Comments by "Luredreier" (@Luredreier) on "Voices of the Past" channel.

One thing worth noting is that although the Icelanders might have thought they where Turks they where most likely just regular Algerian Muslims. Some Berbers, some Arabs, some from other ethnic groups, including converted Europeans. After all, how would he tell a Turk apart from any other Muslim other than with stories of questionable validity told and retold multiple times?
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The Finns where quite warlike, the "Lapps" (Sami people) not so much, being a fairly peaceful people in part due to being behind in weapons technology compared to neighboring peoples. Also, never call a Sami person "Lapp" it's highly offensive.
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@patriciusvunkempen102 He most likely didn't have the faintest idea... Compared to Icelanders even French and Belgian people are brown... Same with Greeks, Spaniards, Portuguese etc. Heck, some Brits could probably pass for Turks in the right clothes to an Icelander at the time if they had been stationed in Gibraltar or somewhere else a bit further south for a while...
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@12345678900987659101 Nice CK2 reference there. :-P
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@EresirThe1st Maybe not ethically, but psychologicaly it's a big part of why people behave the way they do. The inquisition etc really mistreated people in Spain and being any kind of minority was difficult. When being subjected to hate you can easily fall for hate yourself. A lot of war crimes etc happened because of that. Many in Algiers etc where refugees or descendants of refugees from Spain, hating Christians because of the treatment they where subjected to themselves. You stop seeing the ones you think of as "others" as humans. They become devil's, evil incarnate in your mind, and deserve any treatment they can get.
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@Baathist_Brawler_1565 Plenty of those driven out had lived there since before the Muslims invaded... Some had converted to Islam, others had been a minority prior to the invasion. The reconquista lead to a lot of religious extremism and intolerance.
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Yarp Yarp Actually most of them where Spaniards who had converted at some point in the last few generations.
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@Amadis777 Well, Islam isn't a ethnicity but a religion. And "La Convivencia" is rather disputed. There's clear evidence of rebellions being put down among christians in Spain during the Muslim rule. So presumably there's a cause for rebellion? We know about jizya tax at the very least being used in the Muslim world. So why is it that hard to believe that there's a large number of Muslims of local origin in Spain at the time? Also remember, Spain was multicultural already before the Muslim invasion with the visigoths upper class as well as many other ethnic groups, both local and others that found themselves there for various reasons due to the Roman empire. As for genetic tests etc, there so many potentials for misunderstanding the data due to various migrations around the Mediterranean sea. With the Phoenicians/Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals and later empires all taking part in extensive trade. Indeed trade in the region probably predates the Phoenicians and Greeks and goes back to the Bronze age at least. There's Spanish mines from that time for instance. So I don't put much stock in genetic evidence given the huge amount of mixing involved in the region. As for literary sources, you get both sources in favour of the view that the abrahamic religions coexisted in peace and of the opposite. Since we're dealing with humans I feel that the best application of Occam's razor in this case is to believe that both are true at once. Perhaps to different degrees in different places. But clearly there's a reason for people to convert. And if we look at what happened after the reconquista we clearly see that many where forced to convert to Christianity there. This seems to be a pattern. You see the same in the areas where the Romans and Sassanid Empire fell likewise experienced massive conversation even though people often where allowed to follow their own religion after the Muslim invasion they where still treated differently from the Muslim upper class and converting held benefits. So most people there where not from the Arabian peninsula but locals who converted. So why not in Spain? The official number of troops and others Muslims that came there that we can trace isn't exactly that big. Spain was after all taken due to Visigoth weakness, not Muslim strength. So you're a small group of invaders, you need collaboration from the locals if you're to rule. And with conversions, you get it. And the more that convert, the more incentive there is for the rest to do so as well. Sometimes it might be dangerous not to do so. Sometimes doing so might help you etc. Then after generations of this the christians starts invading back, spring no one. People are forced to convert to Christianity against their will, eat pork etc. Then even people who converted to Christianity, some genuinely so are exciled. Lives ruined. So much pain. And Muslims who probably where already raiding as a form of warfare (privateering) got even more of a reason to hate the christians, as well as many new recruits who wanted revenge. I mean, just think of how the Pols, Norwegians, French etc faught alongside the Brits during WW2 after losing their homelands. Both in the air and on the seas units made up of exciled peoples from occupied countries distinguished themselves in fighting, being rather reckless. Or look at the hate building up in Ukraine against the Russians right *now*. But also further into the past in the Balkans. Different peoples will have different narratives about what really happened. But enough people suffered on all sides that it could be used as a causus belli for anything from war to atrocities... That's just human nature. I mean, look at what the Americans did after 9/11... Guantanamo was filled with innocent farmers etc who ended up tortured in there because some neighbors wanted the money offered as a bounty on anyone who might be a "terrorist" or because someone being tortured where forced into giving up others... And that place still exists. Doesn't make Americans evil. But some people will always twist their own ideas of right and wrong into something that "justifies" actions that hurts others. Especially if prior suffering has taken place. Emptying the coast of Christian lands could both be seen as a revenge for what they did, but also as a defense, a way to stop them from growing strong enough to push further. I mean, just look at the crusades, when Jerusalem was no longer a viable option they tried taking Egypt, the plan being to trade it for the "holy land". Suffering of the locals be damned... And for the record, I'm actually a Icelandic citizen. I could be wrong here. But it makes sense that this was revenge and defense. Just like some of the first raids of the viking era was attempts by the Danes to counter Christian Franks from expanding into the recently conquered lands of the Frisian peoples, who where fellow Germanic heathens. The Franks where seen as a threat. Yes, I know that I'm going a bit all over the place. But I'm trying to draw some parallels here to show that there's some patterns that repeat themselves a lot. And sure, there's no evidence that I can find of the 99% claim he has made, but that many if not most where locals seems to be accurate.
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@thoorwulfn9z383 It is. Not all Sami people feel that it is, but the term was never their own word used for themselves and it was used during a rather... dark... time of Norwegian history and our relationship with the Sami people... There's black people who are not offended when someone uses the N word too, that doesn't make it a non-offensive word.
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@thoorwulfn9z383 Both of those words are offensive. Sure, there are individuals who are not offended by it, but using that word when you know that there are people who have had bad experiences with it and might get hurt by it is a dissregard for other peoples feelings and is disrespectflull towards them and their history. Exactly the kind of things that causes this kind of words to become loaded to start with.
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@kyartan My family was Fishermen and Farmers in eastern Iceland. And yes, I'm aware that there was fishing of Icelands coast by other nationalities. My familys home village celebrates the "French days" once a year because of many international, especially French, fishermen fishing of the coast there, and some of them helping the village, helping fund a the building of a hospital, among other things. Yes, Europeans did come there to some degree. But not really from the Muslim world. Apart from everything else there was a whole host of hostile waters between there and Iceland, not in terms of weather and nations. A English, French, Dutch, Norwegian, Irish or even German sailor might find himself on Iceland, but much further away them that seems unlikely. There's other fishing grounds them just Iceland after all. Not all of them that far away from their own shores.
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I wonder if there's anything left of that original Tang Nestorianism.
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@Threezi04 Maybe, but both can have a impact on a peoples culture, traditions and beliefs.
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@Amadis777 Muslims from other parts of the muslim would where mainly a upper class in Spain. Remember that christians where discriminated against with thing like extra taxes and banned from holding certain public offices etc. So it paid to convert, just like it pays to be a member of the communist party in China. So people converted, some believing in it more than others. But after generations you ended up with a majority of the Muslims actually being locals. Just like in many other Muslim countries where Arabs where a minority too.
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@Amadis777 Work you say? If you're a historian then you probably know that there's different narratives promoted in different countries of what events actually happened around the world. Why do you assume the the local school of thought in your country is the correct one?
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@Amadis777 Still searching for more information about the Muladí as a percentage of the population.
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@Amadis777 ""The rate of conversion is slow until the tenth century (less than one-quarter of the eventual total number of converts had been converted); the explosive period coincides closely with the reign of 'Abd al-Rahmdn III (912–961); the process is completed (eighty percent converted) by around 1100. The curve, moreover, makes possible a reasonable estimate of the religious distribution of the population. Assuming that there were seven million Hispano-Romans in the peninsula in 711 and that the numbers of this segment of the population remained level through the eleventh century (with population growth balancing out Christian migration to the north), then by 912 there would have been approximately 2.8 million indigenous Muslims (muwalladûn) plus Arabs and Berbers. At this point Christians still vastly outnumbered Muslims. By 1100, however, the number of indigenous Muslims would have risen to a majority of 5.6 million.", (Glick 1999, Chapter 1: At the crossroads of civilization)"
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@Amadis777 The same source that I cider above also claims that Muladies formed the majority of the muslim population in Al-Andalus by the tenth century. As for the tests, they only talk about relationships between sampled people, the conclusions we draw from them however is very error pron.
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@Amadis777 https://youtu.be/Isa5c1p6aC0
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@Amadis777 Basically DNA tests can't really place anyone ass more than just broadly from north or south or east or west Europe. Specifics just can't be stated with much certainty.
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@Amadis777 Exactly, progress, progress that would not exist if the original data was accurate. While our confidence levels might improve our interpretation of the available data is still deeply flawed, especially when dealing with populations subject to large amounts of migration like the Spanish one and North African one.
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