Not in their entirety. While some portion of the force would be disbanded, there were also full-time “soldiers”.

Yeah, but the Muslims didn't have specialized units (i think) so it's only light cavalry and skirmishers + light sword/spear infantry. Unlike the fully tranined Swiss or French heavy knights for example. They kinda were all levies and every person had their own weapons and horses like back in the Roman Republic times.

To add to this, to my knowledge, they would often travel “with the whole tribe” quite literally. So many times the male soldiers wives, children etc would be close by, traveling with the army in a second camp. This could lead to more relaxed and fraternal atmosphere within each tribe, while still allowing hostilities between the tribes as another commenter pointed out

Weren't European forces the same too? Raising levies during wartime and disbanding afterwards?

Thanks! I'll check it out.

So in 12th century Syria you would've come across Turks more than Arabs. And secondly Jihad as the main motivation against the crusader states didn't become a major thing until the zengids took power in the region so that take seems off by a few decades on either side

Yes. For centuries prisons and "lunatic asylums" had paying public visitors. I am just writing about Newgate Prison, and the warders funded themselves partly by charging visitors.

That one did pop up in my mind because asbridge mentioned that a similar problem plagued saladin's army at Acre during the third crusade. But Saladin's army was more geographically diverse than that of a regional bey like Il Ghazi.

The book is nice, a fun read. I have read other works by asbridge previously and he is a good writer, also uses both islamic and Christian sources to provide a good balanced perspective.

It is very counterintuitive. I have been writing and talking about history for 16 years, and sometimes catch myself out. Because of this, I never use terms like 18th century in our podcast, for exactly this reason.

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Yes, this super decentralised attitude is also a large part of why arab armies are so bad today.

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Muslim Armies (I think) were not full-time armies. So people would sometimes want to go back home after the danger is gone.

That was true of most medieval armies, including the Crusaders.

I was reading 1453: the fall of Constantinople a few years back and as I recall, a large part of the reason Muslim invaders were able to field such problematically large armies was that the soldiers were expected to be self-sufficient, responsible for their own daily upkeep.

Thanks for sharing!

There was also a lot of fractiousness in the Muslim world during the era of the first crusade. It was probably difficult to keep control if the guys next to you wanted to fight you almost as much as the crusaders. The crusaders, on the other hand, were more unified in purpose (without factoring in things like dropping out of the road to Jerusalem to found the principality of Antioch ;) )

Good book?

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What are you on about lad? These things are thousands of years old

####TL;DR, to re-visit and barring large countries: Argentina, Morocco, and Portugal

Top 3 in general or to re-visit?

For example, Iceland is one of the top for sightseeing nature but it's not high on my list to re-visit as I've already been thrice (once was before it blew up on social media so it was empty of tourists but the infrastructure wasn't nearly as good as now). My proximity to places visited also factors into how low it is placed in places to re-visit. EG., I love theme and amusement parks but Florida (more on this vs. US later) won't necessarily be high on the list since it's in relatively close proximity.

Additionally, everyone travels differently. Some go primarily for natural beauty, others for history, to party, for relaxation, etc.

Then how would you even rank them? The amount of breathtaking sights and experiences is the first to come to mind. If that's the metric, I think it's unfair for the large countries such as Canada/China/US as they have such a wide variety of diverse landscapes (and in the case of old civilizations like China, history) but are clearly infeasible to see it all unless you take months off work. As such, I like to separate the provinces/states into their own "country" since, as a more extreme example, the province of Québec can fit France, Spain, Germany, and Belgium within it. Otherwise the top 3 in general would probably be...Canada, China, and US lol if I had unlimited time and funds.

Anyways, back on topic and with my country restrictions. These three countries I've only ever visited once, have very distinct atmospheres, stayed between 1-2 weeks in each, loved my entire time in them, and would not hesitate to go again if asked (in alphabetical order as I'm sure you can tell by now): Argentina, Morocco, and Portugal

Edit: Yes, Canada and US also has history but in terms of structures, there's something different between standing in front of the 2,000+ year old Al-Khazneh and the 137 year old Statue of Liberty

This photo on the post reminded me of the "vampire of Venice" documentary of a woman or man... I'm pretty sure woman, that was buried "biting" a brick. It's still not known for sure why and at a point it's mentioned that she saw ebony spectres as being something real. The weird part is that she actually had dramatically long and sharp canines far more than a normal human would. I remember the conclusion said something like it was prosthetic and with time the prosthetic ends sort of mixed with the natural tooth before she died but it seems related to this or possibly

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Sunnis in Iran were seen as a fifth column who might ally with the Ottomans should they invade Iran. The Ottomans were also putting down Shia rebellions in their own territory, and increasingly emphasizing their position as a specifically Sunni Muslim state. But because Iran was majority Sunni, brutal methods were used to quickly convert the population to Shia Islam to secure it against the Ottoman threat.

Pretty common, there's a common joke at universities about how almost all historians are bad with maths and numbers (which I think there is something to).

Gets even worse when working on projects that spread between BCE and CE and you have to work with second century BCE and second century CE and having to work out how that works for both.

I mainly avoid using the terms when giving lectures and just stick to specific dates or say "around 200 BCE" etc. Much easier.