Moonhead
Posts: 16520
Joined: 9/21/2009 Status: offline
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Inarguably, but I do find all of this talk about the Ottoman empire preserving culture from the savage barbarians in Europe hilarious when one of the ways they did that was burning the library at Alexandria because if anything stored there agreed with the prophet then it was redundant and if it didn't then it was a lie. There's also plenty of other sources for navigation besides the Moors. Most of Scandinavia was doing very well with that even during the Dark Ages, after all. As for gunpowder, didn't the eastern empire get that one from China in its death throes, along with silk, and then pass it on to the Turks? There's very little evidence that one was a Turkish invention, despite a few extravagant claims to the contrary.
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I like to think he was eaten by rats, in the dark, during a fog. It's what he would have wanted... (Simon R Green on the late James Herbert)
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