For a cool, not entirely inaccurate OK, OK, moderately accurate, within the constraints of the medium (just quibbles for the most part) 90-second overview of the past few thousand years’ history of the Middle East, check this flash animated map out.
While it won’t illuminate much for folks who don’t already have some grounding in the area’s history, it’s a pretty cool review for folks who do.
If only the Byzantine Empire could have held against the Muslims : )
And think about it, 500 years ago Turkey was Christian…
Yeh, Mach, what Europe needs today is another Jan III Sobieski or Charles Martel. Heck, we could use someone of their fiber here in the U.S.
But by the time Byzantium was “ready”to fall, it didn’t really matter who would be its heirs, cos there were no putative “Christian” powers available to fillthe vaccuum it had already become. *sigh*