Cindy

“IN WHAT CAME TO BE KNOWN as his farewell address, Muhammad is said to have told his followers: “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god but Allah.’”1 This is entirely consistent with the Qur’an (9:5) : “[S]lay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them [captive], and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush.” In this spirit, Muhammad’s heirs set out to conquer the world.”
― Rodney Stark, God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades

“The Byzantine governor assembled an army considerably larger than that of the Normans and rebels. He then sent a herald to the opposing camp offering either the Normans’ safe return to Lombard territory or battle. In response, an enormous Norman knight smashed his mailed fist on the head of the Byzantine herald’s horse; the horse fell dead on the spot. (Yes, this actually happened, historians agree.)23 The battle began the next day.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“Impoverished Spain depended on imports not only for manufactured products but even for sufficient food. Spanish agriculture was hampered by poor soil and by the strange institution known as the Mesta. Spanish sheep grew high-quality fleeces—not as good as those of English sheep but better than could be found elsewhere—and Spain had, in fact, replaced England as the source of wool for the Flemish and Italian cloth industries. The Mesta was an organization of sheep owners who had royal privileges to sustain migratory flocks of millions of sheep. The flocks moved all across Spain—north in the summer, south in the winter—grazing as they went, making it impossible to farm along their routes.42 When conflicts arose with landowners, the crown always sided with the Mesta on grounds that nothing was more important to the economy than the wool exports. The government’s protection of the Mesta discouraged investments in agriculture, so Spain needed to import large shipments of grain and other foodstuffs.”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity

“An additional indication of economic growth in ancient Greece comes from the major increases in the average size of Greek houses: in the eighth century BC it was 53 square meters; by the sixth century BC it had grown to 122 square meters; and by the fifth century BC it was 325 square meters.54”
― Rodney Stark, How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity