I am of course familiar with the famous Israeli Mauser rifles, reworked from former German stock. At the time, the world was awash in military surplus, from trucks to tanks; who was selling to the newly formed nation of Israel? What were they buying, and as a former British territory, was there a preference for British standard arms and gear?

In school(years ago for me) we were always told that they didn't come because it was too cold. However a friend of mine recently told me that there is a small bit of evidence that the Romans had some influence on Ireland/Hibernia. How true is that?

One would assume because of Spain's neutral stance during the war and general fighting-fatigue that the Allies were hesitant to continue operations. I am finding it difficult to understand how they did not feel a mandate to destroy totalitarianism in Europe (at least Western Europe) after Germany conceded.

If I understand correctly, Shiism only became majoritary in Iran from the rise of the Safavids in the 16th century. The Safavids promoted Shiism to distance themselves and their subjects from the rival Ottomans, who were Sunni.

From the 16th century onwards too, Iraq was most of the time ruled by the Ottomans. However, rather than Sunni-majority like the rest of Iraq (or the Ottomans themselves), southern Iraq is eminently Shiite today. Yet for most of the Middle Ages prior Iraq had been the center of a Sunni caliphate.

Why this apparent discrepancy?

I'm particularly interested in how people today account for his preternatural charisma and healing abilities. Is there a prevalent view among common people that something supernatural was afoot? Or do most people favor a more rational explanation?

I was told recently by a Russian acquaintance that most people in Russia today don't know who Rasputin was. That doesn't seem like it could be true.

And if they did, how did history show us that fear/respect/other emotions manifesting? Did opponents / other individual soldiers flee if they figured out who it was across from them?

I do understand that the notion of individualized dueling and combat in a massive battle is a romantic, Hollywood notion but through thousands of years of history it could still happen, correct?

(This is a rephrasing of an earlier thread I posted at the suggestion of /u/Bernardito .)

I thought this would be a more popular question, but a quick search of the FAQ turned up nothing. Why was there only one industrial revolution? Were there any other non-European cultures that came close to an industrial revolution, or that developed any of the technologies we associate with it? Why didn't burning coal to generate steam power (for example) occur to anyone in (say) the Americas, or the Far East?

A lot of questions about medieval warfare get answered with "well, you know, the middle ages was a long time and europe is a big pace. There's no one answer to your question since medieval warfare changed over time and place."

That makes me curious: what are the major era divisions in the history of medieval european warfare? If you wanted to give a comprehensive answer to a very general question (e.g. "how important were shields" or something similar), how many time periods would you typically divide your answer into?

Like any question about dividing history into different periods, I'm sure there's no perfectly clean choice of divisions. But, I've seen some value in dividing up other kinds of history into time periods, so I assume something similar can be done for medieval warfare.

Or, conversely, how did people form alliances with Hitler and the Nazis while they were exterminating their race?

The thread on Rome and a few deleted replies regarding Detroit had me curious about it.

The Japanese deployment of Kamikaze tactics started in October 1944 and continued until August 1945, it went on for almost a year. This practice interests me on several fronts.

First of all, what were the long-term goals for the Kamikaze tactic? Did the Japanese government use old planes and fresh recruits in a last ditch effort to turn the tide of war and maybe get out of the war without losing outright? Or did they aim to use these rather effective (if they managed to hit..) anti-ship tactics to win the war?

In conjunction with that question, how did the Kamikaze doctrine affect the Japanese industrial warmachine? Did it use obsolete and/or older aircraft? Or did they produce specific Kamikaze planes to fulfill this purpose?

Thirdly, how effective were Kamikaze attacks? What were some big flaws? Is there a chance we will se more of these in the future?

Cheers :)

The Romans only wore something that looked like a toga or kilt whereas the Huns and Sarmatians (an Iranian group who were their allies) wore PANTS to facilitate riding a horse. When we see the art of the Huns/Sarmatians, we see horses quite a bit, and we see that they had amazing prowess on horseback. One of these Iranian groups around 2000 years ago invented the "Parthian Shot" which is shooting an arrow behind while the horse is going forwards.

Anyways, I don't get the impression that horse back riding, charioteering, and cavalry were that big of a deal to the Romans. As a matter of fact, I know for a fact that in 378 AD, the Romans didn't make much use of cavalry during their horrifying defeat at Adrianople.

So is horseback riding and charioteering and cavalry a more associated with South West Asian culture?

Hello there! I've been around the subreddit for quite a long time, and this is not the first AMA I've taken part in, but in case I'm a total stranger to you this is who I am; I have a BA and MA in ancient history, and as my flair indicates my primary focus tends to be ancient Greece and the ancient Near East. However, Arabia and the Arabs have been interacting with the wider Near East for a very long time, and at the same time very few people are familiar with any Arabian history before Islam. I've even seen people claim that Arabia was a barbaric and savage land until the dawn of Islam. I have a habit of being drawn to less well known historical areas, especially ones with a connection to something I'm already study, and thus over the past two years I've ended up studying Pre-Islamic Arabia in my own time.

So, what comes under 'Pre-Islamic Arabia'? It's an umbrella term, and as you'll guess it revolves around the beginning of Islam in Arabia. The known history of Arabia is very patchy in its earliest phases, with most inscriptions being from the 8th century BCE at the earliest. There are references from Sumerian and Babylonian texts that extend our partial historical knowledge back to the Middle Bronze Age, but these pretty much exclusively refer to what we'd now think of as Bahrain and Oman. Archaeology extends our knowledge back further, but in a number of regions archaeology is still in its teething stages. What is definitely true is that Pre-Islamic Arabia covers multiple distinct regions and cultures, not the history of a single 'civilization'.

In my case I'm happy to answer any question about;

• The history of the Arabian Peninsula before Islam (and if some questions about this naturally delve into Early Islam so be it).

• The history of people identified as Arabs or who spoke an Arabic language outside of what we'd call Arabia and before Islam.

So, come at me with your questions!

The battles seem to have a lot of similarities with both defeated armies losing on home soil but at the Battle of Cannae the Romans lost somewhere between 50,000 to 75,000 men to the Carthaginians while at the Battle of Zama the Carthaginians lost 40,000 men to the Romans. Yet Zama was the decisive end to Carthage as a military power while Cannae seemed to have just been a setback for Rome. So what was it about Zama that made it more decisive than Cannae?