The Biblical authors, if we can trust them, are always railing against fellow Hebrews for partaking in worship of various deities besides Jehovah/El—the goddess Asherah and god Baal are two mentioned by name. (Although it must be noted that the Hebrews may have been henotheistic or polytheistic at some points in history. Monotheism may have been a minority opinion.)

5th century Britain is another instance, with the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons.

What else?

I find this subject endlessly fascinating,

Hello,

I am reading up about Islamic history and the Umayyad caliphate is incredibly interesting. Something that caught my eye were the book boasting about how well the non-muslims were treated. By non-muslims I am talking about Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians. They apparently found a sanctuary in the Umayyad caliphate where they could exercise their beliefs without being oppressed, while they couldn't in other places, such as Rome at the time. They even had their own courts and judges.

Were the Dhimmis seen as second class citizens and therefore treated unequally? Were they harassed by the local muslims or were they all allowed to live side by side peacefully? Were they content with being dhimmis?

Did Carthage do anything to cause any of the wars? Or were the wars caused by Rome? Thanks

I'm talking strictly about the time when Isaac Newton was around, so his contributions to current society (calculus and gravitational law for example) are a bit irrelevant, but how the society made him think about those things are very much relevant. How he affected his society is also very much relevant. Also it would be very fun looking at the chain of events leading to this, but this is probably something I can read about on my own as well.

Hello /r/AskHistorians! I am currently working on a 10th grade research project. We were allowed to research any topic in History, and because of my fascination with Medieval Germany, I choose to look into the reasons why the Holy Roman Empire failed. I have started reading through multiple posts here on /r/AskHistorians, along with multiple pages on the German Wikipedia (Which seems to have more information on the subject matter). I also am about to get started with Benjamin Arnold's "Princes and Territories in Medieval Germany". From what I have read, it would appear that the Holy Roman Empire failed because it lacked a single, long lasting dynasty akin to the Capets in France. This led to the emperor's having to renounce regalia over time, especially by Frederick II (With the Statutum in Favorem Principum).

My question is this: Was the lack of a Hereditary monarchy the main reason why the Empire failed to centralize? Or is there a deeper reason why Germany never centralized in the way, say, France did.

I'm sure in history not all cultures started recording time simultaneously, so when did it happen?

Sorry if this question has been answered before but Due to the restrictions set in place by the USSR during the cold war I was curious. Google was no Help :(

There were a great number of military men who took Japanese brides after WW2, and the same could be said for Vietnam. Were there a large number of military who served in WW2 who took German brides?

Hi guys,

I'm writing a story for my own fun where 2 of the characters were born 3000 years ago. One lived a fairly sheltered life so he wouldn't have seen much, but the other lived a fairly open life, so would have seen more.

They live in england. But I can't find much about England 3000 years ago. The only thing on google keeps bringing up Endinburgh castle.

Is 3000 years ago technically middle ages or something else?

I feel like burning the Greek ships would force them to stay and fight, as they would have no way home. So why do the Trojans focus so heavily on burning the ships? I hope I am not missing something obvious.

Was sports something that was encouraged? Did everyone do something? Or was it something that was restricted to the wealthy?

How about olympians? Did they come from all walks of life? Were they professional athletes?

I read a little into the subreddit's FAQ, but couldn't find an answer to this specific question: Why was there ever a reason to line up across the enemy and slug it out? Either your forces are better at firing muskets, in which case the enemy has no incentive to just stand there, or the other way round. The third possibility is if both forces are equally skilled. But then you would gamble on the outcome, since it can go either way. The only 3 scenarios i can imagine in which you just want to draw it out are:

1. Your enemy is stupid and you will win.

2. You want to delay the enemy, knowing you will lose in that specific engagement but win somewhere else.

3. You want to out-attrition your enemy, knowing you will lose now but win later.

If none of these cases apply, why engage in a drawn-out fire fight?

edit:formatting

The thing I don't understand about Victorian wars is why the peace terms seem so meager. Germany had France at their knees didn't they? Couldn't they demand any amount of territory they wanted? So why did they only take Alsace Lorraine? The French were on their way to rearm for WW1 after.

Why did they think it would be short and glorious?

Were the opinions of the older generations different from the younger ones?

How so?

I attended a lecture on ISIS. There were several interesting insights, but one of them shows how ISIS justifies the burning of Jordanian pilot in two ways:

1. A book called Idarat Tawahhusy claims that scare tactics is important in an Islamic movement to show that any opposition to caliphate movement shall be punished so severely.
2. ISIS justifies the action of the burning because in the past, Abu Bakr (not al-Baghdadi, but one of the Rashidun Caliphs) and Ali ibn Abi Thalib did the same to a living person to "send a message" to the enemy during that time.

I'm most interested in point two. The lecturer didn't explain more about his sources on number two. So I am left in questions. Do we have a good account on this incident? In what context that those Rashidun Caliphs burnt an enemy alive? Because such action is condemned by many Muslim worldwide, even among the al-Qaeda.

Additional question: has there been any work investigating the history of torture in Islamic history? The only torture I know in Islamic history is Abbasid's mihna, but I must be wrong.