When has mercy not been recognized?

Certainly, there are slightly different conceptions of mercy, or at least the practice thereof, but acting kindly toward others is something that has always been understood by humans, at least since we began to write and presumably prior to that time.

The most ancient of Hindu texts mention something of mercy, we find it in Homeric writings... I'd have to give it another read, but my gut tells me that some evidence of mercy can be found in Gilgamesh.

Sorry but as a untrained observer of philosophy i was trying to find when the act of mercy on a stranger became a recognisable event.Justice is mentioned and mercy within the family can be seen but it is not mentioned very often in ancient writings.It appears to become more recognisable in the christian tradition more so than in its teachings.Even when it has become recognised, its practice takes us beyond the middle ages and even in Tudor times it has romantic overtones.
It appears an abstract notion am i right?

I would say, not...It is a recognition of fate, and that is why primitives who universally accept fate are universally merciful... For this reason the Jews were not merciful, thinking a man earned all he recieved, but the Muslims are, well aware of the part fate plays in every existence... So, they find it more easy to forgive even the worst of crimes, and try always to spare a life, saying that if you save a life it is as if you saved all of humanity.. And we say forgive us our tresspasses as we forgive those...That means we are all in trouble...

Muslims held slaves, raped their enemies wives,castrated their slaves.They killed 80 million Hindu pagans in the name of god.Their scriptures don't encourage mercy so how do you come by this assumption.
Can you give an example of primitive tribes showing mercy to their sworn enemies?
The concept of mercy can be confused with justice or love when reading historical accounts.I could well be totally wrong but it requires investigation.

I don't know where you come by your misinformation; but Muslims were much more inclined to buy a slave castrated if they wanted one castrated, because it is a dangerous operation if not done, as the Christians did it, to babies, as the Bible says, crushing the testicles between two stones. Consider, that when things were bad in China, people lined up for imperial service, and for the hope of food and shelter let themselves be cut up with a 50% likely hood of dieing of a subsequent infection...
The Muslims did not rape, but they would marry the daughters or wives of their enemies...
And in regard to pagans, there was no call for mercy.. The mercy consisted of this: They had to warn any person three times to convert to Islam, and after that, they could be killed at will...Among their own, and other people of the book, they are merciful... Like American Indians or the German tribes; if a murderer were not caught when the blood was hot, there was a chance the murderer could escape with a payment of blood money, which usually involved two family groups getting together and settling on a price... Everyone wanted to avoid feud, and everyone looked for an excuse to make peace...In very recent times, a murderer condemed to death, In Iran, I believe, was freed from that penalty by the father of the slain...Since the condemned was European, there was a lot of press there for the event, and the father announced this to them with tears streaming down his face, saying this is who we are and what we do...As they conceive of the God as merciful, they can hardly avoid mercy, believing they will be judged upon their actions...

Among the American Indians, any man who had not killed one of their people, when captured was likely to be adopted to replace some person lost to the enemy...It was never any sort of dogma, but compared to what whites have often said of their enemies, British to Irish for example, or Americans to natives; that nits make lice -to excuse killing babies, children and mothers, the Natives were very merciful... They might take a baby and raise it as their own, but no honor would come to a man killing a child or a women, and they lived in honor societies...

Sorry to disillusion you but barbary pirates, Muslims by the will of Allah took slaves, rapped their conquests and castrated their slaves.Millions of African slaves became eunuchs for the Arab world but their genes do not survive because of castration.I'm sorry again but you have not given me any examples of mercy as we now perceive the notion.I'm beginning to think should we discuss what mercy is..

I think you ought to read a book; and perhaps the Book...As Lawrence of Arabia pointed out in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, There are many black and blackish people among the Arabs just because the Book counts the freeing of a slave as a mercy...It was not as the Romans did it, to throw their aged slaves on the corn dole...

.It is written they can take the women of enemies as slaves and have sex with them ,with or without their consent. They can also split husband and wife slaves and sell them to different buyers.
Giving the option to revert before they killed them is not mercy in any stretch of the imagination.Slaves where automatically castrated when serving in harems, another allowance for Muslims.It is well documented the suffering European slaves endured when captured by Muslim pirates.
I'm asking for examples of mercy that we consider mercy, do you consider these acts merciful?

Judging them from our perspective in time is not mercy... I don't think we are merciful...We have five percent of the world's population, and of the world's population behind bars we have twenty-five percent...

You only have to look at how the Muslims were before to find them merciful...Is there something wrong with your eyes??? Seriously, what percent of slaves do you expect served as bed guards??? I mean, there is a perfectly good man, who could be productive turned into an it, and eating as much as any other and supported by all others in society...Considering the low level of technology, and how labor intensive all of life was; do you think such people were all that common except for the most wealthy... The fact is, that it was the slavers themselves who took the risk, because it was risky to castrate, but once that occured, and the man survived, then he would bring more money... Again, they must not all have been castrated, since there are many dark skinned people among the Arabs...

Compare them to the Spanish when they had driven the Muslims out...Compare them to the Greek/Romans of Constantinople...They defeated one army from the Balkans, and out of every one hundred left one man, with one eye to lead the other ninety-nine back home blind... Were the Greek or the Roman's merciful...One time, the Gauls tried to revolt, and Caesar cut the hands off every man he could find, and called it Mercy...

You say Mercy; and I say: Mercy compared to what??? The Muslims are incredibly pacific... They are not suffering from too much blood shed, but too much birth... They are breeding themselves into poverty and war with others, but among themselves know general peace, and part of that peace is due to the fact that in warfare, mercy is very little found... Yet, even between the Turks who were notoriously cruel, and the Arabs, during the revolt, it was only when the Ottoman empire was crumbling and the retreating Turks were slaughtering the native non combatants, was the order given to take no prisoners...

I am not going to argue with your figures...In fact, I will assume they are true, and ask where is your proof that those people killed would have been worse off, which is to say, not killed any way??? The history of mankind has been one of constant struggle...People often blew through Afghanistan for example...Is it possible anyone not Islamic could hold Afghanistan today???Unity is the best defense, and the fact is that India never did present the problem for colonial rule that Pakistan, or Afghanistan did...And, considering Bhuddists; there are still many Chinese Bhuddists, but their cruelty is notable in many places owned by Bhddists who are not Chinese...And the Russians who conquered much of central Asia with great cruelty are still supporting the claims of imported European Russians against natives...The Turks were notably cruel; even to other Muslims...

What then can anyone compare mercy with except the situation, and what came before...When Jack London wrote about the hairpin turn on the way to the Klondike Gold field, and the animals trapped and alive and trampled under the hoves of other horses soon to be trapped, and trampled, it points out that where animals are abused, used up and destroyed, people can expect little better from life... We can look at some hard geography, or climates, and all but guarantee that people living there will be cruel...It is easy to judge people based upon our easy chair existence... The fact is that we often do very little to ease the lives of people in cruel places, but make them worse, more painful, short, and futile... Should we judge them unmerciful when we, knowing better, do not give better???

Who exports more war material than the United States??? Who has more thermonuclear weapons??? Who will not sign the chemical Weapons ban, or the land mine treaty???As a people we are no better than any other, and have improved but little from the middle ages when Richard the Lion Hearted killed so many Muslim prisoners at Acre...

If one shows what we thiink of as mercy to ones kin; it is not mercy, but an obligation...To be mercy, it must not be required, but above and beyond what is required, and come from a largess, and a generosity of the spirit...What the past shows, is that people were incapable of such feelings, but were hospitable and generous to all because that was their honor...When the Natives of America were merciful it was in the process of making the enemy part of their own families.. The notion of returning good for evil was beyond them... The notion of transforming evil into good by adoption was not far fetched to them... Adoptions, after all must be like slavery; by consent...And that opens the possibility that slavery was itself a form of mercy...It is, after all, more of a form of relationship than death, or cannibalism...