medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear Mariano,
If you mean to say, "If indeed you were just addressing a finite point
in this line of argumentation, with no OTHER connection to the larger
discussion," apology accepted. That that was my intent ought to have
been evident, BTW, from a subsequent exchange between Kerry Inman and
myself in this very same thread, also on 1. January and thus two days
before your initial post. If you missed that exchange, it's available
in the archives of this list (just as it was on 3. January had you
wished to inform yourself then about the further course of the
discussion prior to responding to a post that was already several days
old).
The only article I recall having been posted in this thread was Richard
Ostling's AP piece of 31. December posted by Richard Landes on 1.
January. If you can verify that other articles, whether from _National
Review_ or elsewhere, were posted in this thread, you could do us all a
favor by bringing these to the attention of the list managers, as these
other posts seem somehow not to have been archived.
Ostling's AP piece _reports_ on an article by David Curp in the journal
_Crisis_. Others on this list were quick to point out one blatant
implausibility in that piece ("slaughtering the populace and
imprisoning 30,000 people" -- not an absolute impossibility, mind you:
these 30,000 could theoretically have been rounded up from elsewhere).
No one commented on the curious fact that _two_ different sets of
victims are each said in this piece to have numbered 30,000 and that
these are the only sets of victims to be assigned any number other
than "thousands". That strains credibility, but credibility is not
really to be expected in a piece that 1) chooses not to inform its
readers that in ancient and medieval texts large numbers very often
have to be viewed sceptically and 2) uses the
terms "enslave", "slaughter", and "imprison" without either defining
these -- "imprison" is of course highly ambiguous -- or in any way
(apart from employing a simplistic Muslim/Christian dichotomy)
contextualizing the occurrences selected for mention and thereby
facilitates visceral responses from a general readership not prepared
to engage it with informed criticism. Whether it is Curp or Ostling or
Ostling's AP editor who is chiefly responsible for this state of
affairs I do not know, but I would point out that there's nothing on
Curp's web page at Ohio University to suggest any great familiarity on
his part with the ancient or medieval Mediterranean:
http://www-as.phy.ohiou.edu/Departments/History/faculty/curp.html
Because I thought these weaknesses in Ostling's piece apparent, I did
not presume upon the list's time by calling attention to them. Nor had
I thought that a response to seeming factual distortions offered by
another subscriber to this list in answer to Ostling and Curp could
reasonably be interpreted by a careful reader as implying agreement
with their positions, especially when that response was at pains
neither to accept their "horror stories" (Kerry Inman's
characterization) at face value nor to refer to Seljuk conquests as
Muslim ones.
Best again,
John Dillon
On Thursday, January 5, 2006, at 12:50 pm, Mariano Paniello wrote:
> It didn't seem to me to be a dispassionate argument over
> factuality, but
> rather part of a larger discussion in which Islamic cultures are
> being held
> to a much higher standard of civilized conduct than those of the
> Christian
> world. A discussion which began, as I recall, with the posting of
> several
> articles from such splendors of scholarly inquiry as The National
> Review,
> which have a real interest in promulgating this
> cultures-in-inevitable-conflict view of history. Such death-
> tallying always
> seems to be involved. If indeed you were just addressing a finite
> point in
> this line of argumentation, with no connection to the larger
> discussion, I
> express my wholehearted apologies.
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