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al-jAhiz_on_byzantines

(Al Jahiz in the 9th century writes with no holds barred and calls the Byzantines LARPers who are a completely different people from the Ancient Greeks. He says the Ancient Greeks are no more, the Byzantines (Rum) just claim to be their inheritors based on geographical proximity.)

Had the common people but known that the Christians and the Byzantines have neither wisdom nor clarity [of mind] nor depth of thought but are simply clever with their hands in wood-turning, carpentry, plastic arts, and weaving of silk brocade, they would have removed them from the ranks of the literati and dropped them from the roster of philosophers and sages - because

works like the Organon, On Coming to Be and Passing Away, and Meteorology were written by Aristotle, and he is neither Byzantine nor Christian;
the Almagest was written by Ptolemy, and he is neither Byzantine nor Christian;
the Elements was written by Euclid, and he is neither Byzantine nor Christian;
medical books were written by Galen, who was neither Byzantine nor Christian;
and similarly with the books by Democritus, Hippocrates, Plato, and on and on.

All these are individuals of one nation; they have perished but the traces of their minds live on: they are the Greeks. Their religion was different from the religion of the Byzantines, and their culture was different from the culture of the Byzantines. They were scientists, while these people [the Byzantines] are artisans who appropriated the books of the Greeks on account of the geographical proximity. Some of those books they ascribed to themselves while others they converted to their religion, except for those Greek books that were too famous and the philosophical works that were too well known; unable, then, to change the names [of the authors] of these books, they claimed that the Greeks were but one of the Byzantine tribes.

They used their religious beliefs to boast superiority over the Jews, to display arrogance toward the Arabs, and to wax haughty over the Indians to the point that they actually claimed that our sages are followers of theirs, and that our philosophers have followed their example. And that is that.14