Peter Frankopan
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Peter's blog

I blog from time to time about things that catch my eye and particularly about links between the past and present.

Peter's Blog

New Coins, rising resentments & the importance of history

9/15/2015

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So, mercifully, the latest glossy video released by ISIS does not show innocent people being executed, or cultural treasures of the world being destroyed by thugs. For once, the high production values gives some hope that those at the top of ISIS are moving out of the teenage phase of blood-lust and wanting to play a new game that is basically good news (well, it could hardly get any worse). The new game is for adults only. It is called Government.

As if following a manual on how to build a state, attention has turned to having the right kit and the right trappings to be taken seriously. First up, as so often happens, is making your own money.

Numismatists set great store by the importance of money looks like: every time we put our hands in our pockets to pay for a loaf of bread, pint of milk or (let's say) a copy of my Silk Roads book, we affirm our allegiance to the queen, and participate - willingly or otherwise - in the political economy and the social order that binds us into a state. We have different views, different beliefs, different accents, but we all use the same currency (And that, of course, is one reason why UKIP and anti-Europeans attach so much importance to the pound).

And so ISIS have turned their attention to making their own coins; it tells us much about who they think they are and who they want to be.

The video is entitled 'The Rise of the Caliphate (Khalifah) and the Return of the Gold Dinar'. The project as two aims; one perhaps easier to guess than the other.
First is a return to a heavily mythologised past, a return to the era when the Prophet Muhammad lived. As a result, there are three currency denominations, as there were in Late Antiquity - gold, silver and bronze/copper. This is not enormously practical, especially given a gold coin is worth around $140 - not the most practical thing to pull out when you're trying to do some shopping - but it talks to a reversion to a world which was supposedly idyllic. The aim of the new currency, the narrator loftily proclaims, is to 'cleanse the earth of the stain of corruption that has marked it'. Simple, right ?

It is the second aim, though, that we should pay more attention to. It is time, the narrator states, to break the 'American capitalist system of financial slavery.' I think it is only fair to say that the chances of the new coinage in ISIS controlled territory snapping America's 'Achilles heel' is something of a long shot.

What caught my eye, however, was an almost parallel declaration in Moscow that said something very similar. It is time, said the Kremlin to get rid of the dollar and the euro. It would be much better, the proposal sets out, for the creation of a single financial market between Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and other countries of the former Soviet Union.

And the vision goes beyond former USSR territories, In a clear trial run for something more ambitious, Russia has just signed a huge currency swap of the rouble for equivalent Chinese yüan, that seeks to insulate both from the international currency markets.

The key question here is what lies behind the antagonisms towards and deep mistrust of the west and what underpins the growing attempts to form states, bonds and alliances that do not just aim to rival western institutions, but to cut out them out altogether. There are reasons for the deliberate shift away from what the the idealised forms of behaviour which we believe all other countries, peoples and cultures should follow.

That is one of the areas I look at in my new book on The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. If we do not understand - or even try to understand - the history of people who do not live in our own little goldfish bowl, and worse, and do not recognise that others perhaps see our past in a very different way to how we see it ourselves, then we run the risk of reacting on the basis of emotion, rather than of reason. As the axis on which the world spins begins to shift, it is more important now than ever to lift the veil of ignorance, and perhaps even to face some painful home truths about why levels of resentment and attempted rejection are rising.
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Silk Roads: A New History of the world.  

8/26/2015

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Well, here we are.

In just over two hours, my book officially comes to life. I've been waiting for 27 August 2015 for years. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World is the culmination of a journey that began while I was still a boy - keen to find out about parts of the world I was not being taught about, rather than those that I was.

I could not be more proud of the book. Picking it up brings back many memories of long days and late nights spent agonizing how to figure out works written hundreds or even thousands of years ago; of the excitement of spotting patterns; of the frustrations of giving up on dead ends and moving on.

I feel like the conductor of an orchestra made up of gifted virtuosi. I have been able to call up eye-witnesses from across the globe who lived over more than two millennia, who observed, recorded and tried to make sense of a world changing before their eyes. I have admired the authors of a huge range of sources, have learned from them and hope to have introduced them to new audiences.
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I've been counting the weeks, days and hours as the launch date has crawled closer. I've been holding my breath to see what people think of a book that it is unashamedly ambitious, and tries to look at history in a different way.

And now, finally, the moment has arrived.

I hope all who read Silk Roads enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. It will excite, enthrall and challenge. Above all, I hope that it encourages readers to think about the past, and to remember why studying history is so rewarding - and so important.

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Google & Alphabet; and re-branding of an empire

8/12/2015

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So Google has shaken itself up and will re-organise under as Alphabet - hardly the most inspired choice of name, but handily ranks before Amazon and Apple in (hey!) alphabetical lists.

Re-branding in this way, according to experts and stock-pickers alike, is a genius idea. Google, so the story goes, is not a normal company, and so it can behave in non-normal ways. One would think that something had been miraculous had been invented. As it is, the new name (and excitement) simply reflects administrative changes in how the Google Empire is run. The Byzantines would have approved. Most of them that is.
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The switch into Geek into Greek (alpha - beta)

The branding of the East Roman Empire as 'Byzantine' has its own story, worth saving for another day. But the Google into Alphabet has its own neat parallel in late antiquity when the authorities in Constantinople decided to switch from using Latin to using Greek.

The Roman Empire of course used Latin as its primary language - although the Emperor Claudius commended a barbarian for managing to learn 'both our languages' (that is, Latin and Greek). Claudius himself loved showing off his own prowess in Greek, delivering 'long replies' to envoys when given the chance, and liked nothing more than quoting Homer (presumably also at length and also in Greek) during official business.

Two problems emerged as the western part of the empire contracted and disintegrated and Rome itself spiraled into decline from the fifth century. First, the centre of gravity switched to the eastern Mediterranean where Greek was more widespread than in the west; and second, Greek was used by the computer programmers, the geeks and the Silicon valley equivalents of late antiquity - the Christian priesthood.
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Late Antique programmers
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The priesthood
Unlike Google's announcement on Monday, the decision to re-brand the Empire was not proclaimed from on high, nor in fact does there appear to have been a seminal, single moment when a choice was made. By the middle of the 6th century, however, the Emperor Justinian began to issue edicts in Greek; within a few decades, official business was being done at every level in Greek, rather than in Latin - and so too works of literature and history shifted decisively in favour of the former.

The move from Latin into Greek marked the same statement of intent that took Google to Alphabet - a declaration that it was time to look to the future, and not to the past. Rome - like Google - had once been all mighty and all-conquering. It was important to keep moving and think about victories that lay ahead, rather than reflect on those won years earlier.

And so to the moral of the story: did the change have any meaning - what now for Google/Alphabet if history really does rhyme (rather than repeat) ?

Well, if I was called to give my two cents at Mountain View (Rome and Constantinople were built on seven hills; Google with views of them), I'd say that the change was cosmetic and essentially meaningless. It disrupted little and seems to have neither particularly pleased nor annoyed anyone too greatly.

What is more significant, though, was, that re-branding in late antiquity coincided with a time of rising rivalries that brought Eastern Roman Empire to its knees. Soon, it was being buffeted from all sides by intense competition from rivals and challengers that it had previously seen off with ease. By 626, the once strong, secure and proud empire was teetering, one blow away from being knocked out for good. After a near miraculous dice with death, things went from bad to worse: having seen off Persians and Avars, it was the turn of new enemies to threaten to sweep all before them. Things were never quite the same again.

The change of language had no link with the challenges that emerged; but if I was a betting man, I'd follow my instincts as a historian. Faffing about with internal reorganisation has little to do with preparing for the onrush of pressure and challenges from rivals. So, counter-intuitively, Google's desire to look to the future points to the fact that there may be trouble ahead. You should never pander to the priesthood when it comes to power, money or empire.
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The End of an Empire
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student debts and the death of knowledge

7/21/2015

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All societies desire to be meritocratic. Rewarding on ability, rather than accidence of birth, is one of the hall-marks of all empires, kingdoms and states since (as weather forecasters call it) 'records began.'

It is true, of course, that there has often been a dramatic disconnect between aspiration and reality: it's all very well wanting the best to rise to the top, after all, as long as one's own chances are not in any way diminished. Some of the most stratified and unfair societies in the history have maintained their openness to those from all backgrounds - despite all evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless, one of the keys to a fair and just society is not just to allow but to actively encourage those with talent to go forth and prosper.

That prosperity that does not have to be wealth-related: we live in a world where it seems very easy to forget that success can be measured in other ways too (as educators; as carers; as civil servants; as parents, as siblings, as friends and so on). But success is difficult, if not impossible, in a world where lack of opportunity is twinned with poverty.

If I were in a better mood, I'd give some examples from the Byzantine Empire; or from the Islamic world; or from the Mongol era - where contrary to popular belief, stability and social equality were jealously promoted and protected (You can read more about that in my Silk Roads book next month)

But I am today spitting with rage about the latest round of persecution within the university system. Government cuts announced last week will result in 'substantially higher debt[s] for the poorest students'.  As the Institute for Fiscal Studies reports, this will have a dramatic effect on education participation in the UK.

The results will be startling. More than 3.5 children in the UK - an astonishing 1 in 4 - live in poverty. Save The Children estimate that nearly half of them, 1.6 million, live in conditions of 'severe poverty' - with some concentration levels in individual wards across the country at 100%. These figures do not reflect the huge cuts in welfare that have just been passed - along with those now proposed - that Robert Peston says do not amount to efficiency savings but to 'public service reinvention' itself.

Education has always been a key motor for social mobility, allowing new ideas to burst out to challenge the old. At a time when the world is changing dramatically, we should be encouraging our finest young minds to study, rather than putting obstacles and debts in their way. We should be urging young talent from all backgrounds iinto engineering, into medicine, into studying Russian, Arabic, Persian and Chinese history, literature and languages so we can understand emerging opportunities, and commercial, political and military threats that will shape the coming decades.

But what those who teach students can tell you, is that when education and debt is linked, there is enormous pressure to run to safety - to walk down well-trodden paths. With debts to pay, it is all but impossible not to pick subjects that deliver safe results that unlock the jobs that unlock repayments and freedom from debts. Why pick subjects that are complex, challenging and exciting if they are risky and require hard work? Why learn a new language? Why be different?

The raise in fees, incidentally, will not even help the Treasury, says the IFS. It is the triumph of a nasty and ill-thought through dogma, where education loses its value - and produces a bland homogeneity where everyone repeats the same thing to each other, and believes it.

I spoke a couple of weeks ago at the wonderful Chalke Valley History Festival. I had been asked to talk about Russia and the Ukraine - a topic that was the subject of lively debate on the panel, and considerable discussion amongst the audience. Everyone seemed to be bursting with opinions about what was going on and what the West should do.

At the end, I asked my audience (in Russian) who spoke Russian; and (in Ukrainian), who spoke Ukrainian. Given only 5 out of nearly 600 put their hands up, i pointed out that it seemed to me that most views were grounded in emotional reactions to events, rather than being based on any body of evidence or knowledge (beyond that day's newspapers).

Through the disastrous pressure on our education system over the last few decades, we rely on gut instinct rather than on facts; we rely on being able to rush to snap conclusions that are not grounded in the solid earth of research, but on patterns that seem familiar and right.

Little wonder, then, that we can make such catastrophic misjudgments when the blind are leading the blind. I've written about Iraq and Afghanistan in my book, and thought I had seen it all. Then I read this US report that was declassified a few weeks ago. which empahises the West's support for the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI [al-Qaida in Iraq] against Assad's regime in Syria. It was worth supporting these groupings, noted the cable from 2012, even though they would be unlikely to depose Assad. We chose to back a horse that we thought would not win - oblivious to the pure evil that it helped unlock.

(Note too, by the way, that the report carefully notes that ''Russia, China and Iran' all disagree with the approach of supporting armed militant fanatics. Who looks smarter now?)

The dramatic narrowing of society into a winner-loser culture, where those who are dropped down one chimney have all the advantages, while those dropped down another get no chances is a recipe for disaster.

I am a historian, so try to understand the past without claiming to be able to read the future. But i can tell you this: nothing good comes when those who are already struggling have inane barriers put in their way by self-satisfied politicians who are out to prove what capable leaders they are. Government for the few at the expense of the many has never ended well.

The new attack on the poor and on education is narrow-minded philistinism of the highest order. Surely I am not alone in thinking so ?
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civilisation under attack

6/30/2015

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I am watching a harrowing programme on BB4 about the destruction of antiquities and ancient sites across territories taken by Da'esh/Islamic State.

It is heart-breaking seeing magnificent works of art being smashed with glee - and being dismissed as idols and works that deserve to be lost. The attacks are attacks on humankind's inventiveness, on our species' creativity and on the love of beauty that defines all that is good about us.

The destruction of the past will make the future look very different. Works many centuries - and millennia old - have been lost forever.

What I suspect the programme will not discuss (we're only half way through), is how this has all come to pass. My sadness at the images we were being shown turned to anger when we saw how - for all his many flaws (and worse) -  Saddam Hussein had been a champion of museums and how he had invested lavishly in preserving, restoring and maintaining sites that celebrated the majestic history of Mesopotamia from antiquity to the 20th century.

I am not one of those people who thinks that we create terrorists, or that our tolerance is responsible for radicalizing the young who are heading to join Islamic state/Da'esh.

But in this case, we must also reflect on our own role in this, for we really do need to atone for our sins. This destruction is the price to pay for our spectacular failures in the Middle East as a whole, of our embarrassing inability to understand the people and history of this region, of our idiocy in looking to support regime change (in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Tunisia).

The rage anger of those who are committing these acts of cultural barbarism - which go hand in hand with persecution and genocide of Yazidis and others - comes as a reaction to our actions in deliberately adn systematically dismantling a country to suit (what we thought were) our own ends.

I've written about this in my new book; but watching the programme this evening fills me with such despair that I could never capture in writing.
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meltdown: the Historians' Hashtag Fiasco

5/18/2015

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It's been a week where books have been put back on the shelves and the gloves have come off: historians have gone into overdrive following an article in History Today in which the Cambridge academic, David Abulafia, argues that Britain's history is unique and distinct from the rest of Europe.

The article represents the views of a group of academics and writers called 'Historians for Britain', who not only want reform of Britain's relations with the European Union, but believe that 'Britain has developed traditions and practices which are peculiar to our shores'.

The twittersphere lit up as a result, with angst-wridden historians tweeting, blogging, posting and issuing solemn statements (in the manner of Central Committee press releases issued in Moscow circa 1980), and hashtags #HistoriansforBritain #HistoriansforEurope and #HistoriansforHistory trending. The debate quickly found its way into the national press.

I don't want to talk about the article itself, whose flaws and flimsy interpretation have been raked over by others well-enough. Nor am I interested in the banal, self-congratulatory and intellectually vapid stance of saying how wonderful it is that history is so 'alive' that the debate shows how important studying the past is - as though the fact of argument is as important as the content or the conclusions.

What is interesting and important, though, is what it shows about how History and Historians have lost their way; this all looks to me like fiddling while Rome burns.

We live in an age where historians should be looking at parts of the world where our knowledge, understanding and engagement have been woeful. We should be looking outwards to understand regions of profound political, and economic importance in the Arabic-speaking world, in Iran, in Russia and beyond, in West Africa; we should be trying to make sense of regions that are going through instability that has a direct impact on the wider world - whether as the result of migration, human rights abuses or cultural destruction.

We should be looking at exchanges, continuities and borrowings across cultures, faiths and language groups - rather than to seal the bottle and rejoice in insularity.
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How some of my colleagues want to look at History
The boxed in way that many are trying to look at history - and at the world as a whole - means the past is looked at through a perversely limited and entirely misleading lens. It is bad enough to read Little Britain type history and to trumpet the idea of trying to build walls around our past; seeing historians try to knit into a theme of Little Europe, where the west is equally sealed off from the great sweep of the global past is not much better.

Not surprising, then, that we struggle to make sense of what is going on in regions we have deliberately chosen not to study - like Syria and Iraq, like the Ukraine and the Caucasus, like Iran, Central Asia, China, or Somalia, Yemen and Nigeria.

All this typified by a book I received this morning, grandly titled A History of Medieval Christianity 1050-1500, with chapters by some of the best scholars in the field. There is barely a whisper about the church in the east - in Byzantium (one reference!!!),  let alone in Asia - even though there were far more Christians spread across Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf, Asia Minor the Balkans, the Caucasus, Iran and even Western China in this period.

This is where the problem of narrowing down come. Subjects, even those covered by very distinguished scholars, provide partial, blinkered and disingenuous pictures of the past. We should be looking to cast off our historical straight-jackets, rather than tighten them. The furious hashtag frenzy of my peers has left me feeling rather depressed - and concerned about the lack of historical perspective that is perpetuated, rather than brought to an end.
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Giant basements and ivory Towers - The medieval answer

3/13/2015

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There was plenty of coverage of 'Iceberg house' of pharamaceutical tycoon Ernesto Bertarelli and his English wife this week. People have been up in arms for a while about immense basements being dug under their properties in central London for a while - so much so, in fact, that Kensington and Chelsea have imposed a blanket ban on planning applications.

Some do not like the disruption caused by massive building works (not surprisingly); some fear the effects of subsidence and damage to their own properties; others are up in arms at how the new space will be used.

In the case of the Bertarellis, who want to build two vast floors below ground, the Westminster planning spokesman noted that 'concern has been raised by residents that the use of the basements has not been specified'. This suggests the neighbours are a classic collection of Nosy Parkers, whose noses (ho-ho) are put out by the fact that the Bertarellis have dared to keep secrets. You can hear them huffing about it from here: just who do they think they are ?
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Easier, perhaps, to buy a bigger house ?
The main problem with these deep basements though is one that would have been familiar to residents of medieval Italy.

In the 11th century, the issue was not building too deep - but building too tall. The rich competed with each other to be bigger and better, racing to out do each other.

This was disastrous for the common good, since it accentuated social inequality and emphasised the gap between the rich and the poor. Worse, it prompted unsavoury behaviour amongst the wealthy, whose competitiveness quickly became obvious for all to see - and deeply unattractive.

In Pisa in 1090, therefore, the city's bishop Daimbert (later Patriarch of Jerusalem) issued a ban on the height of towers that citizens were allowed to build. From now on, no one was allowed to build above a set height. The time of celebrating excess was at an end: people should live together as as community, rather than set apart because of the means at their disposal.

And in the great way that such directives were signed off in the Middle Ages, the bishop made sure his ruling was not challenged. Anyone who disobeyed, he declared, was 'inflated with the pride of the devil'. Failure to comply would result in 'excommunication and damnation'.

Something tells me that planning officials aren't allowed to talk like that. But it's certainly one way of doing it: Old School.

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A Byzantine Author - and why historians need international women's day

3/9/2015

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I haven't blogged for a while because I've been finishing off my Magnum Opus - a new history of the world, from antiquity to the present day. It's now all done and I'm very pleased with it. It will come out later in the year, so do please keep an eye out for it !

Finishing the book off has brought me back to the Byzantine Empire and a something I've been writing about The Alexiad. The text, written in the mid-12th century,
is not only a Byzantine gem, but a jewel of medieval literature. It covers a crucial period in the history of the Mediterranean, providing invaluable material about the first major Turkish conquests in Asia Minor, providing a context for political crisis in Constantinople on the eve of the First Crusade, as well as a unique viewpoint of the Crusade itself.

Despite its obvious importance, The Alexiad has been much neglected - regularly dismissed as unreliable and biased. The reason? Because it was written by a woman.

Edward Gibbon discarded the text, written by Anna Komnene, out of hand, saying that 'it betrays on every page the vanity of a female author'; modern historians are equally emphatic. The history, in the words of the doyen of modern Crusade studies whom I am too polite to name, cannot be taken seriously because it 'was written by an old lady living in a convent.' (I kid you not).
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Such comments are not only idiotic; they are ridiculous. For one thing, the author of the text had access to extensive source material - including letters from imperial archives as well as state documents, some of which are cited in full. The author was an eye-witness of many of the events she describes, and knew many of the protagonists who appear in a lengthy account personally. This all makes her history considerably more reliable (and interesting) than the many thuggish Latin accounts that were written around the same time - who relied on hearsay, gossip and innuendo, rather than high-grade material. And, incidentally, they were all old men who lived in monasteries - unlike Anna, who lived at the imperial court in Constantinople.

The Alexiad has long suffered because of the fact that its author was a woman; historians of the Crusades barely if ever stop to question basic questions about the structure of the text; or consider its audience, reception or transmission; or to really ask what the primary motivation of the text was (which is NOT that of a besotted daughter, praising her father, the Emperor).

So, to mark International Women's Day, what better than to flick open a text that is unfamiliar to many - and yet is the first narrative history in a European language written by a woman.

And what a history it is: elegantly written, beautifully cadenced and full of surprises at every turn. Its opening line captures with perfect irony the problem of gender and history - one reason, perhaps why these were supposedly the last words of another great woman who can be commemorated today - Catherine the Great.

'Time, which flies irresistibly and perpetually, sweeps up and carried away with it everything that has seen the light of day and plunges it into utter darkness - whether such deeds are of no significance whatsoever, or if they are mighty and worthy of commemoration.'

History shrouds all in its mists, as Anna Komnene understood. Perhaps some of her more modern colleagues might occasionally remember that.
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Deviance in the Middle Ages, fools and russell Brand

11/6/2014

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Lots of people think historians spend their time in libraries blowing dust off books no one else has (wanted to) read, looking for false doors in grand houses that hide undiscovered manuscripts, or tracking down nice pensioners who used to crack codes during the war at Bletchley Park. Sometimes the fun and action is much closer than you might think.

I've been thinking recently about deviance in the Middle Ages - about those on the periphery of society. Rather than look at kings, bishops and elites, I've been looking at those who either opted out or were rejected by their peers. Some had physical disabilities and/or suffered from diseases that were incurable; others, evidently, had serious mental health issues. These were cruel times for those whose conditions could not be treated or even understood.

But this week, I've had most fun working on fools and eccentrics. And lo and behold, just as I was wondering how to best approach this topic, I opened the newspapers, turned on the TV, listened to the radio and checked Twitter. And there, before my very eyes and ears, was the composite of a man I'd been reading about in a range of sources.

I wonder if you can work out who this reminds you of?

It was unbelievable, wrote Paul of Hellas in the 6th century, that people could be taken in  by men who talked quickly and claimed to understand the world around them. Their offers to share their 'wisdom' was laughable, he added: while some listeners were foolish enough to mistake silver-tongued words for intelligence, others understood they were complete nonsense. Such men gave the impression of brilliance and the promise of enlightenment, but in reality offered nothing but empty words.
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Alas...
Celebrity culture is not new to the digital age. One and a half thousand years ago, there were plenty of commentators who threw their hands in the air in bewilderment at the way that poseurs gained followings. St Neilos of Sinai, for example, could not bear the fact that towns and villages were 'groaning' with late antique versions of the cast of Made in Chelsea, X Factor finalists and Russell Brand.

Such people were idiots, according to Neilos, prancing about and posing 'aimlessly and pointlessly'; it was incredible to see them become famous. Who in their right mind, he wonders, would be taken in by hypocritical pseuds and their inane commentaries on contemporary life? As a 6th century Dermot O'Leary would have put it today, 'The Public Have Spoken.' And you can't argue with that.
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Visionaries and intercessors
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The Cast of Made in Constantinople
Other commentators were bewildered by how such supposed sages looked and what they sounded like. Niketas Khoniates could barely hide his incredulity at seeing men with 'bloodshot eyes' and 'completely wild hair' talking centre stage. They were listened to despite the fact that they did not talk, but  'screamed ecstatically as if if stark-raving mad.'

Those urging their own equally ill-conceived version of change and 'Revolution' were fools, wrote authors - echoing David Aaronovitch's epic take-down in The Times this week.

They were obnoxious in person too, hiding the fact that they were wealthy while giving the impression of poverty and concern for the poor. Such men went to great lengths to look the part of holy men - because it suited their act well. Those awful black clothes were an obvious sign of a fool, noted the Life of St. Eunapios in the 5th century. They dressed like monks and holy men, but were driven by the pursuit of pleasure and the desire to satisfy passions.

One such figure infuriated a questioner who challenged his views. The man 'did not answer, but simply lifted his right hand to heaven as if to say 'God spoke to me''.
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Divinely inspired
What annoyed observers most however was the grip that such vacuous figures had on the local population. It was frightening, noted one 5th century writer, that men who were charlatans had a 'power that verged on tyranny' on the general public.

As Paul of Hellas put it, 6th century versions of Russell Brand were obsessed by the need 'to satisfy their own vanity and to fan their thirst for widespread popularity.' Attention-seekers one and a half thousand years ago would say anything to get attention. It seems not much has changed.
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ISIS and the Crusades - Lessons not Learned

10/10/2014

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WHEN President George W. Bush stood on the deck of USS Abraham Lincoln on 1 May 2003, the mood was euphoric. ‘Major combat operations in Iraq have ended’, he announced; ‘in the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.’

Despite the infamous banner draped across the aircraft carrier’s tower reading ‘Mission Accomplished’, President Bush was careful to underline the fact that there was still much to be done. ‘We have difficult work to do in Iraq’, he said, including ‘bringing order to parts of the country that remained dangerous.’
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Ill-advised triumphalism

Few would have imagined that eleven years later, Iraq would be in a state of meltdown. The surging success of ISIS – a radical Islamic group that has brought swathes of territory under its control – has brought the government in Baghdad to its knees. For some observers, though, it is a case of history repeating itself.

Nine centuries ago, the west staged a dramatic military intervention in the Middle East that was strikingly similar to the massive deployment that removed Saddam Hussein from power. In 1095, Pope Urban II announced to the knighthood of Europe that they had to rise up and fight for their faith against a threat from the Muslim world. If they did not do so, he warned, the consequences for Christianity would be bleak indeed.

With reports that acts of extreme violence were being carried out against the innocent population from the shores of the Bosphorus to the Holy City of Jerusalem, some believed that the apocalypse was at hand. Just as after 9/11 many shared the unmistakable sense that a new era of uncertainty was dawning – where things were no longer familiar and comfortable, but unsettled and dangerous.

In the days after 9/11, some - including the President - spoke in terms of a new Crusade.

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The Pope in 1095 calling for a Crusade - 900 years before President Bush did the same
The Pope did not call the struggle with Islamic world ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ or refer to the enemy as part of an ‘axis of evil’, but he might as well have done. The First Crusade was a mission that put western beliefs and values firmly on the line. Just as with Afghanistan and Iraq, this was a struggle of light over darkness.

The knights who set off from home had to rely on extraordinary courage and discipline as they fought off one threat after another. As with the soldiers deployed into Iraq in 2003 and the decade that followed, the experiences were intense and often unbearable – such were the dangers and suffering in order to achieve an almost impossibly ambitious goal thousands of miles from home.

The problem, though, was that all the energy and resources had been directed at taking the Holy City. Little thought had gone into what would happen next. The knights who reached Jerusalem found themselves having to think on their feet about how the city should function, about who should be in charge, about who and what would be needed in the future. Many simply wanted to return home on the basis that the mission had been, well, accomplished.

It was a similar story in Iraq. Attention was spent on the logistics of regime change rather than the aftermath. In the months before the invasion by coalition forces, US Central Command developed a delusional and naïve series of presumptions about how post-Saddam Iraq would look, set out in a series of vapid, superficial and irresponsible PowerPoint slides that epitomise the naivety of the west's engagement in Iraq. Like with the Crusade, there was no exit plan to speak of, no long-term strategy beyond hope and faith.

In the Middle Ages, the real response from the Islamic world took time to form. Muslims had long been divided by petty personal and regional rivalries and by religious squabbling. However, the arrival of the Crusaders sparked a period of consolidation where competition was replaced by the moulding of a single bloc with an overriding raison d’être: the elimination of the foreign occupiers whose presence, beliefs and behaviour were presented as anathema to Islam.

The catalyst was the emergence of charismatic figure who could articulate a coherent vision of unity and deliver results on the battlefield: Saladin. He took on the Crusaders at their own game with an intoxicating blend of faith, military values and personal bravery. He united Muslims from far and wide, if not healing divisions then at least papering them over by focusing on the higher goal of retaking Jerusalem from the Christians and driving the westerners out of the Holy Land.

Picture
Saladin in the film Kingdom of Heaven. Remind you of anyone ?
And that is what is happening with ISIS under the leadership of the murky figure of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, about whom little is known other than the time he (and several of his commanders) spent in prison in Abu Ghraib and then Camp Bucca. Successes in Syria last year have been astutely translated into creating a domino effect that Saladin would have recognised and admired: gains of towns like Raqqa have been translated into attracting more support and manpower, enabling momentum to be built up and increasingly large targets to be fixed onto – including Kobane, but also Mosul and Tikrit, birthplace of both Saddam Hussein and Saladin.

Like Saladin, who controlled his image carefully, ISIS have proved shrewd operators in the propaganda war, focusing on their primary constituency: young motivated jihadists, keen to give humiliate outside interlopers and beat them at their own game.

The images of torture, extreme violence and executions that have mushroomed over the last few weeks are designed to shock – but they are also intended to position ISIS as doers rather than talkers. And that, as Saladin’s followers found out, is extremely attractive to those who can only see inertia, inefficiency and corruption in the system created after Saddam’s fall.

The West brought about the rise of Saladin and ISIS. And as the Crusaders found, you reap what you sow. For it turns out that the hard part is not the conquest, but what happens after that really matters – as history teaches us. If only our politicians and strategists wanted to learn: for one thing, they'd have been expecting the violence of the reaction - and would not be caught cold, making it up as they go along.
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    I'm trying out micro-blogging -short bits of things I think are interesting every now and again. I'm on twitter too if you prefer doses of 140 characters

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