askhistorians

Title	Upvotes	Mark as read	Favorited	Rating	Add to a list
When people look back at Middle-Ages they are quick to identify with the peasants, the commoners and their plight, whereas when looking back on Classical Greece and Rome, they identify more easily with the citizen class and the philosophers. Why the difference and when did it started?	1662
The wikipedia article on the battle of Dyrrhachium (links below) refers to "a force of Manichaeans which comprised 2,800 men" among the byzantine troops .How could there be Manichaeans in the byzantine army in 1081 when the religion was dead since antiquity and were can I learn more about them?	575
Why did the Ottoman empire decline technologically against Europe even if it did not enter isolationism like China or Japan?	276
Why did Europeans never used terrace farming on a large scale?	206
Do we know what Aztec priests thought of Christianity?	110
If European medieval armies were smaller than Roman armies because they did not have a logistical system to supply them how do we explain the seemingly equally large Gallic armies ?	108
What made the Visigothic Kingdom so much poorer than the Emirate (and later Caliphate) of Cordoba when both ruled the same land?	103
How was the Byzantine Empire able to maintain a professional administration while kings in the former West had to rely on land grants and vassalage oaths to rule?	99
The 19th century saw the development of a lot of new leftist ideologies. Yet, two centuries later, only Marxism (and to a lesser extant Anarchism) remain well-known. Why only those two?	81
Why did Frankish kings keep dividing their Kingdoms between their heirs if the knew it would cause civil wars and diminish the king's power?	43

« < > »