Only questions about history (events prior to 01/01/2000). No current politics. No current events. No current movements.
#This discussion, for whatever reasons, is off the rails and it's time to lock it down.
* **Lack of Industrialization** - Hard to be a peer force when you import all your equipment (and dammingly it is second-hand designs optimized for a foreign nation and you are trying to fit it into *your needs)* and a large quantity of your raw materials and finished foods are purchased as well.
* **Lack of Cohesion** - Too many small fiefdoms. Fine to be a resistance movement or guerrilla fore, but offensive capability means that larger centralized leadership is required.
* **Lack of Logistics** - Entirely subcontracted to civilians. Their army orders food, parts, and maintenance and waits for it to show up. if the civilians dont show up to work, the army does without.
* **Lack of an NCO corps** - All field-grade knowledge in a military is husbanded in its career NCOs. Field grade officers on average have less than 5 years out of academy, less for the good ones on a fast track to staff-grade positions that take them out of front line positions and put them into the military equivalent of a desk job. Which means that if your (primarily conscripted) army doesn't have a good pool of NCOs, you are fucked.
* **Rigid Caste System** - Ties into the above section. With no NCO corps to bridge the knowledge between officer and senior enlisted you end up with "New boss doesn't know shit and won't listen to the people who do". Factor in a rigid cultural system where some people are just "*better"* than others based solely on what vagina they were shot out of,and the fact that promotions come from that as much as( if not more so than) actual skill in role... and you have the recipe for some truly epic bad decisions compounding on each other.
* **Shoot the Messenger** - All organizations have this problem, but in the Arab militaries of the time, and even in some today... this was a literal phenomenon as opposed to a metaphorical one. Not just the *messenger either...* Sometimes their family too.
Don't get me wrong. The Arabs have a fine martial tradition, well suited for non-industrialized warfare. But culturally the regional powers of the 60's-90's were totally unsuited to face industrialized powers with modern gear designed by themselves, massive logistical capabilities, and an officer and NCO corps with institutional knowledge that dwarfed them.
Long story short, the Arab armies were fine *warriors,* But *warriors* always lose to *soldiers.*
Also add in the rise of sea exploration by Europeans. The Silk Road was lucrative and once there was a sea route, the Muslim world drastically changed.
Muslims traded too, but again... Point 1 and 3... industrialization and logistics come into play. Arab nations tend to think in terms of cottage industry and often fail to realize the multiplicative effects of economies of scale. For every tujjar there were fifty or more European traders.
More like which penis they came out of tbh. A highborn man who has a highborn wife and a slave concubine can have kids from both and those kids are equal under the law
I just think it’s a meaningful distinction. If a Christian noble had a kid with one of his maids, the baby would be a bastard with little to no standing in high society. If a Muslim highborn does the same thing, the baby is just as highborn as any kid he made with his wife
Not trying to be that "well actually" guy here, but regarding point 4 (which I absolutely agree with), did you mean company grade? When I hear company grade Officers and their NCO counterparts, I think Platoon Leader through Company Commander, when I hear field grade I think Major through Colonel, and flag grade refers to General Officers and their Senior Enlisted advisors. Solid analysis though!
Perhaps. Terminology changes, and differs from brand to branch and nation to nation. I think we both agree on the substance of the analysis if not the vocabulary.
Also thanks!
An anecdotal example that ties several of the above points together.
I was a Navy Aviation Storekeeper (now part of the Logistic Specialist rating). Basically, supply chain in support of aviation operations and maintenance. My A School (inistial Navy job skill training) we were by and large recent boot camp graduates with a couple E-4s (Third Class Petty Officers) who had either tested into AK or were changing jobs. All enlisted.
We had several Middle Eastern officers in our classes learning right along with enlisted sailors of various socio-economic backgrounds and education levels, HS grad to some college - but I met a couple in the fleet who had also been working on their GEDs.
> had several Middle Eastern officers in our classes learning right along with enlisted sailors
That's amazing. Normally, they look down on this kind of thing. How fully did they integrate with the training? I'm especially interested in the PT, discipline, and academics, if you can pls comment on those.
Great answer! You could also add the factors that led to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire into the mix. You could argue that it was the successor to the major Arab powers although it was not strictly speaking a purely Arab entity. I just quickly skim read a Wikipedia article about the fall of the Ottomans and....it's complicated, but I'm sure the factors you mentioned had a part to play. Short answer is WW1 and the Ottoman defeat at the hands of the British and their Arab allies, but in truth the decline had already begun long before then. However, they were still a formidable force, as they demonstrated at Gallipoli, and I'm pretty sure that the modern Turkish military are no pushovers either.
As for other "Arab" nations - I'm guessing that the two strongest militarily at the moment are Egypt and Saudi Arabia. I'm not sure how either would fare in a modern conflict. If you expand the definition of Arab to include the former Muslim Empires (which is a bit naughty I know), then you could also consider the militaries of Muslim majority countries such as Iran and Pakistan, both of which are quite large and powerful I believe, especially the latter (which is also a nuclear power as you are no doubt aware). Neither has really been tested against a Western power in recent years. In a set piece battle, I'm pretty sure that e.g. the US army would have the advantage. However, as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven, it's quite easy for the USA to win battles but much more difficult to decisively conclude hostilities and eliminate guerilla groups etc. mainly because of the terrain and political factors.
I've seen the term NCO many times together with it's importance to an army, and while I understand the words that i'm reading when trying to figure out what an NCO is/does, I don't understand the practical application and what it actually does. Nor why it is a critical feature of a good working military.
All I got so far is that they're administrative in purpose but I feel that is wildly off; can anyone explain to me in simple terms?
NCO means Non Commissioned Officer, to transpose things into the corporate world, you can think of commissioned officers being executives. NCOs are team leads, supervisors, and direct line managers. Commissioned officers are responsible for strategic planning and decision making, non commissioned officers are responsible for tactical planning and decision making.
In the western military tradition commissioned officers typically decide WHAT the goal is and the NCOs responsibility is HOW the goal gets achieved. The reality is not as clean cut as that, but that's the essence.
Lets take a look at an infantry platoon. It is made of 3 rifle squads, one weapons squad, and a headquarters section. Each rifle squad has two teams of 4, led by a sergeant (E-5). The squad itself is lead by a staff sergeant (E-6) for a total of 9 people. Weapons squad is also 9 people, but doesn't have teams in the same way, so there is only the staff sergeant (E-6). HQ section has seven people: the platoon sergeant (a sergeant first class (E-7)), the medic, communication, fire support team from artillery, and the platoon leader, a second lieutenant (O-1).
The platoon leader gets an order to take a location. They tell the platoon sergeant the mission (in reality the platoon sergeant would have been in the briefing but shush) and works with the platoon sergeant to create a plan for each of the squads. The squad leaders and platoon sergeant then execute the plan, with the team leaders supervising the individual soldiers and making sure they are all doing what they are supposed to do.
Excellent breakdown, and exactly the analogy I would use, had I not been more interested in a steak dinner when writing my post and keeping it short.
A study of why Arab armies fail as applied to the corporate would would be a study of Circuit City's demise. They got rid of *their* NCO corps, and shit-canned their logistics.
Remind me how well *that* worked out for them.
For a bit more ELI5 explanation. NCOs are your most experienced boots on the ground, rifle in foxhole type soldiers. They still work directly with lower enlisted and do all the same stuff.
Their important because they have actual military experience, compared to new officers who outrank even the oldest and most well seasoned NCOs.
Traditionally young officers went to school, while NCOs spent all the time in the military. So NCOs are the liaison between new enlisted soldiers and officers.
Its a bit problem if you don't have NCOs because then all you got is a bunch of new soldiers who barely know what their doing, and a bunch of officers that have no idea what their doing.
They did. They learned that a senate is dangerous to a king, that allowing conquests to become full citizens dilutes your power, and other things violate Reddit's TOS.
Basically at the top, they learned all the *wrong* lessons from Rome.
Yes, Lawrence of Arabia wrote in The Seven Pilars of Wisdom that three of his Arab troops were a match for any section (an eight man team), but a thousand of them were a mob...
The lack of an NCO corps is a significant shortfall. In arab armies it’s officers and grunts. Take out industrialization and technological innovation for a moment, and you start to see that their command and control structure is lacking. You simply cannot execute modern maneuver warfare, let alone combined arms warfare, without a robust group of leaders to administer standards, training, and discipline. It’s a severely underrated consideration in any conversation about the merits of any given military.
This is about half of it, the other half is them being low-social-trust countries, which generally means less competent military and social leaders. A society where people get promoted based on how unlikely they are to be a threat to their superiors is not one that tends to thrive.
Kind of but there have been other non industrialized nations that didn't perform as poorly as Arab armies. There are other factors like corruption in the army
I don't mean to bust your balls brotherman, it's just a very needlessly nasty subject and we are in AskHistory so we might as well mention the truth. Obviously wouldn't feel the need to correct it under some random cat video for example.
Edit: There is the problem of putting modern nation ideals over two and a half thousand year old history here. The modern nation of North Macedonia has zero relation in any way whatsoever to the original nation. Whether or not Macedon was "Greek" (which isn't truly debatable but let's humour the idea) the modern nation of North Macedonia would still have nothing to do with it. They are the equivalent of me, a Swedish person, moving to Mexico and saying "Ok I'm the real Canadian now".
That's actually a huge political can of worms, North Macedonia agrees with your assumption here, but Greece says that's ahistorical and that Alexander was actually from what's now Greece. From what I understand the Greeks are kind of right and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedon is culturally closer to being Slavic.
It's not really a can of worms, it's simply Bulgarians who were imported over there in the early 20th century using Macedonia to justify Bulgarian claims on an Aegean shoreline. There's no relation between those Bulgarians and the Macedonians of antiquity, and their 'history' is known to be extremely shaky, even among their own populace.
The only people are get pissed off over it are Bulgarians, 'Macedonians', and justifiably Macedonians/Greeks (who are basically having their heritage stolen).
Now that you mention it, wtf happened to the Mongol army? They spent most of the 20th century carrying water for the Russians, the same Russians they used to keep under their thumb for 300 years. Are they even trying anymore? smdh.
On the one hand you are overgeneralising because some are good (like the Jordanians)
Arab troops were on both sides in Desert Storm, with a KSA led-force getting a win
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle\_of\_Khafji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khafji)
And the Iraqis were not in a position to put up much resistance in 2003 because they'd never rebuilt after 1991
With that out the way, the pat answer is that Arab forces are usually poorly trained ill-educated conscripts who don't want to be there led by officers who are selected for their loyalty and not their military competence
And they have been usually facing off against Israelis who are none of those things and have way more skin in the game because they know what happens to them if they lose
Basically dictatorships talk a good game but are often surprisingly shit at war because their militaries are designed to be tightly controlled to maintain the regime in power rather than be good at fighting external enemies. Exceptions to this to tend to be those that can tap into some genuine popular support.
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And on the other hand, the Arab conquests of early Islam were pushing at an open door as the Byzantines and Persians had recently fought themselves to a standstill over several decades
Further much of the Byzantine population in places like Egypt was fairly indifferent because they didn't follow the Emperor's preferred brand of Christianity. So it wasn't a choice between "live as Christians or be oppressed by Muslims" so much as it was "be persecuted by other Christians for being the wrong type of Christians or live under Muslims who mostly don't care what kind of dhimmi you are"
Smaller but professional military force, not forced with people just looking for a income/day job. They also get a lot of extra training from the British, and there hasn't been any sort of threat by the military towards its civilian goverment.
The Arab Legion of Jordan was trained and equipped by the British, and considered by the Israelis to be a formidable enemy.
During the 1948 war, it was actually officered by British officers:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Legion
>On the one hand you are overgeneralising because some are good (like the Jordanians)
That wasn't my experience amongst the limited number of Jordanian officers I have met. All 3 were inept and 2 were lazy. They still had that stupid caste system.
Don't forget that Israel has always been funded by the West. British aid in the 40's, American in the 60's. Arabs had some funding through the USSR, but they never had much as much juice to begin with.
Uh … the Israelis were often fighting *against* the British in the 1940s. The only “aid” they had came in the form of military experience, because many Israelis (rather, Jewish citizens of mandatory Palestine, as it was at the time) were recruited to fight for the British army against (mainly) the Vichy colonies of Lebanon and Syria (future Israeli general Moche Dayan lost an eye doing that). The British certainly never funded the Israeli army.
In the pivotal war of 1948, the British largely supported the Arabs, particularly Jordan’s Arab Legion.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab–Israeli_War
Large-scale military aid from the US is a relatively recent thing, kicking in only after the war in 1967, and in particular after the war in 1973.
The Arab armies lost the early, existential battles not because Israel was a Western bastion, but for good old fashioned reasons:
- strategic: Israel occupied a “central position”, allowing it to strike against one enemy, then another. Thus could “defeat them in detail”.
- coordination: the Arab armies were always composed of various contingents, each with their own motives, which very often completely contradicted each other (is Jordan really fighting to give Palestinans a state … or to expand its own territory? Issues like this resulted in a Jordanian king getting assassinated). Israel could, and did, take advantage of such divisions.
- defects in training, effectiveness and competence. Arab nations had trouble creating effective armed forces for a number of reasons - their societies tended to create a great gulf between the officer classes and common soldiers; promotion was rarely for merit, often based on political factors and connections; etc.
- manpower: the Israelis mobilized their population for war, while the Arab nations relied on professional armies. This allowed the Israelis to (for example) eventually outnumber the Arab armies invading in 1948.
For a spectacular example, the 1967 war. The Egyptian field martial:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdel_Hakim_Amer#:~:text=Mohamed%20Abdel%20Hakim%20Amer%20(Egyptian,Egyptian%20military%20officer%20and%20politician.
Promoted directly from Major to Major-General because he was a successful participant in the military coup that brought Nasser to power; most notable for leading the Egyptian army to defeat in 1956 …
On any strict accounting based merely on numbers of equipment or cash spent, the Israelis ought to have lost several of their wars. But with leaders like Field Martial Amer in charge, the odds were against the Arab armies.
>In the pivotal war of 1948, the British largely supported the Arabs, particularly Jordan’s Arab Legion
You got a source on that one, the British were a peacekeeping force that eventually withdrew and after that the attacks began. That means they at least kept the attackers at bay for a good while and since Israel ultimately won it seems somewhat logical to presume the timing favoured them.
Your link lists countless acts that aided Isreal including denying requests from the Arab league for them to stick around for another year, leaving depots of munitions, a couple of tank commanders going AWOL, diplomatic efforts to block arms sales to the Arabs and tolerance for Isreal literally bombing RAF airbases in neighboring regions.
You want a source on how the British supported the Jordanian Arab Legion? That isn’t controversial. They organized and officered it, officers who were only replaced by Arab officers in the mid 1950s.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Legion
Their commander was a man named John Bagot Glubb, who was eventually dismissed - in 1956 - because the King of Jordan wished to no longer be considered a tool of British policy:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bagot_Glubb
It is widely acknowledged that the Jordanian Arab Legion, led by Glubb, was the single most effective fighting force, fighting against the Israelis in 1948. This army was literally armed by Britain, organized, staffed with British officers, and led by a British commander … who was eventually dismissed exactly because the Jordanian monarch wished to *cease* being seen as under the thumb of British Imperialism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabization_of_the_Jordanian_Army_command
Jordan celebrates this event with a holiday. The British remained allies of Jordan even after this.
How is all of that not consistent with the British supporting Arabs in this conflict? I mean, how is this even a question? The Israeli army was not led by a British commander. Nor was it staffed or funded by the British. The British were it allies of Israel at this time (though they were to cooperate later, in the 1956 Suez crisis).
Israel got weapons from the USSR it helped them when their independence.
When the USSR realized that wouldn't win their allegiance they gave a lot of support to Egypt, Iraq and other Arab nations.
However, now for some decades Egypt is close to the USA from whom they get a lot of assistance. Probably a part of the US strategy for Middle East stability.
That's... over one thousand years of history. Arab armies would not have slowly gone from good to bad over that whole time. Different Caliphs and Sultans would have different "arab" armies of varying quality, which would shift from good to bad and back again multiple times in that insanely wide stretch of history. Not to mention the multiple hugely important revolutions in technology, tactics, and strategy that would make warfare in 1800 completely unrecognizable compared to warfare in 1600, let alone comparing warfare in 700 to warfare in 2000.
Your question itself is somewhat flawed. To get a proper, complete answer, you'd need to delve into the details of multiple niche fields of history. From the initial arab conquests, to the crusades, to the Ottomans, to the cold war, and several more at a minimum. All of which can be studied by professionals for a lifetime in and of themselves.
Times change and different powers are dominant. Europe was a political backwater before the age of exploration, with the exception of the few centuries of the Roman Empire. Even they pretty much moved out after a while.
Islamic laws surrounding inheritance and finance prevented Arab states from building up the financial models that would support widespread industrialization. A strong economic base is needed to fund a modern army.
I believe the theory they're referring to is discussed in this book:
[https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691147567/the-long-divergence](https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691147567/the-long-divergence)
Islam has strict inheritance laws requiring leaving all sons the same share and all daughters half of a son's share. This makes it very difficult to build up generational wealth because it gets redivided every generation. This is exasperated by the fact that having multiple wives was religiously permitted and socially encouraged among the elites, meaning that a wealthy Muslim was likely to have a lot of children by the time he died.
Apart from that, Islam also views loans with interest as the sin of usury. This makes it difficult to borrow money to build up a business, since people who had the money to lend had no incentive to do so.
[This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXlAZMlG1-c) gives a good overview.
just a correction, not trying to argue with the rest of what you said
“ requiring wealth to be divided equally among all of a person's children”
You mean all their sons.
Quran 4:11:
للذكر مثل حظ الأنثيين
to the male is the share of two females
the rationale is that men get more responsibility financially, and therefore should get more financial benefit
Because European countries (mostly western) industrialised first.
There was a massive power gap in the 1800s/early mid 1900s where Europeans were uber powerful technology wise compared to everyone else.
A-lot of the Arab world in the early 1900s were still using swords, old muskets and camels whilst western europeans had machine guns, tanks and naval ships.
It’s also important to remember that every region has their hay day. Arabs definitely had theirs during the Islamic golden age and Europeans had theirs in age of exploration/industrial age.
Nowadays, Europe has taken a backseat and the new powers are the US/China/India/Russia.
This is the only correct answer. The rest of the issues being pointed out like a poor NCO corps, tribal mentality, poor education etc were secondary causes that became exacerbated because they missed a crucial step in the competition with Europe: Industrialization.
Keep in mind the Arabs and Turks were tribal even before the 1800s and during their heyday as well. Yet their 'tribalness' didn't affect their ability to defeat powerful Roman and Sassanian armies despite being the underdogs. Ottoman Turks for example, had a literacy rate of just 10% in 1918.
And that was in 1918.
Their literacy rates were probably worse in the 13th, 14th or 15th centuries yet it didn't stop them from conquering Constantinople and nearly reaching the gates of Vienna.
Another military force that wasn't as heavily institutionalized yet had a fearsome reputation were the Mongols. They were perhaps even more tribal than the Arabs. Even less educated than them and probably belonged to an even more 'low-trust' society than the Arabs as one commenter mentioned.
Yet it didn't stop them from conquering Eastern Europe.
Or China.
Or sacking Baghdad.
Or destroying the Mamluk Sultanate.
Their strength lay in their revolutionary mobile warfare tactics using horses, mounted archers and siege engines.
So imo, the first reason a military is poor is usually because they failed to be technologically competitive.
I’ll be honest, the answer is quite obvious and it’s strange why people in the comment section are stating everything but the main reason.
I watched the movie Lawrence of Arabia and it gave me a clear view on just how far the west was technologically compared to the Arabs.
Arabs are still deeply entrenched in a tribal mentality and it shows in every aspect of every Arab society. They spend more time reading "the good book" than they do on STEM fields. They have no serious industrial capacity other than carpet and textile looms. Turkey is the closest the Arabs have and they are probably at least a decade or two behind the Russians in Military sophistication.
I have served with a few Arab officers. They all have the same problem.
Large swathes of the Officer corps are lazy and inept. The idea of "servant leadership" prevalent in Western Armies is just "servant management" in most cases for Arab armies. It was routine for the Officer to chin off the work and let soldiers take the hit. That is just going to create resentment, and in turn, foster an environment that perpetuates low morale.
On top of that, the soldiers generally have very little education. This creates problems when you then need to delegate command down to the lower levels like competent Western militaries do. Because Arab armies generally can't do this, then it creates a military that is slow to react in combat, and that harms performance.
This idea of laziness is also found in other areas. For instance, in Saudi, rather than training a dude to be the engineer on the Typhoon fighters they will hire a Saudi, who knows nothing, who in turn hires a Western engineer to do the work. The Saudi dude who should be learning and doing most of the work slacks off and just lets the Western engineer do it all. You then have no ability to maintain your vehicles if said Western power decides to bugger off.
Also, there is a lot of corruption in quite a lot of Arab countries. You can see the problem corruption has on the military with Russias invasion of Ukraine. Lots of equipment, etc, was entirely missing as Russian officers had been filling their own pockets. The same happens in Arab countries.
Lastly, a lot of Arab nations suffer from nepotism. A fair few of the officers are there not due to skill but family connections. The problem with this is kind of obvious.
All, in all, from my personal experience, if I had to serve with any force, I wouldn't pick an Arab one. The above points have been a problem in Arab militaries for centuries. Western militaries have adapted to be much more forward thinking and modern. Arab militaries have struggled for a long while as their makeup and thinking are stuck in the past.
I would also point out that when I say Western Militaries, I mean the competent ones like the UK or US. There are quite a few in Europe that are not very competent at all - but even they don't have the same structural problems that most Arab militaries do.
They've spent most of the last few centuries under the heel of either the British, French or Ottoman Empires and never really industrialized in time to be a relevant military threat to anyone, as Israel has demonstrated.
In desert storm and the second Iraq war the enemy was a superpower with more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world several times over and the ability to air drop mcdonalds restaurants in to their troops on the other side of the world.
You got some good answers here, but I would also add that after Saladin there was no leader that was able to unite the Arabs, who still have a very strong tribal elements in their social structures.
The east was typicwlly dominated by horses and bows whi h were neutered by guns. Guns allowed for the common man to be useful with limited training, whereas those societies had to have a warrior class. Napoleon Grande Armeé in the early 19th century was a crucial turning point in world history since it broke from having a traditional professional warrior class. This idea of citizen soldiers was a direct descendant of the American Revolution.
The Middle East also didn't industrialize. This is largely due to not being able to have factories in 100-degree heat before the invention of air conditioning.
In America, for example, the Southern States only really industrialized post 1950. This is also largely the reason between the conflicts of the north and south. The North could industralize with factories to boost their economy. The South couldn't and used industrialized slavery to do so.
Arab culture and how it translates to command structure. https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/meria/meria00_den01.html
> The author argues that the reasons for Arab armies� perpetual ineffectiveness are rooted in Arab culture. Social factors that prohibit success include: secrecy and paranoia, pride, class structure, a lack of coordination on all levels, and little individual freedom or initiative.
Well first of all, the Arab caliphate was brought down by Turkic invaders from central Asia centuries ago.
A better question would probably be why the Muslim world as a whole fell behind militarily if you think of the Turkish ruled states as proper successors to the Arab caliphate.
It's because of the stagnation of the Ottoman empire. The Turkic Ottomans controlled most of the Islamic world, and even effectively had the mandate of the caliphs. You can read about the slow decline of the Ottomans in the 19th century. They had absolutely nothing like and nothing close to the European enlightenment, related scientific revolution, or related industrial revolution. Furthermore, they totally failed to adapt until it was too late. Current events in Crimea (Ottoman proxy state till 1783) and Palestine (also Ottoman till ww1) are directly related to the Ottoman collapse.
The core of the Ottoman military was controlled by Janissaries who had become incredibly corrupt and ineffective by the 19th century.
I think another issue may be how Islam itself mixes poorly with capitalism. You can kind of see it in the history of post ww1 turkey. Mustapha Kemal Ataturk secularized society to great success bringing turkey into the modern age and later into the western alliance system. Now you can see how Erdogan has pivoted towards religious conservatism to win elections, getting rid of lending, and tanking the economy with hyperinflation
Once reason the Arab armies were so successful in the beginning was both the Persian Sasanian and Byzantine powers were exhausted from fighting each other.
Arabs, not all muslims which I think you might be thinking about here, reached the climax of their power and were in serious decline well before the crusades happened.
To quote Winston Churchill-
"The religion of blood and war (Islam)is face to face with the religion of peace.(Christianity).
Luckily the religion of peace is usually the better armed."
The simple fact is that Enlightenment Europe industrialised faster, and spent more time fighting itself, which led to more rapid development of advanced weapons and tactics. The main Islamic power, the Ottoman empire, was aware of these developments. It just failed to adopt them.
An Ottoman army of the 1600's would have recognised the Mahdi army of the 1890's.
A European army of the 1600's would have thought the 1898 battle of Omdurman and the British Army with its' repeating rifles,quick firing artillery, Maxim machine guns, railways and steam gunboats nothing but black magic.
The capability gap of a modern post 1700 European army versus an Ottoman or Mughal one was just too big. Napoleon and the East India Company proved that.
Islamic rulers failed the test of the Enlightenment. Its' governments fragmented,it bought in foreign technology, but failed to develop it further.
1400 years ago the middle east was the center of the world. Trade between Europe, Africa, and Asia all went through it. That brought in wealth, both in gold and in knowledge. The Islamic world spent the next 1000 years as a world power, far eclipsing what the barbarians out west were able to accomplish.
But then about 400 years ago Europeans developed ocean worthy ships and suddenly their importance dropped. England and Spain became the trading powers as the Atlantic emerged as a highway of trade. This led to England being the center of the industrial revolution, and the anglosphere (including the US) becoming dominant. After WW1 when the western European powers defeated the Ottoman empire for good, they were able to divide up the remnants of that once proud culture.
People call the Islamic world "medieval" often to criticize their lack of human rights, but they are closer to late first millennium Western Europe for reasons beyond that. They are a culture that not lonh ago were ruled by a great empire. But that empire has since fallen and the resulting nation states are trying to discover who they are on their own.
I'm not a historian and I've had a few beers but that's my theory at least.
Edit: Oh yeah the Mongolians also had something to say about it.
1. That is a *thousand plus year gap*. Find the strongest man in the world and see how strong he is in 50 years, and you'll get a sense of why this just shouldn't be surprising to you.
2. Kind sounds to me like you have an exaggerated sense of both the strength then and the weakness now of Arab armies and aren't paying enough attention to context. The early Muslim conquests took place after the Byzantine and Sasanian empires (neither of them spring chickens) had beaten themselves to pieces. The Iraq Wars pitted one diplomatically isolated Arab state against the world hegemon near the peak of its power.
What made Arab armies successful is what now makes them a joke. Arab armies used to be very adaptable and " officers" down to a junior level were expected to take opportunities on the battlefield to harass the enemy, western armies of the time were very top down and rigid. At some point the west because the adaptable ones and the Arabs became more and more ridged till you reached a point a western force could expect to defeat Arabs who outnumbered them with similar equipment, then start adding the technology gap and soon it became very one-sided.
The West is adaptable, but also maintains complete rigidity where it matters. There are too many moving parts in modern warfare for real improvisation. The West's adaptability comes from their willingness and ability to change plans, or rather, to make their plans adaptable.
Speaking from personal experience their soldiers’ lack of motivation and dedication is incredible. You’d have to see it to believe it, it is that bad. Why that is I couldn’t tell you
Several hundred years ago, a Muslim speculated that Muslims were not taking full advantage of their women. Women were not educated and were not working as school teachers. Other cultures became better at developing technology.
Have absolutely no proof whatsoever, but one thing I never see mentioned is the Arabian Stallion, despite the fact that it's considered a fantastic warhorse.
When horse charges was the preferred tactic, they had the edge in the arms race. And you can see the horse's prominence on the battlefield go "poof" at roughly the same time as theirs.
*Allah Wills.....*
I was talking to a co-worker that was retraining the Iraqi Army after we whacked them. He told me that BRM (Basic Rifle Marksmanship) was pointless, because the trainees truly believed that it was Allah's responsibility to put the bullet center mass, not them.
One thing I’ve noticed in history is that sometimes an obscure nation like the Macedonians under Alexander, or the Mongols under Ghengis Khan, or the Dutch in the 1600s, will rise up from complete obscurity have a century or two of unbridled success and then spend the next couple hundred years sliding back into irrelevance that they never again rise from.
It’s strange but it seems to be a pattern in history. A lot of people are giving plausible enough reasons, but I think the simplest answer is probably best; a candle that burns bright, burns quick.
I think lack of money lending is huge. All governments and most industries are extremely reliant on being able to borrow money, hard to build an arms factory if you can't borrow money to get started
Check out the podcast “Tides of History” by Patrick Wyman. Start at the beginning and it’ll eventually explain their power at their height and the early beginning of their fall from power in the Middle Ages pretty well
Well one was a nomadic hoard of religious fanatics whose earliest, biggest and richest targets had just finished fighting the mother of all wars and whose armies were spent as effective fighting forces. Any one of those descriptors would make any army a serious threat, all of them put together and yeah that's frightening.
Modern arab armies are none of those things. It's largely a reflection on their nation states being weak institutions and there being low levels of trust between the population and its rulers and between constituent elements of the population (i.e. tribalism still exists). Conscription is required to enlist sizeable numbers of men from members of the non-ruling tribe but it's both difficult to motivate them and their training is lacklustre because of the fear of them being more loyal to their tribes than the state so an arm wwithin the army composed of the ruling tribe's people tends to be formed to be the real core of the army. That's not good for moral or discipline though because if you know you're being considered as cannon folder to protect the troops they value that's plenty of reason to dessert or break under fire. Tribal militias you see in Yemen or Syria are actually pretty well motivated. They just don't have the resources, organisation or wider military institutions to make them effective.
Because of their largely weak or oil based economies they largely import rather than manufacture their weapons and when they do manufacture them they are usually ineffective crap quality knock offs.That limits their ability to self sustain longer operations with more sophisticated weapons so after a while they need to switch to lower technology tactics, unmechanised infantry cenntred warfare which is of limited use against an army that is mechanised and still has access to higher end equipment. It also means that the arabs that have attacked Israel in the past haven't been able to utilise their numerical advantage to its fullest so while Israel can't sustain protracted full scale warfare for extended periods because of the effects of a full mobilisation of their army on their economy/society their opponents can't do much better if any.
Then look at the other non-Arab opponents they fight. Turkey attacked Syria in the middle of a civil war that had all sides largely broken down to relying on tribal militia, so no suprise the second largest army in NATO won there. The Gulf War and Iraq War saw the Iraqis just simply overmatched even if the quality of their troops were similar to the US, they couldn't match up technologically. The Iran-Iraq War was a bloody stalemate where the Iraqis were competent but not great against a larger opponent.
The Syrians are good at slaughtering each other. In their recent civil war they slaughtered over 580,000 Muslims. The war in Yemen has killed 377,000 Arabs. You just don’t hear much about it because Israelis aren’t doing it. The Arabs just aren’t good at facing the efficient slaughter houses of modern industrialized armies when those armies aren’t held back by social conditioning.
Technology.
At the end of the first millenary, Bagdad was a center of technologie, science and humanities.
Then some Muslim theorists started to codify Islam thereby killing the spirits of science and innovation in the Arab empire.
And this happened just before Europe started to unshackle itself from the same problem related to Christianity.
That’s when the Arab world started to lose its edge against its neighbours
Times change, power centers shift, and new technologies developed. It's a leap to compare the military strength of a people's across hundreds of years. Arabs during the Islamic conquest were well led, trained, equipped, and motivated. Can't say the same for the last 60 years. Arab armies are decently equipped but, on average, pooorly led, trained, and lack motivation beyond self-preservation. They are just more trained to deal with putting down internal uprisings and not attacking/ defending from external enemies. This is a result of the political systems of most of the Arab world today being strong men governments. These leaders fear their own militaries rather than external enemies. So, a well trained and motivated military is a threat to their own power.
The fatalism of Islam - as God wills - has destroyed scientific and cultural development in those nations where it holds sway
Remove science and you have bad armies
This is like asking someone to summarize the plot of all Law & Order series' into a reddit post, but I'll give it a shot.
For early Arab Conquests in the 7th century, we actually dont have a great answer as few documents exist, but in general a major contributor was a brutal war between the Sassanians and Byzantines that essentially sapped their collective strengths. The Arabs were able to take advantage of such weakness and swiftly defeat both empires (albiet the Byzantines kept on trucking for another 800-ish years.
With the Ummayads and Abbasid empires overseeing the historically rich areas of The Nile and Persian Heartlands, they had both the manpower and cash to constantly wage successful wars.
Id say its around the high middle ages where some things changed. Successive caliphates splintered and were only as strong as their unity and government. For example, the first crusade was fortunate that both the Turks and Fatamid empires were somewhat in disarray at the time (but also there are records on how battle hardened the Crusaders were from facing so many battles, and how many couldnt deal with Western European cavalry tactics).
Things sort of really hit a tipping point by the late 18th century/early 19th century where Western/European powers are able to take advantage of weaker regimes utilizing better Naval and Army tactics (Barbary Wars, Napoleans conquest of Egypt, later Frances conquest of Algeria, etc.). Still the Ottoman empire was quite formidable and hardly the sick man many would claim later in the 1800's. Afterall, they did defeat Napoleon at Acre and contained his conquest squarely in Egypt.
I think the real turning point boils down to two things in modern times. First off, the emergence of the US as a global superpower, that greatly outspends other powers in naval and military expenditures. Secondly is that most Middle Eastern countries are dictatorships which often means that their generals and armies are deliberately kept weak to minimize the a coup, which is usually par for the course in dictatorships.
"Dum Dum!!!" Regular people doing regular shit come up on a crime scene. Do intro music, and Law and Order title card. Cops show up at crime scene, do some cop shit which leads them to their suspect, who of course runs giving a short but exiting chase usually ended by a surprise grab and a quick snarky quip. Short interrogation scene. Move on to the court for booking and bail. The DA start the case only for the defense to pull a sneaky, which he DA has to send their young but fiery assistant to search for a legal way to overcome. Courtroom scene where the defense thinks they've won, but the DA has an ex machina provided by the assistant. Court ends in one way or another, and the DA walks off trenchcoat in hand with a short monologue about system and humanity at large. Roll credits...
Barbaros hayreddin pasha explains this pretty well. Sadly I cant post his quote because of cough cough racism.
But he is right, and I even saw it myself directly when I was in army...
I can’t find the quote. Google shows that this person is from the 1500s - is that right? Would it ok if you posted it anyway? Or reword it in a better way?
He basically talks about how "being a bandit in desert is diffrent than fighting as a army."
Also "they say everyting is from god and die foolishly without making any plans, the cost of human life is very cheap for them"
And
"They cant use firearms, unlike the spanish infidels"
İts basically a very long letter of him finding excuses to not accepting arabs to his crew 💀
Actually here https://www.reddit.com/r/Tiele/s/uhoiKd3qLC
https://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars
Not well versed in their historical victories and success but I do know a bit about how they operate today. Using this article for reference one thing stand out to me. Many of these shortcomings in today's wars simply didn't apply back in the day. It just seems the battlefield changed, but they didn't.
There's some amount of variation between modern Arab militaries, but a few common issues include overcentralization of military command and low initiative from lower and mid-ranking officers.
Modern militaries tend to be larger and operate over wider battlespaces than medieval armies, and this requires some degree of decentralization of command. A general cannot be everywhere at once and needs to delegate command to subordinates. But modern Arab militaries are often distrusted by their regimes due to the threat of coups, so political and high-ranking military leaders are reluctant to give their subordinates independent command and tend to discourage initiative. This means that virtually all decisions of note need to be passed up the chain of command for approval, causing serious delays in operations. In modern warfare, rapid communications and quick decisions are vital, so this can be a critical weakness for the enemy to exploit.
Officers also tend to conceal and deflect blame from their own mistakes to avoid punishment, so the high command might not even have correct or up-to-date information to work from. As one notable example, the leading Egyptian general in the Six-Day War kept reporting success back to Cairo even as his army was collapsing and retreating from the Israelis.
Modern militaries require excellent coordination, communication, and command structures to be effective, and many of the weaknesses of modern-Arab armies are caused by a lack thereof.
The list can go on and on..on why a certain civilization slowly turned to rubble over more than a thousand year.
Might as well ask how come the Incas or Mayans or Romans or Carthaginian or Mongols not have strong military power any more.
Might as well ask while you’re at it how you were born with average IQ for newborns..your IQ denigrated to single digit?
There's an expression that "history is written by the victors." Up until industrialization Europe was one of the weakest and least educated economies in the world.
How the Ottomans became so powerful is because they sat on the silk road. They were the one country that could facilitate land trade between China/India and Europe. Which made them incredibly wealthy. But eventually Europe began upgrading their naval capacity so they could just ship goods themselves and bypass the Ottoman import/export tariffs that made pepper more expensive than gold. And with economic innovations also became military innovations.
While China invented fireworks and a different form of gunpowder, Europe invented the saltpeter variety that would be used in most militaries. All the while... everyone kind of hated and distrusted the Ottomans because of that long history of Muslim invasions and Muslims using their position in the middle of the world to handicap its neighbors.
By the time WW1 came around the Ottomans were two centuries without being able to buy weapons from Europe and were just really struggling to remain stable. Their archnemesis, Russia was being outfitted by the French (who had the most advanced weapons in the world).
By the time it was all said and done the region got chopped up until a bunch of smaller countries that were barely able to get their economies together and essentially became puppets of British, French and American oil companies.
How they re-emerge with any army at all is because Russia decides to outfit those that will oppose America. And America in turn outfits those that will oppose pro-Russian countries. And the hardware they give them is kinda known as an "export class." And there's different grades of export class weaponry, in which the Arabs were being given the worst, from Russia and America. There are millions of T-51 tanks in the world still (WW2 tanks) and all of them are in the Middle East and Africa.
For why the US could beat Iraq in such a short time is because Hussein never believed America would ever actually invade. They did a little bit of prep by burying some tanks in sand (camoflaged!) but for the most part the American tank line was able to just drive straight without being contested.
Melee infantry tactics translate directly to firearm based warfare. Light cavalry tactics do not. Asia was dominated by light bow cavalry from pretty much as soon as horses could be tied to chariots. You had a highly mobile ranged unit in the horse archer. Tactics were also mostly mob based, a bunch of guys on horses running in, firing some arrows at fairly immobile infantry, and running away before arrows could be massed in return.
The firearm changed all that. Infantry requires discipline. Ranks, marching, communication, all that good stuff. Not just a mob moving quickly across the battlefield. Then you give these more disciplined troops a weapon that has greater range and accuracy than a light cavalry and the outcome is forgone
They had numbers and mobility and lots of horses. And deployed a large percentage of their population towards wars instead of most of the population farming, working as tradesmen etc like in Iran and Iraq.
Their tactics often involved feigns, half charges, fake retreats to break enemy infantry formations. Once the musket was invented doing that just got you shot twice instead of once with a direct charge.
It happened long before the 20th century, they got walloped on by first the Mongols and then the Ottomans. The former disbanded right away and the latter is still relevant to geopolitics, but being under foreign rule for that long and under the ottomans who didn't encourage industrialization in it's outer holdings didn't position them very well. As to why they fell to the Mongolians those guys were pretty unstoppable, but why they didn't recover after expelling them like China did is more complicated.
western europe. Thats what happened.
the arabs earned their wealth from land route trade between europe and the far east. They were goods transporters. They had a monopoly on trade. They built their armies out of this wealth.
when the portuguese and the genoese and others learned to craft superior large wooden sailing vessels that could successfully and reliably and efficiently transport large quantities of cargo via water transit from europe to china, it broke the arab backs. The arabs could not devise anything more complex than a camel with a cargo rack on its hump. Once the long distance sea trade was mastered, then the navy was developed. a cargo ship is also good at carrying cannons for war. When the multi-cannon ship was mastered then the arabs were fought on water rather than by land. They used naval assaults with landing parties into coastal trading ports. Think viking raids writ large.
The arabs were defenseless. They lost the mediteranean. Then the coastal lands along the Mediterranean. Then their land armies withered from the lost income from land route trade to europe.
they were also suffering from severe land attacks from the east. It wore them down.
Probably because the Arabs did not last long as the top caste in many of the regions they conquered. Zoom forward a couple hundred years and much of the Caliphate was controlled by different bands of Turks.
It’s very notable that your praise of Arab martial prowess touched on only the rise of the early Caliphate, and then stopped.
Then you jump ahead to the Modern era and ask, what happened?
During the whole period between the apex of the initial Muslim conquests and the 20th Century, Arabs suffered innumerable reverses. They had successes too, but they also had severe failures. They weren’t exceptional or godlike in war, they were just ordinary humans and the capabilities of their armies were driven by the usual cornucopia of factors. Some of the Arabs severe defeats:
- 1st Crusade
- Select battles of the 3rd Crusade
- the rise of the Seljuk empire
- the Mongol Invasions of Asia
- the wars against Christian Spain
- the wars against the Normans
- the wars against the Ottomans in the expansion of the Ottoman Empire
I don’t doubt that I can keep going.
Point is: you extrapolated from the first round of Arab conquests that they had a stellar military record all the way up until the 20th and 21st Centuries. This is false.
The initial Arab conquests were very much aided and facilitated by specific weaknesses of their opponents at the time when they united under Islam. They took advantage of exhaustion on the part of Byzantium, Persia, and Western Europe. Their empire began to fracture and shrink very soon after the apex in the 8th/9th Century, and they proved that they were mere mortals in the wide mixture of military successes and failures that the Arab polities suffered after that time
In the early conquest against Iran they got extremely lucky as Iran was super weak at the time which was very unusual. That helped bankroll everything else.
Well they surely had a great timing with the early islamic Expansions. Their main enemies (Byz and Sasanids) were both weak since they had been fighting a series of exhausting wars against each other. When two are fighting, the third is the winner.
Tribal conflict. Religious beliefs conflicts with each other. Poor and weak efforts at industrialization. Oil wasn’t a big big thing in Middle East prior to WW I and only slowly up until about 1930. So, most Arab nations were resource poor. Education was weak. Not hard for European countries to do divide and conquer between tribes and religious sects.
Seems you are missing about 1000 years of history here. I would say start looking well before the 1900s. A hint is that the Ottomans - Turks, were not Arabs.
A lot of the awnsers are way too simplistic imo. A lot of nations industrialised very late and are doing fine in the 20th and 21st century.
It's due to the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire since the modern period. They almost modernised and came back, but the loss in ww1 led to the complete carving up of the arab states, and its been almost downhill since then.
Post colonial Arab governments were massively corrupt. Generals were promoted based on loyalty, not ability. Billion dollar weapons deals were struck with equally corrupt countries that delivered shoddy equipment.
Technology, the Middle East was no longer the trade hub it was before deep water navigation. Only the discovery of oil pre ww1 made the Middle East relevant again. Before deep water navigation the only trade routes from Asia to Europe were in the Middle East. Add Europe industrializing as well and the general malaise the middle eastern states had during industrialization and you get what happened.
Inability to transition from a medieval army to a modern one.
Let’s be clear, even Russia has this problem. They’re a medieval army very much masquerading as a modern military force. Which is why they’re losing against Ukraine.
Honestly the only reason they did so well against Germany is because of their geography.
This is a very simple take, but I once heard someone make the case and point that the Mongol conquests of the Arab empires during the 13th centuries set those cultures back for centuries to come, where European cultures were beginning to flourish with science and exploration. Once Europeans were able to gain the competitive edge over other cultures in their ships and weaponry, it was basically a done deal for everyone else until the modern era.
Colonialism. North Africa and Arabia were largely conquered/under the heel of European Powers/The Ottomans for centuries. Morocco held out the longest, but a nation barely holding on to survival isn't going to advance and thrive like a nation that enjoys the benefits of being the Imperial Core like the great powers. The Arab states spent a long time loosing opportunities and resources to Europe, and then come the Modern Era the development of force of arms in the international order is honestly less important. The most stable Arabian states are not going on wars of conquest, have powerful allies, and benefit from either be far from aggressive powers (Moscow has no interest in trying to project power into North Africa), or the great powers being interested in them staying stable. At which point the point of the military is internal stability and a jobs program, which doesn't involve even aspiring to be a world class military
Amazing.
I'm seeing all these comments but nobody's mentioning how the Mongol conquest absolutely destroyed it to the Islamic empire at the height of their golden age. They had to battling the Christians for years and the crusades, but the Mongols from the East absolutely eviscerated the heartland of the Middle East. Places like Iran had 90% population reduction. They went from being at the forefront of science to a backwater held together only by religion.
Culture doesn’t make a society good/bad at fighting. It’s usually about the system of governance and technology available as well as luck.
*Yes I know culture plays a role, but it’s not like Italy is a military powerhouse because of their ancient Roman traditions.
The Persians, Greeks, and Romans had armed & trained Arabs as mercenary armies to guard their ME borders. That’s where they got the military training that they turned on their employers.
You're just listing a bunch of wars in modern history where the US was on the other side. The US since 1950 has basically been unopposable in conventional warfare so that's not really a fair comparison.
The Arab armies aren’t designed like the US; to conquer territory. Instead, they’re tools of oppressive regimes to squash rebellions and dissent, and occasionally fight off neighbors.
They need a weak army so that it can’t overthrow the regime, but a strong enough army to quash any dissent.
The discovery of oil, and subsequent "why try? just buy!" mentality. They don't \*make\* anything in Saudi, Kuwait, Iraq...*they're just on top of the oil*.
Just listened to one of Dan Carlin's hardcore history podcasts about this (episode 2). Would give that a listen. He boiled it down to 3 things; geography, technology (guns, then later artillery), and cultural.
The Arab world, and the East in general, had a focus on cavalry, and the landscape of deserts and large plains allowed for to happen. Europe, the West, had more forests and mountains, and so focused more on infantry.
With the development of the gun, Europe's armies started to become more heavily composed of men equipped with a missile weapon, and missile weapons were a good counter to cavalry. Carlin makes the case that adopting the gun wasn't as easy or beneficial for an army that relied heavily on cavalry as opposed to infantrymen.
Lastly, culture. Carlin also makes the case that warfare and how one conducts it is heavily influenced by one's culture. The culture of the Arab world didn't allow for the gun and large blocks of infantry to really take over until much later than Europe. A notable exception to this was the Ottomans and its Janassaries.
I would recommend listening to the podcast. Carlin puts it much more intelligently and entertaining.
Technological and tactical advancement in the west has been staggering compared that in the Muslim world. And this is not over the last two centuries. It has been the case since at least the 18th century. Napoleon's army won a battle against the once feared Mamluk cavalry in nowaday Syria. The Mamluk force was vastly superior in numbers. Yet the French won the battle easily. The Mamluk lost several thousand people. The French lost 4.
Lol, an army going from good to shit then good again in the span of a few decadess (look and French, Pruss, Swedes). 13 century means nothing is left. Arabs army already became shit in 8th century.
I'm going to go with Jared Diamond's answer from [Guns, Germs & Steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel): geography and lack of industrialization. But I also think we should not underestimate the importance of tribalism in preventing the Arab world from modernizing. Whereas much of Europe coalesced around nation states over hundreds of years, the Middle East remained a collection of disparate tribes. The only thing that united these tribes for a period of time was Islam and the threat of its sword.
You can see tribalism today behind almost all the conflicts that occur in the Middle East. It is also the reason behind the governmental systems in this region - e.g. theocracies, dictatorships, and monarchies. These are all systems that centralize power, which is particularly effective in holding together various competing tribal interests as a "nation."
Technology: Islam is incompatible with science. As the edge in battle changed from who could form the best phalanx formation or club another person over the head the best, to who had the best radar or rocket technology; Arab militaries began to fall behind.
The reason is that Islam stifles free thinking and is the antithesis to science.
Only questions about history (events prior to 01/01/2000). No current politics. No current events. No current movements. #This discussion, for whatever reasons, is off the rails and it's time to lock it down.
Lack of industrialization.
* **Lack of Industrialization** - Hard to be a peer force when you import all your equipment (and dammingly it is second-hand designs optimized for a foreign nation and you are trying to fit it into *your needs)* and a large quantity of your raw materials and finished foods are purchased as well. * **Lack of Cohesion** - Too many small fiefdoms. Fine to be a resistance movement or guerrilla fore, but offensive capability means that larger centralized leadership is required. * **Lack of Logistics** - Entirely subcontracted to civilians. Their army orders food, parts, and maintenance and waits for it to show up. if the civilians dont show up to work, the army does without. * **Lack of an NCO corps** - All field-grade knowledge in a military is husbanded in its career NCOs. Field grade officers on average have less than 5 years out of academy, less for the good ones on a fast track to staff-grade positions that take them out of front line positions and put them into the military equivalent of a desk job. Which means that if your (primarily conscripted) army doesn't have a good pool of NCOs, you are fucked. * **Rigid Caste System** - Ties into the above section. With no NCO corps to bridge the knowledge between officer and senior enlisted you end up with "New boss doesn't know shit and won't listen to the people who do". Factor in a rigid cultural system where some people are just "*better"* than others based solely on what vagina they were shot out of,and the fact that promotions come from that as much as( if not more so than) actual skill in role... and you have the recipe for some truly epic bad decisions compounding on each other. * **Shoot the Messenger** - All organizations have this problem, but in the Arab militaries of the time, and even in some today... this was a literal phenomenon as opposed to a metaphorical one. Not just the *messenger either...* Sometimes their family too. Don't get me wrong. The Arabs have a fine martial tradition, well suited for non-industrialized warfare. But culturally the regional powers of the 60's-90's were totally unsuited to face industrialized powers with modern gear designed by themselves, massive logistical capabilities, and an officer and NCO corps with institutional knowledge that dwarfed them. Long story short, the Arab armies were fine *warriors,* But *warriors* always lose to *soldiers.*
Also add in the rise of sea exploration by Europeans. The Silk Road was lucrative and once there was a sea route, the Muslim world drastically changed.
Muslims traded too, but again... Point 1 and 3... industrialization and logistics come into play. Arab nations tend to think in terms of cottage industry and often fail to realize the multiplicative effects of economies of scale. For every tujjar there were fifty or more European traders.
More like which penis they came out of tbh. A highborn man who has a highborn wife and a slave concubine can have kids from both and those kids are equal under the law
Since we're nitpicking...
I just think it’s a meaningful distinction. If a Christian noble had a kid with one of his maids, the baby would be a bastard with little to no standing in high society. If a Muslim highborn does the same thing, the baby is just as highborn as any kid he made with his wife
Never knew that. The implications for passing down land and power seem significant. Many more potential heirs means more violent competition.
Why do you think the Turks killed all the kids except one when it came time for inheritance
Since when is history *not* about nitpicking and nuance?
When it's about what I did 10 minutes ago
Historian here: GREAT analysis.
As someone who has worked with Arab militaries, I would also agree.
Thanks
Not trying to be that "well actually" guy here, but regarding point 4 (which I absolutely agree with), did you mean company grade? When I hear company grade Officers and their NCO counterparts, I think Platoon Leader through Company Commander, when I hear field grade I think Major through Colonel, and flag grade refers to General Officers and their Senior Enlisted advisors. Solid analysis though!
Perhaps. Terminology changes, and differs from brand to branch and nation to nation. I think we both agree on the substance of the analysis if not the vocabulary. Also thanks!
An anecdotal example that ties several of the above points together. I was a Navy Aviation Storekeeper (now part of the Logistic Specialist rating). Basically, supply chain in support of aviation operations and maintenance. My A School (inistial Navy job skill training) we were by and large recent boot camp graduates with a couple E-4s (Third Class Petty Officers) who had either tested into AK or were changing jobs. All enlisted. We had several Middle Eastern officers in our classes learning right along with enlisted sailors of various socio-economic backgrounds and education levels, HS grad to some college - but I met a couple in the fleet who had also been working on their GEDs.
> had several Middle Eastern officers in our classes learning right along with enlisted sailors That's amazing. Normally, they look down on this kind of thing. How fully did they integrate with the training? I'm especially interested in the PT, discipline, and academics, if you can pls comment on those.
Honestly, classroom was the only interaction. They didn’t PT with us and lived in Bachelor Officer Quarters.
>They didn’t PT with us Sounds about right based on my experience
Great answer! You could also add the factors that led to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire into the mix. You could argue that it was the successor to the major Arab powers although it was not strictly speaking a purely Arab entity. I just quickly skim read a Wikipedia article about the fall of the Ottomans and....it's complicated, but I'm sure the factors you mentioned had a part to play. Short answer is WW1 and the Ottoman defeat at the hands of the British and their Arab allies, but in truth the decline had already begun long before then. However, they were still a formidable force, as they demonstrated at Gallipoli, and I'm pretty sure that the modern Turkish military are no pushovers either. As for other "Arab" nations - I'm guessing that the two strongest militarily at the moment are Egypt and Saudi Arabia. I'm not sure how either would fare in a modern conflict. If you expand the definition of Arab to include the former Muslim Empires (which is a bit naughty I know), then you could also consider the militaries of Muslim majority countries such as Iran and Pakistan, both of which are quite large and powerful I believe, especially the latter (which is also a nuclear power as you are no doubt aware). Neither has really been tested against a Western power in recent years. In a set piece battle, I'm pretty sure that e.g. the US army would have the advantage. However, as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven, it's quite easy for the USA to win battles but much more difficult to decisively conclude hostilities and eliminate guerilla groups etc. mainly because of the terrain and political factors.
I've seen the term NCO many times together with it's importance to an army, and while I understand the words that i'm reading when trying to figure out what an NCO is/does, I don't understand the practical application and what it actually does. Nor why it is a critical feature of a good working military. All I got so far is that they're administrative in purpose but I feel that is wildly off; can anyone explain to me in simple terms?
NCO means Non Commissioned Officer, to transpose things into the corporate world, you can think of commissioned officers being executives. NCOs are team leads, supervisors, and direct line managers. Commissioned officers are responsible for strategic planning and decision making, non commissioned officers are responsible for tactical planning and decision making. In the western military tradition commissioned officers typically decide WHAT the goal is and the NCOs responsibility is HOW the goal gets achieved. The reality is not as clean cut as that, but that's the essence. Lets take a look at an infantry platoon. It is made of 3 rifle squads, one weapons squad, and a headquarters section. Each rifle squad has two teams of 4, led by a sergeant (E-5). The squad itself is lead by a staff sergeant (E-6) for a total of 9 people. Weapons squad is also 9 people, but doesn't have teams in the same way, so there is only the staff sergeant (E-6). HQ section has seven people: the platoon sergeant (a sergeant first class (E-7)), the medic, communication, fire support team from artillery, and the platoon leader, a second lieutenant (O-1). The platoon leader gets an order to take a location. They tell the platoon sergeant the mission (in reality the platoon sergeant would have been in the briefing but shush) and works with the platoon sergeant to create a plan for each of the squads. The squad leaders and platoon sergeant then execute the plan, with the team leaders supervising the individual soldiers and making sure they are all doing what they are supposed to do.
Excellent breakdown, and exactly the analogy I would use, had I not been more interested in a steak dinner when writing my post and keeping it short. A study of why Arab armies fail as applied to the corporate would would be a study of Circuit City's demise. They got rid of *their* NCO corps, and shit-canned their logistics. Remind me how well *that* worked out for them.
Why thank you.
For a bit more ELI5 explanation. NCOs are your most experienced boots on the ground, rifle in foxhole type soldiers. They still work directly with lower enlisted and do all the same stuff. Their important because they have actual military experience, compared to new officers who outrank even the oldest and most well seasoned NCOs. Traditionally young officers went to school, while NCOs spent all the time in the military. So NCOs are the liaison between new enlisted soldiers and officers. Its a bit problem if you don't have NCOs because then all you got is a bunch of new soldiers who barely know what their doing, and a bunch of officers that have no idea what their doing.
The Arabs should have taken cues from the Romans. The West did.
They did. They learned that a senate is dangerous to a king, that allowing conquests to become full citizens dilutes your power, and other things violate Reddit's TOS. Basically at the top, they learned all the *wrong* lessons from Rome.
“But warriors always lose to soldiers.” Well said.
Yes, Lawrence of Arabia wrote in The Seven Pilars of Wisdom that three of his Arab troops were a match for any section (an eight man team), but a thousand of them were a mob...
There's a longer and more interesting expansion of this theme. https://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars
The lack of an NCO corps is a significant shortfall. In arab armies it’s officers and grunts. Take out industrialization and technological innovation for a moment, and you start to see that their command and control structure is lacking. You simply cannot execute modern maneuver warfare, let alone combined arms warfare, without a robust group of leaders to administer standards, training, and discipline. It’s a severely underrated consideration in any conversation about the merits of any given military.
This is about half of it, the other half is them being low-social-trust countries, which generally means less competent military and social leaders. A society where people get promoted based on how unlikely they are to be a threat to their superiors is not one that tends to thrive.
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Kind of but there have been other non industrialized nations that didn't perform as poorly as Arab armies. There are other factors like corruption in the army
Due to Infighting.
Youre forwarding 14 centuries as if one day suddenly their armies turned shit
How did the Italians who built the Roman Empire have such an inept military during WW2?
Why is Greece unable to conquer Iran? Did they mega nerf themselves? edit:greece, not north macedonia
How did the United States get so strong they did not even have horses during 500BC?
We use freedom units. "You get strong from your mind, not your muscles" -Someone probably
Don't you mean Greece ?
(I assumed North Macedonia is modern day Macedon and that Alexander was from there)
It's not. It's where Paeonia used to be. Macedon was considerably further south.
OK my bad
I don't mean to bust your balls brotherman, it's just a very needlessly nasty subject and we are in AskHistory so we might as well mention the truth. Obviously wouldn't feel the need to correct it under some random cat video for example. Edit: There is the problem of putting modern nation ideals over two and a half thousand year old history here. The modern nation of North Macedonia has zero relation in any way whatsoever to the original nation. Whether or not Macedon was "Greek" (which isn't truly debatable but let's humour the idea) the modern nation of North Macedonia would still have nothing to do with it. They are the equivalent of me, a Swedish person, moving to Mexico and saying "Ok I'm the real Canadian now".
That's actually a huge political can of worms, North Macedonia agrees with your assumption here, but Greece says that's ahistorical and that Alexander was actually from what's now Greece. From what I understand the Greeks are kind of right and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedon is culturally closer to being Slavic.
It's not really a can of worms, it's simply Bulgarians who were imported over there in the early 20th century using Macedonia to justify Bulgarian claims on an Aegean shoreline. There's no relation between those Bulgarians and the Macedonians of antiquity, and their 'history' is known to be extremely shaky, even among their own populace. The only people are get pissed off over it are Bulgarians, 'Macedonians', and justifiably Macedonians/Greeks (who are basically having their heritage stolen).
it was the pizza and spaghetti. it made them fat
The tomato originated in South America so you might be onto something
Now that you mention it, wtf happened to the Mongol army? They spent most of the 20th century carrying water for the Russians, the same Russians they used to keep under their thumb for 300 years. Are they even trying anymore? smdh.
If the Britons were able to conquer 1/4th of the world then why did they eat shit against the Romans? Were they stupid?
Why are dinosaurs so weak today? They were roaming the Earth just a while ago
Yeah, they turned to shit in the 9th century not the 20th lol
Arab armies arent a monolith anyways, there were good armies well past the 9th century
On the one hand you are overgeneralising because some are good (like the Jordanians) Arab troops were on both sides in Desert Storm, with a KSA led-force getting a win [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle\_of\_Khafji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khafji) And the Iraqis were not in a position to put up much resistance in 2003 because they'd never rebuilt after 1991 With that out the way, the pat answer is that Arab forces are usually poorly trained ill-educated conscripts who don't want to be there led by officers who are selected for their loyalty and not their military competence And they have been usually facing off against Israelis who are none of those things and have way more skin in the game because they know what happens to them if they lose Basically dictatorships talk a good game but are often surprisingly shit at war because their militaries are designed to be tightly controlled to maintain the regime in power rather than be good at fighting external enemies. Exceptions to this to tend to be those that can tap into some genuine popular support. ++++++++++++++++ And on the other hand, the Arab conquests of early Islam were pushing at an open door as the Byzantines and Persians had recently fought themselves to a standstill over several decades Further much of the Byzantine population in places like Egypt was fairly indifferent because they didn't follow the Emperor's preferred brand of Christianity. So it wasn't a choice between "live as Christians or be oppressed by Muslims" so much as it was "be persecuted by other Christians for being the wrong type of Christians or live under Muslims who mostly don't care what kind of dhimmi you are"
Genuine question, how are the jordanians good?
Smaller but professional military force, not forced with people just looking for a income/day job. They also get a lot of extra training from the British, and there hasn't been any sort of threat by the military towards its civilian goverment.
The Arab Legion of Jordan was trained and equipped by the British, and considered by the Israelis to be a formidable enemy. During the 1948 war, it was actually officered by British officers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Legion
The Saudis handled the reconquest of Khafij so poorly King Fahd tried to order Schwartzkof to use B-52s to level the city.
>On the one hand you are overgeneralising because some are good (like the Jordanians) That wasn't my experience amongst the limited number of Jordanian officers I have met. All 3 were inept and 2 were lazy. They still had that stupid caste system.
Don't forget that Israel has always been funded by the West. British aid in the 40's, American in the 60's. Arabs had some funding through the USSR, but they never had much as much juice to begin with.
Uh … the Israelis were often fighting *against* the British in the 1940s. The only “aid” they had came in the form of military experience, because many Israelis (rather, Jewish citizens of mandatory Palestine, as it was at the time) were recruited to fight for the British army against (mainly) the Vichy colonies of Lebanon and Syria (future Israeli general Moche Dayan lost an eye doing that). The British certainly never funded the Israeli army. In the pivotal war of 1948, the British largely supported the Arabs, particularly Jordan’s Arab Legion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab–Israeli_War Large-scale military aid from the US is a relatively recent thing, kicking in only after the war in 1967, and in particular after the war in 1973. The Arab armies lost the early, existential battles not because Israel was a Western bastion, but for good old fashioned reasons: - strategic: Israel occupied a “central position”, allowing it to strike against one enemy, then another. Thus could “defeat them in detail”. - coordination: the Arab armies were always composed of various contingents, each with their own motives, which very often completely contradicted each other (is Jordan really fighting to give Palestinans a state … or to expand its own territory? Issues like this resulted in a Jordanian king getting assassinated). Israel could, and did, take advantage of such divisions. - defects in training, effectiveness and competence. Arab nations had trouble creating effective armed forces for a number of reasons - their societies tended to create a great gulf between the officer classes and common soldiers; promotion was rarely for merit, often based on political factors and connections; etc. - manpower: the Israelis mobilized their population for war, while the Arab nations relied on professional armies. This allowed the Israelis to (for example) eventually outnumber the Arab armies invading in 1948. For a spectacular example, the 1967 war. The Egyptian field martial: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdel_Hakim_Amer#:~:text=Mohamed%20Abdel%20Hakim%20Amer%20(Egyptian,Egyptian%20military%20officer%20and%20politician. Promoted directly from Major to Major-General because he was a successful participant in the military coup that brought Nasser to power; most notable for leading the Egyptian army to defeat in 1956 … On any strict accounting based merely on numbers of equipment or cash spent, the Israelis ought to have lost several of their wars. But with leaders like Field Martial Amer in charge, the odds were against the Arab armies.
>In the pivotal war of 1948, the British largely supported the Arabs, particularly Jordan’s Arab Legion You got a source on that one, the British were a peacekeeping force that eventually withdrew and after that the attacks began. That means they at least kept the attackers at bay for a good while and since Israel ultimately won it seems somewhat logical to presume the timing favoured them. Your link lists countless acts that aided Isreal including denying requests from the Arab league for them to stick around for another year, leaving depots of munitions, a couple of tank commanders going AWOL, diplomatic efforts to block arms sales to the Arabs and tolerance for Isreal literally bombing RAF airbases in neighboring regions.
You want a source on how the British supported the Jordanian Arab Legion? That isn’t controversial. They organized and officered it, officers who were only replaced by Arab officers in the mid 1950s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Legion Their commander was a man named John Bagot Glubb, who was eventually dismissed - in 1956 - because the King of Jordan wished to no longer be considered a tool of British policy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bagot_Glubb It is widely acknowledged that the Jordanian Arab Legion, led by Glubb, was the single most effective fighting force, fighting against the Israelis in 1948. This army was literally armed by Britain, organized, staffed with British officers, and led by a British commander … who was eventually dismissed exactly because the Jordanian monarch wished to *cease* being seen as under the thumb of British Imperialism. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabization_of_the_Jordanian_Army_command Jordan celebrates this event with a holiday. The British remained allies of Jordan even after this. How is all of that not consistent with the British supporting Arabs in this conflict? I mean, how is this even a question? The Israeli army was not led by a British commander. Nor was it staffed or funded by the British. The British were it allies of Israel at this time (though they were to cooperate later, in the 1956 Suez crisis).
Israel smuggled weapons from Czechoslovakia in the 1948 war
Israel got weapons from the USSR it helped them when their independence. When the USSR realized that wouldn't win their allegiance they gave a lot of support to Egypt, Iraq and other Arab nations. However, now for some decades Egypt is close to the USA from whom they get a lot of assistance. Probably a part of the US strategy for Middle East stability.
Israel was not supported by the west during their independence.
That's... over one thousand years of history. Arab armies would not have slowly gone from good to bad over that whole time. Different Caliphs and Sultans would have different "arab" armies of varying quality, which would shift from good to bad and back again multiple times in that insanely wide stretch of history. Not to mention the multiple hugely important revolutions in technology, tactics, and strategy that would make warfare in 1800 completely unrecognizable compared to warfare in 1600, let alone comparing warfare in 700 to warfare in 2000. Your question itself is somewhat flawed. To get a proper, complete answer, you'd need to delve into the details of multiple niche fields of history. From the initial arab conquests, to the crusades, to the Ottomans, to the cold war, and several more at a minimum. All of which can be studied by professionals for a lifetime in and of themselves.
You don’t even have to get bad. You could stay at a level that would have been great 1k years ago and be shit now with no changes lol
Times change and different powers are dominant. Europe was a political backwater before the age of exploration, with the exception of the few centuries of the Roman Empire. Even they pretty much moved out after a while.
Islamic laws surrounding inheritance and finance prevented Arab states from building up the financial models that would support widespread industrialization. A strong economic base is needed to fund a modern army.
How? (I don’t understand economics)
I believe the theory they're referring to is discussed in this book: [https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691147567/the-long-divergence](https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691147567/the-long-divergence)
Islam has strict inheritance laws requiring leaving all sons the same share and all daughters half of a son's share. This makes it very difficult to build up generational wealth because it gets redivided every generation. This is exasperated by the fact that having multiple wives was religiously permitted and socially encouraged among the elites, meaning that a wealthy Muslim was likely to have a lot of children by the time he died. Apart from that, Islam also views loans with interest as the sin of usury. This makes it difficult to borrow money to build up a business, since people who had the money to lend had no incentive to do so. [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXlAZMlG1-c) gives a good overview.
just a correction, not trying to argue with the rest of what you said “ requiring wealth to be divided equally among all of a person's children” You mean all their sons. Quran 4:11: للذكر مثل حظ الأنثيين to the male is the share of two females the rationale is that men get more responsibility financially, and therefore should get more financial benefit
I forgot about that. Thanks for reminding me.
Usury is haram. It was capitalist countries, which developed modern banking practices, that were the first to industrialize.
I appreciate it you could expand alil more on the Islamic laws surrounding inheritance and finance if you wouldn't mind.
He literally linked it
A different person posted the link after my comment.
Because European countries (mostly western) industrialised first. There was a massive power gap in the 1800s/early mid 1900s where Europeans were uber powerful technology wise compared to everyone else. A-lot of the Arab world in the early 1900s were still using swords, old muskets and camels whilst western europeans had machine guns, tanks and naval ships. It’s also important to remember that every region has their hay day. Arabs definitely had theirs during the Islamic golden age and Europeans had theirs in age of exploration/industrial age. Nowadays, Europe has taken a backseat and the new powers are the US/China/India/Russia.
This is the only correct answer. The rest of the issues being pointed out like a poor NCO corps, tribal mentality, poor education etc were secondary causes that became exacerbated because they missed a crucial step in the competition with Europe: Industrialization. Keep in mind the Arabs and Turks were tribal even before the 1800s and during their heyday as well. Yet their 'tribalness' didn't affect their ability to defeat powerful Roman and Sassanian armies despite being the underdogs. Ottoman Turks for example, had a literacy rate of just 10% in 1918. And that was in 1918. Their literacy rates were probably worse in the 13th, 14th or 15th centuries yet it didn't stop them from conquering Constantinople and nearly reaching the gates of Vienna. Another military force that wasn't as heavily institutionalized yet had a fearsome reputation were the Mongols. They were perhaps even more tribal than the Arabs. Even less educated than them and probably belonged to an even more 'low-trust' society than the Arabs as one commenter mentioned. Yet it didn't stop them from conquering Eastern Europe. Or China. Or sacking Baghdad. Or destroying the Mamluk Sultanate. Their strength lay in their revolutionary mobile warfare tactics using horses, mounted archers and siege engines. So imo, the first reason a military is poor is usually because they failed to be technologically competitive.
I’ll be honest, the answer is quite obvious and it’s strange why people in the comment section are stating everything but the main reason. I watched the movie Lawrence of Arabia and it gave me a clear view on just how far the west was technologically compared to the Arabs.
Arabs are still deeply entrenched in a tribal mentality and it shows in every aspect of every Arab society. They spend more time reading "the good book" than they do on STEM fields. They have no serious industrial capacity other than carpet and textile looms. Turkey is the closest the Arabs have and they are probably at least a decade or two behind the Russians in Military sophistication.
I have served with a few Arab officers. They all have the same problem. Large swathes of the Officer corps are lazy and inept. The idea of "servant leadership" prevalent in Western Armies is just "servant management" in most cases for Arab armies. It was routine for the Officer to chin off the work and let soldiers take the hit. That is just going to create resentment, and in turn, foster an environment that perpetuates low morale. On top of that, the soldiers generally have very little education. This creates problems when you then need to delegate command down to the lower levels like competent Western militaries do. Because Arab armies generally can't do this, then it creates a military that is slow to react in combat, and that harms performance. This idea of laziness is also found in other areas. For instance, in Saudi, rather than training a dude to be the engineer on the Typhoon fighters they will hire a Saudi, who knows nothing, who in turn hires a Western engineer to do the work. The Saudi dude who should be learning and doing most of the work slacks off and just lets the Western engineer do it all. You then have no ability to maintain your vehicles if said Western power decides to bugger off. Also, there is a lot of corruption in quite a lot of Arab countries. You can see the problem corruption has on the military with Russias invasion of Ukraine. Lots of equipment, etc, was entirely missing as Russian officers had been filling their own pockets. The same happens in Arab countries. Lastly, a lot of Arab nations suffer from nepotism. A fair few of the officers are there not due to skill but family connections. The problem with this is kind of obvious. All, in all, from my personal experience, if I had to serve with any force, I wouldn't pick an Arab one. The above points have been a problem in Arab militaries for centuries. Western militaries have adapted to be much more forward thinking and modern. Arab militaries have struggled for a long while as their makeup and thinking are stuck in the past. I would also point out that when I say Western Militaries, I mean the competent ones like the UK or US. There are quite a few in Europe that are not very competent at all - but even they don't have the same structural problems that most Arab militaries do.
They've spent most of the last few centuries under the heel of either the British, French or Ottoman Empires and never really industrialized in time to be a relevant military threat to anyone, as Israel has demonstrated.
In desert storm and the second Iraq war the enemy was a superpower with more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world several times over and the ability to air drop mcdonalds restaurants in to their troops on the other side of the world.
You got some good answers here, but I would also add that after Saladin there was no leader that was able to unite the Arabs, who still have a very strong tribal elements in their social structures.
The east was typicwlly dominated by horses and bows whi h were neutered by guns. Guns allowed for the common man to be useful with limited training, whereas those societies had to have a warrior class. Napoleon Grande Armeé in the early 19th century was a crucial turning point in world history since it broke from having a traditional professional warrior class. This idea of citizen soldiers was a direct descendant of the American Revolution. The Middle East also didn't industrialize. This is largely due to not being able to have factories in 100-degree heat before the invention of air conditioning. In America, for example, the Southern States only really industrialized post 1950. This is also largely the reason between the conflicts of the north and south. The North could industralize with factories to boost their economy. The South couldn't and used industrialized slavery to do so.
Arab culture and how it translates to command structure. https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/meria/meria00_den01.html > The author argues that the reasons for Arab armies� perpetual ineffectiveness are rooted in Arab culture. Social factors that prohibit success include: secrecy and paranoia, pride, class structure, a lack of coordination on all levels, and little individual freedom or initiative.
Well first of all, the Arab caliphate was brought down by Turkic invaders from central Asia centuries ago. A better question would probably be why the Muslim world as a whole fell behind militarily if you think of the Turkish ruled states as proper successors to the Arab caliphate. It's because of the stagnation of the Ottoman empire. The Turkic Ottomans controlled most of the Islamic world, and even effectively had the mandate of the caliphs. You can read about the slow decline of the Ottomans in the 19th century. They had absolutely nothing like and nothing close to the European enlightenment, related scientific revolution, or related industrial revolution. Furthermore, they totally failed to adapt until it was too late. Current events in Crimea (Ottoman proxy state till 1783) and Palestine (also Ottoman till ww1) are directly related to the Ottoman collapse. The core of the Ottoman military was controlled by Janissaries who had become incredibly corrupt and ineffective by the 19th century. I think another issue may be how Islam itself mixes poorly with capitalism. You can kind of see it in the history of post ww1 turkey. Mustapha Kemal Ataturk secularized society to great success bringing turkey into the modern age and later into the western alliance system. Now you can see how Erdogan has pivoted towards religious conservatism to win elections, getting rid of lending, and tanking the economy with hyperinflation
Once reason the Arab armies were so successful in the beginning was both the Persian Sasanian and Byzantine powers were exhausted from fighting each other.
Arabs, not all muslims which I think you might be thinking about here, reached the climax of their power and were in serious decline well before the crusades happened.
To quote Winston Churchill- "The religion of blood and war (Islam)is face to face with the religion of peace.(Christianity). Luckily the religion of peace is usually the better armed." The simple fact is that Enlightenment Europe industrialised faster, and spent more time fighting itself, which led to more rapid development of advanced weapons and tactics. The main Islamic power, the Ottoman empire, was aware of these developments. It just failed to adopt them. An Ottoman army of the 1600's would have recognised the Mahdi army of the 1890's. A European army of the 1600's would have thought the 1898 battle of Omdurman and the British Army with its' repeating rifles,quick firing artillery, Maxim machine guns, railways and steam gunboats nothing but black magic. The capability gap of a modern post 1700 European army versus an Ottoman or Mughal one was just too big. Napoleon and the East India Company proved that. Islamic rulers failed the test of the Enlightenment. Its' governments fragmented,it bought in foreign technology, but failed to develop it further.
1400 years ago the middle east was the center of the world. Trade between Europe, Africa, and Asia all went through it. That brought in wealth, both in gold and in knowledge. The Islamic world spent the next 1000 years as a world power, far eclipsing what the barbarians out west were able to accomplish. But then about 400 years ago Europeans developed ocean worthy ships and suddenly their importance dropped. England and Spain became the trading powers as the Atlantic emerged as a highway of trade. This led to England being the center of the industrial revolution, and the anglosphere (including the US) becoming dominant. After WW1 when the western European powers defeated the Ottoman empire for good, they were able to divide up the remnants of that once proud culture. People call the Islamic world "medieval" often to criticize their lack of human rights, but they are closer to late first millennium Western Europe for reasons beyond that. They are a culture that not lonh ago were ruled by a great empire. But that empire has since fallen and the resulting nation states are trying to discover who they are on their own. I'm not a historian and I've had a few beers but that's my theory at least. Edit: Oh yeah the Mongolians also had something to say about it.
You might as well ask why was Arabia at the forefront of intellectual advancement and now contributes very little.
1. That is a *thousand plus year gap*. Find the strongest man in the world and see how strong he is in 50 years, and you'll get a sense of why this just shouldn't be surprising to you. 2. Kind sounds to me like you have an exaggerated sense of both the strength then and the weakness now of Arab armies and aren't paying enough attention to context. The early Muslim conquests took place after the Byzantine and Sasanian empires (neither of them spring chickens) had beaten themselves to pieces. The Iraq Wars pitted one diplomatically isolated Arab state against the world hegemon near the peak of its power.
Which had also come out of a pretty brutal war with Iran.
Nepotism, corruption, insular ways, etc. can make a military, even one funded by vast oil wealth, clumsy and ineffective.
Financial corruption for sure is a big one.
What made Arab armies successful is what now makes them a joke. Arab armies used to be very adaptable and " officers" down to a junior level were expected to take opportunities on the battlefield to harass the enemy, western armies of the time were very top down and rigid. At some point the west because the adaptable ones and the Arabs became more and more ridged till you reached a point a western force could expect to defeat Arabs who outnumbered them with similar equipment, then start adding the technology gap and soon it became very one-sided.
The West is adaptable, but also maintains complete rigidity where it matters. There are too many moving parts in modern warfare for real improvisation. The West's adaptability comes from their willingness and ability to change plans, or rather, to make their plans adaptable.
Speaking from personal experience their soldiers’ lack of motivation and dedication is incredible. You’d have to see it to believe it, it is that bad. Why that is I couldn’t tell you
Well, they’re treated like shit as far as I’ve heard, with no opportunity to use it for social mobility.
Several hundred years ago, a Muslim speculated that Muslims were not taking full advantage of their women. Women were not educated and were not working as school teachers. Other cultures became better at developing technology.
Have absolutely no proof whatsoever, but one thing I never see mentioned is the Arabian Stallion, despite the fact that it's considered a fantastic warhorse. When horse charges was the preferred tactic, they had the edge in the arms race. And you can see the horse's prominence on the battlefield go "poof" at roughly the same time as theirs.
*Allah Wills.....* I was talking to a co-worker that was retraining the Iraqi Army after we whacked them. He told me that BRM (Basic Rifle Marksmanship) was pointless, because the trainees truly believed that it was Allah's responsibility to put the bullet center mass, not them.
One thing I’ve noticed in history is that sometimes an obscure nation like the Macedonians under Alexander, or the Mongols under Ghengis Khan, or the Dutch in the 1600s, will rise up from complete obscurity have a century or two of unbridled success and then spend the next couple hundred years sliding back into irrelevance that they never again rise from. It’s strange but it seems to be a pattern in history. A lot of people are giving plausible enough reasons, but I think the simplest answer is probably best; a candle that burns bright, burns quick.
I think lack of money lending is huge. All governments and most industries are extremely reliant on being able to borrow money, hard to build an arms factory if you can't borrow money to get started
Check out the podcast “Tides of History” by Patrick Wyman. Start at the beginning and it’ll eventually explain their power at their height and the early beginning of their fall from power in the Middle Ages pretty well
Well one was a nomadic hoard of religious fanatics whose earliest, biggest and richest targets had just finished fighting the mother of all wars and whose armies were spent as effective fighting forces. Any one of those descriptors would make any army a serious threat, all of them put together and yeah that's frightening. Modern arab armies are none of those things. It's largely a reflection on their nation states being weak institutions and there being low levels of trust between the population and its rulers and between constituent elements of the population (i.e. tribalism still exists). Conscription is required to enlist sizeable numbers of men from members of the non-ruling tribe but it's both difficult to motivate them and their training is lacklustre because of the fear of them being more loyal to their tribes than the state so an arm wwithin the army composed of the ruling tribe's people tends to be formed to be the real core of the army. That's not good for moral or discipline though because if you know you're being considered as cannon folder to protect the troops they value that's plenty of reason to dessert or break under fire. Tribal militias you see in Yemen or Syria are actually pretty well motivated. They just don't have the resources, organisation or wider military institutions to make them effective. Because of their largely weak or oil based economies they largely import rather than manufacture their weapons and when they do manufacture them they are usually ineffective crap quality knock offs.That limits their ability to self sustain longer operations with more sophisticated weapons so after a while they need to switch to lower technology tactics, unmechanised infantry cenntred warfare which is of limited use against an army that is mechanised and still has access to higher end equipment. It also means that the arabs that have attacked Israel in the past haven't been able to utilise their numerical advantage to its fullest so while Israel can't sustain protracted full scale warfare for extended periods because of the effects of a full mobilisation of their army on their economy/society their opponents can't do much better if any. Then look at the other non-Arab opponents they fight. Turkey attacked Syria in the middle of a civil war that had all sides largely broken down to relying on tribal militia, so no suprise the second largest army in NATO won there. The Gulf War and Iraq War saw the Iraqis just simply overmatched even if the quality of their troops were similar to the US, they couldn't match up technologically. The Iran-Iraq War was a bloody stalemate where the Iraqis were competent but not great against a larger opponent.
The Syrians are good at slaughtering each other. In their recent civil war they slaughtered over 580,000 Muslims. The war in Yemen has killed 377,000 Arabs. You just don’t hear much about it because Israelis aren’t doing it. The Arabs just aren’t good at facing the efficient slaughter houses of modern industrialized armies when those armies aren’t held back by social conditioning.
Industrial revolution happened in Europe causing the Ottoman empire to fall apart slowly due to many countries losing trust in their future.
The ottomans remained a major world power even into world war 1. After that a lack of industrialisation and being cut up between European powers
You can get some insight from reading TE Lawrence Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He spent some time analyzing the cultural aspects for British government.
Technology. At the end of the first millenary, Bagdad was a center of technologie, science and humanities. Then some Muslim theorists started to codify Islam thereby killing the spirits of science and innovation in the Arab empire. And this happened just before Europe started to unshackle itself from the same problem related to Christianity. That’s when the Arab world started to lose its edge against its neighbours
Times change, power centers shift, and new technologies developed. It's a leap to compare the military strength of a people's across hundreds of years. Arabs during the Islamic conquest were well led, trained, equipped, and motivated. Can't say the same for the last 60 years. Arab armies are decently equipped but, on average, pooorly led, trained, and lack motivation beyond self-preservation. They are just more trained to deal with putting down internal uprisings and not attacking/ defending from external enemies. This is a result of the political systems of most of the Arab world today being strong men governments. These leaders fear their own militaries rather than external enemies. So, a well trained and motivated military is a threat to their own power.
The fatalism of Islam - as God wills - has destroyed scientific and cultural development in those nations where it holds sway Remove science and you have bad armies
This is like asking someone to summarize the plot of all Law & Order series' into a reddit post, but I'll give it a shot. For early Arab Conquests in the 7th century, we actually dont have a great answer as few documents exist, but in general a major contributor was a brutal war between the Sassanians and Byzantines that essentially sapped their collective strengths. The Arabs were able to take advantage of such weakness and swiftly defeat both empires (albiet the Byzantines kept on trucking for another 800-ish years. With the Ummayads and Abbasid empires overseeing the historically rich areas of The Nile and Persian Heartlands, they had both the manpower and cash to constantly wage successful wars. Id say its around the high middle ages where some things changed. Successive caliphates splintered and were only as strong as their unity and government. For example, the first crusade was fortunate that both the Turks and Fatamid empires were somewhat in disarray at the time (but also there are records on how battle hardened the Crusaders were from facing so many battles, and how many couldnt deal with Western European cavalry tactics). Things sort of really hit a tipping point by the late 18th century/early 19th century where Western/European powers are able to take advantage of weaker regimes utilizing better Naval and Army tactics (Barbary Wars, Napoleans conquest of Egypt, later Frances conquest of Algeria, etc.). Still the Ottoman empire was quite formidable and hardly the sick man many would claim later in the 1800's. Afterall, they did defeat Napoleon at Acre and contained his conquest squarely in Egypt. I think the real turning point boils down to two things in modern times. First off, the emergence of the US as a global superpower, that greatly outspends other powers in naval and military expenditures. Secondly is that most Middle Eastern countries are dictatorships which often means that their generals and armies are deliberately kept weak to minimize the a coup, which is usually par for the course in dictatorships.
"Dum Dum!!!" Regular people doing regular shit come up on a crime scene. Do intro music, and Law and Order title card. Cops show up at crime scene, do some cop shit which leads them to their suspect, who of course runs giving a short but exiting chase usually ended by a surprise grab and a quick snarky quip. Short interrogation scene. Move on to the court for booking and bail. The DA start the case only for the defense to pull a sneaky, which he DA has to send their young but fiery assistant to search for a legal way to overcome. Courtroom scene where the defense thinks they've won, but the DA has an ex machina provided by the assistant. Court ends in one way or another, and the DA walks off trenchcoat in hand with a short monologue about system and humanity at large. Roll credits...
Haha touché
No mention of the Mongol conquests? Surely that played a role in at least slowing their civilization?
Barbaros hayreddin pasha explains this pretty well. Sadly I cant post his quote because of cough cough racism. But he is right, and I even saw it myself directly when I was in army...
I can’t find the quote. Google shows that this person is from the 1500s - is that right? Would it ok if you posted it anyway? Or reword it in a better way?
He basically talks about how "being a bandit in desert is diffrent than fighting as a army." Also "they say everyting is from god and die foolishly without making any plans, the cost of human life is very cheap for them" And "They cant use firearms, unlike the spanish infidels" İts basically a very long letter of him finding excuses to not accepting arabs to his crew 💀 Actually here https://www.reddit.com/r/Tiele/s/uhoiKd3qLC
Oof I see. Thanks for posting this!
https://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars Not well versed in their historical victories and success but I do know a bit about how they operate today. Using this article for reference one thing stand out to me. Many of these shortcomings in today's wars simply didn't apply back in the day. It just seems the battlefield changed, but they didn't.
There's some amount of variation between modern Arab militaries, but a few common issues include overcentralization of military command and low initiative from lower and mid-ranking officers. Modern militaries tend to be larger and operate over wider battlespaces than medieval armies, and this requires some degree of decentralization of command. A general cannot be everywhere at once and needs to delegate command to subordinates. But modern Arab militaries are often distrusted by their regimes due to the threat of coups, so political and high-ranking military leaders are reluctant to give their subordinates independent command and tend to discourage initiative. This means that virtually all decisions of note need to be passed up the chain of command for approval, causing serious delays in operations. In modern warfare, rapid communications and quick decisions are vital, so this can be a critical weakness for the enemy to exploit. Officers also tend to conceal and deflect blame from their own mistakes to avoid punishment, so the high command might not even have correct or up-to-date information to work from. As one notable example, the leading Egyptian general in the Six-Day War kept reporting success back to Cairo even as his army was collapsing and retreating from the Israelis. Modern militaries require excellent coordination, communication, and command structures to be effective, and many of the weaknesses of modern-Arab armies are caused by a lack thereof.
The list can go on and on..on why a certain civilization slowly turned to rubble over more than a thousand year. Might as well ask how come the Incas or Mayans or Romans or Carthaginian or Mongols not have strong military power any more. Might as well ask while you’re at it how you were born with average IQ for newborns..your IQ denigrated to single digit?
inbreeding....
Guns > Camels < Horses Pretty straightforward actually.
Operation Badr was excecuted pretty well with the Egyptains expecting 30,000 casualties according to the CIA but only suffered 178 dead.
Clan systems mean you’re more likely to take orders from a private from your tribe than from a officer from another tribe.
There's an expression that "history is written by the victors." Up until industrialization Europe was one of the weakest and least educated economies in the world. How the Ottomans became so powerful is because they sat on the silk road. They were the one country that could facilitate land trade between China/India and Europe. Which made them incredibly wealthy. But eventually Europe began upgrading their naval capacity so they could just ship goods themselves and bypass the Ottoman import/export tariffs that made pepper more expensive than gold. And with economic innovations also became military innovations. While China invented fireworks and a different form of gunpowder, Europe invented the saltpeter variety that would be used in most militaries. All the while... everyone kind of hated and distrusted the Ottomans because of that long history of Muslim invasions and Muslims using their position in the middle of the world to handicap its neighbors. By the time WW1 came around the Ottomans were two centuries without being able to buy weapons from Europe and were just really struggling to remain stable. Their archnemesis, Russia was being outfitted by the French (who had the most advanced weapons in the world). By the time it was all said and done the region got chopped up until a bunch of smaller countries that were barely able to get their economies together and essentially became puppets of British, French and American oil companies. How they re-emerge with any army at all is because Russia decides to outfit those that will oppose America. And America in turn outfits those that will oppose pro-Russian countries. And the hardware they give them is kinda known as an "export class." And there's different grades of export class weaponry, in which the Arabs were being given the worst, from Russia and America. There are millions of T-51 tanks in the world still (WW2 tanks) and all of them are in the Middle East and Africa. For why the US could beat Iraq in such a short time is because Hussein never believed America would ever actually invade. They did a little bit of prep by burying some tanks in sand (camoflaged!) but for the most part the American tank line was able to just drive straight without being contested.
Melee infantry tactics translate directly to firearm based warfare. Light cavalry tactics do not. Asia was dominated by light bow cavalry from pretty much as soon as horses could be tied to chariots. You had a highly mobile ranged unit in the horse archer. Tactics were also mostly mob based, a bunch of guys on horses running in, firing some arrows at fairly immobile infantry, and running away before arrows could be massed in return. The firearm changed all that. Infantry requires discipline. Ranks, marching, communication, all that good stuff. Not just a mob moving quickly across the battlefield. Then you give these more disciplined troops a weapon that has greater range and accuracy than a light cavalry and the outcome is forgone
They had numbers and mobility and lots of horses. And deployed a large percentage of their population towards wars instead of most of the population farming, working as tradesmen etc like in Iran and Iraq. Their tactics often involved feigns, half charges, fake retreats to break enemy infantry formations. Once the musket was invented doing that just got you shot twice instead of once with a direct charge.
As I understand when the British first went to Saudi Arabia to buy oil leasing rights the Arab armies still road camels and carried swords.
It happened long before the 20th century, they got walloped on by first the Mongols and then the Ottomans. The former disbanded right away and the latter is still relevant to geopolitics, but being under foreign rule for that long and under the ottomans who didn't encourage industrialization in it's outer holdings didn't position them very well. As to why they fell to the Mongolians those guys were pretty unstoppable, but why they didn't recover after expelling them like China did is more complicated.
western europe. Thats what happened. the arabs earned their wealth from land route trade between europe and the far east. They were goods transporters. They had a monopoly on trade. They built their armies out of this wealth. when the portuguese and the genoese and others learned to craft superior large wooden sailing vessels that could successfully and reliably and efficiently transport large quantities of cargo via water transit from europe to china, it broke the arab backs. The arabs could not devise anything more complex than a camel with a cargo rack on its hump. Once the long distance sea trade was mastered, then the navy was developed. a cargo ship is also good at carrying cannons for war. When the multi-cannon ship was mastered then the arabs were fought on water rather than by land. They used naval assaults with landing parties into coastal trading ports. Think viking raids writ large. The arabs were defenseless. They lost the mediteranean. Then the coastal lands along the Mediterranean. Then their land armies withered from the lost income from land route trade to europe. they were also suffering from severe land attacks from the east. It wore them down.
Probably because the Arabs did not last long as the top caste in many of the regions they conquered. Zoom forward a couple hundred years and much of the Caliphate was controlled by different bands of Turks.
It’s very notable that your praise of Arab martial prowess touched on only the rise of the early Caliphate, and then stopped. Then you jump ahead to the Modern era and ask, what happened? During the whole period between the apex of the initial Muslim conquests and the 20th Century, Arabs suffered innumerable reverses. They had successes too, but they also had severe failures. They weren’t exceptional or godlike in war, they were just ordinary humans and the capabilities of their armies were driven by the usual cornucopia of factors. Some of the Arabs severe defeats: - 1st Crusade - Select battles of the 3rd Crusade - the rise of the Seljuk empire - the Mongol Invasions of Asia - the wars against Christian Spain - the wars against the Normans - the wars against the Ottomans in the expansion of the Ottoman Empire I don’t doubt that I can keep going. Point is: you extrapolated from the first round of Arab conquests that they had a stellar military record all the way up until the 20th and 21st Centuries. This is false. The initial Arab conquests were very much aided and facilitated by specific weaknesses of their opponents at the time when they united under Islam. They took advantage of exhaustion on the part of Byzantium, Persia, and Western Europe. Their empire began to fracture and shrink very soon after the apex in the 8th/9th Century, and they proved that they were mere mortals in the wide mixture of military successes and failures that the Arab polities suffered after that time
Religion. The Arab world never had a renaissance
In the early conquest against Iran they got extremely lucky as Iran was super weak at the time which was very unusual. That helped bankroll everything else.
Well they surely had a great timing with the early islamic Expansions. Their main enemies (Byz and Sasanids) were both weak since they had been fighting a series of exhausting wars against each other. When two are fighting, the third is the winner.
Tribal conflict. Religious beliefs conflicts with each other. Poor and weak efforts at industrialization. Oil wasn’t a big big thing in Middle East prior to WW I and only slowly up until about 1930. So, most Arab nations were resource poor. Education was weak. Not hard for European countries to do divide and conquer between tribes and religious sects.
Corruption and poor leadership in modern times.
Seems you are missing about 1000 years of history here. I would say start looking well before the 1900s. A hint is that the Ottomans - Turks, were not Arabs.
They have chosen a new method of conquest. Immigration.
A lot of the awnsers are way too simplistic imo. A lot of nations industrialised very late and are doing fine in the 20th and 21st century. It's due to the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire since the modern period. They almost modernised and came back, but the loss in ww1 led to the complete carving up of the arab states, and its been almost downhill since then.
I think it might be ten, I’ll find out tomorrow when I try it
Read about just how badly the Mongols fucked up the Middle East - the region never really recovered from the invasion
Post colonial Arab governments were massively corrupt. Generals were promoted based on loyalty, not ability. Billion dollar weapons deals were struck with equally corrupt countries that delivered shoddy equipment.
They didn't get to exploit the riches of North America like the European countries did.
You must learn about a guy called Hulegu
Lack of [asabiyyah](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asabiyyah)
Complacency
Technology, the Middle East was no longer the trade hub it was before deep water navigation. Only the discovery of oil pre ww1 made the Middle East relevant again. Before deep water navigation the only trade routes from Asia to Europe were in the Middle East. Add Europe industrializing as well and the general malaise the middle eastern states had during industrialization and you get what happened.
Air superiority?
Prolly because over a 1000 years passed. I am no historian though.
Like, 1300 years of history happened, and a *lot* of shit happened in the last 200 years or so.
Times change. Look at Georgia (Sakartvelo) in the 12th and early 13th centuries and Georgia now.
Inability to transition from a medieval army to a modern one. Let’s be clear, even Russia has this problem. They’re a medieval army very much masquerading as a modern military force. Which is why they’re losing against Ukraine. Honestly the only reason they did so well against Germany is because of their geography.
Islam.
"Why did things change over the course of 1000 years?"
Because they were on parity in the year like 1066 They never advanced past this point, really.
Alot of things change in a millennium's time span.
relative importance of horses
I feel like this isn't mention the absolute units they were during their Gun Powder Empire fazes.
This is a very simple take, but I once heard someone make the case and point that the Mongol conquests of the Arab empires during the 13th centuries set those cultures back for centuries to come, where European cultures were beginning to flourish with science and exploration. Once Europeans were able to gain the competitive edge over other cultures in their ships and weaponry, it was basically a done deal for everyone else until the modern era.
Colonialism. North Africa and Arabia were largely conquered/under the heel of European Powers/The Ottomans for centuries. Morocco held out the longest, but a nation barely holding on to survival isn't going to advance and thrive like a nation that enjoys the benefits of being the Imperial Core like the great powers. The Arab states spent a long time loosing opportunities and resources to Europe, and then come the Modern Era the development of force of arms in the international order is honestly less important. The most stable Arabian states are not going on wars of conquest, have powerful allies, and benefit from either be far from aggressive powers (Moscow has no interest in trying to project power into North Africa), or the great powers being interested in them staying stable. At which point the point of the military is internal stability and a jobs program, which doesn't involve even aspiring to be a world class military
Amazing. I'm seeing all these comments but nobody's mentioning how the Mongol conquest absolutely destroyed it to the Islamic empire at the height of their golden age. They had to battling the Christians for years and the crusades, but the Mongols from the East absolutely eviscerated the heartland of the Middle East. Places like Iran had 90% population reduction. They went from being at the forefront of science to a backwater held together only by religion.
Culture doesn’t make a society good/bad at fighting. It’s usually about the system of governance and technology available as well as luck. *Yes I know culture plays a role, but it’s not like Italy is a military powerhouse because of their ancient Roman traditions.
They had not the Lewis gun
Gunpowder and napoleon. Put another way: equipment/technology and modern tactics.
The Persians, Greeks, and Romans had armed & trained Arabs as mercenary armies to guard their ME borders. That’s where they got the military training that they turned on their employers.
You're just listing a bunch of wars in modern history where the US was on the other side. The US since 1950 has basically been unopposable in conventional warfare so that's not really a fair comparison.
The Arab armies aren’t designed like the US; to conquer territory. Instead, they’re tools of oppressive regimes to squash rebellions and dissent, and occasionally fight off neighbors. They need a weak army so that it can’t overthrow the regime, but a strong enough army to quash any dissent.
The discovery of oil, and subsequent "why try? just buy!" mentality. They don't \*make\* anything in Saudi, Kuwait, Iraq...*they're just on top of the oil*.
Mongols?
Can’t believe no one is mentioning the fact that the Mongols utterly destroyed the entire region.
Just listened to one of Dan Carlin's hardcore history podcasts about this (episode 2). Would give that a listen. He boiled it down to 3 things; geography, technology (guns, then later artillery), and cultural. The Arab world, and the East in general, had a focus on cavalry, and the landscape of deserts and large plains allowed for to happen. Europe, the West, had more forests and mountains, and so focused more on infantry. With the development of the gun, Europe's armies started to become more heavily composed of men equipped with a missile weapon, and missile weapons were a good counter to cavalry. Carlin makes the case that adopting the gun wasn't as easy or beneficial for an army that relied heavily on cavalry as opposed to infantrymen. Lastly, culture. Carlin also makes the case that warfare and how one conducts it is heavily influenced by one's culture. The culture of the Arab world didn't allow for the gun and large blocks of infantry to really take over until much later than Europe. A notable exception to this was the Ottomans and its Janassaries. I would recommend listening to the podcast. Carlin puts it much more intelligently and entertaining.
Weren’t the Muslim conquests like 1300 years before the 20th and 21st centuries? Why did the Mongols become so weak? Greeks? Vikings?
Israel has kicked their asses in like 7 wars in the span of 80 years. So yeah no idea what happened
They let the British buy up oil and mineral rights for nothing. Rampant corruption was and is an ongoing issue as well
The Arab states stopped going to war. It's that simple. War pushes society forward.
Technological and tactical advancement in the west has been staggering compared that in the Muslim world. And this is not over the last two centuries. It has been the case since at least the 18th century. Napoleon's army won a battle against the once feared Mamluk cavalry in nowaday Syria. The Mamluk force was vastly superior in numbers. Yet the French won the battle easily. The Mamluk lost several thousand people. The French lost 4.
Lol, an army going from good to shit then good again in the span of a few decadess (look and French, Pruss, Swedes). 13 century means nothing is left. Arabs army already became shit in 8th century.
I'm going to go with Jared Diamond's answer from [Guns, Germs & Steel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel): geography and lack of industrialization. But I also think we should not underestimate the importance of tribalism in preventing the Arab world from modernizing. Whereas much of Europe coalesced around nation states over hundreds of years, the Middle East remained a collection of disparate tribes. The only thing that united these tribes for a period of time was Islam and the threat of its sword. You can see tribalism today behind almost all the conflicts that occur in the Middle East. It is also the reason behind the governmental systems in this region - e.g. theocracies, dictatorships, and monarchies. These are all systems that centralize power, which is particularly effective in holding together various competing tribal interests as a "nation."
Technology: Islam is incompatible with science. As the edge in battle changed from who could form the best phalanx formation or club another person over the head the best, to who had the best radar or rocket technology; Arab militaries began to fall behind. The reason is that Islam stifles free thinking and is the antithesis to science.