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Post by dmitry on Jan 12, 2016 20:51:15 GMT
As with so many asertians the primary sources make the level of western vs islamic technology in the high era of the Crusades (11-13 centuries) is contradictary. On the one hand we have claims that western metalwork, siege weaponary, construction ability (better castles) and crossbows were superior to their muslim oponents (for instance several claims of Muslim writers about the exellent and before unseen quality of "Latin" weapons and armor, for instance Saladins claim that had western traders not supplied his army with western weapons he couldnt have crushed the crusaders). On the other hand several historians speak about the almost absolute inferiority of western technology vs that of the Muslims.
I would be gratefull for any clarifications.
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endrefodstad
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Post by endrefodstad on Jan 14, 2016 12:47:09 GMT
The answer is simple. None of the cultures had a clear technological edge over the other. Both the occident and the orient were composed of many different regions and groups that each had different strengths and weaknesses technologically. Also, aesthetics played a role, for example in the way arms and armour were made. The different regions and groups also traded with one another, so "better" equipment made by one "side" could be avaliable to the other.
Few actual specialists in the field tend to make statements about inferority of equipement and technology. When they look at things in detail, they tend to get different results than the broad strokes often painted by older authors. A recent example is this PhD: Leif Inge Ree Petersen , Siege Warfare and Military Organization in the Successor States (400–800 AD): Byzantium, the West and Islam. (History of Warfare 91.) that successfully argues that there is no real technological difference between byzantine, arab and "barbarian" successor states in terms of siege technology - the technology spread too fast to be contained, and all of them maintained siege trains and workshops that does not seem too different. This was likely also the case three hundred years later.
If you read certain older authors (Runciman comes to mind) and a few modern ones, they'll happily make a number of statements backed up by relatively flimsy evidence that support their general bias. For Runciman, the Crusaders were simply a bunch of hooligans trampling over his beloved byzantines. That's what happens if you abandon a certain impartiality as an historian.
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Post by dmitry on Jan 14, 2016 13:57:24 GMT
Thank you!
Still the question of fortress strength is in my opinion unclear, I do know that there was something of a revolution in fortification in Europe in the 12th century and I wonder if at least during the crusades European fortresses were realy better then thous of the Byzantines or Muslims.
When it comes to the speed of spread of military inovations I do agree that this type of inovation did spread far faster then any other, still in later history we can see great differences in equipment. For instance European canons were superior to the artillery of all other cultures steadely from the 15th century on. Even the ottomans had to buy european canons and went to great length to aquire them over the whole period being unable to copy European metalurgy (and they were the militarely most advanced of the non european states). The finer and more pure gunpowder that got developed in the west in the 15th century spread to the Ottomans in the 16th and to the Mughals (with direct ottoman help) only in the 17th century. When it came to fortifications the Ottomans started to copy European achievements in fortification made to make castles resilient to artillery in the 18th century and only with the help of french engineers. The rest of the world still stuck with mostly medieval style castles (with minor adoptions to gunpowder weaponary) untill the west came with breech loading TNT artillery in the 19th century and blew it all to pieces!
So I wouldnt be so quick to say that "the technology spread too fast to be contained". After all the chinese held to masses of technology the rest of the world didnt have untill the Mongol invasion despite frequent military contact with many surounding areas and even India.
Also is there any information if the Crusaders tryed to introduce 3 field crop rotation into Palestine and the Levante?
I know that it came to Russia in the 15th century and to the Balkans around the same time. But despite Bulgarians practecing it it never spread to Ottoman Anatolia or any other of the Muslim Ottoman holdings.
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endrefodstad
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Post by endrefodstad on Jan 14, 2016 14:23:42 GMT
If you are buying it, you are accessing it without your own industry, and might not need to produce your own. But you still have access to it, using it as a technology. As noted, some regions were better than others in some fields and exported their wares as a result. The castle building of high medieval europe was also tied to internal social developments in europe and more emphasis on that sort of fortification, which was exported to the middle east as the many crusader castles demonstrate. They also seem to have incorporated some levantine aspects into their european fortifications.
To some extent, chinese technology was not all that well contained until the mongol invasion - or at least, the story is more complex. Blast furnaces, for example, seem to appear in northern europe during the 12th century, well before the invasions, (likely as an independent invention) and gunpowder (long thought to have been independently developed) might just have spread from china after all (and if it did, it disseminated extremely rapidly. But east asia is a very different thing from the civilizations around the mediterranean, which were the ones I was writing about. The story of crucible (2damascus") steel is a case where the technology seems to, for a long time, to have stayed in its original region (India) and only exported as goods until a very late period. But I wasn't saying above that all technologies disseminated rapidly, only that some spread too fast to be contained.
I do not thing the three field system makes much sense in the middle east. Its spread was tied to the spread of the moldboard plough, which is more suited to the heavy soil of northern europe, and some of the crops - notably legumes - required summer rain, which isn't a common occurense in the middle east - or around the mediterranean in general, another region where the three field system was not as successful. I can not see why they would try to use a techniwue which they well knew did not work as well in mediterranean climes to the levant. Especially as relatively few european peasants actually moved there during the crusades - most farmers were local ones.
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Post by dmitry on Jan 14, 2016 17:11:56 GMT
Thank you very much for your answer!
Well gunpoweder was invented in China in the 9th century but it took 400 years till it apeared anywere else (which is exactly the time of the Mongol invasion), basicly if it got to Europe and the Middle east from China it got there through the mongols, before that the Chinese maneged to keep it to themselves for 400 years.
when it comes to fortifications Im just wondering if western Europe had superior fortification skills compared to Islam/Byzantium (which basicly were on the same level) by the 12th century.
Also what about the crossbow? Did the knowloge how to make them exist in the Middle east and they just didnt get popular there because they had acsess to high quality compound bows? While in Europe the rainy and overall humid climate made water creep between the layers of such bows which made them fall apart? Or was there some technological superiority of the west in this field?
Did the Blast furnance apear in the Islamic world at any time? Or did it only exist in India/China and then in the west after the 12th century? This migh explain why Byzantine and Islamic writers wrote about superior western steel around this time.
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endrefodstad
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Post by endrefodstad on Jan 15, 2016 9:18:44 GMT
Things can be invented independently and until people looked at it more closely. we had no transfer chain for gunpowder from china to the mediterranean. Now we do - possibly... As far as I know, blast furnaces appeared in the islamic world after they did in scandinavia. We also have some indication that there might be independent invention of a version of them in Africa, predating both the chinese and the european invention. There are few indications that the scandinavian osmond steel was exported widely. So it is all conjecture at this point.
Westerners certainly were building MORE castles than the islamic world or byzantium.
The crossbow was known in the middle east. Laminated bows were common up here in scandinavia where it is very wet. They had access to glue that would keep in humid climates.
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Post by dmitry on Jan 15, 2016 17:23:56 GMT
Thank you for the answer!
What do you think of the idea that the secret of European superiority in artillery lies to a large part in the strongly developed tradition of churchbells in Europe. Sine there was allready a well developed craftsmenship of bellsmelting it was easier to use it to make canons. The muslim world didnt like bells because of a hadith acording to which shaitans voice was like the ringing of a bell and bells were generaly prohibited to christians in the Muslim world, thus Christians had a headstart once canons apeared.
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endrefodstad
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Post by endrefodstad on Jan 18, 2016 16:41:36 GMT
I think it sounds a bit speculative. I mean, early cannon once they got past the vase cannon stage were to a large extent made from iron with breeches. They tried for a long time to resolve the issue of not having a tight breech until they gave up and started casting bronze cannon (they had been casting bronze hand cannon and several larger cannon before, but they really seem to have wanted the breech loaders to work). So technically, the earliest cannon are "more advanced" than the standard cannon technology used until after the Napoleonic times, when they finally were able to cast iron in large scale and were able to produce tight breeches. But yes, early bronze cannon casters likely started their careers as bell casters. The process of casting large bells is a pretty complicated affair with many pitfalls, so their skills would have mattered in the early stages.
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