u/extraneous_parsnip

In a discussion of Sabbatai Zevi, the historian David Abulafia makes passing reference to Oliver Cromwell "not being immune" to the messianism of the mid 17th century. His book is about the Mediterranean so Cromwell is not really relevant and he doesn't expand further on the point.

Is he right? Was there a strain of messianic thought to Cromwell, or around him at the time?

1979 saw several major Islamic uprisings. The Iranian revolution, the Syrian uprising, the seizure of the Grand Mosque, the storming of the US embassy in Pakistan, the Herat mutiny.

Was there something particular to the "Muslim world" that caused 1979 to be such a stormy year, or does it even make sense to speak of that as a continuity given the Shias in Iran had little common cause with the Sunnis in Saudi Arabia/Afghanistan/etc.?