50% of ancestry in modern day Yugoslavs, 25% in Albanians, & 40% in Bulgarians comes from invaders from northern & eastern Europe who arrived 200-700 AD. Romanian origins complex, with 50% of their ancestry from same NE European invaders as well as Asiatics from steppe.
Roman Europe was very diverse at its height, with migrants from the more densely populated east settling in European cities. A sizable part of population of Viminacium in modern Serbia was of Middle Eastern origin, & they were wealthier than the locals.
Middle Eastern ancestry in Roman Balkans declined in 4th century AD. Sarmatians from the steppe and Germans from the north began to settle the Balkans, mixing with the pre-Roman populations who had held out in the relatively more homogenous countryside.
Slavic invasions of the Balkans in the Dark Ages formed the modern populations of former Yugoslavia. South Slavs of the 10th century AD are very similar in ancestry to modern South Slavs. Slavic ancestry was disproportionately (75%) from women.
Paper is one of several confirming what Juvenal, the Gracchi Brothers, Pliny the Elder observed - that the late Roman Republic's & early Roman Empire's eastern subjects comprised a noticeably high part of the Empire's European population. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
The decline & fall of the Roman Empire featured mass die offs, with the Easterners concentrated in the cities disappearing. The rural pre-Roman populations survived and mixed with their German & Slav conquerors, forming modern Europeans nations.
In line with archaeology, western & central Iberia were populated by hunter-gatherers distinctive from those on Mediterranean coast by their higher Magdalenian ancestry. Those hunter-gatherers had a resurgence over the EEFs as elsewhere during neolithic.
Steppe ancestry in IEs was diluted by the time that they reached SW Iberia at end of third millennium, in line with other studies. However, there are signs of an Eastern Mediterranean migration to Iberia in Bronze Age or earlier:
There was substantial migration to urban areas in Portugal during the Roman period from Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. If these samples are representative, about half of the urban population was foreign-derived. Date of the site isn't provided, but was after 100 BC.
Safavids were, like Ottomans, born in obscurity in chaos of mid-13th century Mongol invasions - although as Sufi order rather than as tribal migration. Contrary to later propaganda, Sheikh Safi was not a sayyid or from a Shia background, but he became prominent in a Shia milieu.
Safavid Order had a waqf (charitable endowment) for its benefit by 1305 in Ardabil. Its network of followers expanded in Anatolia, Khorasan, & Mazandaran under aegis of Ilkhanate & some of its successors, but was forced to arm some of its supporters in at least Ardabil.
Timur, the greatest mystic of his era, liked the Safavid Order & granted it additional lands to financially sustain its missionary efforts. However, the Order was squeezed by his sons, who desires to centralize power in the realm.
Thread with excerpts from "Hezbollah: A Short History" by Augustus Richard Norton
Shia birthrates in mid-20th century Lebanon were higher than those of Sunnis & Christians.
from 1950s to 1970s Lebanese Shia typically supported secular parties led by Christians - whether rightist or leftist. Growth of armed Palestinian formations in Lebanon in 1970s drove formation of both coalitional & oppositional Shia organizations.
Thread with excerpts from "Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic" by Michael Axworthy
one reason to find the Iranian Revolution interesting is that it proceeded to follow a non-Western path of development, much like India & China, rather than following the Western path.
Iranian Shia Islam is a more organized & disciplined force than Sunni Islam in most of the rest of the world as the result of an enduring clerical hierarchy (the Sunni Caliphate was dissolved in 1924).