It has been noted in the HBDsphere that the Christian Arabs sorry N.N. Taleb, I meant Phoenicians, Copts, Maronites, Alawites, etc., have been rather successful relative to their Muslim neighbors.
This is true for economic achievement (e.g. Carlos Slim, Steve Jobs) and for intellectual achievement (e.g. Albert Hourani, Skin In The Game man).
Why?
One possibility, initially raised by hbd*chick, (and occasionally developed on this blog), is that they had less cousin marriage.
However, in a recent paper by Mohamed Saleh, it is suggested that poorer Egyptians converted to Islam, to avoid the poll tax on Christians, while the richer ones stayed put as Copts.
Self-selection of converts is an under-studied explanation of inter-religion socioeconomic status (SES) differences. Inspired by this conjecture, I trace the Coptic-Muslim SES gap in Egypt to self-selection-on-SES during Egypt’s conversion from Coptic Christianity to Islam. Selection was driven by a poll tax on non-Muslims, imposed from 641 until 1856, which induced poorer Copts to convert to Islam leading Copts to shrink into a better-off minority. Using novel data sources, I document that high-tax districts in 641–1100 had in 1848–1868 relatively fewer Copts, but greater SES differentials. Group restrictions on apprenticeships and schooling led the initial selection to perpetuate.
The paper convincingly attributes the declining share of the Coptic population to the poll tax on non-Muslims driving conversions, especially amongst the poor (immigration and fertility differentials are ruled out). Indeed, a existence of a socio-economic status gap between Copts and the Muslims is established to more than a millennium ago. Moreover, the Copts’ rate of decline as a share of the population correlated with the size of the poll tax during various periods.
It should be noted that the author rejects genetic differences as a means of explaining the persistence of ability differentials. This is primarily justified by making arguing that SES in medieval Egypt was weakly correlated with ability, and by noting that the possibility of rich Copts marrying poor Copts would result in “regress to the population mean.” I am not sure I buy this. Even if the selection effects were small, they were active in play for more a millennium.
The latter hypothesis always seemed obvious to me, though its nice to see it confirmed in a published study.
I imagine the same is true for Zoroastrians.
There could be a genetic difference, and higher hereditary intelligence in Christian Arabs – , but in absolute numbers there should still be a lot more intelligent people among the Muslim Arabs because of their many times larger population.
So also probably a large impact of current cultural influence that is suppressing intelligent Muslim Arabs from achieving same visibility or intellectual contributions as Christian Arabs.
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Offtopic, Lebanon itself seems (at least looking on internet) to have a more socially secular atmosphere than neighbours (with women in bikinis and pool parties, etc) – it’s probably because of a larger Christian component in the population. Probably Lebanon would be a country like Spain, Portugal or Greece, if would be fully Christian.
This is a misleading. There are Arabs and then there are Arab speakers who are simply called Arabs but are ethnically distinct from Arabs. I know people that can speak purer Arabic than Arabs, but they remain White or Pakistani, etc. Unless you descend from one of the original Arab tribes…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribes_of_Arabia
…you are not true Arabs (ethnically) you are a people that adopted Arabic as a language which many people in the Levant and North Africa did. So this IQ thing has to be evaluated with that in mind; the Arabs in Morocco are not the same as from Iraq or Egypt.
Yup…the poz would be in full swing. They are being blocked though due to Muzantium.
Peace.
Wasn’t Jobs’ biological father Muslim?
From Wikipedia:
Greg Cochran interestingly rejected the differential conversion hypothesis in a blogpost maybe a year ago. He proposed that it’s just Peninsula Arab and especially Sub-Saharan admixture with more widespread cousin marriage further depressing phenotypes.
Here, in the comments:
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/06/01/saudi-modernization/#comment-79853
The Iranian Zoroastrian community is also pretty successful. In the late Qajar era they went from being harassed sustenance farmers to prosperous merchants and bankers in the space of about a generation after a few of the restrictions on them were loosened. Since they were exempt from the ulema’s disapproval of it and their leaders came to emphasize literacy, their children usually had Western style educations before it was common for Muslims (the first girls’ school in the country was for Zoroastrians, for example). When the Pahlavis were in power they ran a lot of the big businesses and charitable foundations in Tehran, somewhat like the Moscow Old Believer families.
Lol.
Look, here’s a simple fact of life and a redpill: Islam is a totalitarian cult, and like all totalitarian cults it is a direct hit to IQ. You can see this even in first-generation Muslims.
what is the average iq of arab christians.
The success of various persecuted sectarians may be explained simply-with religious oppression only the most adapted (hardworking, strong-willed, etc.) can maintain their faith
Pretty good point there. Jizyah really only gets stragglers and those who have a half-hearted commitment.
I mean, you could even double taxes on all Muslims in the West and people in my circle wouldn’t even consider the idea of converting; we’d likely make plans to move overseas if the financial burden was too much. Plenty of nominal Muslims would swap in a heartbeat, of course.
Peace.
I know a number of Copts, all of whom are very devout, highly educated, and patriotic to boot– after all, they really wuz kangz! Two examples. 1) An engineer who was told by his thesis advisor in Egypt that if he wanted to finish his Ph.D., he had to convert to Islam. He packed his bags and went abroad to finish it. 2) A doctor who came to Moscow to study as aeronautical engineering as a second career. He speaks many languages and has enough money to study in other countries. When asked why he liked Russia, he responded without hesitation, “Because Russians are patriotic”
It’s stupidity like that which has led to an enormous brain drain to the West from the Muslim world (Muslim and non-Muslim).
Peace.
Is there any reason Gregory Clark’s observations wouldn’t apply in the Islamic world? I can’t think of one.
The idea that SES was not correlated with ability prior to industrial times strikes me as complete rubbish.
Even slavery doesn’t invalidate this. I can’t speak for the Islamic world, but in classical antiquity masters would sometimes free promising slaves for the purpose of business ventures. Think of it as venture capital, Roman-style.
And even if the Islamic world permitted no upward mobility of male slaves at all (something we know to be false–look at the Mamlukes), their sisters were taken as concubines or even wives by very high-status men.
A big theory I’ve heard besides inbreeding for Islamic IQ depression is that abortion is permitted in Islam and was apparently practiced by upper classes.
There’s also the matter that despite the fact that black slaves from the Zanj and the trans-Saharan routes were castrated, it appears that the negroid fraction of the Islamic world increased. An effect of negress concubines? It’s well known that swarthy men will f@#$ anything, so why not drill for oil?
This is something which requires major study, as it doesn’t seem like the North Africans and West Asians of classical antiquity were dumber than the civilizations in Europe. For that matter what’s now Central Asia was for a period of time the most advanced part of the entire world. Certainly none of that in the ‘stans now.
Probably 100–comparable to Anglo and European means–to my observation.
Agreed.
Similar deals would be struck for slaves with high aptitude in the Muslim world; for example, work for me for such and such time and I’ll grant you freedom – contracts would be drafted for this kind of thing.
You mentioned the Mamelukes and there were high administrative positions that could be attained as well:
“The closeness of the eunuchs to the members of the Ottoman dynasty put them in a position of considerable power since they had the ear of the sultan and valide sultan and controlled the information flow. Not only did they control the privy purse and the treasury, the top eunuch, the Kızlar Aga, was in charge of supervising nearly all mosque foundations including those that were private and it is estimated numbered around 500 in the eighteenth century. Among these foundations were the two holy cities of Islam, Mecca and Medina.”
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/the-black-eunuchs-and-the-ottoman-dynasty-47541
This is not correct. Contraception has always been allowed, but abortion is (generally) prohibited (the below answer is by a mufti who wrote a detailed book on the subject):
“In conclusion, abortion after 120 days is totally unlawful and tantamount to murder. Some Fuqaha, however, have given a dispensation only in the situation where the mothers life is in certain danger. As far as abortion before the 120 days have elapsed is concerned, it will still be unlawful, though the sin will be of a lesser degree, and it will become permissible if there is a genuine and valid reason.”
http://seekershub.org/ans-blog/2011/10/06/when-is-having-an-abortion-permitted/
Now, to be honest – certain medieval scholars were somewhat lax in what they considered “valid reasons” – there were divergences even within schools. But the later scholars shifting through the various opinions, and deciding on what has the most firm backing, sided as a majority with the conclusion cited above – as explained here:
“While Islamic tradition thus evinces some diversity of views, the general trend (if it can be called that) is clearly against abortion.”
http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/cavalier/Forum/abortion/background/islam1.html
OK – now that’s a different question altogether. Certain Muslim elites could drink Irish sailors under the table so this may not be surprising.
This definitely happened. I was just tracing my family line back and we’re descended from the eighth Shi’i imam – Ali Ridha (ra) who was born from the Lady Najmah (ra) a pious freed woman of Nubian origin.
The effect of this varies from place to place in the Muslim world. Concubines from Abyssinia and Nubia were common in certain places even before Islam.
Everyone has their day in the sun. There is very little evidence that Black slaves were shipped that far. In fact, that area itself supplied some of the best slave-soldiers.
Peace.
Gregory Clark made a similar data-backed argument. I figured this out years ago observing the status obsession and heroic, almost maniacal work ethic of Maronites in the USA. It’s guaranteed to be genetic, Jayman says regression to the mean is only a one time effect (children’s generation) and this process has been cooking for 1400 years, almost as long as selection on the Ashkenazim.
MENA Christians have less Sub-saharan and Central Asian admixture than their Muslim neighbors, but that can’t explain all of it: https://qz.com/880933/education-levels-are-the-biggest-divide-between-christians-and-muslims-in-africa/amp/
In Paradox games, a “converted to Islam” event should dock 20 points from your civilization’s mean IQ.
And give you a population advantage – producing villagers at three times the rate. Probably also give you plus 30 points on any battlefield where technology versus a rival civilization is level.
Kidding aside though, the most educated and advanced sub-Saharan Africans by a long shot (before the Europeans arrived) were Muslims as evidenced by the many empires and sultanates they established (especially in the West) and the records they left behind of grammar, mathematics, astronomy, etc.
Peace.
Good point, but, just off the top of my head, there was also: the Nok culture in Nigeria (which had ironworking before most of Europe,) Benin kingdom, various empires centered on what is now Ethiopia (Mahommed’s companions sought refuge there), the builders of Great Zimbabwe and nearby ruins, etc. Today the failed state index is usually dominated by Mahommedan countries in Africa plus Zimbabwe (Rhodesia before that was an entirely different story).
I should have been specific about the Western region of SSA because Ethiopia has always been fairly advanced (as well as parts of Nubia).
I would really like to see this index, because I don’t see many of the crises in Muslim countries being worse than what’s happening in places like DRC, CAR, South Sudan, Burundi, etc. Also, in Africa, it seems you have flare ups here and there – Rwanda kicking into Zaire, etc. But I agree, Muslim nations have tended to be in the news more as of late.
Peace.
Is it your hardware or your software that makes you incapable of forming more than one sentence at a time?
“drink Irish sailors under the table ”
Sir, I take the slur personally. Another such outburst will be considered a challenge.
Such a pop boost is unrealistic in mediaeval period games, and in early modern period games having a large peasant population is not very worthwhile if serfdom, slavery or not being Westernised/Modernised is preventing you from turning them into industrial workers – plus it lowers your literacy rate (and thus research rate).
Now I actually went ahead and looked up some of the effects Saracen nations get in EUIV, and among other things Sunnis get +10% Cavalry ratio while Shia get +5% Morale of armies.
Actually in Saleh’s paper it is noted that Coptic fertility was on average higher than Muslim fertility (however, it was canceled out by higher child mortality rates).
I didn’t read the paper thoroughly to see if there was an explanation, but this would be consistent with (a) Copts being richer but (2) also more urbanized. Many of them were petty bureaucrats and artisans, so that would make sense.
EU4 has a quasi-HBD system where the tech levels of various civilizations are capped at different levels corresponding to historical reality.
I meant no offense, my good fellow. And since the Seljuks aren’t around to defend the claim, you win by forfeit.
Peace.
I wouldn’t be surprised by this. I wouldn’t be surprised also that parts of Europe were producing more kids than parts of the Muslim world. There was also a time when Europe was at a technological disadvantage with the Muslim world (which was far more literate) and had nothing of value to trade with them except for furs and human beings.
So I was thinking in terms of just overall trends.
I do remember that my son said that in the latest Age of Empires, Ottoman villages spawn villagers automatically for free. Ottomans be fertile!!!
Peace.
I get the feeling Talha would not enjoy playing Victoria II given the game’s focus on Westernisation for uncivilised nations…
Yeah – I don’t know how these things work anymore. I used to love those old Koei games like Nobunaga’s Ambition. I just couldn’t get into the newer ones; they seemed way too complicated and I just didn’t want to devote the time to figure out how to play well.
And then kids happened. But they seem to like some of those games.
Last game I’ve really enjoyed playing with my sons is Gang Beasts.
Peace.
As I explained earlier, I just don’t have time.
However, what you are talking about is fairly realistic. All of the Muslim gun-powder empires had to play catch up with the Western armies and hired European advisers to help them modernize. You simply can’t field Zulus with shields against Navy SEALs backed up by an Apache.
The one thing I wish these guys would add to the mix is that once a civilization leaves religion for too long and gets too materially advanced, nearing the dreaded poz event horizon, population starts tanking and military units are sapped of morale and effectiveness due to LGBT integration.
Assumptions of civilizational advancement being linear seem to be a bad joke.
Peace.
I think some user mods set in modern-day era try to incorporate things like fertility decline and pacifism? But they tend to be buggy and full of errors so I don’t really play them, and I am not really interested in the post-war era whether it concerns games or books.
While I am not very discriminate in my appreciation of Far Eastern culture, I do find Japan’s mediaeval period with a centuries-long lords-and-swords political order more relatable than reading about Chinese or Korean mandarinate palace scheming.
The cannons that breached the walls of Constantinople were built by a Hungarian Christian, I guess you could say his people suffered for his sins a few decades later at Mohacs ,if you believe in that sort of thing.
And the Ummayad navy that made the first assaults against the Byzantine Empire was built and mostly manned by Christians.
It’s been going on for a while.
Peace.
That was the case a long time ago, that mechanic was replaced by ‘Institutions’, which in practice spread through world almost equally, leading to constant complaining on the forums. I suppose the old ‘Westernisation’ mechanic was too much for the Swedish developers.
why does that bother you?
It makes me wonder about your mind. If you can write two or more sentences in your reply I will drop the matter.
Sorry to hear that. It’s been years since I played it.
The Institutions mechanic actually gets abusable (and more ahistorical) once you factor in how institutions can be spread by spamming monarch points/mana into development. In general, institutions spread too quickly, spawn ahistorically too often, and put even more emphasis on mana than is necessary. Fortunately, MEIOU & Taxes exists, but I get the feeling that Paradox is trying to overwhelm mod developers by way of feature creep.
The Victoria II mods Hypoborean mentioned earlier are New World Order and Cold War Enhancement, though the latter is based on the former, and they’ve both been inactive lately. Victoria II is showing its age, though, especially in its inability to model demographics and the modern economy properly.
O good. Really convincing.
Do you know what percentage of male slaves was castrated? I once read that some families in the Maghreb still have names that allude to a background from Northern Europe. These families apparantly descend paternally from enslaved Scandinavians who converted to Islam.
What percentage of female slaves ever got to have children?
Could male and female slaves have relationships togheter similarly to American slaves?
I’ve read nothing with anything approaching something solid – the numbers are all over the place (as they usually are concerning a medieval phenomenon that spanned multiple centuries, cultures and continents.
Castration of slaves is strictly prohibited in Islam, thus already-“manufactured” eunuchs were imported. And this varied from time to time and place to place. Black slaves were different from European slaves. Slave soldiers were different than slave government administrators or domestic help all the way down to those who probably had the worst time – galley slaves in Barbary pirate ships.
Ottomans were bipolar about it; they would sometimes pronounce edicts banning all imports of eunuchs when pushed by the Muslim scholars only to send out edicts a few years later demanding more eunuchs. Whack!
I can only say the number was significant and leave it at that – if someone has a good resource on the number, that would be much appreciated.
Doesn’t surprise me – there was definitely upward mobility for slaves in the Muslim world (again, depended on where and when your are talking about).
Also not sure about exact numbers, but it is also significant. Often, masters would simply free their slave women and marry them – so the line could be blurred.
Bearing the master a child was one of the quickest ways for a female slave to automatically ascend the social strata and gain a quasi-free status known as umm-walad:
“Mother of the son. Refers to a slave woman impregnated by her owner, thereby bearing a child. In the opinion of many classical jurists, such a slave woman cannot be sold. In sociohistorical practice, slave girls used their beauty and intelligence to attract the attention of powerful men and then used the birth of male children to place themselves in positions of power. In some cases they were raised to the rank of queen after giving birth to a son, especially under the Abbasids and Ottomans. Children, male or female, born of this union are legally free and enjoy all rights of legitimate parentage, including inheritance and use of the father’s name.”
http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t125/e2424
At this point she is locked in as a kind of wife, he cannot do anything other than let her go (in a sense divorce) or she automatically gains her freedom if he dies. Intelligent umm-walads could easily wield more power in the family than a wife – not unlike other cultures with concubinage.
Absolutely. Slaves could and did marry each other – permission needed to be sought from the master. At this point, the master had to abstain from sexual relations with his female slave once she was married.
Peace.
Perhaps this is the result of the looting by Algerian pirates of Iceland in 1627.
“Perhaps this is the result of the looting by Algerian pirates of Iceland in 1627.”
Perhaps some of it. I watched a documentary once about a raid at a Icelandic island. It presented the journey of the inhabitants from their settled life to slavery in the Maghreb. The men or a large portion was hanged once they arrived, while the women and children were sold or given to slaver owners. The main character is a Icelandic woman who later leaves the Maghreb, during the raide her husband is killed, later her son is castrated and trained to be slave soldier, she later becomes part of the Sultan’s court. In the end she leaves the Maghreb for Denmark, there she marries a younger man whom moves with her to Iceland, where her descendants still live. She never got to know what happened to her son, perhaps he was trained to become a pirate to collect new slaves in Europe?
Another source was ships whos staffing was enslaved.
“Castration of slaves is strictly prohibited in Islam, thus already-”manufactured” eunuchs were imported. And this varied from time to time and place to place. ”
How was black and white slaves treated differently? I have read that non muslims like Copts were used to castrate black slaves, that way the hands of muslims were clean. It was in reality just a loophole.
“Absolutely. Slaves could and did marry each other – permission needed to be sought from the master. At this point, the master had to abstain from sexual relations with his female slave once she was married.”
Can you give a source?
I’ve never come across anything stating slaves were treated differently based on race. It all depended on what the slave was purchased for; if it was to guard the imperial harem, then a eunuch was going to be employed. Slave soldiers could rise fairly high in rank. The Circassian Mameluke control of Egypt is well known, but Black slave soldiers were prominent during Fatimid times:
“Abū al-Misk Kāfūr, (died AD 968), Ethiopian slave who, as vizier under the Ikshīdid dynasty, was de facto ruler of Egypt from 946 to 966 and de jure ruler from then until his death.”
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abu-al-Misk-Kafur
“Although the owner himself cannot get married to his slave woman, without giving her freedom, he can get her married to someone else. If he gets her married to someone else, then only her husband can now have intercourse with her and the owner’s right of having intercourse with her comes to an end.”
http://islamqa.org/hanafi/askimam/28394
Peace.
“I’ve never come across anything stating slaves were treated differently based on race. It all depended on what the slave was purchased for”
Okay. Is it possible to categorize the main utilities/tasks that slaves were purchased on the basis of? Then what percentage of the slaves were used in the different categories.
“http://islamqa.org/hanafi/askimam/28394”
Was it common to have intercourse with slave women?
In the documentary i watched on the Barbary Slave Trade, there was told a story about a slave owner who did not let his male slaves convert to Islam. Would you say that it was common not to let slaves convert?
Were slave soldiers castrated?
Sure, but what you speak of is a massive topic, I don’t think anyone has done a comprehensive study on the slave trade in the Muslim world in its entirety. Usually I’ve come across books that deal with just one aspect or a specific time period or specific region. I’d love to find a reliable resource on the subject.
I mean you had Turkic slave soldiers/guards being bought and employed by the West African empires. It’s a huge subject.
It was uncommon not to. It was one of the reasons you purchased them – this was pretty much the same across the world.
No, it was not – conversion does not automatically lead to emancipation. Not letting slaves convert to Islam is a massive crime and sin, but not much is expected from pirates after all. Blocking conversion is as silly as forcing conversion – you can only deal with the outward aspect of things, it doesn’t really reflect the reality of belief in the person’s heart.
An interesting aspect is that a group of Maliki scholars actually permitted forcible conversion of female slaves when it came to polytheist females. The reason being that Islam does not permit men to copulate with pagan females (slaves or free), thus they stated the master was not able to benefit from the rights of ownership. Everyone else opposed this since it is a violation of the rights of the slave to have their own belief.
Yes and no – depends. Some slave soldiers were expected to be castrated while some established their own dynasties. That was actually the reason why certain sovereigns only wanted castrated slave-soldiers; those who rose to high ranks and could have children could become a potential threat and establish their own dynasty. On the other hand, castrated slaves don’t rape defeated populations – so that is a positive from that perspective.
Peace.
Beirut was said to be the Paris of the Middle East before the Palestinian refugees settled there.
I think there is something striking in that analogy: Detroit was called the Paris of the West. Beirut the Paris of the Middle East. And, if those analogies were not enough, Paris itself seems to be noticeably changed from migration, making it a trifecta.
The parents of Danny Thomas were Maronite Christians. I think from Lebanon. He’s not so well remembered today, but he may have been the second biggest TV star of all time after Lucille Ball of “I Love Lucy” fame.
There certainly does seem to be a distinctive ‘Maronite phenotype’.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Danny_Thomas_1957.JPG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Katter#/media/File:Bob_Katter.jpg
https://serg-slavorum.livejournal.com/2365519.html