>they believe the dark ages meme,

the dark ages was nothing more than the trade routes being cut off from the east,
it stunted the growth of european civilization itself, due to less access to raw materials,

although the turkish menace was growing in the south east. https://twitter.com/frentanyI/status/1304048995065622528

sole reason the otttomans survived after timurs invasion was because of their parasitic behaviour in the balkans, their entire home territory was taken by central asians, and they had to reinvade anatolia using forced slave labour and pirates

i fell asleep so i forgot to finish this thread but it forced europeans to utilize the oceans more and also utilize the resources of europe itself, as there was no silk road,

these people who shill the dark ages meme are the same group who say that iberia was in its golden age

at the exact same time in history so for these academics ?

which is it that your going to pick because both of these history narratives contradict each other

also the turks and persians blocked the silk road with their endless wars, the mongolians were situated further east

the ottomans were knocked out of asia minor and virtually lost all their lands there to the mongolians except what they had raided and taken in the balkans

the timurids raided smyrna/izmir and burned it to the ground, they allowed the greeks 3 days to leave before they sieged it

timur thought of constantinople as a meme city and it wasnt relevant so he didnt go near it since he wiped out the turkish leadership in ankara

portuguese and spanish and others dodged the closure of the silk road by charting and the establishing of the sea routes around africa

turks werent the leaders of the muslims until 1517

the validity of their claim to the caliphate is X'ed off because they dont meet the requirements

sufi caliphs werent allowed to become the leader only sunni muslims were allowed to lead their own group- osmanli arent sunnis

and carrying their muslim banner for invasions was only allowed if you had descent from mohammed which the osmanli family in general do not have despite all of their harems and hundreds of slaves and other groups they married into,

since the turks themselves killed off the sultan of egypts family which had the direct descent, thus the turks invalidated themselves from it,

The turks invaded europe as early as the 1300's long before the turks managed to take control of medina and mecca from the arabs of egypt which was in 1517

the turks acted as mercenaries mainly in the balkans, anatolia, the caucasus, asia minor, and the levant and other places, a bunch of them fought in the crusades

The crusades in my opinion are overated and gay, most of them were purposely botched by the royal class of europe

as a way to appease the, jews, arabs,turks and other groups in concessions

tis my opinion the incursions to north africa are far more interesting in terms of history + they are underated

the normans also went into north africa, The normans i think were more of a loose gang of various ethnic groups rather than one single group, they heavily relied on jews to finance their expeditions and they invaded almost every country in europe ,

so i would assume a large amount of them were jewish, the rest were a mix of french .italians alpines, italian upper class, swedes, nordics, vikings a few germanics groups and random english and welsh components, and the useful idiots like the earl of pembroke

i am going too far away with this so back to the original topic

the dark ages is mostly a meme, its some form of english propoganda that was used against the germans during the wars of the 1870's, its the claim that they are always trying to ruin europe,

while the actual dark ages (nothing to do with the germans could be said to only apply to the balkans, and the greek lands/islands that were occupied by the foreign turks and the parts of eastern europe held captive by the tartar horde of crimea