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I have so many questions. They are never going to all be answered to my satisfaction. Who knows if I will ever have a comprehensive enough answer to the question of how the elephants got to the Iberian peninsula to start their trek to the Italian peninsula.
But maybe don’t go _that_ far back.
How about Prince Henry the Navigator. The way I learned it, he was this amazing patron to exploration down the western coast of Africa and beyond, in hopes of getting to the good stuff in the Indies without having to go the usual route. You can really better understand _why_ Henry would be so motivated to do this once you understand, like I did today, about how he and his brothers took Ceuta. I mean, probably they wound up paying ever more than usual to buy anything from anyone after that.
My initial theory was: did Henry like find a filing cabinet with some maps in it and go, hey, let’s update these maps and see if we can accomplish our goals? However, a little light googling has resulted in me wondering if I was paying any attention in any history class I ever took. The caravels? Probably from the Islamic empire. There were probably multiple crossings to the Americas by Islamic sailors? Who were kidnapped, rescued, and who on succeeding visitors ran into people who spoke Arabic? Are you kidding me? Also, windmills were invented in Iran? Paper making moved from China to the Arabic world (and then to more familiar terrain) after the Battle of Talas?
What?
Did everyone else know all this already? I mean, it’s all in wikipedia, so apparently?
I have a bunch of additional questions of a more unpleasant nature, but I will save those for later. In the meantime, I remember poking around at the history of smallpox vaccination a couple times in the last few years and learning that there were two approaches, the insufflation thing which was Chinese, and then the more familiar version that apparently is of Turkish origin. Today, I got to wondering to what degree did the Arabic empire — a weird empire, not unified in governance, but rather in language, law and currency — ensure that the population or at least the traveling population was protected against smallpox (and thus prevent the spread of smallpox)? I don’t know that it would ever have _occurred_ to me to even ask that question. And now, I feel kinda stupid that I just now thought of it.
But maybe don’t go _that_ far back.
How about Prince Henry the Navigator. The way I learned it, he was this amazing patron to exploration down the western coast of Africa and beyond, in hopes of getting to the good stuff in the Indies without having to go the usual route. You can really better understand _why_ Henry would be so motivated to do this once you understand, like I did today, about how he and his brothers took Ceuta. I mean, probably they wound up paying ever more than usual to buy anything from anyone after that.
My initial theory was: did Henry like find a filing cabinet with some maps in it and go, hey, let’s update these maps and see if we can accomplish our goals? However, a little light googling has resulted in me wondering if I was paying any attention in any history class I ever took. The caravels? Probably from the Islamic empire. There were probably multiple crossings to the Americas by Islamic sailors? Who were kidnapped, rescued, and who on succeeding visitors ran into people who spoke Arabic? Are you kidding me? Also, windmills were invented in Iran? Paper making moved from China to the Arabic world (and then to more familiar terrain) after the Battle of Talas?
What?
Did everyone else know all this already? I mean, it’s all in wikipedia, so apparently?
I have a bunch of additional questions of a more unpleasant nature, but I will save those for later. In the meantime, I remember poking around at the history of smallpox vaccination a couple times in the last few years and learning that there were two approaches, the insufflation thing which was Chinese, and then the more familiar version that apparently is of Turkish origin. Today, I got to wondering to what degree did the Arabic empire — a weird empire, not unified in governance, but rather in language, law and currency — ensure that the population or at least the traveling population was protected against smallpox (and thus prevent the spread of smallpox)? I don’t know that it would ever have _occurred_ to me to even ask that question. And now, I feel kinda stupid that I just now thought of it.