Immigration has played and continues to play an enormous role in European history since the end of World War II. In response to several factors, including decolonization of Africa and Africa, decimated populations as a result of the war and subsequent zero (or even negative) population growth, and later the Schengen Agreement all contributed to …
Tag Archives: Islam
Term Paper: Arab Rule in Sicily
By 732 CE, the armies of the Umayyad Caliphate, with their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula well under way, had crossed the Pyrenees only to be defeated in France by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours. With only 250 kilometers between Carthage in North Africa and the western Sicilian city of Trapani and just …
Conversion in Late Antiquity: Islam v. Christianity
Christianity and Islam are closely related religions, with the key differences between focusing mainly on their different understandings of Jesus and the latter’s emphasis on the prophesies of Muhammad. Although they are not the only Abrahamic faiths, they nevertheless spread rapidly in the century or two following their founding, and through today, their adherents make …
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Work in Progress: Timeline of Sicilian-Arab Interaction
By of explanation, next week I’ll be starting a new course at SNHU — HIS-117, World Civilization, Prehistory to 1500. The term paper for this course asks that the student write a paper on intercultural interaction, so I decided to return to a topic I started researching a few years back in hopes of perhaps …
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On Paris and History
One of the moral dicta of history is the famous one from George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The advice is clear: history is told in part to teach of what went wrong in the past so we can avoid it in the present (and future). So far, …
Inevitable Historicity 