Were any of the purges under Stalin based in any reality or have actual evidence. Were any real plot uncovered and stopped or were the purges the result of pure paranoia on Stalin and his supporters part?

Is Islam's traditional historical account of the origins and first couple of decades of "Islam" reliable by modern standards?

Can we assume that some broad/concrete claims like these are true?: that a man who is the historical basis of Muhammad actually lived between 570s - 630s, he was born in a polytheistic trade metropolis called Mecca ruled by a coalition of tribal patriarchs, and at some point he led a political opposition and gained social support, and they had to migrate to Yathrib where they established a "commonwealth" that eventually absorbed the entire peninsula, this state somewhat resembled a prototypical republic with meritocratic elements and also constitutional concepts that echoed Magna Carta (some sort of election, accountability, and impeachment mechanics are implied and equality of the ruler and the ruled is emphasized in Muhammad's successors' inauguration speeches (Abu Bakr and Umar), Muhammad didn't establish his own dynasty (though Shia disagrees), there's the Medina Charter that appears to function as a social contract between different religious communities constituting a single ummah (polity)), then there is civil wars and transition to a monarchical empire by the Umayyads and in the course of these events significant figures were eliminated who were Muhammad's contemporaries, close circle, and direct descendants.)

Can we be confident that this picture approximately represents what actually happened? If yes, what else can we be sure about? Are the details as certain as the overall picture?

What do we know about the origins, developmental stages, and spread of "Islam" as an idiosyncratic ethno-religious identity, that eventually began to claim superiority to/discriminate against other surrounding identities? What do (or can) we know as an unsuspected fact about the "original movement" that started in Meccah and migrated to Yathrib, their beliefs and world view? Did they believe in monotheism? If so, were they initially a Christian or Jewish sect or under their influence? Or were they independent in origins? Did they believe a man among them had spiritual experiences and divine inspirations? Did they have this guru figure like Paul, a scholar-king/rabbi-warrior walking among them? Did Muhammad exercise such privilege and authority? Does this image contradict the depicted political atmosphere of Medina? Can the first Quran manuscripts be traced back to Muhammad's lifetime? Is there an alternative, well grounded theory of when/how/by whom the Quran was produced and codified? Is there a possibility that Muhammad did not claim prophethood or preach the Quran, and that these are later constructs by future generations who anachronically ascribed them to him and a mythical past, suiting the needs and conceptions of their time? (If I wanted to ascribe divinity to a scripture I wrote, I would rather say some widely respected historical figure originally preached it instead of saying I received it. As long as I convince people that the book is holy, I don't have to be the prophet myself, it's better to exploit someone's name who's already influential -and dead- than use my own status. I mean, Paul didn't say he was Christ--he said he represented him, which was much easier.)

In other words, did Muhammad and his contemporaries found Islam, or Muslims? (like, was it Jesus or Paul who founded Christianity). Could it be that "the Prophet and his companions" are figures legendified/mythologized by Muslim societies, scholars, and rulers, if not completely imagined by them? that the "Muslim ummah" becoming a distinct theo-political entity was actually a later development, that anachronically traced its origins back to 610s? Maybe they needed an origin story for this new ethno-religious "supertribe" they created (similar to modern nationalism), so they came up with a charismatic founding father, a divinely supported war chief, and built up sacreds/creed to mark their irreconcilable difference from rival tribes, much like the pre-Islamic Arabs would do?

This is more of a hypothesis/speculation than a question, and I don't expect a definitive answer, but I don't like conspiracism and I request a historian's guidance to set me on a scientific, methodological approach to such questions, to test these hypotheses. I recently heard about Dan Gibson's Petra theory (he claims the real Meccah was in modern Jordan) and I realize his methods are not exactly scholarly, but he makes some undeniably good points on the resemblance of the geographical descriptions of Meccah in the Sirat with real life Petra and I don't know what to make of it. If such a thing is true, what else can be a complete fiction about Islam? I don't like extreme positions like "Jesus is Christianity's forgery, Buddha is made up by Buddhists", I don't believe you can bring such influential historical figures into existence out of mere imagination, but there seems to be an Orwellian 1984 situation going on with Islam's history. (A lot of civil wars and revolutions, the "Prophet"s grandchildren getting killed by Muslims themselves, bloodshed in their own "Holy City"... is it wrong to assume politics must have played a huge role in writing/censoring/forging history?) Now I'm in this skeptical position that there is zero certainty beyond the fact that there has to be some kind of historical basis to these characters and events but that's it.

The Tlaxcala were a powerful rival to the Aztecs and crucial in Cortes defeating Montezuma. What was their fate after the conquest? Were they treated well by the Spanish? I know there is a state in Mexico today by their name.

Writing a paper on Korea under Japanese rule. I've read a few websites and a strange qna site claiming it was due to industrialization and the restrictions Japan had geographically. Do you guys have any answers and/or articles or books I can read on this part of Korean/Japanese history?

From many scholars and historians I've heard and read that Hinduism is one of the oldest religion in the world like from 3000 BCE.

Thing is there's no one founder of Hinduism like Christianity for example, so Rigveda according to UNESCO was composed 3500 years ago which is already earlier than 3000 BCE but also it was composed not written because the oldest script of RigVeda is only from the year 1464 according to UNESCO.

And Sanskrit itself in which all the Hinduism text are written isn't that old, it's written in devanagari nowadays but there's no written document of Sanskrit devanagari that's that much old. It was written in Brahmi script and for that we have the farthest evidence going around 100 BCE or 200 something around there.

So Why is Hinduism considered the oldest or one of the oldest religion? And if it existed in 3000 BCE was it same as the one practiced now? Because it's super hard to believe they used to worship the same gods, maybe all the stories are legends, stories with super natural things added later, there are many Buddhist stories called Jatak Katha too and in those stories there are stories very similar to Ramayan and Mahabharat two major stories of Hinduism. So did the gods came after this from these stories or before them??

Hi everyone,

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As the question states, what is behind the theory that he was indeed Portuguese?
I am Portuguese myself and sometimes I've heard people say that despite not giving actual facts to hold that statement.

Perhaps you guys can enlighten me.

Thank you so much !

Hi y'all,

I'm not totally sure if this post goes against the rules, but here goes.

I'm in need of some reference material detailing the pre-world war one system of alliances and the lead-up to the whole shebang. Anything from books to articles and anything in between would be helpful.

Thanks in advance!

Edit. As someone pointed out there are already books on the recommended reading list. I admit I completely missed them. So, that's my bad!

I just realized a lot of old statues feature some bush, but there is no other hair at all. Not on the chest, butt, arms, or legs. Were they shaving their body hair back then? Was this just an idealized version of what man should look like? And if that is the case, why leave some pubic hair but no other hair anywhere else on the body?

If I've understood things correctly, in the tax farming system, the tax farmer remits a pre-defined sum to the state and takes the rest of the revenue for himself. I feel this would obviously lead to exorbitant taxation and eventually economic decline, since it's in the personal interest of the tax farmer to tax as much as possible before his term runs out.

Wouldn't a better solution have been for the state to appoint bureaucrats who are given a fixed salary and collect just the pre-defined sum, like they did in East Asia AFAIK?

I've asked my professors about this, and they said the state's benefits are:

• a guaranteed income, because the tax farmer is personally liable to pay the fixed sum independent of e.g. crop failure
• cheaper than appointing tax officials, because the tax farmer is personally responsible for establishing and financing the tax-collecting network down to the village level

But I still can't help but feel that both benefits are overshadowed by the very obvious fact that this creates a massive incentive for tax farmers to extort the peasantry as much as possible.

I got curious as to how an island became apart of the U.S. all those years ago and tried to look it up. I found a bunch of articles saying the U.S. illegally acquired it. I also saw articles saying that wasn't true. So, what was going on with Hawaii back then?

I’m going to be writing my dissertation on the Holocaust, and more specifically why Auschwitz is the most recognised camp in western society. Does anyone know any books or pieces of work that could help with this?

I ask because from most of the images of women depicted in the ottoman empire ive seen are depicted as not wearing a hijab or any kind of face covering. And if not did islam have different rules concerning women covering up than the modern rules?

There were ones like, for example, Mali, who were actually pretty powerful and massively wealthy, or Ethiopia who actually had managed to keep themselves alive.

I know that the roman cities in italy had thousands of people. Some even 300.000, 400.000.

I also know that in the punic wars, Rome was able to raise army after army, and it seemed to never ran out of manpower.

I find it so strange that all of a sudden the roman provinces in the italian peninsula seemed to be desolate and unpopulated when facing the barbarians.

It seems to me they had nobody or very little numbers.

So what happened? Where did the romans go? Did they immigrate somewhere else?

Was there a major birthrate collapse? Was there any issue with climate change and resources becoming scarce?

They were certainly not killed in mass because this happened before the barbarians arrived.

But im not an historian and i'd like to hear it from you.

The Mulford Act was pretty explicitly to stop the Black Panthers from carrying guns. And they entered the chamber "to show their opposition". But (at least in hindsight), it seems like this stunt guaranteed that the legislators would get scared of "a band of armed Negroes" and pass the bill BECAUSE of this event.

Did they really think their action would make the legislatures vote it down? Or did they want it to pass for some reason? Or maybe they saw it as inevitable, with or without their demonstration?

Basically, was there an anti-American sentiment analogous to the Yellow Peril in Europe? Was there the idea of the American Peril? I know that America was not actually particularly militarily powerful at the time, but its industrial and economic influence would surely be felt, right?