So I have read that Jesus Christ is a highly revered figure in Islamic theology and considered a great prophet.

I was wondering has this ever been debated or questioned in Islamic history?

Specifically in the crusader period. Did hundreds of years of conflict with European christians cause any debate or re-evaluation over Christ's position in Islamic theology.

But also in the colonial and contemporary periods, has Christ's association with the Western world ever conflicted with the way in which he is represented in the Quran?

Did travelers encountering one another from a distance use this method, or anything similar to communicate with each other? Was this just used with Native Americans? Are there any documented incidents of this occurring on the Oregon trail, or on any other journeys by travelers/ settlers?

Thank you!

Never posted here beofre, so I hope I'm not breaking the rules (though I did read them).

I have questions about the Great Depression. Were people really leaping to their deaths because of losing money? How much of a fortune was wiped out whe people did so? Would the average man with a mortgage just lose his house? What percentage of jobs vanished during this period?

Westerners hear of the great library of Alexandria, or great centers of learning in Islamic Cordoba, Baghdad, or various places in Persia, but there isn’t a lot out there (in English, anyway), about great libraries of ancient or medieval China, Korea, Japan, Dai Viet, etc. There’s the tradition that Shi Huang Di destroyed all books, or all of certain books, which, given the presumed difficulty of such a task, seems to imply a degree of centralization, but on the other hand, Qin-era China seems like it might have had the sophistication of organization to go door-to-door to collect books from individual homes.

The point is, were there ever any great libraries of Chinese works and Chinese translations of foreign works?

This is mostly just for my own gratification, but I'm planning on starting to write a blog, or producing youtube videos about history. It's a subject that interests me and I like writing. So in an effort to avoid ending up on /r/badhistory, how to I make sure I'm being accurate? Mostly what I'm concerned with is recognizing the reliability of sources and how to do it without literally spending years of research on each topic I write about.

I was curious as to what happened to the Han, I know the young Emperors were supposedly taken hostage and used for power, but did they ever have successful children? Was there another ruler who was within the imperial line or related enough to possibly be considered a Han ruler?

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I just have a particular fascination with fallen empires and nations. Thanks for any help!

I've been reading the Travels and Polo frequently mentions the great Prester John and his christian kingdom in the Far East. I know that Ethiopia has been associated with the character but that is nowhere near the places Polo visited; did such a christian king really exist in the east around that time?

I spent too much time this morning googling this, and couldnt really find an answer. I saw several places say that it lost political power by the end of the 17th century, but none said why. The Puritian church seems to have had so much power, going as far as being able to do the salem witch trials. Then suddenly, boom nothing.

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Also I searched here, but couldnt find anything.

My question is based on some assumptions which Ill list so you can easily break them if wrong.

• Columbus believed he reached asia and reported his findings as being asia.
• Contemporaries beleived the world was too big to cross the ocean
• There was a period between his discovery and the confirmation that it was a new continent

So the question is, did anyone say "well shit, I guess it is smaller?"

Because it seems like this would be like finding out the moon is genuinely made out of cheese.

Did the USSR at any point in it's history employ spy planes like the U2 or SR71 and conduct overflights of the USA? Or did it solely rely on human Intel and satellites? Do we have any information on Soviet Spy technology like we do on Western tech? E.g. it's common knowledge about u2, blackbirds, stealth fighters and b2 bombers. What was the Soviet equivalent up to the fall of of the USSR?

My understanding is that Jefferson was very much opposed to slavery. He believed that abolition had to be a gradual process, first with the abolition of the slave trade, then encouraging the growth of crops that did not require cultivation by slaves (e.g.: wheat and wine grapes rather than tobacco), until slave owners would willingly give up their slaves.

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His want of gradual, as opposed to immediate, abolition was because he was afraid that such an action would be perceived as contrary to States' right, etc. and therefore risk civil war. However, this was not a problem when it involved only him and his slaves, so why not free them, while working towards gradual abolition?

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What books would you recommend regarding military strategy. Mostly looking for civil war to present era but open to anything. I've read gates of fire by Steven pressfield but have found it hard to find books regarding more modern warfare.

I don't recall in any classes, or books learning about any government shut downs in the past. Seems common place now. Just curious if anything like this occurred in the past. What happened to cause it, how’d it end?

The English/Latin alphabet is originally based off of the Phoenician alphabet, as is Greek, Arabic and Hebrew. The Greek alphabet begins ABGDEZΘ and the Hebrew alphabet begins with (A)BGDHWZ without the Dagesh, which is a later innovation to reduce ambiguity, and the Arabic alphabet begins with (A)BJDHWZ but the Latin alphabet begins with ABCDEFG. In Latin/English, F is the 6th letter while its corresponding letters are ordered at #17 in Arabic, #17 in Hebrew (again, not counting the Dagesh), and #21 in Greek. G is the 7th in Latin/English while its equivalent is #3 in Arabic Hebrew and Greek. Why does the English/Latin alphabet have such an unusual word order compared to its cousins in the Eastern Mediterranean?

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Other than the seeming inability of the Spartans to evolve their society, are there any other factors that caused Sparta to wither to almost nothing?

Growing up in Texas, we always had black-eyed peas with New Year's dinner - traditionally for good luck or prosperity in the new year. Invariably the story about Sherman's march was cited as the origin, but that explanation has always smelled like a "just-so story" to me. Wikipedia claims:

The first is associated with General William T. Sherman’s march of the Union Army to the sea, during which they pillaged the Confederates' food supplies. Stories say peas and salted pork were said to have been left untouched, because of the belief that they were animal food unfit for human consumption. Southerners considered themselves lucky to be left with some supplies to help them survive the winter, and black-eyed peas evolved into a representation of good luck. One challenge to this legend is that General Sherman brought backup supplies with him including three days of animal feed[6] and would have been unlikely to have left even animal feed untouched. In addition, the dates of the first average frost for Atlanta and Savannah, respectively, are November 13 and November 28.[7] As Sherman's march was from November 15 to December 21, 1864, it is improbable, although possible, that the Union Army would have come across standing fields of black eyed peas as relayed in most versions of the legend. In another Southern tradition, black-eyed peas was a symbol of emancipation for African-Americans who had previously been enslaved, and who after the Civil War were officially freed on New Years Day.[8][9] Other Southern American traditions point to Jews of Ashkenazi and Sephardic ancestry in Southern cities and plantations.[10]

Unfortunately, the sources linked in the Wikipedia article are ... less than illuminating, and my searches of r/AskHistorians turned up little. Do any of the experts here have some insights?

It seems that some form of bow from the polite nod to the self abnegating kowtow have existed in many times and places. Is this practice as widespread as it seems to me? If it is why and how? If not why does it seem that way?

Essentially, I'm curious about the social dynamics of mid 20th century marriages that surround this trope. Was this form of domestic violence acceptable in this time period and so could be considered lighthearted fodder for sitcoms?

Edit: I would like to clarify that the “form of domestic violence” I’m referring to above is the act of a husband spanking his wife for the purpose of “discipline” or asserting control over her. I’m not accusing kinksters or those of you that enjoy a bit of horseplay of being domestic abusers or victims of domestic abuse. I also recognize that, at most, I Love Lucy caricatures this behavior. My question is about the social norms that informed the creation of the show. Sorry for any confusion.

Today music is seen as somewhat timeful among generations and few artists surpass generations and time so easily. I'm assuming, picking a time for arguments sake and specificity, 1700s Europe, new music was more rare than today and music didn't define generations as much as today. I'd like to expand this question to other cultural senses like fashion, food, etc, but for simplicity's sake will use music. Basically, did music seem more timeless and dividing of generations then as it is now?