AskHistorians

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I'm very confused because the so-called Mughal and Timurid empires used "Gurkani" as a self-designation. Can someone explain the sameness(es) or distinction(s) between these states?	5
Why were Egyptian Mamluks so badly beaten by both the Ottoman Empire and French Empire? Are both campaigns cases of melee cavalry being shot to death by well-disciplined infantry relying on gunpowder weaponry?	4
According to the Wikipedia article for the Battle of Molodi: "[...] close-in fighting made the Tatars' famed skill in archery quite useless [...] Artillery and arquebuses were also used by the Russians to great effect." If true, what made one set of ranged weapons effective at closer ranges?	4
I used to think that griffins were thought up in the Middle Ages, but I've recently seen them in Ancient Greek and Scythian art. What is the history of griffon mythology?	4
A strategy game refers to various steppe cavalry units as "Baexdzhyntae". How did this word happen? How is "xdzh" pronounced?	3
Did Alexander the Great's army suffer more casualties at the Battle of the Hydaspes than in any other military encounter? Did war elephants inflict heavy losses? Did the shock of fighting war elephants play a substantial role in the refusal of Alexander's army to advance beyond that point?	3
What does "flourishing of culture" mean when used in a summary of regional, imperial, or national history?	3
Do populations in regions with difficult climate/terrain actually produce unusually resilient fighters, or is the reputation of places like Afghanistan more related to imperial troops with failing morale going up against people who desperately want to defend their homes?	3
Why does nearly everyone agree that places like Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were definitively fascist, while having profound disagreements about whether places like Soviet Russia and Khmer Cambodia were communist (or when they started/stopped being communist, to what degree were(n't) they, etc)?	3
After the 1595 sack of Patras, the Ottoman sultan considered exterminating the Christians of Constantinople, eventually expelling unmarried Greeks from the city. What was so vile about the sack of Patras, why did the sultan decide against extermination, and why specifically expel unmarried Greeks?	3

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