> By the sword. They would ask a city to surrender and convert to Islam, or they would take it by force and either kill or enslave it's citizens. Doesn't sound very peaceful to me.
This differs from the common behavior of powers at the time in what way?
But it's also incredibly misleading. That's what they did to the Crusader States, centuries later, but the collapse of Byzantine/Persian power, and the absence of any strong power blocs in North Africa (after the exarchate of Carthage was established and the Vandals broken) makes this a null argument. Cities traded hands all the time. Without a field army nearby, or, if the field army was decimated, the city essentially had no choice but to surrender.
Additionally, the umma under the Rashiduns and Ummayads often lived outside the city. The caliphate was happy to simply collect taxes, and have Arab troops live among Arabs (as an external garrison).
> And they were also the most prolific slave traders in all of history. It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to say that the caliphates were any more or less peaceful than any other world empires.
This is incredibly speculative. The Romans are estimated to have had anywhere from 5-8m slaves throughout the Empire, for 400 years. We really have no idea what the scale of slavery was like in most of antiquity, or even late antiquity.
You're conveniently forgetting that chattel slavery as practiced in the Americas was wholly different from slavery in the "Old World", also.
I wasn't the one to assert that the caliphate was "more" or "less" peaceful than any other world empire, and I would not. I asserted that it's was peaceful.
If you're going to pick once that is the "most" peaceful based on duration and territory held, I'd go for China, but it's the kind of "who is the best baseball player ever" argument that goes nowhere.
This differs from the common behavior of powers at the time in what way?
But it's also incredibly misleading. That's what they did to the Crusader States, centuries later, but the collapse of Byzantine/Persian power, and the absence of any strong power blocs in North Africa (after the exarchate of Carthage was established and the Vandals broken) makes this a null argument. Cities traded hands all the time. Without a field army nearby, or, if the field army was decimated, the city essentially had no choice but to surrender.
Additionally, the umma under the Rashiduns and Ummayads often lived outside the city. The caliphate was happy to simply collect taxes, and have Arab troops live among Arabs (as an external garrison).
> And they were also the most prolific slave traders in all of history. It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to say that the caliphates were any more or less peaceful than any other world empires.
This is incredibly speculative. The Romans are estimated to have had anywhere from 5-8m slaves throughout the Empire, for 400 years. We really have no idea what the scale of slavery was like in most of antiquity, or even late antiquity.
You're conveniently forgetting that chattel slavery as practiced in the Americas was wholly different from slavery in the "Old World", also.
I wasn't the one to assert that the caliphate was "more" or "less" peaceful than any other world empire, and I would not. I asserted that it's was peaceful.
If you're going to pick once that is the "most" peaceful based on duration and territory held, I'd go for China, but it's the kind of "who is the best baseball player ever" argument that goes nowhere.