the Middle East grew rich from controlling the price of goods passing through their territory. It was due to this reason that European explorers looked for a sea-route to China to circumvent Arab stranglehood of goods coming to their territory. As a result, Europe grew more and more technologically, scientifically and militarily. The Arabs on the other hand, having been eliminated as middle men, began its slow decline that only ended when oil wealth was discovered early in the previous century.
Material wealth and prosperity is a product not of genetics or social constructs but of – yes: location, location, location. In the Middle Ages, the Chinese were the inventors and manufacturers of wealth. with their several thousand years of culture behind them> they may be considered more advanced a truly superior race. Mere merchants and middlemen can not presume superiority.
Were they?
The Caliphate collapsed under attack from the Mongols in the 13th century, Baghdad being captured and the Caliph executed. Doesn’t sound much as if the Arabs were ahead of a bunch of nomadic raiders at the time, let alone the Chinese.
What “European giants” did the Caliphate defeat? The corrupt and divided Visigothic Tolosa kingdom in Spain? The Byzantine Empire (which defeated 2 Arab sieges)? The Crusaders of the First Crusade?
Seeing as ‘Arabic numerals’ were in fact picked up by Arab traders in India, perhaps they pinched the rest of their science and technology from others.
Making the first map of the stars (something ancient Egyptians,Babylonians,and Greeks might dispute anyway) doesn’t make a race genetically superior to others, any more than having huge overseas empires in the past made White Europeans genetically superior to other races.
THEY ACCEPTED KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT QUESTIONING FROM WHERE IT CAME.
SEE THE NUMBER SYSTEM WE TODAY CALL THE ARABIC NUMERAL SYSTEM WAS DEVELOPED IN INDIA, MANY AYURVEDIC MEDICAL BOOKS WERE TRANSLATED INTO ARABIC DURING THOSE DAYS.
LATER DURING THE CROSS WARS THE EUROPIANS (CHRISTIANS) TOOK THOSE BOOKS IN ARABIC AND TRANSLATED THEM INTO LATIN LEAVING THE NAME OF THE AUTHOR OR THE TRANSLATOR AWAY.
THAT COMES TO THE CONCLUSION THAT MODERN SCIENCE HAS MANY OF ITS ROOTS ANCIENT ASIA!