/u/Basilikon's posts
The Islamic influence of men like Averroes and Avicenna on medieval philosophy is widely hailed, but what effect did the scholastic philosophers of the west have on non-Christian academics and scholars of the period?
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Creole Louisiana - Francophone, Catholic, and outside Common Law - is markedly distinct from the rest of the American South. How did the practice and norms of slavery differ here from neighboring states?
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When did the indigenous Middle Eastern and North African Christians become a minority in their regions, and what determined the relative endurance of those communities? Were they already minority by the time of the crusades? A significant minority? Did Coptics last longer than Nestorians? Catholics?
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What do historians actually know about the Shia Imams? Multiple major historical figures who allegedly stayed in hiding all their lives, only known through intermediaries protecting their lives and location - does this present an insurmountable obstacle for historians to work with? Did they exist?
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How did the practice of Astrology differ in Medieval Europe compared to antiquity? Was it intellectually preserved and continued, like Philosophy and History, or did it stagnate, later to be revived? Did the Christian injunction against divination do much against the astrological tradition?
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What was the formal legal status of the Roman Empire in the medieval period, especially from the fall of the Western Emperors to the crowning of Charlemagne? Did all these early Germanic kings really justify their reigns with reference to an absent, eastern sovereign?
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Archaeologists have apparently held very contentious debates over the last several decades as to the nature and extent of ritual cannibalism in the Prehispanic American Southwest. How, and with what evidence has our understanding of cannibalism among the Ancestral Puebloans changed over time?
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How developed were Indian financial credit institutions in the late Mughal period? Should bankers like the Jagat Seth's be seen in the fashion of the Fuggers, sustaining a complex lending and accounting system, or had European innovations in bookkeeping not penetrated the subcontinent?
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The commercial phonograph existed as early as the 1880's - why did it take until the late 1920's for cinema to make significant use of pre-recorded audio technology?
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