/u/jurble's posts

Title	Upvotes	Subreddit
Did the Islamic daily prayers have any equivalent in Judaism or Christianity at the time of early Islam in terms of the repetition of fixed body positions - standing, bowing, prostration?	38	AskHistorians
Alexander the Great's hair cut is pretty iconic and apparently was very influential with Hellenistic kings... But where did it come from? Did Alexander naturally have really good hair? Did he have a reason for keeping his hair the way he did?	34	AskHistorians
The Roman elite liked to go around clean shaven, but what about non-elites? Did they shave daily, whether at home or at a barber? Was attending the barber daily affordable?	33	AskHistorians
It's been a decade, but I recall in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers he makes an argument akin to East Asian work ethic being an outgrowth of rice farming, since the return on rice farming is apparently proportional to the effort put in. Do historians consider this valid?	33	AskHistorians
Is Attila the Hun's presence in Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied and his death there-in representative of an oral tradition of rumors that spread from his death at his wedding or was there interplay between written accounts with folkloric accounts before these legends were fixed in writing?	31	AskHistorians
I've seen the Mongols blamed for the destruction of Mesopotamia's historic irrigation systems, leading to that region's decline in importance. Is that true, and if so, why weren't the irrigation networks rebuilt afterwards?	31	AskHistorians
The Pashtun people of Afghanistan are seen as an especially warlike people. But Afghanistan used to have a Buddhist presence. To what degree was Buddhism present among the Pashtun people before Islam, did it have any lasting influence and did Afghan Buddhism have any unique characteristics?	30	AskHistorians
In the song "Matchmaker, Matchmacker" from Fiddler on the Roof, there's a mention of dowries (or lack thereof for the girls). How common were dowries in Eastern European Jewish marriages and what did they typically consist of?	27	AskHistorians
Pre-Islamic Arabia was surrounded by Christians in Byzantine Syria, Egypt and the Ethiopian presence in Yemen. There were also large Christian and Jewish minorities inside Arabia. Was Arabian paganism already moribund at the advent of Islam?	27	AskHistorians
What was the opinion of the Islamic scholars, the 'ulema, and the wider Muslim community towards sending kids to Western missionary schools in colonial times?	27	AskHistorians

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