The modern political era began with the French Revolution of 1789. It was a popular uprising in which the king and queen, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, were overthrown and guillotined. But the revolution was messy and bloody and ultimately ended in the rule of Napoleon, who became the prototype of the modern dictator, although he did not start the revolution. Napoleon was actually a general, who went on to conquer much of Europe and thus spread the ideals of the revolution.
There have been two major, and numerous minor, reenactments of the French Revolution. What I mean by this is not how important each revolution was but whether it changed the basic direction of the French Revolution. There have been two changes of direction, with the two major reenactments.
Since the original French Revolution there had been widespread industrialization. This brought about a very wealthy upper class of people, and the millions of exploited and underpaid laborers who worked for them. This brought about the first major change in direction, with what we could call the Second Revolution. This was the October Revolution, of 1917, which was the beginning of world Communism.
The original French Revolution was hostile to the Catholic Church. The Second Revolution, based on the theories of Karl Marx, was even more hostile to religion. But the second major reenactment, what we could call the Third Revolution, was the Iranian Revolution of 1979. This turned the world back toward religion, and not only Islam.
But all three revolutions overthrew a monarchy and all three had a "storming" as their signature event. The signature event of the original French Revolution was the Storming of the Bastille, of the October Revolution it was the Storming of the Winter Palace, and of the Iranian Revolution it was the Storming of the U.S. Embassy.
We have seen this revolution series in detail in "The Rule Of Successive Revolutions", October 2024, and "Multidimensional History ", November 2024.
But history repeats itself and rarely, if ever, is there anything that is completely new. So there must have been precedents to this series of revolutions that have shaped modern times.
The first thing that comes to mind is the overthrowing and execution of England's King Charles I by the forces of Oliver Cromwell. He wanted to abolish the monarchy, in order to create a theocracy in the Name of God, and had the Crown Jewels destroyed. But when Cromwell died, his son didn't inspire the same devotion and the Royalists were able to reestablish the monarchy.
What about this series of revolutions though? There is another series that was actually quite similar. It was the Islamic Caliphates.
While Europe was going through the "Dark Ages", it was the Islamic part of the world that kept learning alive. The intellectual center of the world was the House of Wisdom, in Baghdad. Among many other things, they brought the numerical digits that we now use as well as the concept of zero from India, developed mathematics such as algebra, and this era is why so many of the stars have Arabic names and the digits 1-9 are called the Arabic Numerals. Spain was ruled by Moslems for about seven hundred years and, during this time, students from across Europe sought to study at the great university in Cordoba.
What finally brought Europe out of the Dark Ages was the conquest of Constantinople, which was Christian, by the Ottomans. Many Christian scholars loaded manuscripts onto pack animals and headed westward. This brought about the intellectual awakening that is now referred to as the "Renaissance", which means "rebirth". The city most associated with the Renaissance is Florence. Out of the Renaissance grew the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution and, the French Revolution.
So it shouldn't be surprising if some of the concepts that have shaped modern Europe came from the Moslem countries.
There were four well-known successive caliphates in the early days of Islam, and each was centered around it's capital city. The Rashidun Caliphate was centered on Medina and was the first four caliphs after the death of Muhammad. During the Rashidun Caliphate was the split between Sunni and Shiite, over who should be caliph after Muhammad.
The Rashidun Caliphate was supplanted by the Umayyad Caliphate, which was centered on Damascus. It was the Umayyads who built the two mosques on the Temple Mount, the Al Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock.
The Umayyad Caliphate was supplanted by the Abbasid Caliphate, which was centered on Baghdad. Unlike Damascus, which was an ancient city, Baghdad was especially built as the Abbasid capital, and is where the House of Wisdom was located, but the Umayyad Caliphate did continue on in Spain.
The Abbasid Caliphate was supplanted by the Fatimid Caliphate, which was Shiite. The Fatimids especially built Cairo as their capital, just as the Abbasids had built Baghdad.
You can see that this series of revolutions follows the same pattern as the caliphates, with one supplanted by the next, except that it is informal. Each revolution also centers around a major city, although informally, just as the caliphates did. The original French Revolution was centered on Paris, the October Revolution on St. Petersburg and, the Iranian Revolution on Tehran.
Another way that we can see the historical impact of these long-ago caliphates is in the lack of unity in the Middle East. There used to be discussion of Syria and Iraq uniting. The two neighboring countries were led by the same Baath Party, which promoted Arab unity. But what was against the merger was history. The Abbasids, centered in Baghdad, had defeated and supplanted the Umayyads, centered in Damascus. Syria and Egypt united for a while, as the United Arab Republic. The Fatimids, based later in Cairo, had not had direct conflict with the Umayyads, but even so the history of different caliphates was enough to doom the merger.
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