It was a cold, overcast, and wintry day. Someone decided to scrawl "Happy Birthday ❤️ Sun" on the sidewalk in front of a bleak apartment complex.
The local mosque
Administration of the Udmurt Republic building - with the Udmurt flag flying at the same height as the Russian flag. The sheen on the ground is ice - you had to walk carefully to avoid falling.
Michael the Archangel Cathedral
The area by the pond was grim
Izhevsk's most famous resident - Mihail Kalashnikov - was not forgotten. Several thousand locals are employed by the Kalashnikov Concern. 95% of Russian small arms are made in Izhevsk.
Descendants of Indo-Europeans & their Uralic conquerors who subsequently mixed with Sarmatians, the Udmurts are about a seventh of Izhevsk's population. Their name for the city is "Izhkar". Seemed like a tenth of the local population had red hair.
Two statues. Left is labeled "Izhevsk Weaponry" and has plaques celebrating the city's military manufacturing history. Right is a medieval man and woman with a boat. Can't read the plaque.
Izhevsk Heat & Electric Center-1 next to the Izhevsk Pond. Built in 1934, it is one of the two power plants in Izhevsk. It operates with natural gas.
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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).
Thread with excerpts from "A History of Myanmar Since Ancient Times: Traditions and Transformations" by Michael Aung-Thwin and Maitrii Aung-Thwin
Burma is a colonial era English name for Myanmar. In the Burmese language (Myanma Saga), the ethnicity & nationality of locals are not distinguished - such distinctions are made only in Western academia.
the authors take issue with the focus that Western anarchist academics like James C. Scott (& David Graeber?) place on the hill tribes of Myanmar, stating that their evidence is weak & that it was indeed the states of the region which drove pre-modern history. @ResonantPyre
Thread with excerpts from "The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of Africa's Middle Ages" by Francois-Xavier Fauvelle
Mansa Musa's rise to power is known only through a dictation written down by a secretary in Cairo.
the medieval contact zone between the Islamic world & sub-Saharan societies was unstable. There are archaeological sites with no Arabic language records, and Arabic language references to cities that have yet to be found - suggesting terrible wars now long forgotten.