“The Quran has stayed the same throughout history”

This claim is very common for Muslims to make.

I am curious however about the history of the Quran.

Are there different versions of the Quran throughout history?

Wha is the oldest known copy?

What do we know about who wrote it?

What do we know of its origin?

In an era when ſaving ſpace was ſeen as important, when printing coſts were hiȝ, it ſeems like þe letter Þ would've been prioritized more. Didn't Gutenberg ever þink to make a Þ ſort? It's not like þe Engliſh weren't buying printing preſſes too. Would it really have been too much effort for him to include one more meaſly letter for us Engliſh ſpeakers?

It's very ſtrange how þe Engliſh letter Þ exiſts in ancient manuſcripts & a bit on þe internet but it ſkipped þe print era completely. 😆

As far as I understand, tensions had set in between the Western and Eastern Army for quite some time before that battle occurred, and Mitsunari being a pretty unpopular leader is what is often thought to have caused so many critical betrayals to occur during it, which in turn led to them losing badly.

So, I hope such a confirmation question doesn't sound dumb, but over time I've become aware of previous travels from old world cultures to the Americas and the notion that the continent wasn't completely unknown.

I'm specifically aware of Leif Eriksson's trip, and I believe I read something about a supposed Chinese visitation too, but my objective is not to discuss the previous voyages to the Americas. I'd like to know if there wasn't any information in Europe about the existence of the Americas before Columbus' travels and if the story of him thinking he'd been to India is really true, and how strong is evidence for that.

A minor side question is: if it isn't true that he thought he'd been to India, why did he call the natives Indians?

I'm more curious about more traditional forms of Greco-Roman religion than Neoplatonism, but I'm vaguely aware of something about Gnosticism being a syncreticism between Neoplatonism and Christianity.

Obviously the most famous Onion Knight in popular culture today, especially in the west, is Ser Davos Seaworth from George R.R. Martin's fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, as well as its HBO adaption. That character, at least within the context of the story, got his name after being knighted for smuggling a boatload of onions into a castle under siege.

What's interesting though is that this isn't the first time the term onion knight showed up in pop culture. Eight years before Ser Davos first appeared in 1998's A Clash of Kings, there was a job class called Onion Knight ("Tamanegi Kenshi" in Japanese, more or less a literal translation as far as I can tell) in the SquareSoft JRPG Final Fantasy III. Other Japanese fantasy games have them as well, most notably Dark Souls, but those may well be direct nods to Final Fantasy's use of the term. I can't see any such connection to Martin's work though. I doubt he had played the game when he created Ser Davos, especially since Final Fantasy III was only officially released in the west in 2006, and even the first fully playable fan translation post-dates ACoK.

Now Onion Knight is a pretty weird term, so I was wondering whether the developers at SquareSoft and George R.R. Martin really came up with it independently, or whether they could both be referencing an earlier use of the term.

Just as the header asks, what levels of irreparable ecological and environmental damage was caused by the war?

When I read about the island invasions of the Pacific War such as Peleliu, Okinawa and the many other islands that saw the war, and the preceding naval bombardments that typically accompanied them and then the intense battles that would follow; I think of all of the native, tropical species caught up in that fire storm and how it affected those biomes and ecosystems.

The same relative question applies to the war in both Eastern and Western Europe and how those battles and cataclysmic conflicts affected the land in an agricultural as well as ecological sense.

I recently visited Hammershus in Denmark, which claimed ordinary people needed at least 6 litres of beer per day. However, some people complained and said they the daily rations were too small, and said they needed 16 LITRES Per day.

Then we had the elite of the society, which drank 8 litres of beer and then 4 litres of wine per day.

My question is: How did they drink so much? As in, how could they drink so much alcohol without dying? And how in general could someone drink 6-16 litres of anything per day without dying? It just seems crazy to me.

Ive sadly just learned that the pyramids cover the same distance from the city as i do to my nearest grocery store (sadly as in i should have known by now).

Recently I discovered that Im not the only one that didn’t know this, and i think it’s fascinating that all kinds of media and camera angles can change ones perspective.

What annoys me the most is that i cant figure out why people (me) would love and think that the pyramids would be in the middle of nowhere rather than a part of a big city. Nostalgia? If so where does this come from?

Would think its a great place to settle considering the river, but cant find any sources on how close civilization have been to the pyramids throughout times.

Can someone explain to an idiot why i didnt know you could walk 400 meters from pizza hut to Giza rather than riding a camel for 3 days?

Edit:

Was a bit unclear with my question. Why is media giving us this false idea of the pyramids, is there anything historical to it? Was there once bigger distance from civilization and the pyramids?

The book "The Gallic Wars" by Julius Caesar (specifically the one translated by Thomas Holmes constantly references "Corn" Which I did not believe to exist in Europe During the roman period. My question is, is this a mis translation or am i missing something?

I know that Jews, Christians, and Islamic people all regard the Old Testament as a book of scripture and I’m not sure the extent to which they take it historically. At least for Jews it seems like a pretty integral part of their history and belief. Are the people and tribes and leaders actually real or can they be treated at least as placeholders for real people?

For starters, I know the categories I mention are at least in part modern day inventions, but bear with me. What I want to know it's if, say, a person living on a ''tribe'', would know they were living in a tribe ? Would a person living in a state, know thwy were living in a state ? If these two hypothetical persons interacted or exchanged places, would they know or notice that there is something fundamentally different between their polities ?

Freud's book The Interpretation of Dreams presented the case that dreams were the product of our unconsciousness and all that stuff boiling over. We now more or less accept this to be the case. But before that, what was the prevailing theory about what dreams were?

Why did they need to see it burn up?

So most of us know that after Mycenaean Greece collapsed, their dark ages started. But what confuses me (as someone just learning about this age) is if they really forgot how to write or not.

Some refer to the Middle Ages as the dark ages, but that’s because of the lack of writing that we have from the period, and the decline of information. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they didn’t write, they did, it’s just we don’t have too many records.

Is it the same for Mycenaean Greece after their collapse, or did they actually forget how to write? That simplifies it a LOT, as I know that they didn’t just forget their writing, but after time did they forget or no?

Who was it that wrote the details of the conspirator's plan to assassinate Caesar and delivered it through a man while caesar was heading to the auditorium? Was it one of the conspirators who defected? Why delivered it in such a roundabout manner that has a low chance of actually being read by caesar? Why not hand it in person? Was he afraid that it would backfire on him if his identity was known? But why risk it in the first place? Perhaps it wasn't one of the conspirators but a third party who have leads on the opposition party and wanted to help Caesar anonymously? Too many questions and no answer .

Being as mighty an empire as Rome was, I'm curious to know what is the furthest extent in the world that someone would have heard of it. If I asked a middle class Japanese or South African person of that time, would he be at least familiar with the name? How about other isolated areas like Siberia or Malaysia?