The gift of Islam

Oi gang :2thumbsup:
Time to shift the Monastery towards a new debate! The latest entries seemed to have left a rather bitter taste. I am unsure the subject will be less controversial, yet I find it a lot more compelling. Please don't skip the spoiler tags, I am only placing them to make the post legible, yet I've placed my principal arguments there.


The theme I would welcome your views on is the influence of Islam on European civilization. Sounds a bit tame considering the widely accepted arguments making the case for the beneficial outcome for the Europeans that resulted from this clash of civilizations and the debt Europe owes to the refined Arab caliphates, as it is generically described almost since Voltaire and particularly in the multicultural era which embraced Said's Orientalism.


However
My point shall build up the grounds to prove the fact that Islam was in fact the cause for the effacement of the Roman institutions, language and culture, and the effect of its birth was one of profound regress across the continent which robbed Europe of almost half of a millennium of economic and cultural growth, while its absence would have likely translated intoa civilizational continuum up to the present day.


I will work my way up to that slowly :bow:
Not a few months ago, I was discussing with a friend the fate of Sylvain Gouguenheim ulterior to the impact of his violently opposed "Aristote au Mont Saint-Michel: Les racines grecques de l’Europe Chrétienne”. His thesis, which will be described below, caused an earthquake in 2008 among European intellectuals, especially French multiculturalists. While there were important figures to come to his defence, the book ultimately caused him to lose his position in the research lab of the École Normale Supérieure of Lyon. Three petitions were signed by various public figures, accusing him of intellectual racism and he became an almost officially persona non grata thanks to the hegemony of the above mentioned multicultural current, heavily influenced by Eduard Said’s Orientalism and the works of scholars such as Philippe Buttgen, Alain de Libera, Marwan Rashed şi Irene Rosier-Catach.

There aren’t a great many English language resources presenting his thesis, yet here is a link for a New York Times review: Europe's debt to Islam given a skeptical look

Between the next spoiler tags, I shall attempt to present his argument.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

In Aristote au Mont Saint-Michel, Gouguenheim points out that a Greek demographic presence linked the culminating period of Late Antiquity with the incipient phase of the Middle Ages in the West; and that presence persisted for centuries. “In the Europe of the High Middle Ages, many regions sheltered knots of ethnic Hellenes: Sicily, Southern Italy, and again Rome.” These communities supported literate elites, who contributed actively to the Latinate majorities among whom they lived, giving rise to such notable figures as Gregory of Agrigento (born 559), who became bishop in his native city later in life; George, Bishop of Syracuse, killed by the Arabs while on a mission to them in 724; Saint Gilsenus (mid-Seventh Century), a Greek-born monk living in a Roman monastery who evangelized in Hainault with Saint Armand; and Simeon of Reichenau, known as “The Achaean,” who belongs to the Tenth Century. In men like Simeon this Byzantine Diaspora reached well beyond Mediterranean Europe into the Rhine and Danube regions. Not only Greek but also Syriac Christians became additional mediators of the classical heritage at this time, driven from their homeland by the Jihad. “Paradoxically,” writes Gouguenheim, “Islam from its beginning transmitted Greek culture to the Occident by provoking the exile of those who refused its domination.” So, to be fair, did the Puritanical spasms of Byzantine court-theology in its regular iconoclastic moods. The persecuted iconodules, like the Syriac Christians, often sought refuge in Italy, Spain, or France.

Gouguenheim makes clear the conscious and deliberate indebtedness of the Carolingian Renaissance to these sustained currents from the East; he emphasizes the importance of the Carolingian Hellenophile project to the preservation and recirculation of Neo-Platonic and Aristotelian thought before the school of Aquinas. “From the court of the Carolingians to that of the Germanic emperors of the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries, one does not cease to encounter men who interested themselves in Greek knowledge and culture.” Gouguenheim mentions how Pépin le Bref (reigned 751-768) petitioned the Pope for Greek texts and how Paul I responded by committing to royal custodianship various “liturgical books, manuals of grammar and orthography, of geometry [and] works of Aristotle and pseudo-Dionysius” along with “men capable of translating them.” Charlemagne himself employed an Italian of Greek background, Paul Diacre (720-799), “to teach Greek to the clerics” at a moment when a marriage seemed possible between his daughter Rothrude and a Byzantine prince. Charles the Bald (reigned 840-877) “was fascinated by Greek culture, to the point that he asked the Irish savant Duns Scotus Erigena to translate the work of [pseudo-Dionysius] towards 855.”

With respect to Aachen, Gouguenheim senses an “irresistible attraction for the Greek authors,” which carries over into the Ottonian period and even intensifies. “The reputedly obscure centuries of the Middle Ages were in reality animated by multiple intellectual rebirths.” Gothic Christianity, far from being averse to or irreconcilable with antique philosophy, “succeeded in the task of integrating antique culture within the Biblical framework of which [Christendom] was the issue.”

In addition to passing remarks, Gouguenheim devotes a separate chapter to the classicizing tendencies of the Syriac and Arab Christians, as distinct from their linguistic cousins and brethren in the Islamic faith. As part of Byzantium, of which their main region of Cappadocia was a province, Syriac Christians played a central role in constituting the Eastern theological discourse during the medieval centuries, continuing to do so even after they had fallen under the sway of the Caliphs, thereby assisting in the westward transmission of Attic and Alexandrian lore. Gouguenheim writes: “Insofar as one speaks of ‘Arabic-Muslim culture’ in the Seventh through the Tenth Centuries, one commits an anachronism… because the culture was at that time barely Muslim and was Arab only by displaced appellation.” Truly, “Syriac is closer to Hebrew than to Arabic,” and the elites of the Nestorian and Monophysite dispensations could generally boast bilingualism in their own tongue and the Koine of the Empire. The jolly idea of Muslim competence in classical learning, as Gouguenheim argues, rests on a misunderstanding: what Islam knew of Greco-Roman wisdom, which it possessed at no time extensively, it knew largely thanks to Syriac scholars. “The Syriac [Christians] were in effect the essential intermediaries of the transmission into Arabic of the philosophical texts of the ancient Greeks,” who generously gave far more than the reluctant takers took. Obtuse westerners betray their lack of discrimination and their poverty of real knowledge in failing to differentiate between Syriac culture and the Arabic-Muslim culture that, by means of the Jihad, conquered and cruelly stamped out Nestorian (and Coptic and Byzantine) society.

Unlike their Muslim beneficiaries, however, the Syriac Christians could assimilate the full range of Greek logic and speculation. The Johannine Logos stemmed from the Greek Logos and the Christianity of the Patres – whether Greek, Latin, or Syriac – therefore comported itself as a rational theology; already in Late Antiquity, Cappadocians and Syrians stood out as the chief developers of Neo-Platonism; emperors both Pagan and Christian sought counsel from the professors of Antioch’s renowned Daphnaeum. In a chapter on “Islam and Greek Knowledge,” Gouguenheim notes that for Muslims, on the other hand, the Logos constituted an inassimilable scandal, subversive of the absolute submission to Allah’s commands, as articulated in the Koran, that the name Islam denotes. Islam kept of Greek thought “in general [only] that which could not come in contradiction with Koranic teaching.” Furthermore, “Greece – and so too Rome – represented a world radically foreign to Islam, for reasons religious, but also political”; and, unlike the Latinate and Frankish peoples, “Muslims did not interest themselves in the languages of those whom they had conquered” because “Arabic was the sacred language par excellence, and that of revelation.”

More aggressively, “Muslim rejection – or indifference – to Greek knowledge manifested itself again through the destruction of the cultural centers that were the monasteries.”

Multiculturalists and Islamophiles have pointed to the Abbasid establishment in Spain (Andalusia) called the Bayt al Hikma or “House of Wisdom” as proof of Muslim enthusiasm for classical learning. Gouguenheim demonstrates that this is another “seductive” misunderstanding, to which the fanciful eagerly yield. The “House of Wisdom” never functioned other than as a Koranic school, and even in that capacity it enjoyed only a truncated existence.

Aristote au Mont Saint-Michel celebrates a central figure, Jacques de Venise (Twelfth Century), who, not only metaphorically, brought Aristotle to Mont Saint-Michel. Jacques was a cleric of Venetian origin, as his name tells, who studied in Constantinople before reestablishing himself in France. Jacques, as Gouguenheim phrases it, through his Herculean labor of scholarship and translation, supplies “the missing link in the history of the passage of Aristotelian philosophy from the Greek world to the Latinate world.” It is a matter of colossal importance that Jacques, as Gouguenheim reports, “translated a considerable number of Aristotle’s works directly from Greek to Latin, making him a pioneering figure.” (Emphasis added) According to the story prevalent today, Aristotle in his fullness returned to the ken of Christendom through a complicated chain of transactions, beginning with supposed Arabic translations out of Greek, and then, by way of Moorish generosity, from Arabic back into Latin and over the Pyrenees. But the story does not wash. It is plagued by linguistic problems, which Gouguenheim duly rehearses, but it is flatly demolished by what Gouguenheim has discovered concerning Jacques’ work. Jacques’ manuscripts, which are in almost every case the earliest attested for a given Aristotelian opus, swiftly gained a reputation, well founded, for being the most accurate and idiomatic. Jacques’ translations gained wide currency and formed the basis for an Aristotelian revival all across Western Europe.

As Gouguenheim writes, “The two great names of theological and philosophical reflection in the Thirteenth Century, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, utilized [Jacques’] Greco-Latin translations.” In a manner, Jacques brought his project to too fine a point of perfection, reestablishing the Aristotelian tradition so effectively that his own pioneering status lapsed into oblivion, exactly in proportion as knowledge of The Metaphysics and the Analytics came to be taken for granted. Many of his original manuscripts lay unrecognized in the archives at Mont Saint-Michel until recent decades.

All this aside
What actually still surprises me to this day is the virtually uncontested dominance of the generic view that Islam proved to be a beacon of light for an Europe which had been plunged into the Dark Ages by the Germanic tribes westward push, when in fact I would opine Islam was in fact the cause for Europe losing almost a thousand years of progress, and this view was shaped at a rather early age by my lecture of Henri Pirenne’s superb posthumously published book, Mohammed and Charlemagne.

A wonderfully researched thesis, it proves that it was the advance of Islam rather than the barbarian invasions that caused the break with antiquity and the consequent decline of Western civilization in the Middle Ages. The Mediterranean Sea was Europe, and Islam suffocated it. In the worlds of Ibn-Khaldoun (with the necessary reservation as regards Byzantium): ‘The Christian could no longer float a plank upon the sea.’ “Romania” was to be found on all shores of the Mediterranean and trade flourished anew.

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“In the VIIth century, nothing announces yet the end of this community of civilization built by the Roman Empire from the Pillars of Hercules to the Aegean Sea and from the shores of Egypt and of Africa to the ones of Italy, Gaul and Spain. The new world has not yet lost the Mediterranean character of the ancient world. its whole activity is focused on the shores of the Mediterranean.
Nothing announces the fact that this millenary evolution shall be brutally interrupted. No one expects a catastrophe. Even if the immediate successors of Justinian cannot continue his work, they have not abandoned it. They refuse to make concessions to the Longobards, they fortify Africa feverishly, their politics extend over the Franks and Visigoths; their fleet rules the sea; the pope in Rome considers them his legitimate sovereigns.”

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While I still have the book here somewhere (I've moved about a lot in the past years and thus I am at pains to admit my book shelves would benefit from a neat re-organization at the moment) I shall attempt to piece a review from memory and by patching together the quotes and commentary I could find between the following spoiler tags.

The first section investigates the question of western civilization after the Germanic invasions. Pirenne is at pains to show that while there were important military victories scored by the Germanic tribes, there was little lasting shift in the fundamental culture of Rome. He shows how within a relatively short period of time Germanic peoples were co-opted into Roman culture, intermarried and that the Latin language(s) remained dominant. He argues that fundamentally the Germanic peoples had little desire to destroy the empire, but much preferred to just have a share of the benefits.

So the book begs the question: if Germanic Barbarians did not end the Roman Empire, what or who did? Pirenne posits that the explosive advance of Islam out of the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century AD ended the Roman Empire. The advance of Islam transformed the Western Mediterranean Sea into a vast "Musulman lake," which, in turn, curbed commerce and thought between Constantinople-centered Roman Empire and the Roman Empire in the West. Islam, according to Pirenne, suffocated Western Europe by transforming the Western Mediterranean Sea into a vast den of predatory Arabs. To survive, many urban Western Europeans decamped from their formerly prosperous commercial maritime cities to inland villages where they embraced agriculture. The axis of life in the West shifted northwards away from the Mediterranean for the first time in history, noted Pirenne.

Pirenne presents and analyzes many lines of evidence to support his work. He organized his thesis in two parts: Western Europe before Islam and Islam and the Carolingians.

I will attempt to synthesize the contents for you:

I. Part One: Western Europe before Islam

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Pirenne taught the importance of the Mediterranean Sea to the far flung Roman Empire. "Of all the features of that wonderful human structure, the Roman Empire, the most striking, and also the most essential, was its Mediterranean character," he wrote. "The inland sea, in the full sense of the term Mare nostrum, was the vehicle of ideas, and religions, and merchandise…Life was concentrated on the shores of the great lake. Without it Rome could not have been supplied with African wheat…On the roads that led thither from the provinces the traffic of these provinces converged upon the [Mediterranean] sea. As one travelled away from it civilization became more rarefied."

Western Europe depended on Constantinople, a maritime city and important naval base in the Eastern Mediterranean, for manufactured articles and luxuries, including silk and spices. "Thanks to the Mediterranean, the [Roman] Empire constituted, in the most obvious fashion, an economic unity," wrote Pirenne. "It was one great territory, with tolls but no custom houses. And it enjoyed the enormous advantage of a common monetary unit, the gold solidus of Constantine, containing 4.55 grammes of fine gold, which was current everywhere."

Pirenne acknowledges Barbarians did surround the Roman Empire in both the Greek East and in the Latin West, beginning in the third century. At first, the frontier guard of the Roman Legions ably defended the Empire's borders on the edge of the Sahara, on the Euphrates, on the Danube and on the Rhine. "But behind the dyke the waters were rising," observed Pirenne. "In the 3rd century, owing partly to civil disturbances, there were cracks in the dyke, and then breaches. From all directions there was an irruption of Franks, Alamans and Goths, who ravaged Gaul, Rhaetia, Pannone and Thrace, advancing even as far as Spain.

Initially, military leaders of Illyria (northern part of the Balkans) leaders swept back the Barbarians and re-established the Roman Empire's frontier. "But on the German side of the Empire the limes [border defense or delimiting system of ancient Rome] no longer sufficed; a deep defensive front was necessary. The cities of the interior were fortified: those cities that were the nerve-centers of the Empire, Rome and Constantinople, became two model fortresses."
In the fifth century, the Roman Empire, however, finally "lost" its Western territories to the Germanic Barbarians. Unlike other historians, Pirenne believed the Barbarians were friendly to those they conquered most of the time. Of course, there was a certain amount of pillage and violence. But, he writes, "They [the Barbarians] asked nothing better than to enter the service of Rome…All these Germans who entered the Empire did so to serve it and to enjoy its advantages. They felt for it all the respect of the Barbarian for civilization. No sooner did they enter it than they adopted its language, and also its religion: that is to say, Christianity, after the 4th century; and in becoming Christians, in losing their national gods, and frequenting the same churches, they gradually merged into the population of the Empire. Before long almost the entire army was composed of Barbarians; and many of them, like the Vandal, Stilicho [359-408 AD], the Goth, Gainas, and the Suevian, Ricimer, achieved fame as soldiers of the Empire."

The important question thus becomes: Why did the Germanic Barbarians overrun the Roman Empire in the West? Pirenne wrote that the real cause of the final failure of the Roman Empire to maintain its borders against the Germanic Barbarians was "the flood of the Hunnish advance." The Huns were an early confederation of Central Asian equestrian pastoralists who moved into Europe in the fourth and fifth centuries. The Huns pushed the German Barbarians southward into the Western Roman Empire. "For the first time Europe was to feel, across the immense gap of the Sarmatic Plain, the repercussion of the clashes between the populations of Farthest Asia," opined Pirenne.

Nevertheless, the Roman Empire, in a cultural sense, remained intact, and "could hardly have done otherwise," noted Pirenne. "The Roman Empire continued to be Roman, just as the United States of North America, despite immigration, have remained Anglo-Saxon. As a matter of fact, the newcomers were in a very small minority…What was the population of the Empire? 70 millions?...The Germans disappeared in the mass of the population…Schmidt's figure of 100,000 (Visigoths) may be accepted as probable…The Germanic element in the Western provinces beyond the limes [constituted] 5 percent of the population." (8-9)

Pirenne allowed that a minority can "transform a people when it wishes to dominate it effectively, when it has only contempt for it, regarding it as fit only for exploitation; as was the case with the Normans in England, the Musulmans wherever they appeared, and even the Romans in the conquered provinces. But the Germans wished neither to destroy nor to exploit the Empire. Far from despising it, they admired it." (9) Eventually, all Germanic law, or rather, all Germanic institutions had disappeared when in 442 Genseric [King of the Vandals] ...established an absolute monarchy. His was a Roman government. He struck coins which bore the effigy of Honorius. The inscriptions were Roman. [His] government did not meddle with the economic life of the country, or deal with the realities of daily existence. It seems that the Vandal kings even continued to send presentations of oil to Rome and Constantinople. When Genseric established the order of succession to the throne he did so in a codicil drawn up in accordance with the prescriptions of Roman legislation."
Pirenne provides countless examples over many pages to support his thesis, "There could be no greater mistake than to suppose that the idea of the Empire disappeared after the dismemberment of the Western Provinces by the Barbarians." The Emperor in Constantinople "no longer governed, but he still reigned." "Despite its losses, the Empire was still the only world-power, and Constantinople was the greatest of civilized cities. The foreign policy of the Empire embraced all the peoples of Europe, and completely dominated the policy of the Germanic State. Until the 8th century, the only positive element in history was the influence of the Empire. And it is an undeniable fact that this Empire had become Oriental."

How did the Byzantines continue their hegemony over the Western Empire? Simple! As long as "the Mediterranean remained the great means of communication between the East and the West, the preponderance of the first over the second was inevitable. The sea, which the Byzantines continued to control, spread their influence in all directions. And the civilization of the period was found beside the sea, both in the West and in the East. From Germanism in itself nothing more was to be expected." The one exception to the rule was the new center of culture making its appearance among the Anglo-Saxons, but this culture had come to them direct from the Mediterranean.

Trade flourished between the East and the West in the sixth century AD. Trade went beyond "the mere importation of jewels and articles of clothing…The really important branch of Oriental commerce, by which it was actually related to everyday life, was the importation of spices. One cannot insist too strongly on the importance of this trade. The Roman Empire had received all sorts of spices from India, China, Arabia…Their diffusion was not interrupted by the [Germanic] invasions. They continued, after the invasions, as before them, to form a constituent of the everyday diet."

Commerce required written documents, and the trade in papyrus that came from the East was brisk. "Egypt had the monopoly of furnishing the whole Empire with the writing material in general use, parchment being reserved for special purposes. Now, both after and before the invasions the art of writing was practised throughout the west. It was a necessary constituent of social life."

The demand for oil during this time was fierce. People used it to cook with and for the lighting of the churches at this period. Wax candles came later, after the Islam invasions. Thriving inland commerce involved white slaves, who merchants exported in large numbers eastward. The Barbarian peoples constituted the great source of slaves.

Nothing attests more clearly to the persistence of the economic unity of the Empire during the Merovingian period, after the Germanic invasions, than the persistence of monetary unity throughout the Mediterranean. The Merovingian dynasty ruled ancient Gaul from the fifth to the mid-eighth centuries AD. Pirenne notes, "Until the cataclysm which occurred in the time of the Carolingians, the Greek Orient, like the Occident conquered by the Germans, adhered as a whole to the gold mono-metallism which had been that of the Empire. The Syrian navigators, on disembarking in the ports of the Tyrrhenian Sea, found there the currency to which they had been accustomed in the ports of the Aegean Sea. What is more, the new Barbarian kingdoms adopted, in their coinage, the changes introduced in the Byzantine currency.

II. Part Two: Islam and the Carolingians

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The German invasions of the Roman Empire were, according to Pirenne, an anti-climax as compared with the explosive expansion of Islam into Roman Empire, beginning in the seventh century. The German invaders, once inside the Roman Empire, "promptly allowed themselves to become absorbed in it, and as far as possible they maintained its civilization and entered into the community upon which this civilization was based," said Pirenne. The Roman Empire's experience with the Musulman invaders was radically different.

The Roman Empire had had practically no dealings with the peoples of the vast Arabian Peninsula. It had not regarded Arabia as a threat and thus had never massed any large proportion of military forces near its border. "It was a frontier of inspection, which was crossed by the caravans that brought perfumes and spices…There was nothing to fear from the nomadic Bedouins of the Peninsula, whose civilization was still in the tribal state, whose religious beliefs were hardly better than fetichism, and who spent their time in making war upon one another, or pillaging the caravans that travelled from south to north, from Yemen to Palestine, Syria and the Peninsula of Sinai, passing through Mecca and Yathreb (the future Medina)," declared Pirenne.

The Persian Empire, led by the Sassanid dynasty, was likewise unaware of the Arab threat. The Persians and Romans instead fought one another while Mohammed (570-632 AD) made his remarkable ascent to unite Arab nomads, preaching a new religion they "would presently cast upon the world, while imposing its own dominion. The Empire was already in deadly danger when [Arab Christian] John of Damascus [676-749 AD] was still regarding Islam as a sort of schism, of much the same character as previous heresies." Pirenne suggests the success of the Islamic attack was due to the exhaustion of the Roman and Persian Empires fighting one another. The Romans, led by Emperor Heraclius (575-641 AD), had at last triumphed over the Sassanids, led by Shah of Persia Chosroes II, in Ctesiphon.

Mohammed died in 632 AD. Several years later, the Islamic attacks began. The Roman and Persian Empires were taken by complete surprise. "The provinces which Persia had just surrendered [to Heraclius] were suddenly wrested from the Empire by Islam. Heraclius was doomed to be a helpless spectator of the first onslaught of this new force which was about to disconcert and bewilder the Western world."

"The Arab conquest, which brought confusion upon both Europe and Asia, was without precedent. The swiftness of its victory is comparable only with that by which the Empires of Attila, Ghenghis Khan and Tamerlane were established," noted Pirenne. "But these Empires were as ephemeral as the conquest of Islam was lasting…The lightning-like rapidity of its diffusion was a veritable miracle as compared with the slow progress of Christianity."

Bosra, Transjordania. “Bosra is an extremely ancient city mentioned in lists of Tutmose III and Akhenaton in the fourteenth century BC. The first Nabataean city in the 2nd century BC, it bore the name Buhora, and then Bustra during Hellenistic period. Later the Romans took an active interest in the city, and at time of Emperor Trajan it was made the capital of the Province of Arabia (in 106 BC) and was called Neatrajana Bustra. The city flourished when it became a crossroads on the caravan routes and the official seat and residence of the Imperial Legate. After the decline of the Roman Empire, Bosra played a significant role in the history of early Christianity. It was also linked to the rise of Islam, when a Nestorian monk called Bahira met the young Mohammad when his caravan stopped at Bosra, and predicted his prophetic vocation and the faith he was going to initiate.

"The Arabs…took possession of whole sections of the crumbling Empire," writes Pirenne. In 634 they seized the Byzantine fortress of Bothra (Bosra) in Transjordania; in 635 Damascus fell before them; in 636 the battle of Yarmok gave them the whole of Syria; in 637 or 638 Jerusalem opened its gates to them, while at the same time their Asiatic conquests included Mesopotamia and Persia. Then it was the turn of Egypt to be attacked; and shortly after the death of Heraclius (641) Alexandria was taken, and before long the whole country was occupied. Next the invasions, still continuing, submerged the Byzantine possession in North Africa."

Why were the Arabs not absorbed by the populations they conquered, in a manner similar to the German Barbarians, as described above? "There is only one reply to this question," replied Pirenne, "and it is of the moral order. While the Germans had nothing with which to oppose the Christianity of the Empire, the Arabs were exalted by a new faith. It was this, and this alone, that prevented their assimilation. For in other respects they [Arab Muslims] were not more prejudiced than the Germans against the civilization of those whom they had conquered. On the contrary, they assimilated themselves to this civilization with astonishing rapidity; they learnt science from the Greeks, and art from the Greeks and the Persians. In the beginning, at all events, they were not even fanatical, and they did not expect to make converts of their subjects. But they required them to be obedient to the one God, Allah, and His prophet Mahommed, and, since Mahommed was an Arab, to Arabia. Their universal religion was at the same time a national religion. They were the servants of God."

Islam imposed itself upon the entire basin of the Mediterranean. "From the second half of the 7th century it aimed at becoming a maritime power in regions where Byzantium, under Constant II ( 641-668), was supreme. The Arabian ships of the Caliph Moawiya (660) began to invade Byzantine waters. They occupied the island of Cyprus, and off the coast of Asia Minor they won a naval victory of the Emperor Constans II himself. They seized the island of Rhodes, and advanced upon Crete and Sicily." They subjugated the Berbers in North Africa and founded the holy city of Kairouan in 670 (located in Tunisia, about 160 km south of Tunis). The Berbers and Romans cooperated to push back the Arabs in the 680s, thereby restoring the coast of Africa to the Byzantines.

The Arabs perceived they were in trouble, since the victory of the Byzantines threatened their invasion of the Mediterranean, which they sought to control. In desperation, the Arabs took Carthage by assault (695 and again in 698) and finally replaced "the ancient city with a new capital at the head of the gulf: Tunis, whose harbor—Goletta—was to become the great base of Islam in the Mediterranean. The Arabs, who at last had a fleet, dispersed the Byzantine vessels. Henceforth they had the control of the sea."

From Tunis, the Islamic warriors assembled converted Berbers into a military force that conquered Spain under the control of the Visigoths. In 711 a Berber army, whose strength is estimated at 7,000, crossed the Straits under the command of Tarik…All the cities opened their gates the conqueror, who, reinforced in 712 by a second army, finally took possession of the country.

The Arabs reached no further into Europe as the Carolingians were able to preserve the Occident. The Carolingian dynasty replaced the Merovingian dynasty in 751 AD. The first Carolingian King was Pepin the Short (714-786), but the greatest Carolingian monarch was Charlemagne (747-814), who was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III (died 816) at Rome in 800 AD. The Arabs also did not take Constantinople, which resisted with the great attack of 718, and thereby protected the Orient.

The important point here is that the expansion of Islam was unable to absorb the whole of the Mediterranean. "It encircled the Mediterranean on the East, the South, and the West, but it was unable to obtain a hold upon the North. The ancient Roman Sea had become the frontier between Islam and Christianity. All the old Mediterranean provinces conquered by the Musulmans gravitated henceforth toward Baghdad."

What did this mean for the Orient and the Occident? They were cut off from one another. "The bond which the Germanic invasion had left intact was severed. Byzantium was henceforth merely the centre of a Greek Empire" with its farthest Western outposts as Naples, Venice, Gaeta and Amalfi. The fleet still enabled it to remain in touch with them, and thus prevented the Eastern Mediterranean from becoming a Musulman lake. But the Western Mediterranean was precisely that. Once the great means of communication, it was now an insuperable barrier."

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"This was the most crucial essential event of European history which had occurred since the Punic Wars. It was the end of the classic [Greek and Roman] tradition. It was the beginning of the Middle Ages, and it happened at the very moment when Europe was on the way to becoming Byzantinized"

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exhorted Pirenne.

The Arabs opened new trade routes connected not to the Mediterranean or the Black Sea, but to the Baltic Sea via the Caspian Sea, by way of the Volga River. The Scandinavians, whose merchants frequented the shores of the Black Sea, were suddenly forced to follow the new route to sell their furs and other merchandise. "Navigation between the Musulman ports of the Aegean Sea and those ports which had remained Christian became impossible from the middle of the 7th century," observed Pirenne.

The Arab conquest of Spain in 711, and "the conditions of insecurity obtaining on the coast of Provence immediately after this conquest, absolutely put an end to any possibility of sea-borne grade in the Western Mediterranean," continued Pirenne. "Thus, it may be asserted that navigation with the Orient ceased about 650 as regards the regions situation eastward of Sicily, while in the second half of the 7th century it came to an end in the whole of the Western Mediterranean. By the beginning of the 8th century it had completely disappeared. There was no longer any traffic in the Mediterranean, except along the Byzantine coast. Ibn-Khaldoun famously said, "The Christians can no longer float a plank upon the sea."

The Mediterranean was henceforth at the mercy of the Saracen pirates. In the 9th century they seized the islands, destroyed the ports, and made their razzias [plundering raids] everywhere. "The great port of Marseilles, which had formerly been the principal emporium of Western trade with the Levant, was empty. The old economic unity of the Mediterranean was shattered, and so it remained until the epoch of the Crusades. It had resisted the Germanic invasions; but it gave way before the irresistible advance of Islam."

The flow of spices, papyrus, oil, wine, and other merchandise from Byzantium and Asia dried up. Records show that "by the end of the 7th century and the beginning of the 8th spices had disappeared from the normal diet. They did not reappear until after the 12th century, when the Mediterranean was reopened to commerce." Oil was not longer exported from Africa, and churches turned to wax candles for their lighting. The use of silk became unknown during this period. Charlemagne dressed simply, which was in sharp contrast to the preceding Merovingian kings. Gold became increasingly rare. Proof of this is in the increasing content of silver in the coins during the Carolingian period. The wealthy professional merchants, who were often great benefactors to society, disappeared. An active trade in slaves from Slavonia continued via Venice, which continued to exist under the protection of Byzantium.

Pirenne summarized the dismal situation in this way:

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"The Christian Mediterranean was divided into two basins. The East and the West, surrounded by Islamic countries. These latter, the war of conquest having come to an end by the close of the 9th century, constituted a world apart, self-sufficing, and gravitating toward Baghdad. It was toward this central point that the caravans of Asia made their way, and here ended the great trade route which led to the Baltic, by way of the Volga. It was from Baghdad that produce was exported to Africa and Spain.

Christian navigation, however, continued active only in the Orient, and the furthermost point of Southern Italy remained in communication with the Orient. In the Occident, on the contrary, the coast from the Gulf of Lyons and the Riviera to the mouth of the Tiber, ravaged by war and the pirates, whom the Christians, having no fleet, were powerless to resist, was no merely a solitude and a prey to piracy. The ports and the cities were deserted. The link with the Orient was severed, and there was no communication with the Saracen coasts. There was nothing but death. The Carolingian Empire presented the most striking contrast with the Byzantine. It was purely an inland power, for it had no outlets. The Mediterranean territories, formerly the most active portions of the Empire, which supported the life of the whole, were now the poorest, the most desolate, the most constantly menaced. For the first time in history the axis of Occidental civilization was displaced towards the North, and for many centuries it remained between the Seine and the Rhine. And the German peoples, which had hitherto played only the negative part of destroyers, were now called upon to play a positive part in the reconstruction of European civilization. The classic tradition was shattered, because Islam had destroyed the ancient unity of the Mediterranean."

The stunning Islamic invasion of Europe was the beginning of the Middle Ages. "Before the 8th century what existed was the continuation of the ancient Mediterranean economy. After the 8th century there was a complete break with this economy. The sea was closed. Commerce had disappeared. We perceive an Empire whose only wealth was the soil, and in which the circulation of merchandise was reduced to the minimum. So far form perceiving any progress, we see that there was a regression. Those parts of Gaul which had been the busiest were now the poorest. The South had been the bustling and progressive region; now it was the North which impressed its character upon the period."

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The one exception to this rule was the Low Countries in the extreme north of the Carolingian Empire. They were a great center of maritime navigation, but were atypical of the rest of the Empire. The seas on the Northern were still free and the Flemish cloth industry had not disappeared. The Viking civilization also prospered in the 9th and 10th centuries. "The Carolingian Empire had therefore two sensitive economic points: one in northern Italy, thanks to the commerce of Venice, and on in the Low Countries, thanks to the Frisian and Scandinavian trade. And in these two regions the economic renaissance of the 11th century had its beginnings. But neither was able to reach its full development before the 11th century." The Low Countries were crushed by the Normans and Venice was hampered by the Arabs and the turmoil in Italy.

The severe commercial regression brought on by the Islamic paralysis of the Western Mediterranean resulted in making the soil more than ever the essential basis of economy life in Europe. The Latin language disappeared in the great disorders of the 8th century. The political anarchy, the reorganization of the Church, the disappearance of the cities and of commerce and administration, especially the financial administration, and of the secular schools, made its survival, with its Latin soul, impossible. It became debased, and was transformed, according to the region into various Romanic dialects…Latin ceased to be spoken about the year 800, except by the clergy."

The one exception to the generality of economic and cultural regression in Europe in the 8th and 9th centuries was the Anglo-Saxons in whom the Latin culture was introduced suddenly, together with the Latin religion. "No sooner were they converted, under the influence and guidance of Rome, than the Anglo-Saxons turned their gaze toward the Sacred City. They visited it continually, bringing back relics and manuscripts. They submitted themselves to its suggestive influence, and learned its language, which for them was no vulgar tongue, but a sacred language, invested with an incomparable prestige. As early as the 7th century there were men among the Anglo-Saxons, like the [Benedictine monk] Venerable Bede [672-735] and the poet Aldhelm [639-709], whose learning was truly astonishing as measured by the standards of Western Europe." Indeed, the Anglo-Saxons propagated Christianity in Germany.

III. Conclusion

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Pirenne drew two conclusions from his remarkable synthesis, which grew out of his keen analysis of the objective findings of his research.

First, "the Germanic invasions destroyed neither the Mediterranean unity of the ancient world, nor what may be regarded as the truly essential features of the Roman culture as it still existed in the 5th century, at a time when there was no longer an Emperor in the West.

"Despite the resulting turmoil and destruction, no new principles made their appearance; neither in the economic or social order, nor in the linguistic situation, nor in the existing institutions. What civilization survived was Mediterranean. It was in the regions by the sea that culture was preserved, and it was for them that the innovations of the age proceeded," e.g., monasticism and the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. "In 600 the physiognomy of the world was not different in quality form that which it had revealed in 400."

Second, "the cause of the break with the tradition of antiquity was the rapid and unexpected advance of Islam. The result of this advance was the final separation of East from West, and the end of the Mediterranean unity. Countries like Africa and Spain, which had always been parts of the Western community, gravitated henceforth in the orbit of Baghdad. In these countries another religion made its appearance, and an entirely different culture. The Western Mediterranean, having become a Musulman lake, was no longer the thoroughfare of commerce and of thought which it had always been.

"The West was blockaded and forced to live upon its own resources. For the first time in history the axis of life was shifted northwards form the Mediterranean. The decadence into which the Merovingian monarchy lapsed as a result of this change gave birth to a new dynasty, the Carolingian, whose original home was in the Germanic North.

"With this new dynasty the Pope allied himself, breaking with the Emperor [in Constantinople], who, engrossed in his struggle against the Musulmans, could no longer protect him. And so the Church allied itself with the new order of things. In Rome, and in the Empire which it founded, it had no rival. And its power was all the greater inasmuch as the State, being incapable of maintaining its administration, allowed itself to be absorbed by the feudality, the inevitable sequel of the economic regression. All the consequences of this change became glaringly apparent after Charlemagne. Europe, dominated by the Church and the feudality, assumed a new physiognomy, differing slightly in different regions. The Middle Ages…to retain the tradition term—were beginning. The transitional phase was protracted. One may say that it lasted a whole century—from 650 to 750. It was during this period of anarchy that the tradition of antiquity disappeared, while the new elements came to the surface.

"This development was complete in 800 by the constitution of the new Empire, which consecrated the break between the West and the East, inasmuch as it gave to the West a new Roman Empire—the manifest proof that it had broken with the old Empire, which continued to exist in Constantinople."

So...what exactly are you trying to say?

I seriously doubt you lack the brain power to understand :shrug: But go head, troll away.

I'm not convinced religion, any religion, is a gift

Just making a post here to remind myself to come back to this when I've not got an essay due in in 18 hours.

The gift of islam to Europe and mankind in general is war, simple as that. We owe a lot of our wealth to them though, it was the closing down of the mediterranean that made us look for alternative sea-routes.

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Originally Posted by Fragony

The gift of islam to Europe and mankind in general is war, simple as that. We owe a lot of our wealth to them though, it was the closing down of the mediterranean that made us look for alternative sea-routes.

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The West owes almost everything we have to Islam. Without Islamic scholars preserving and advancing the achievements of classical civilizations Europe would still be living in the feudal ages.

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Originally Posted by Populus Romanus

The West owes almost everything we have to Islam. Without Islamic scholars preserving and advancing the achievements of classical civilizations Europe would still be living in the feudal ages.

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That's ignoring the entire role that medieval abbeys played in preserving knowledge. Not to mention Byzantium which upon its destruction helped trigger the Renaissance in Italy.

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Originally Posted by Populus Romanus

The West owes almost everything we have to Islam. Without Islamic scholars preserving and advancing the achievements of classical civilizations Europe would still be living in the feudal ages.

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Oh really, and how did all that happen

Well, this is certainly a breath of fresh air, much more interesting than all the military nitpicking that has been going on excessively in this particular forum for the past months! :2thumbsup:

However, I do not agree in the slightest.

You cite exactly two (2) books to make a point (however intellectually) in an extremely large and very controversial debate covering a very wide area of history, including the fields of intellectual, economic, social, and political history. One book (Gouguenheim) came under heavy criticism from a large group of distinguished scholars, while the other (Pirenne) is almost a century old. Really now: this cannot form proper grounds for criticism on the contemporary consensus (if there indeed is any) on the exact relationship between Islamic and (Latin) Christian culture.

I will be the first to admit, however, that this is a particularly academic piece of criticism, not totally fit for the confines of an online history forum. I'll be fair, therefore, and offer some criticism on these books you've put forward. I'll concentrate on Pirenne since I know the most about his hypothesis (which is all it is; he has not "proven" anything).

If you're short on time I'll condense my argument. You claim the following:

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Originally Posted by Nowake

while its absence would have likely translated into a civilizational continuum up to the present day.

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What you imply here, namely that there was a "break" somewhere after the "fall" of Rome, is completely unsustainable given current knowledge in the field of early medieval history. There is a civilizational continuum in the West, which has its roots in the early Middle Ages (~500 - ~1000). The term "Dark Ages" is nothing short of a cheap polemic attack, made by 15th-century humanists, on a period that was neither "dark" nor barbarous.

I sincerely invite any readers of this thread interested in this topic to read The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe From 400 to 1000 by Chris Wickham. It is an excellent and up-to-date work of early medieval history, that challenges and debunks many of the commonly held assumptions about the "dark ages" which were not dark at all. It is such a good work of scholarship that it even changes one's view, not only on the so-called "fall" of Rome, but also on the high Middle Ages (~1000 - ~1300). Pirenne is in fact discussed (and corrected) in the book.

Now, for some more elaborate criticism below.

Gouguenheim is right to focus on the vitality of Latin Christian civilization in the medieval period. However, this is nothing new: since the early 1980s many scholars have come to the conclusion that the first two centuries of the second (Christian) millennium saw a flowering of Latin civilization, along with an economic boom and social revolution across Europe. Where Gouguenheim is wrong is in his claim that there was no Islamic influence on this process, and for this he has been rightly and heavily criticized by other authors. This has nothing to do with Said and discussions on orientalism, which is mostly focused on a phenomenon from the modern era (~1750 - present). It is simple historical fact. The influence of Islamic translations and interpretations of classical sources on the budding Western civilization may not be as big as some apologists of so-called "tolerance" in Muslim Spain claim, but it certainly existed.

Of course, it is debatable if a "rediscovery" of classical sources was needed to "reignite" civilization in Latin Christendom (in other words, to cause a "renaissance"). This is more a propagandistic historical narrative invented by 15th-century humanists like Petrarca than it is historical fact. However, that is fuel for another debate ~;)

Gouguenheim's argument that Arab culture was more Greek than it was Arab, and that it brought forth nothing of its own, is of course utter and complete drivel, unsubstantiated and unsupported by even the most superficial reading of the sources, or by any serious scholar.

As for Pirenne, are you really trying to use a 80-year old book to make claims about historical reality? :dizzy2: You cannot possibly be serious. Am I really to believe you are unaware of 90 years of further scholarship? Wickham's book is just one example. For instance, a book as old as Fernand Braudel's Mediterannée (1949; revised 1966) discusses and rejects Pirenne's view, if memory serves. Pirenne's hypothesis is simply not sustainable when held up against historical reality, if only because it is based on the humanist bias depicting the early Middle Ages as an age of darkness and barbarism, which it most clearly was not. Pirenne also focuses too much on the "Carolingian renaissance" (a teleological approach to history if I ever saw one). The Seine-Rhine region of Europe was in fact made economically central in Western Europe not by the Carolingians, but under the Merovingians (and for the first time in history) in the 6th century.

Furthermore, Pirenne's view on Mediterranean trade in the early Middle Ages is clearly outdated. It may not have reached Roman levels, but do you think that Italian urbanization and economic diversification in the 11th and 12th centuries somehow emerged out of thin air? What about the huge economic success called Muslim Spain, do you think this occurred without exports? What about the comparative economic complexity of places like Byzantium, Italy, and the Muslim world? And finally, to use one of Pirenne's arguments against him, do you really think there would have been so many pirates and raiders in the Mediterranean if the seas had been empty? As Braudel noted, a pirate often became a merchant and vice versa depending on time, place, and opportunity. If there had been nothing to gain, there would have been no raiders of the seas.

In short, the scale of activity in the Mediterranean does not support a thesis attempting to put blame for a (hugely overstated) Western "decline" on the Muslims for a (nonexistent) "blockade" of the Mediterranean. It is furthermore not very academic at all to play a blame game in the study of history. There should be no blame in history, just events and (more importantly) processes.

History is a contentious science that continuously reviews received wisdom and current consensus. Please don't read 80-year old books if you want to learn about it. Feed your curiosity with the latest works of historical scholarship, to avoid getting trapped in the outdated ideas of the past.

After reading the opening post and then the replies, I am amazed at how many people are simply responding to the title and not actually to the content. (Excluding The Wizard who sneaked in his post before my own reply)

According to the argument presented by Nowake, it is arguing that the 'gift of Islam' as described by Populus Romanus's reply to the thread as a fallacy, since the retransmission of the works was many due through Syriac Christians and the displacement of people from their homelands seeking refugee into Western Europe. The 'gift' if any, if the destruction of Classical Europe based around the Mediterranean and repositioning northwards towards Germany. From a Sea-based Economical Empire to an Inland Economical Empire which fractured and split the East and West, causing the Schism and the decay and anarchy.

Thus argued, only 'gift' it might have given us is the possibly of similar not remaining a stagnant classical era sea-Empire.

:bow: Thank you for lending a hand there Tiaexz. After my reply to Lazy O, I loathed making a similar comment, which would not doubt have given everyone the erroneous impression that I was prone to harass our readers. As a third party, you embody the voice of reason!

Of course, the title was tongue in cheek. It was inspired by an article I read in an English-language magazine when I was in highschool. While not so entitled, it used the expression to qualify the enlightening effect the Islamic civilization under the Caliphate had over Europe. The word-pairing was stuck in my mind since.



And hello Wizard :2thumbsup:

Caveat: Reading the responses left over the weekend, I’ve rushed to reply, yet I lack the time to do it thoroughly now, so I will go fast through the general considerations and leave the specific historical data for a later time. I won’t be too long! I’ve one hour for a... I believe you chaps call it working lunch (?) today, so I will “prolong” it to two hours and haul my ass in some Starbucks to write up the second post.

All right. It is my distinct impression, upon reading your reply, that we do not disagree on half as many occasions as you would think, nor do I wish to make half the points you believe me to support.
Moreover, it was not my intention to debate the merits of Aristote au Mont Saint-Michel, I am merely using it as a starting point to begin an inquiry into certain established theories regarding the influence of Islam before AD 1000. However, I endeavoured to synthesize it for our convenience. I also promise to explain the controversy the book caused and why that controversy is relevant for our debate further below in this post.

Now, my vantage point appears to you restricted by my sources. Yet, over the years, my thinking has been shaped by numerous others which confirm them. I have not gone through an extensive effort to list every article establishing my views because this is, after all, only an online forum where, despite my lengthy opening post, I did not wish to give a lecture, merely to write the first step initiating a debate which would challenge my views and those of my interlocutors.

Seeing the results, perhaps if I would’ve opened the thread with two sentences and an interrogation, I would’ve captured the attention of the rest of our audience a lot better. Nonetheless, it’s possible that interrogations will elucidate the main issues I wanted us to discuss:
i) How is it that a view holding European culture as indebted to Islam for preserving the Greek heritage even exists? Populus Romanus’ assertion above:

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The West owes almost everything we have to Islam. Without Islamic scholars preserving and advancing the achievements of classical civilizations Europe would still be living in the feudal ages.

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synthesizes this standard belief perfectly.
Yet it seems logical that, in view of:
- the open trade and cultural exchanges taking place in the pre-VIIIth century Mediterranean space
- the dominance of the Latin language, both orally and written, across all provinces of the former Western Roman Empire bar Britain
- the deep influence of the Byzantine economy, civilization and institutions as far as Merovingian Gaul and Visigoth Spain
- the existence of the vast learning centres of the Byzantine East, whose knowledge was relayed through Christian Syrians as far as Paris
The heritage of the Greek world would’ve been a lot more proficiently disseminated in the absence of the Islamic conquest and that the phenomenon which caused the Occidental Romanias to spiral out from under Constantinople’s gravitational pull and destroyed the Greek cultural centres of the East (coincidentally, Islamic conquest) seems the one which should be seen as having endangered the survival of said Greek heritage in the first place.
ii) Pirenne, while not making it the main point of his exposition, lays the groundwork beautifully for the thesis that the Germanic invasions were merely a new phase in the evolution of the Roman Empire and that, while it is implausible to think Constantinople would ever reassert the same degree of control Rome exercised, it could still have led the Mediterranean world as a benevolent sovereign. In fact, it was what it actually was doing with various degrees of success at the moment of the Islamic invasion.
You have to keep in mind that, at the beginning of the VIIth century, Constantinople reigned over all the provinces of the former Empire bar Gaul and Hispania (and leaving aside the two provinces it evaluated as worthless to defend centuries before, Dacia and Britannia). I’ll link a solid map below; less for you, as I know you are aware of the political situation, but for our readers. Both Gaul and Hispania acknowledged its primacy, were Christian of the Nicaean confession, i.e. Byzantine, their lifestyle and revenue depended on Byzantine commerce which the Byzantine fleet secured up to Gibraltar and the Visigoths and Burgundians even introduced Roman law universally (i.e. it applied to both Roman and Visigoth or Burgundian citizens equally; see Liber Iudiciorum). However, let me make it clear, this thread is not about an inane What if scenario. It merely posits that the Mediterranean basin was still Roman to its core and that it was slowly Byzantinised when Islam destroyed its unity forever. And... I forgot to formulate it as an interrogation, bravo me...

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You cite exactly two (2) books to make a point (however intellectually) in an extremely large and very controversial debate covering a very wide area of history, including the fields of intellectual, economic, social, and political history. One book (Gouguenheim) came under heavy criticism from a large group of distinguished scholars, while the other (Pirenne) is almost a century old. Really now: this cannot form proper grounds for criticism on the contemporary consensus (if there indeed is any) on the exact relationship between Islamic and (Latin) Christian culture. (...)
As for Pirenne, are you really trying to use a 80-year old book to make claims about historical reality? (...)
History is a contentious science that continuously reviews received wisdom and current consensus. Please don't read 80-year old books if you want to learn about it. Feed your curiosity with the latest works of historical scholarship, to avoid getting trapped in the outdated ideas of the past.

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Let me first address these matters, before dealing with your arguments on the actual history of the problem.

For one, I open the debate from only two sources because my lectures on the subject are not very extensive (academic background in law and political science, not history), limited to perhaps half a dozen works on the Mediterranean space between AD500-1000. The rest of these books were either not demolishing Pirenne’s thesis at all in my opinion or, at best, misinterpreting his arguments. Plus, as I affirmed earlier, while I make the effort to present my claim in detail, it’s simple due diligence towards the subject and the rules of polite debate, I do not think to hold an irrefutable truth, I only wish to provide the food for thought necessary to ferment eloquent replies.
Secondly, the fact that his book is eighty years old is not an argument per se, you delve into pointing this fact with relish, yet do consider there are certain circumstances to be taken into consideration. The first, and most important, is the fact that the book was published posthumously, in the 50s. It was never finished by the author and this was merely the first draft. What’s more, in order to establish a thesis in the academia, one needs to press his argument in numerous fora over the course of years. Pirenne’s book never benefited from such a treatment, nor can we presume Pirenne had no reply to ulterior criticism which would’ve placed his work on a solid footing; death preventing him to reply to feedback, the counter-arguments have remained unaddressed in peer-reviewed journals and books. While the book was not buried, it tends to be forgotten to some degree. I am bringing it forward because I believe it has not received the attention it deserves.
Plus, while his book was published in1956, twenty-one years after his death, the current consensus, such as it is, largely stems from a decades-old paradigm as well. And while you will counter that established “dogma” exists merely because it was not challenged, you cannot dismiss the influence of multiculturalism which, in Europe, has nipped in the bud many a scholarly feedback. It is a decades-old trend.

In this context, Sylvain Gouguenheim is a case in point. A historian who took great care in his book to detach himself from any suspicion of bias and who attempted to create a Chinese Wall between his research and today’s context regarding Islam in Europe, he was labelled as racist and silenced without being given any opportunity to an appeal.
Even if the academia was in fact quite split on his work, the public intelligentsia, not even necessarily expert in his field, labelled him as an islamophobe despite opposition from a few intellectuals such as Jacques Le Goff, Remi Brague or Jacques Heers, who came to his defence. There were two colloquia organised against his book. The first, which took place in Sorbonne and lasted a full day, did not invite him nor any of the historians who agreed with him. A new colloquium was called in October 2008 over a period of three days. It gathered thirty-five public intellectuals, all adversaries of his work, while Gouguenheim was given permission to participate only one day before the proceedings were scheduled to begin. Understanding it to be merely an intellectual tribunal, he thus refused to attend. Public pressure (read: multicultural intellectuals pressured by the powerful French Islamic lobby, battle-hardened by its many travails, not the least the Burka-issue with which you may be familiar) caused him, as I wrote in my initial post, to lose his position in the research lab of the École Normale Supérieure of Lyon. He was physically threatened. The petitions signed against him in various publications accused him of intellectual racism.

The most amusing part of it all is that he was accused both of the fact that his data is false and that it was already known (as you posited).

What you neglect to acknowledge though, and the fact which I have not emphasized enough either, as my post was getting longer and longer through the mere presentation of his point of view, is that Sylvain Gouguenheim’s stated purpose was not at all to negate the fact that there were a great many Greek works which were brought to the attention of medieval Europe after they had been translated into Arabic.

He contests the premise, widely employed currently, that Europe owes its knowledge of the ancient world to Islam.
There are two versions of this premise. The first version states that, due to the Arabs, Greek knowledge transited from the Abbasid world to Europe. He never contests this and he presents it as a fact. It is just that the phenomenon comports a dimension which is, in general, unacknowledged: these translations were realised by Arabic-speaking Christian Syrians or Christian Arabs. This trove of information reached Europe due to Arab or Arab speaking individuals who were not Muslim. Muslims have utilized, commented and exploited Greek documents to a certain degree, but it is unlikely they would have discovered them in the first place without these pockets of intellectuals which resisted long enough to translate and thus transmit to Arabic culture the heritage of the Greeks. After all, the initial cultural impact was brutal. When Alexandria fell to the Muslims in 642, Caliph Omar destroyed its library; his logic: “If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them.” While the anecdote, relayed by a handful of Muslim sources to my knowledge, is disputed by some modern authors, it bespeaks to a mindset.
The second version substitutes Arabs for Islam. And here Gouguenheim wants to launch the debate. First of all, he asks for the term to be clearly defined in the context. Are we talking about the religion or the civilization which this religion gave birth to? Between Muslim religion and Muslim civilization, his book makes the argument that the Muslim religion never sought to incorporate the Greek and Roman knowledge. Just compare it to the adoption of this heritage by the Catholic Church. However, in the midst of Muslim civilization, there were individuals interested by Greek philosophy: Al Farabi, Avicenne, Averroes.
Yet these philosophers, no matter how brilliant, were never very successful in influencing their society*.
Why? Gouguenheim explains that the way these men approached philosophy was not only perceived as elitist, but that they never advocated the spread of philosophy beyond the very limited circle, at the time, of social elites. They were also not supported by the political power. Finally, they did not have at their disposal the institutions and schools which could conserve and relay their findings. For these reasons, the Muslim world was only superficially Hellenized, even when talking about said elites.

Personal note: when talking about the absence of institutions and schools capable to ensure a wide circulation of their ideas, it is my understanding he is only referring to territories under Muslim control, where the various Houses of Wisdom would examine Greek thinking, but also limit or restrict it to Quran conformist knowledge. I presume he does not talk about the Sicilian universities of the XIIth century because these were developed by the Norman Catholic rulers of the island after all. Thus, even if Arab intellectuals would travel to Sicily to educate themselves, there’s a deep gap between the phenomenon and a genuine embrace of the Greek world by Islam.

I’d close with a quote from an interview he gave a year ago, which better explains the problems certain European historians face nowadays when attempting to re-evaluate certain “pillars of faith” of the multicultural intelligentsia:

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Q: What do the petitioners reproach you? That your work contains a number of value judgements or ideological stands apropos of Islam?
Gouguenheim: They argue the existence of these value judgements and ideological stands, when they themselves never cease to make them. They place themselves as apologists of the Abbasid world and despise the Latin Occident. They transform in ideology a difficult scientific problem only due to political reasons. Some of them are convinced of the superiority of Islam over medieval European civilization, others are afraid that the slightest critique of the medieval Muslim world could feed a clash of our contemporary civilizations. In other words, we should recognise that the European culture has a debt towards the Muslim world in order to not endanger the establishment of peaceful relations, which everyone desires. Or, the problem is not there. The relations between the Christian and Muslim civilizations in the Middle Ages have, in my opinion, no relevance for the present or future relations. I will explain myself through an analogy: France and Germany went through three conflicts between 1870 and 1944. This fact does not prevent them from having cordial relations and the closest collaboration today. What does it matter? The fact that a civilization was behind or ahead of another at one point has no bearing upon the present situation, and even less can it be used as a prognosis for the next two centuries.

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*And here I would like to point out that there are a number of acknowledged Muslim Arab thinkers and historians nowadays who support this train of thought, such as Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, Ibrahim Al-Buleihi, Anwar Malek etc. They are alive, for now.
There’s a very good, very erudite work on the subject by Al-Buleihi, “The Qualitative Changes in Human Civilization”, yet I’ve not been able to get my hands on it and had to be content with a handful of extensive reviews which of course cannot replace the actual book.

Here are a few excerpts from an interview he gave in 2009 though. Note that these questions were not always linked in the actual transcript, thus the paragraphs I quote give the impression of several ideas being repeated ad nauseam; taken in the proper context, their reassertion was needed.
Source

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'Okaz: "Some Western thinkers wrote that Western civilization is an extension of previous civilizations. How can you, a Muslim Arab, deny this?"
Buleihi: "When we review the names of Muslim philosophers and scholars whose contribution to the West is pointed out by Western writers, such as Ibn Rushd, Ibn Al-Haitham, Ibn Sina, Al-Farbi, Al-Razi, Al-Khwarizmi, and their likes, we find that all of them were disciples of the Greek culture and they were individuals who were outside the [Islamic] mainstream. They were and continue to be unrecognized in our culture. We even burned their books, harassed them, [and] warned against them, and we continue to look at them with suspicion and aversion. How can we then take pride in people from whom we kept our distance and whose thought we rejected?...

'Okaz: "Mr. Buleihi, haven't you read in the history of your people about hundreds of scholars who had significance and impact and whose lives are studied to this day, even though they possessed no power, tribe, or religious affiliation, and who are valued for their scholarship?"
Buleihi: "This is a general statement which is not backed by fact. Arab history, with the exception of the period of the rightly-guided Caliphs, was dominated by politics. When the Fatimids took over Egypt and North Africa, these areas became Shiite, and when Salah Al-Din Al-Ayyubi [i.e. Saladin] put an end to the Fatimids, he drove out everything that had any relation to Shiism. The same happened when the Safavids converted Iran to Shiism, which then led the Ottomans to act the same way [in imposing Sunnism]. Thus Arab history, or Islamic history, in the wider sense, is the outcome of political ups and downs…."
"Those Exceptional [Arab] Individuals Were Not the Product of Arab Culture, But Rather Greek Culture... We Don't Deserve to Take Pride In Them, Since We Rejected Them and Fought Their Ideas"

'Okaz: "Let me pause here for a moment. You are reducing Islamic history just to political history. Even Islamic political history for all its tragedies, is not as bad as you described it. You also overlook the scientific and cultural aspects of Islamic history, which created a great civilization even while Europe suffered under the rule of feudalism, the Church, ignorance, and backwardness."
Buleihi: "We have inherited certain clichés about our history and the history of other nations without reading our history critically and without reading the history of others fairly and objectively. The luminous Greek civilization emerged in the sixth century BC and reached the peak of its flourishing in the fifth century BC. In other words, Greek civilization emerged many generations before the Islamic one, and Greek philosophy was the source from which Muslim philosophers derived their philosophy. Those individuals in whom we sometimes take pride, such as Ibn Rushd, Ibn Al-Haytham, Al-Razi, Al-Qindi, Al-Khawarizmi, and Al-Farabi were all pupils of Greek thought. As for our civilization, it is a religious one, concerned with religious law, totally absorbed in the details of what Muslims should do and shouldn't do in his relations with Allah and in his relations with others. This is a huge task worthy of admiration, because religion is the pivot of life. We must however recognize that our achievements are all confined to this great area. Let us not claim then that the West has borrowed from us its secular lights. Our culture has been and continues to be absorbed with questions of the forbidden and the permitted and belief and disbelief, because it is a religious civilization…

'Okaz: "They [the Muslims] learned from the Greek civilization and this is not a fault, this is the way young civilizations are, they learn from previous civilizations and build upon them. Is it expected that they should have abolished the achievements of the Greeks and started from zero?"
Buleihi: "I am not against learning [from others]. What I wanted to clarify is that these [achievements] are not of our own making, and those exceptional individuals were not the product of Arab culture, but rather Greek culture. They are outside our cultural mainstream and we treated them as though they were foreign elements. Therefore we don't deserve to take pride in them, since we rejected them and fought their ideas. Conversely, when Europe learned from them it benefited from a body of knowledge which was originally its own because they were an extension of Greek culture, which is the source of the whole of Western civilization."

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Thank you for your articulate response by the by :book2:

" According to the argument presented by Nowake, it is arguing that the 'gift of Islam' as described by Populus Romanus's reply to the thread as a fallacy, since the retransmission of the works was many due through Syriac Christians and the displacement of people from their homelands seeking refugee into Western Europe."

Not only because of that, the throwback on classical civilisation aka the renaissance simply excludes the islam, Greek and Roman, not islamic. Kinda curious how we owe the end of feudalism to the islamic world, leftists love to scream that but I think 'ehhhhhhh' existed before islam people have been saying it for millenia. I think gunpowder is a somewhat more likely explanation, cannons say lol@walls and nobility moved to the courts

:curtain:

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Originally Posted by The Wizard

Pirenne also focuses too much on the "Carolingian renaissance" (a teleological approach to history if I ever saw one). The Seine-Rhine region of Europe was in fact made economically central in Western Europe not by the Carolingians, but under the Merovingians (and for the first time in history) in the 6th century.

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And yet, you would be hard pressed to find in my posts or Pirenne’s work the assertion which contests that, unless you understand it to be the region around which the kingdom gravitated exclusively. The Low Countries had known a commercial impetus since Roman times in fact, long before the Franks had conquered them. Tiel, Duurstede and Quentowic maintain a maritime tradition under the Merovingians dating from the time of the intense exchanges with Roman Britannia.

No, what is being argued is that the Carolingian state retained a trade-oriented character only in that region; and in Venice, which it could never hold. The rest of the Empire’s economy was solely rural, land-based, by the IXth century.

And the break in the continuum which you inquired about is thus illustrated in this example as well, by comparing the two systems, Merovingian and Carolingian. The rural economy of the latter comes in striking contrast with the urban component of the Merovingian kingdoms, thriving from Neustria to Provence. Indeed, there are three main components to all Germanic kingdoms of the VI-VIII centuries. They are absolutist, secular and their administrative basis is the fisc and the treasury.

There is no trace of public assemblies anymore; they were only preserved in the anglo-saxon Britannia. The royal power is in perfect concordance with the imperial concept. The Merovingian state was more barbarous than its Visigoth and Burgundian counterparts, but it was not more Germanic. The organization of the taxes and the currency were roman. Almost all the King’s agents were recruited among the urban Gallo-Romans. The Frankish King, like the other Germanic Kings, was now the centre of all authority. He was an absolute despot and we have in praeceptiones: Si quis praecepta nostra contempserit oculorum evulsione multetur, in which we have an expression of the essentially Roman notion of the crimen laesae majestatis.

In all these kingdoms the absolutism of the king is explained by his financial power. Everywhere, as the successor of the Emperor, he disposed of the fisc and the taxes. Now the wealth of the fisc was enormous. It included the imperial domain, the forests, the waste lands, the mines and, most importantly, the ports and the highways, and there were also the taxes and the mint. This wealth was secured by a plethora of Gallo-Roman functionaries, and this administrative system more than sustained itself. The Merovingian Kings granted large assignations from their treasuries: before 695 the Abbot of St. Denis drew an annuity of 200 gold solidi from the treasury and another of 100 solidi from the fisc (cellarium fisci); they lent money to the cities, paid missionaries and bought or corrupted men at will. The retention of the Roman impost and the market toll (tonlieu) were the essential sources of their power. To regard them, as they have often been regarded, merely as great landed proprietors is a manifest error, of which the only explanation is that they have been compared with the kings that came after them. But the fact is that owing to their wealth in money they were far more akin to the Byzantine kings than to Charlemagne. And they did everything they could to increase the treasury upon which their power was based. Chilperic made in all parts of his kingdom descriptiones novas et graves. There was a whole complicated financial administration, with its registers, its revisors, etc. It was to seize one another’s treasuries that the kings fought and slew one another.

All of it was made possible solely in the context of a thriving trade-oriented urban Gallo-Roman population which enabled the continuation of the Imperial administration throughout the kingdom, only beginning to fade in Austrasia, the seat of the Carolingians.
A secular administration at that, in all its phases, in the splendid tradition of antiquity. Although the kings were generally on good terms with the bishops, not one of the latter filled a governmental office: and here was one great difference between this period and the Middle Ages. On the other hand, many of the bishops had been royal referendarii. Here we have a striking contrast with the policy of Charlemagne, which was based upon the missi, half of whom were necessarily bishops, or that of Otto, who entrusted the reigns of government to the Imperial bishops. The fact is that on the morrow of the invasion the laity was still educated. The King himself was a pure layman, and his power did not depend upon any religious ceremony. The Church was the subject of the King, not otherwise. Though in theory the bishops were appointed by the clergy, in practise they were very often appointed directly by the king. And here, again, we have the ancient tradition of the State Church, as in the East. The kings convoked the Councils after all.
The entire system thrives under the Merovingians and maintains close relations with its cultural patron, Byzantium, through the ports of south-east Gaul: Marseille, Fos, Narbonne, Agde, Nice etc. Its character is Mediterranean and Roman to its core.


I’ve run out of time yet again :stare: I wanted to post at least part of my reply as I said I would though. I do intend to address your points on trade apropos of the Italian urbanization, Muslim Spain, Saracen pirates and the total decline of commerce in the Western Mediterranean tonight or tomorrow morning at best.

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Originally Posted by Populus Romanus

The West owes almost everything we have to Islam. Without Islamic scholars preserving and advancing the achievements of classical civilizations Europe would still be living in the feudal ages.

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Nope. Islamic scholars copied everything from the Indian texts. It should be India you should be thanking, not Islam. And I believed Europe was quite well off without Islam in the first place. We , French were the first to stop the islamic expansion into Europe. I don't think the Napoelonic wars nor WW1 was greatly influnched by Islam.

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Originally Posted by Marshall Louis-Nicolas Davout

Nope. Islamic scholars copied everything from the Indian texts. It should be India you should be thanking, not Islam.

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Yep.

That, gentlemen, is very one eyed. Arab scholars undoubtedly drew heavily on Indian sources for a lot of topics, from astronomy to medicine. That's not the same as the preservation of classical Greek and Roman texts, for which the Arabs were in a good part responsible.

It's a shame that ridiculous modern ideologies and racial prejudices means people feel the need to score card ancient and medieval contributions. There's plenty of scope to discuss how the contributions took place and what the channels of transmission were, but outright denial of the manifest contributions of the Muslim world to where we are in modern society is a very sad approach to take.

Preserving texts is a gift how exactly? If I would be realy mean-spirited I'd just call it loot because that is what it technically was.

So in the event of the colalpse of dutch civilisation the copying and preservation by someone else of your philosophers and scientists writings would be looting? :dizzy2:

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Originally Posted by Catiline

So in the event of the colalpse of dutch civilisation the copying and preservation by someone else of your philosophers and scientists writings would be looting? :dizzy2:

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Texts were taken to Damascus during the Islamic expansion. Thx for not burning it? Hardly the west owing our civilisation to them.

I don't recall claiming that we did.

Some texts were taken to Damascus, some weren't. The Romans looted Greek libraries mercilessly during their conquests - are we going to deny the fact that they contributed to modern society as a result? The Anglo Saxons in part looted and pillaged their way into Britain with the collapse of the Roman Empire, yet contributed to the creation of a monastic culture that enabled the preservation of vast quantities of ancient knowledge and philosophy, even if it'only rediscovered now in palimpsest form after some monk enthusiatically scrapped it off to copy another psalter.

Must have misread this 'The West owes almost everything we have to Islam. Without Islamic scholars preserving and advancing the achievements of classical civilizations Europe would still be living in the feudal ages.' then. Simply isn't true no matter how some love the idea.

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Originally Posted by Fragony

The gift of islam to Europe and mankind in general is war, simple as that.

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Yeah, 'cause Mohammed obviously invented the thing.
You know you're making the Sumerians cry in their graves, right?

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Originally Posted by Watchman

Yeah, 'cause Mohammed obviously invented the thing.
You know you're making the Sumerians cry in their graves, right?

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The Sumerians kinda lived in Iraq

Yeah, that's where Mesopotamia was the last time I checked. Your point?

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Originally Posted by Watchman

Yeah, that's where Mesopotamia was the last time I checked. Your point?

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The topic: 'your views on the influence of Islam on European civilization.'

Ho, hold on a minute gang :uneasy:
I owe this thread a big reply, but after writing about two pages for it last evening, I got distracted. It’s pretty arduous work, as I need to check on certain primary sources.

Yet I would like to re-channel this thread on topic :bow:
The thread doesn’t touch one bit on Islamic advances in physics, medicine, astronomy, cartography and especially mathematics, and it never will. That is progress the Islam civilization as a whole, not even just its Arab component, has developed and shared.
There are two contexts for the debate I initiated, as I not very tersely explained previously.

One is that of the European Islamic pressure groups which silence say, protests against the establishment of Sharia courts in Britain (which have jurisdiction in civil matters) for their anti-European human rights character, by presenting Islam as the phenomenon which saved the European culture. It became such an important argument that even when a historian like Sylvain Gouguenheim, which almost “stumbled upon” his book – in the sense that his specialty is the Teutonic Order and in his research on it he came upon so much info from Mont Saint-Michel, that he desired to present it and have its importance recognised – must be ostracized should it inadvertently contradict it.
Second is formed by an argument which I simply never saw to have been ever refuted, while not actually being recognised either; thus I wanted to get your views on it. And that is that the Roman Empire was experiencing a healing process all over the Mediterranean in the VIIth century – the Empire had just experienced one of the strongest provocations to its supremacy after Iustinian, defeating or stalling the simultaneous Longobard, Slav and Persian advances and had prevailed – and that there was nothing there to stop it when Islam erupted and forever shattered it. It’s a personal historical curiosity which I’d like to see debated.

Thus don’t misinterpret my agenda, Arab civilization is in fact fascinating to me and, after getting my French DALF last year and hopefully obtaining my Spanish degree early the next (it comes very easy for Romanians to score qualifications in the rest of the Latin languages), I have decided I will focus on a non-European language. Obviously, the choice was between Chinese and Arabic. I picked the latter. I know China is the future, yet the Arab world is so wonderful to lose yourself into.

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Originally Posted by Fragony

The topic: 'your views on the influence of Islam on European civilization.'

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I fail to see the connection you're trying to make. Given that, as even someone thoroughly ignorant on history could tell you on basis of pure commonsense, endemic mass warfare is rather a bit older than 7th century AD.

@Nowake: I'm failing to see that second argument. The last I read about it, what was left of Rome - ie. the eastern part, "Byzantium" for short - was riven with domestic religious and political strife, under constant attack along its rather exposed northern frontier, and still stuck in the frankly rather pointless imperial pissing contest with Sassanid Persia both had inherited from their "parent" empires (and without which the Muslim "blitzkrieg" out of Arabia would have been much more difficult if not outright impossible)... Byzantium went on to have several more periods of resurgence, but human politics can do little to change geographical issues such as now the flat out exposed and vulnerable - nevermind now for outsiders desirable - location the empire was stuck with.
Props to them for hanging on as long as they *did* despite being the obvious Thanksgiving Turkey in the neighbourhood.

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Nowake: I'm failing to see that second argument. The last I read about it, what was left of Rome - ie. the eastern part, "Byzantium" for short - was riven with domestic religious and political strife, under constant attack along its rather exposed northern frontier, and still stuck in the frankly rather pointless imperial pissing contest with Sassanid Persia both had inherited from their "parent" empires (and without which the Muslim "blitzkrieg" out of Arabia would have been much more difficult if not outright impossible)... Byzantium went on to have several more periods of resurgence, but human politics can do little to change geographical issues such as now the flat out exposed and vulnerable - nevermind now for outsiders desirable - location the empire was stuck with.

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Yet this is the generic view against which I argued in both my first and second posts. You've either not read them, as then you would specifically knock down each one before writing your conclusion, or you're asking me to post the page-length explanations every time I make the assertion, in which case: Have mercy! :wacko:

Oh and there's no debate that Byzantium acted as a Roman Empire rather than an eastern offshoot for three whole centuries after the Arab onslaught. It took surprisingly aggressive actions against its foes from Gibraltar to Italy to Damascus until the late IXth century, disputing entire provinces and forcing the Arabs into to costly counter-attacks; hardly the behaviour of a spent empire (hanging-on) which can only hope to defend its last stretches of land.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nowake

Ho, hold on a minute gang :uneasy:
I owe this thread a big reply, but after writing about two pages for it last evening, I got distracted. It’s pretty arduous work, as I need to check on certain primary sources.

Yet I would like to re-channel this thread on topic :bow:
The thread doesn’t touch one bit on Islamic advances in physics, medicine, astronomy, cartography and especially mathematics, and it never will. That is progress the Islam civilization as a whole, not even just its Arab component, has developed and shared.
There are two contexts for the debate I initiated, as I not very tersely explained previously.

One is that of the European Islamic pressure groups which silence say, protests against the establishment of Sharia courts in Britain (which have jurisdiction in civil matters) for their anti-European human rights character, by presenting Islam as the phenomenon which saved the European culture. It became such an important argument that even when a historian like Sylvain Gouguenheim, which almost “stumbled upon” his book – in the sense that his specialty is the Teutonic Order and in his research on it he came upon so much info from Mont Saint-Michel, that he desired to present it and have its importance recognised – must be ostracized should it inadvertently contradict it.
Second is formed by an argument which I simply never saw to have been ever refuted, while not actually being recognised either; thus I wanted to get your views on it. And that is that the Roman Empire was experiencing a healing process all over the Mediterranean in the VIIth century – the Empire had just experienced one of the strongest provocations to its supremacy after Iustinian, defeating or stalling the simultaneous Longobard, Slav and Persian advances and had prevailed – and that there was nothing there to stop it when Islam erupted and forever shattered it. It’s a personal historical curiosity which I’d like to see debated.

Thus don’t misinterpret my agenda, Arab civilization is in fact fascinating to me and, after getting my French DALF last year and hopefully obtaining my Spanish degree early the next (it comes very easy for Romanians to score qualifications in the rest of the Latin languages), I have decided I will focus on a non-European language. Obviously, the choice was between Chinese and Arabic. I picked the latter. I know China is the future, yet the Arab world is so wonderful to lose yourself into.

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The thread doesn’t touch one bit on Islamic advances in physics, medicine, astronomy, cartography and especially mathematics, and it never will. That is progress the Islam civilization as a whole, not even just its Arab component, has developed and shared.

I am sorry but I must disagree entrierly on this. Medicine was copied from India. The Feudal system was copied from India. Who invetned the number zero? The Indians did. Why are the Muslims so acknowledged? Being a Frenchmen, I know how everyone calls us ''cowards.'' which is not true, but everyone is giving credit to them! Look at the Chinese or the Indians! The Indians were the first to use maths and use zero. Everything they wrote down was by their scholars, saints, Brahmins. The Astronomy came from the Indian sages, no, it was from the anicents! I don't believe they made a advance in physics. The ancient greeks and romans created the first maps. Not Islam. And anyway, they didn't influnce europe, only in medicine did they do that. Otherwise Europe changed itself. The Ottoman empire was weak. They had no great power as they once used to be. So why say that the gift of Islam gave anything to Europe? I don't see the reason why.

The Chinese were ,among the romans to create a sort of ''ancient modern time'' meaning their ages simply resembled ours in which we live in today. They used paper money, their huge advancements in their army. And Confucius, who wrote his books was a clever scholar. Sun Tzu wrote the Art of War, which greatly influenced Napoleon Bonaparte and the Samurai in Japan, including the world.

Generic my foot, that was based on multiple analyses on the state of the Byzantine Empire on the eve of the Muslim onslaught. When entire provinces welcome a foreign, heathen invader as a preferable alternative to the Emperor and the particular interpretation of Christianity he has opted to sponsor as the "state religion" (for the Muslims didn't particularly care a whit about how exactly their new Christian subjects worshipped), the realm has some real structural problems. And the geostrategic vulnerability is very much a fact; aside from the "natural fortress" of Anatolia - where the Empire indeed fell back to for quite a while - it was painfully short of "naturally defensible" borders, in particular in the dangerously immediate vicinity of the capital itself in the Balkans.

Anyway, as I seem to recall mentioning, Byzantium enjoyed numerous periods of resurgence. And all due credit to the rulers who pulled that off, despite the realm being almost constantly under assault from all directions. Didn't really matter much in the end, though - and equally, it suffered from any number of disastrous downturns due to both internal problems and external aggression (Fourth Crusade being arguably the one with the most serious long-term repercussions, as the Empire never quite fully recovered from that one).

Also your OP seemed to be mostly about the "Christian West" rather than Byzantium, so I kind of didn't look too closely at it given that I'm not even addressing that particular topic... (Your *second* post seems to be a short rebuttal to Lazy O for "trolling", so yeah...) I'd point out that to argue that "teh Muzlums" demolished the Roman Empire is BS right on the face of it, though - for the faith didn't even exist yet when the ailing Western Empire collapsed under the Germanic migrations, and the Eastern Empire (AKA "Byzantium") went on truckin' for a whopping eight centuries or so after losing the Middle East to the Arabs...

For another, awful many people here seem to be merrily ignoring the little detail that Muslim scholars didn't just copy Classical junk, they actively elaborated on it; a fair bit of which eventually made its way into Western Europe, AFAIK primarily through "interface zones" like Sicily and Moorish Spain, where quite a few Christian literati went to study (and during the Reconquista captured Moorish libraries couldn't be looted and translated fast enough, as far as the scholars were concerned). In all fairness, the same goes for the much-maligned Catholic Church which in actual fact was the main refuge of higher learning and advanced thought in Europe, as well as the birthplace of the university.
And as for the Great Library of Alexandria, spare me. By the time the Arabs turned up there was little more than a distant memory left of the thing.

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Originally Posted by Catiline

It's a shame that ridiculous modern ideologies and racial prejudices means people feel the need to score card ancient and medieval contributions.

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But isn't that exactly what this thread is arguing against?

This thread looks an awful lot like an attempted defense of the brand of Eurocentric revisionism that's been getting popular in some circles during the past decade or two. Which brand of thinking strikes me mostly as an exercise in nerve-gratingly smug historical solipsism.

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Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro

But isn't that exactly what this thread is arguing against?

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It is, and my post wasn't directed at the thread, but some of the posts in the middle, and I PM'd Nowake at the time to let him know that. Apologies if it wasn't clear.

'I fail to see the connection you're trying to make. Given that, as even someone thoroughly ignorant on history could tell you on basis of pure commonsense, endemic mass warfare is rather a bit older than 7th century AD.'

What's so hard about it, the Sumerians aren't Europeans so they have no place in a discussion on the influence of Islam on Europe. Which isn't as big as you guys make it out to be there wasn't all that much cultural exchange, that is a rather modern idea.

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Originally Posted by Watchman

And the geostrategic vulnerability is very much a fact; aside from the "natural fortress" of Anatolia - where the Empire indeed fell back to for quite a while - it was painfully short of "naturally defensible" borders, in particular in the dangerously immediate vicinity of the capital itself in the Balkans.

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I'm agreeing with most of what you post, but the last time I checked the Danube was quite a defenisible border? Main problem was when they couldn't even defend that one.

Uff, done with quite busy week! Yet I did find the time to answer Wizard during breaks from my work project. A couple of pages every evening; took me more to try to find/confirm the sources that still stand.
I will then take it chronologically and respond to MND and perhaps tomorrow will disprove Watchman’s assertions thoroughly.


All right Wizard :2thumbsup:
First of all, my response is rather disjointed.
To ease your navigation, I’ll provide links below; hopefully I've not buried you in too many facts and you will find the time to reply again. If not, I am certain it is my loss sigh. Anyway:
Part 1
Part 2
And Part 3 follows in this post:

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In short, the scale of activity in the Mediterranean does not support a thesis attempting to put blame for a (hugely overstated) Western "decline" on the Muslims for a (nonexistent) "blockade" of the Mediterranean.

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I wish my argument could begin by “In short” as well, yet I have to provide what information I have.
You’ve no idea what you burdened me with now :stare: because there are so many aspects which must be examined at once. Yet this closing of the Western Mediterranean is too crucial so I must do it justice I guess.
So, for your point to retain a semblance of validity, the persistence of Oriental navigation in the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Gulf of Lyons after the 7^th century should be established as a fact. That Marseilles and the ports of Provence remained in communication with the Levant after this date, since Hispania and northern Italia are pretty much in Arab hands afterwards, so it’s impossible to compare. Now, I don’t expect you to immediately observe the decline in trade without giving you the data prior to the invasion. Before Islam scourged the Western Mediterranean of any sign of life.


Lets start with a look at the “dutch” of the 5^th to 8^th centuries, the Christian Syrians. The Syrians were then the great maritime carriers. It was in Syrian vessels that the spices of the East and the industrial products of the great Oriental cities – Antioch, Damascus, Alexandria etc. – were exported. The Syrians were to be found in all the ports of the Mediterranean, but they also penetrated inland. Under the Empire they had establishments in Alexandria, Rome, Hispania, Gaul and Britannia, even on the Danube. The invasions did not in any way alter the situation. Genseric, by his piracies, may have hindered navigation a little, but when he had disappeared, it was as active as ever. Salvian writes towards the end of the 5^th century, doubtless generalizing from what he had seen in Marseilles though, about the negociatorum et Syricorum omnium turbas quae majorem ferme civitatum universarum partem occupant. This Syrian expansion is confirmed by archaeologists; and the texts say even more about it.

In the 6^th century there were large numbers of Orientals in southern Gaul. The life of Saint Cesar, the bishop of Arles, states that he composed hymns in Greek and Latin for the people. There were also many in the North, since Gregory of Tours speaks of the Greek merchants of Orleans, who advanced, singing, to meet the king. According to the life of Saint Genevieve, Saint Simeon Stylites is said to have questioned the negotiatores euntes ac redeuntes concerning her. But in addition to these merchants who travelled to and fro, there were many who had settled in Gaul. They are mentioned in many inscriptions and among them they were wealthy individuals who settled in the country when they had made their fortune. Gregory of Tours mentions a negotiator of Bordeaux who possessed a great house in which was a chapel containing relics and he offered a hundred and then two hundred gold solidi in order that these should not be taken from him. Another such merchant was Eusebius of Paris, negotiator, genere Syrus, who purchased the episcopal dignity, and then, finding fault with his predecessor’s scola, constituted one of his own, which comprised only Syrians. So they were abundant in Gaul; though of course, predominant in the South. The population of Narbonne in 589 consisted of Goths, Romans, Jews, Greeks and Syrians. There were also Egyptian influences at work in Gaul: they explain the popularity in that country of certain Egyptian saints and also the fact that the churches of the Gauls enjoyed a right of asylum as extensive as that of the churches of Egypt; moreover, they doubtless explain the presence of a Stylites at Yvoy for example. Besides these, there were doubtless Africans among the transmarini negotiatores mentioned by Cassiodorus and the law of the Visigoths. Carthage was a great city, a stop for the vessels sailing to the East. And the camels mentioned to have been utilized in Gaul (Which I will discuss a bit later) probably came from Carthage. And then, of course, there were Jews, yet their activity is similar throughout the centuries, so I won’t insist on them in order to limit this already long post.

The Roman organization was retained. Along the quays, named cataplus, a sort of exchange was held. At Fos, for example, there was a magazine of the fisc on the quays. We know that in Italy, during the reign of Theodoric, there were all sorts of officials who were occupied in the regulation of commerce. Similarly, in Spain there were thelonearii for the benefit of the transmarini negotiatores. The Byzantine “commerciaries” introduced in Carthage after it was re-conquered must have exercised a certain amount of influence throughout the Tyrrhenian Sea.

All these references show that it would be a mistake to imagine that this commerce was concerned only with luxuries. Archaeology has preserved mainly objets de luxe, and the Liber Judiciorum of the Visigoths speaks of the transmarinus negociator who imported gold, silver, clothing and all sorts of objets de luxe. We have knowledge, though, of many other types of merchandise: of the ivories of Egypt, the purses from Phoenicia which were common among the merchants according to contemporary accounts, and altars were decorated with a plethora of Oriental curtains. Anyway, all these were Oriental, and the fashions of Constantinople set the tone; the Merovingian elites were addicted to this luxury. There are a number of texts which attest that silk was worn by the men as frequently as by the women. And where could silk come from if not from the East? It was brought from China and the Justinian establishes its manufacture in the Empire.
The luxuries of the table were also supplied by the East. Gregory speaks of wines of Syria which were exported from Gaza and were to be found everywhere in Gaul in large quantities. A widow in Lyons used to take two gallons of Syrian wine to her husband’s tomb every day. It was therefore a usual article of commerce. This of course was not the only Eastern wine and the liquors imported from Alexandria were also greatly appreciated.
Foodstuffs follow as a main article imported from the East. At all events, during Lent the ascetics used to eat bitter herbs imported from Egypt. Gregory speaks of the hermit in the neighbourhood of Nice who ate nothing but roots which were brought to him from Alexandria. This speaks of a trade which went beyond the mere importation of jewels and articles of clothing; but the really important branch of Oriental commerce, by which it was actually related to everyday life, was the importation of spices. One cannot insist too strongly on the importance of this trade. The Roman Empire had received all sorts of spices from India, China, Arabia. It was the trade in spices that built up the prosperity of Palmyra and Apamez. Pliny the Elder recounts that the Empire spent every year incredible amounts on spices imported from said faraway places. Their diffusion throughout the Roman Empire was not interrupted by the invasions. They continued afterwards, as before them, to form a constituent of the every diet. You can obtain some notion of this from the treatise of Anthimus, a Greek physician who was banished from Byzantium in 478 and whom Theodoric sent as ambassador to Thierry I, King of Austrasia.

But, as an example, lets examine a document which I will also use at a later point in this post. The diploma granted to the Abbot of Corbie on April 29^th 716 by Chilperic II. It casts a revealing light on this branch of commerce. It confirms documents of a similar nature which were granted to Corbie by Clotair III half a century earlier. The sovereign gave this church an authorization to levy merchandise from the cellarium fisci of Fos. The list contains the following: 10.000 pounds of oil; 30 hogsheads of garum (a sort of condiment), 30 pounds of pepper, 150 pounds of cumin, 2 pounds of cloves, 1 pound of cinnamon, 2 pounds of nard, 30 pounds of costum (an aromatic herb), 50 pounds of dates, 100 pounds of figs, 100 pounds of almonds, 30 pounds of pistachios, 100 pounds of olives, 50 pounds of hidrio (a kind of spice), 150 pounds of chick-peas, 20 pounds of rice, 10 pounds of auro pimento, 20 skins seoda, 10 skins of Cordova leather, 50 quires of papyrus. Of course, not all these goods were imported from the East. But the majority were. And the document allows various conclusions. First, that the cellar of the fisc was always abundantly furnished with these spices, since the permission granted to the monks is permanent. And, of course, we can hardly suppose only this monastery profited from such generosity. But even so, you can still deduce that spices were so generally employed that even a monastery kitchen could not dispense with them.
As a matter of fact, they were in such general use that the king provided for the consumption, by the missi of the monastery at Fos, of a pound of garum, an ounce of pepper and two ounces of cumin. Thus even these fellows found pepper as necessary as salt. These prestations to the missi had to be made at every posting-house, going and returning, which amounts to saying they were obtainable everywhere. Similar data is recorded in the tractoria which Marculf preserved. Practically the same spices are mentioned as in the Corbie document.

Now, I’ll focus specifically on papyrus a bit. Egypt had the monopoly of furnishing the whole Empire with the writing material in general use, parchment being reserved for special purposes. Now, both after and before the invasions the art of writing was practised throughout the West. It was a necessary constituent of social life. The juridical and administrative life of the Empire, the very functioning of the State, necessitated the practice of the art and the same may be said of social relations. The merchants had their clerks, mercenarii litterati. Masses of papyrus must have been required by those who kept the registers of the fisc, by the notaries of the tribunals, by private correspondents and by monasteries. The monastery of Corbie, as noted above, consumed every year 50 quires (tomi) of papyrus, drawn from the cellarium fisci of Fos. Whole cargoes of this commodity must have been unloaded upon the quays of the seaports. Gregory of Tours makes a striking remark: O si te habuisset Massilia sacerdotem! Numquam naves oleum aut reliquas species detulissent, nisi cartam tantum, quo majorem opportunitatem scribendi ad bonos infamandos haberes. Sed paupertas carta finem imponit verbositati. The part which relates to my argument would translate: the insults of his colleagues of Nantes could not have been inscribed upon all the papyrus discharged in the port of Marseilles. For the ampleness of this trade to make it in a quip is significant. Moreover, papyrus was used in the manufacture of wicks for candles and also, apparently, oiled papyrus was used instead of glass in the lights of lanterns. The fact that papyrus could be bought in the shops of Cambrai means that it could be obtained throughout the country. It was therefore an article of general consumption and there was consequently a wholesale trade in papyrus, radiating from Alexandria to all parts of the Mediterranean. There’s material proof of this in the handsome royal diplomas preserves even today in France, Italy and Spain; also, in fragments of private charters; also in the debris of innumerable scrinia in which private persons kept their business papers and their correspondence, just as the cities preserved the acts inserted in the gesta municipalia. All this necessitated an exceptionally active import trade.

Another article of consumption figuring largely in the commerce of the period was oil. There was a demand for it everywhere; in the first place for alimentary purposes, for it seems that in southern Gaul nearly everything was cooked in oil, as in Spain and Italy. The native olive trees did not suffice to meet the demand. It was necessary to import oil from abroad; all the more necessary inasmuch as the lighting of the churches at this period – doubtless precisely because oil was so abundant – was effected not by means of wax candles, as it was at a later date, but by means of oil-fed lamps. Now Africa was the greatest oil producing region in the Empire and was to remain so until the Muslim conquest. It was exported from Africa in orcae. Theodoric, between 509 and 511, wrote to the Bishop of Salona on behalf of the merchant Johannes, who had furnished this bishop with sexaginta orcas olei ad implenda luminaria, and who wanted to be paid. The rest of the letter shows this was merely a parvitas, that is to say, a bagatelle. Gregory of Tours tells more about the oil trade at Marseilles; he speaks of a merchant who had seventy orcae of oil stolen on the quay. A diploma granted by Clovis III in 692, which dated back to Dagobert I, granted the monastery of Saint-Denis an annual subsidy of a hundred solidi, with which the actores regii were to buy oil from the cellarium fisci, in accordance with the ordo cataboli. A formula of Marculf’s mentions Marseilles as the port where the oil for the luminaria was generally purchased. This oil therefore found its way into the North. The Corbie diploma is of course further proof, with its 10.000 pounds of oil. It cannot be assumed this was oil from Provence, as it was deposited in the cellarium fisci. A tax which refers to the exportation of oil from Bordeaux allows us to know that this oil was forwarded from Marseilles.

Now, this is irrefutable proof of active trade relations with Africa. But the very curious fact that camels were employed as pack animals in Spain and Gaul throws a vivid light on these relations. For these camels can only have come from Africa, where they were introduced by Rome in the 2^nd century. They must evidently have been employed on this side of the Mediterranean before the invasions. Gregory of Tours speaks of the camels and horses loaded cum ingenti pondere auri atque argenti and abandoned by the army of Gondevald during its retreat. Moreover, Brunehaut, before her execution, was paraded before the army on a camel. And this, it would seem, when compared with the preceding text, proves that the armies used to transport their baggage on the backs of camels. Also, the Vita Sancti Eligii speaks of a camel which accompanied the bishop on his travels. In Spain, King Wamba had the rebel Paulus brought to Toledo abrasis barbis pedibusque nudatis, subsqualentibus veste habitu induti, camelorum vehiculis imponuntur.

All this further establishes the existence of an extremely active navigation on the Tyrrhenian Sea, to the East and to the coast of Africa. Carthage seems to have been a sort of half-way station for the Oriental trade. There was also a coasting trade along the shores of Italy, Provence and Spain. People travelling to Rome from the North embarked at Marseilles for Porto, at the mouth of the Tiber. Travellers going to Constantinople went by sea. The land-route by way of the Danube, encumbered with Barbarians, was seldom used. There was another route by way of Ravenna and Bari. All in all, navigation was at least as active as under the Empire. After Genseric you read of no further mention of piracy and it is clear that the trade which was carried on was wholesale trade on a very large scale. You can not doubt this when you consider the nature of the imports, their regularity and the wealth amassed by the merchants.

Now, I want to talk about inland commerce and gold together, because I want to show the existence of a numerous, powerful and very urban merchant class. Main export from Gaul? Slaves of course. Household and agricultures slavery was still very widespread after the 5^th century, in fact, the Germanic invasions revived the prosperity of the slave trade. The Germans were as familiar with the institution of slavery as the Romans and must have brought plenty of slaves with them. Their wars against the Barbarians beyond the Rhine and against the Lombards must have added to the numbers of their slaves. On the other hand, while the Church, by admitting the slave to the Sacraments, and recognizing his right, or rather his obligation to contract matrimony, had improved his condition, it had neither condemned nor attacked the institution of slavery on principle. Mancipia were consequently to be found everywhere, not only in the great domains, but in the service of all private persons who were at all prosperous. The liberation of slaves did nothing to reduce their numbers; there were still slaves everywhere, and their numbers were increased by constant fresh arrivals. Anyway, I won’t go into further detail. Plus, beside the slave trade, exports included many other articles such as clothing, textile fabrics, timber and possibly madder. And all this is supported by an abundant circulation of gold, but I will come back to that later.
Because beside this international commerce, which was largely if not exclusively in the hands of foreigners, the inland trade filled an important role in the economic life of the West. Here a different picture presents itself. We have not only Syrian and Jewish and Greek and African merchants, but also natives. Not only shopkeepers, but merchants by profession. For example, according to contemporary accounts, Verdun is afflicted by poverty under the Bishop Desideratus (sometime around AD 550). The bishop borrows 7.000 aurei from King Theodebert and distributes them among the citizens “at illi negotia exercentes divites per hoc effecti sunt et usque hodie magni habentur”. Here’s indubitable proof of great commercial activity and it is a remarkable fact: the bishop speaks to the king about the revival of trade in his city Sicut reliquae habent, so commercial activity was a normal feature of all the cities. There were certainly professional merchants in Italy and I bring it up because there’s a very interesting fact to recount: it is often mentioned Lombard merchants served in the army; they constituted, therefore, an independent social class, living by purchase and sale. That they were very numerous is proved by the fact that there was a special regulation effecting their military service. And there are many individual wealthy merchants mentioned all over the place, leaving considerable property behind and doing charity work.
And where was all this commerce carried on? Because this is a very important aspect, in striking contrast with the commerce taking place in the Middle Ages in markets and fairs. In the cities. It was there that these negotiatores resided, They were installed within the walls, in the oppidum civitatis. The cities were commercial in nature. Even in the cities of the North, such as Meaux, there were streets with arcades prolonging into suburbs which were giving the cities an Italian appearance. In these cities, besides the merchants, lived the artisans, concerning whom we have very little information, but their presence is noted in Arles for example. The glass industry seems to have been very important.
The curator civitatis and the defensor civitatis saw to the policing of the markets and the protection of goods. Of course, the cities had suffered from the invasions. Bridges had broken down and had been replaced by bridges of boats. But all the cities still existed; moreover, the bishops had restored them. And there is no doubt that just as they were the centres of the civil and religious administration, they were also the permanent commercial centres of the kingdoms. Here again the ancient economy continued. There’s nothing resembling the great fairs of the Middle Ages – such as those of Champagne. There were some fairs in the North of Gaul, yet very local. And in Spain, there were no fairs at all according to Valdeavellano. And anyway, there is no mention anywhere of those little markets so numerous in the Carolingian period. Markets were not an essential element in cities where there were professional merchants and which were permanent commercial centres. It was when commerce had disappeared that all these small economic centres of replenishment were organised, serving a restricted area and frequented only by occasional merchants. This is a period of urban commerce. Gregory of Tours also describes the conventus of the merchants, which were held in the cities; none of them in the countryside.
The king levied market-tolls (tonlieux) in the cities and in the portus (those were wharves or landing-places). These were the ancient Roman market tolls, payable in the same places. These market tolls comprised all sorts of taxes: portaticum, rotaticum, pulveracitum etc. Their character was clearly fiscal. They seem to have been levied exclusively in money. The king could allow remission of the tax in the case of the abbeys, but he did not, except during the period of decadence, cede it to anyone else. The tonlieu was a tax imposed for the benefit of the king and its yield was very great. There’s proof of this in the magnitude of the annuities assigned by the king – more particularly to certain abbeys – to be drawn from the cellarium fisci.
The collection of these taxes was still possible because the king had at his disposal agents who were able to read and write, the telonearii. In the great seaports there were magazines or warehouses with their personnel and officials stationed in the ports, as we learn from the laws of Theodoric.
As for the post, it still existed throughout the basin of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Traffic followed the Roman roads. Bridges of boats replaced the old Roman bridges where those were broken down. The competent authorities insisted that the banks of watercourses be left clear for the space of at least a pertica legalis on either side, in order to permit the hauling of barges.

Finally, Gold! The Roman gold solidus, adjusted by Constantine, was the monetary unit throughout the Empire at the time of the invasions. This monetary system, which had long been known to the Barbarians, thanks to the subsidies which they had received from the Empire, was preserved by them unchanged. In none of the countries occupied by them will you find that there was at first any change whatsoever in the currency. The Germanic kings continued to strike coins bearing the effigies of the Emperors.
Nothing attests more clearly the persistence of the economic unity of the Empire. It was impossible to deprive it of the benefit of the monetary unit. Until the Islamic cataclysm which occurred during the time of the Carolingians, the Greek Orient, like the Occident conquered by the Germans, adhered as a whole to the gold monometallism which had been that of the Empire. The Syrian navigators, on disembarking in the ports of the Tyrrhenian Sea, found there the currency to which they had been accustomed in the ports of the Aegean Sea. What is more, the new Barbarian kingdoms adopted, in their coinage, the changes introduced in the Byzantine currency E.G. when at the end of the 6^th century the Cross replaced the Victory on the Imperial coins, the mints of Marseilles, and then the other mints, followed this example.
There were some bronze and silver coins, sure, but gold was the official currency. The monetary system of the Barbarians was that of Rome. The Carolingian system, which was the silver monometallism, was that of the Middle Ages.
While I will steer clear of the multiple avenues through which the minting of coins was done, at least for now, I would like to emphasize that this constant activity of Byzantine equivalent currency is crucial to our talk. We know of the kings’ wealth in gold, and the wealth of the Church and of private individuals; this proves there was a huge stock of gold in the West; and yet, there were no gold mines and we cannot even think so much gold can have been derived from auriferous sands. No once can confuse this for a Carolingian natural economy in the presence of such large amounts of liquid treasure.
There was an active circulation of money, it did not stagnate in anyone’s coffers. Just by looking at the royal treasury this becomes clear. It provided opulent annuities, dowries for daughters, gifts to friends, lavish alms to the poor; it enabled the king to also lend money at interest, as he can be found lending it to the Bishop of Verdun; to pay pensions to needy ecclesiastics; to provide Saint Amand with money when he went forth to convert the Franks; to buy peace from the Barbarians, as did Brunchaut; or to cover the apse of Saint Denis with silver, as Dagobert did; to purchase missoria from Constantinople; to defray the expenses of the chancellery and the scola etc. Commerce supplemented its revenue to allow for all that and much more for two and a half centuries, until Charles Martel. Gold was pouring into the country. The barbarian kings imported gold. The Law of the Visigoths proves that they did so. Gregory of Tours shows the king buying gold in Constantinople and an account of a shipwreck off Agde proves that gold was carried by sea. The transport of gold, like that of slaves, is mentioned in the tariffs of the tonlieux.


All this clearly proves that the economic life of the Roman Empire was continued into the Merovingian epoch throughout the Tyrrhennian basin.
All the features of the old economic life were there: the preponderance of the Oriental navigation, the importation of Oriental products, the organization of the ports, of the tonlieu and the impost, the circulation and the minting of money, the lending of money at interest, the absence of small markets and the persistence of a constant commercial activity in the cities, where there were merchants by profession. The commercial activities of the Mediterranean continued with singular persistence and commerce played an essential part, both in daily life – by the sale of spices, clothing etc. – and in the life of the State – by virtue of the resources which the tonlieu procured for it – and in social life, owing to the presence of merchants and the existence of credit. There had been no definite break with what had been the economic life of the Empire.




Until now
Lets come back to the last text which attests this connection; it is the document of Corbie, dated AD 716. According to this text which I described above already, the magazine of the fisc at Marseilles, or at Fos, must still have some provisions of oil and spices at that point in time; that is, of products imported from Asia and Africa. It may merely be an archaism all together. The document merely confirms certain decades old privileges of the Abbey of Corbie; it may have reproduced earlier texts verbatim. Anyway, this is the latest mention that we have of Oriental products warehoused in the ports of Provence. In fact, four years later the Muslims were landing on this coast and pillaging the countryside. Marseilles was then dead.
Not only is it impossible to find a single text which mentions the continued presence of Syrian or Oriental merchants, but from the 8^th century onwards, all the products which they used to import were no longer to be found in Gaul. That is the definitive argument.

Papyrus was the first to disappear. All the works written in the west on papyrus of which we have knowledge are of the 6^th or 7^th century. Until 659-677 nothing but papyrus was used in the royal Merovingian chancellery. Then parchment made its appearance. A few private documents were still written on papyrus, doubtless obtained from old stocks, until nearly the end of the 8^th century. There is no sign of it after that. And the explanation cannot be that it was no longer manufactured, for this supposition is disproved by the beautiful papyrus documents of the 7^th century in the Arab Museum of Cairo. The disappearance of papyrus in Gaul can only have been due to the fact that commerce first declined and then ceased. Parchment does not seem to have been widely used at first. Gregory of Tours, who calls it membrana, mentions it only once and seems to indicate that it was manufactured by the monks for their own use. Now, we know that the habits of the chancellery are extremely tenacious. If at the close of the 7^th century the royal offices had ceased to make use of papyrus it was because it was becoming very difficult to obtain any. Papyrus was still used to some extent in Italy. The Popes employed it for the last time in 1057. Are we to suppose that they were using up old stocks, or did it come from Sicily, where the Arabs introduced its manufacture in the 10^th century? That was disputed. It was probably obtained through the trade of the Byzantine ports of Naples, Amalfi, Gaeta and Venice. But in Gaul, no one could get its hands on it anymore.

Mention of spices, like that of papyrus, disappears from the text after 716. The statutes of Adalhard mention only pulmentaria, which was a kind of vegetable soup. Actually, spices must have disappeared at the same time as papyrus, since they came in the same vessels. If you look at capitularies, only those spices and exotic products which could be cultivated in the villae, such as madder, cummin and almonds, are mentioned. There is not a single reference to pepper, cloves, nard, cinnamon, dates or pistachios, so abundant before.
The Carolingian tractoriae mention, among the foodstuffs which were served to functionaries on their travels, bread, pork, fowls, eggs, salt, herbs, vegetables, fish and cheese, but not a single kind of spice. Similarly, the tractoria “de conjecta missis dando” of AD 829 enumerates as provisions to be furnished to the missi 40 loaves of pork or lamb, 4 fowls, 20 eggs, 8 casks of wine, 2 measures of beer and 2 measures of wheat. A very rustic menu for such important faces. The Capitula episcoporum of AD 843-850 allow for the bishops, when they travel from place to place, 100 loaves of pork, 50 casks of wine, 10 fowls, 50 eggs, 1 lamb, 1 porker, 6 measures of oats for the horses, 3 cartloads of hay, honey, oil and wax. But in all the list, no mention of condiments.
You can see from the letters of Saint Boniface how rare and expensive spices had become. He received or sent presents which consisted of small quantities of incense. In 742-743 a cardinal sent him aliquantum cotzumbri quod incensus, Domino offeratis. In 748 an archdeacon of Rome also sent him a small consignment of spices and perfume. These gifts prove the rarity of spices to the north of the Alps, since they formed valuable presents. And note that they all come from Italy. They were no longer reaching the port of Marseilles or the ports of Provence and northern Italy. The cellarium fisci was empty or even, which is very probable, had been burned down by the Saracens. And spices were no longer an article of normal commerce as before. If small quantities still found their way into the country very rarely, it was by means of pedlars. In all the literature of the period, although very abundant, there’s no mention of spices. So by the end of the 7^th century, beginning of the 8^th, spices had disappeared from the normal diet. They did not reappear until after the 12^th century, when the Mediterranean was reopened to commerce.

The same thing applies to the wine of Gaza, which disappears. Oil is no longer exported from Africa. Such oil as was still used came from Provence. Henceforth, the churches were lit with wax candles.
Similarly, the use of silk seems to have been almost entirely unknown in this period. There is only one mention of it in the capitularies, and even presents some caveats. That is, in Brevium exampla, composed about 810, you can find in the treasury of a church, a dalmatica sirica, of fanones lineos serico paratos, of linteamina serico parata, of manicas sericeas auro at margaritis paratas et alias sericeas, of plumatium scrico indutum. All church ornaments, the majority of which dated from a much earlier period.
We know how simply Charlemagne was accustomed to dress. The court was similarly austere. This simplicity, which contrasts so strongly with the Merovingian luxury, was a matter of necessity. They were forced to break their habbits.

Another striking fact: the increasing rarity of gold. You can read on the Merovingian gold coins of the 8^th century, which were alloyed with a constantly increasing proportion of silver. Evidently gold had ceased to arrive from the Orient. While it continued to circulate in Italy, it became so rare in Gaul that it was no longer employed as currency. From the time of Pippin and Charlemagne only silver denarii were struck, with very rare exceptions. Gold resumed its place in the monetary system only when spices resumed theirs in the normal diet, centuries later. This is an essential fact more eloquent than all the texts. It must be admitted that the circulation of gold was a consequence of commerce, since where commerce survived, that is, in southern Italy, gold continued to be in common use.

One consequence of the suppression of the Oriental trade and maritime traffic was the disappearance of professional merchants in the interior of the country. Henceforth, merchants are hardly ever mentioned in the documents of the period; and when they are, we’re talking about occasional merchants. You will not find a single negotiator of the Merovingian type i.e. a merchant who lent money at interest, was buried in a sarcophagus and gave his goods to the churches and the poor. There is no evidence whatsoever of the continued existence in the cities of colonies of merchants or of a domus negotiantum. There can be no doubt that as a class, the merchants had disappeared. Commerce itself had not disappeared, for we cannot imagine a period without any sort of exchange, but it had assumed a different character. The spirit of the age was hostile to it except in the Byzantine countries, since so few laymen were able to read and write at this point in time. It rendered impossible the continued existence of a class living normally by sale and purchase. The disappearance of loans at interest affords further evidence of the economic regression produced by the closing of the sea.

Do not imagine that the Muslims of Africa and Spain or even Syria were able to replace the former merchants of the Byzantine Levant in the first three centuries, and even after with the exception of Sicily. At first the Muslims and the Christians were permanently at war and the ones non-converted to Islam were not allowed contact with the enemy. There was no notion of trading with the other faith, only of pillaging. The documents do not mention a single Muslim as established in Gaul or Italy. It is a proven fact that the Muslim traders did not install themselves beyond the frontiers of Islam. When they traded, they did so among themselves. We do not find a single indication, after the conquest, of any traffic between Africa and the Christians, with the already mentioned exception of the Byzantine southern Italy. No sign of traffic with Christians on the Provencal coast. Under these circumstances the only ones engaged in commerce “internationally” were the Jews. They were numerous everywhere. The Arabs neither drove them out nor massacred them, and the Christians had not changed their attitude towards them. They therefore constituted the only class to make a living by trading. At the same time, thanks to the contacts which they maintained among themselves, they constituted the only economic link which survived between Islam and the Christendom.

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Furthermore, Pirenne's view on Mediterranean trade in the early Middle Ages is clearly outdated. It may not have reached Roman levels, but do you think that Italian urbanization and economic diversification in the 11th and 12th centuries somehow emerged out of thin air?

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First of all, we were discussing the Western Mediterranean. And there my arguments are presented as part of my reply to your assertion regarding the “blockade” you dismissed.

Now, as to the Italian urbanization and economic diversification of the Middle Ages. It obviously emerged from under the protective wing of Byzantium, which, as I explained before, fought for the first three centuries after the eruption of Islam like a Roman Empire, not an eastern off-shoot, an Empire which protected Italy aggressively and sought to dominate it. Only after losing Sicily after two centuries of warfare on its soil and along its shores, in the IXth century, and Crete – albeit temporarily – between the IXth and the Xth centuries, did Byzantium cease to conduct a truly Mediterranean policy.
You seem under the impression Italy had been left relatively untouched by Islam, when in fact the Roman Empire ensued a titanic struggle in the VIIIth century to ensure its protection.

Thus, lets look at the main cause behind the Italian economic surge by looking at its lungs. Between the VIIIth and Xth centuries, it breathed through the Greek cities of Venice, Naples, Gaeta, Amalfi and to a lesser degree, Salerno; they all continued to pump oxygen into Italy due to their ties to a Roman Empire which continued to rule the seas, despite shaking the Byzantine yoke whenever possible. Byzantine influence is the only reason for their fundamentally mercantile spirit, especially when taking into account the infusion of the Greek and Syrian component in their social life.
I won’t write here a history of Venice, suffice it to say, after in 810 Pippin, having borrowed shipping from Comacchio, Venice’s bitter early rival in the Adriatic Sea, recaptures Venice and the Dalmatian coast, the Byzantine fleet comes yet again to the rescue and compels him to immediately abandon his conquests. He then dies and Charles rushes to conclude a peace with Byzantium, surrendering Venice and the cities of Istria, Liburnia and Dalmatia for good in 812. The Carolingian Empire basically surrenders the sea. Venice enters the Byzantine orbit. Its union with the Empire enabled Venice to expand in the Orient and this without threatening its autonomy, since the Empire had need of its support in the struggle against Islam. On the other hand, the peace had opened the Occident for it, as when Charles had renounced the possession of the city, it had also acknowledged its right to trade within the Frankish Empire. Secure against attack from the West, Venice had no one to fear apart from Comacchio, which held the mouth of Po. In 875 it destroys it for good. Henceforth, the markets and port of Upper Italy, Pavia, Cremona, Milan and the rest were dependent upon the commerce of Venice, and this Byzantine protectorate plants the seed for future progress in Italy.
There remained the Saracen peril. Here the interest of Venice was the same as that of the Emperor. In 828 he asked for the assistance of its warships. In 840 Venice came to the help of the Empire by sending sixty of its ships; upon which the Muslims burned Ancona and captured the Venetian vessels. In 867-871 Venice made war upon Bari from the sea, in concert with the Byzantines and Louis II, who attacked the city from the land. But in 872 the Muslims attacked Dalmatia and in 875 they besieged Grado! Nevertheles, Venice retained the mastery of the Adriatic Sea in its quality of Byzantine protectorate, and by doing so assured some navigation to the Levant. This, however, did not by any means prevent Venice from trafficking with Islam. It is true that the Emperor, as early as 814-820, had prohibited trading with the Saracens of Syria and Egypt, but the Venetians traded with the infidel, even while they fought it. It was from Alexandria that a fleet of ten ships brought the relics of Saint Mark to Venice in 827, the Venetians having stolen them unknown to the Christians and Muslims of the city.
The most important branch of Venetian trade was the traffic of the Slav slaves of the Dalmatian coast. In 876 the Doge prohibited this trade, but in vain. In the middle of the 9^th century the merchants were even selling Christian slaves to the Muslims. The commercial treaty concluded between Venice and Lothair in 840, which shows that the city was essentially mercantile, forbade the sale of Christian slaves and of eunuchs.
From the Orient came spices and silk which were immediately re-exported to Pavia and Rome. There was next to nothing left to reach across the Alps. Venice also had as its market the whole of the Dalmatian coast. It was probably with this coast that the busiest trade was carried on. Compared with the Occident, Venice was another world. The Venetians had the mercantile spirit, and were not embarrassed by interdicts relating to turpe lucrum. This mentality was merely the mentality which had disappeared in the Western world and in northern Italy since the Arab conquests, but which still survived in Venice and in the other Byzantine centres in Southern Italy. Bari, for example, was still entirely Greek, and retained its Byzantine municipal institutions until the reign of Bohemond, although Bari was occupied by the Muslims until 871.

It was the same with Salerno, Naples, Gaeta and Amalfi on the south-western coast. These were essentially the only former Byzantine outposts which retained a navy. Thus, they remained active seaports and, like Venice, they maintained a loose connection with the Empire; they also fought for their autonomy against the Duke of Benevento. Their hinterland was far wealthier than that of Venice, for Benevento had retained its gold currency, and they were not far from Rome, which remained, owing to its churches and the afflux of pilgrims, a great consumer of spices, perfumes, precious fabrics and even of papyrus. Moreover, in the duchy of Benevento there was still a comparatively refined civilization. Paulus Diaconus taught Greek there to the princess Adelperga; and there Duke Arachis, at the close of the 8^th century, built a Church of Santa Sofia which he embellished with ornaments brought from Constantinople; he prided in still being able to import from the Orient silken fabrics, vases of chiselled gold and silver, products from India etc.

Emphasis must be laid upon the fact that the dukes of Benevento had retained the gold currency and even the Byzantine monetary system. The continuation of the Mediterranean unity was still visible here, though it disappeared later.

These maritime cities of the South retained, as said, a Greek fleet, and while they combined it successfully with the Imperial navy to protect themselves, they also used it to buck the Emperor and even raid Sicily and trade with the Arabs when those were not posing a direct threat thanks to the Byzantine fleet. In 879 the Greek admiral sent to defend Sicily held up a number of merchant vessels which, despite the War, were trading between Italy and Sicily. He took such quantities of oil from them – proof that they were coming from Africa – that the price of this commodity in Constantinople fell to a derisory figure. This trade between the ports of Southern Italy and the Muslims was also a trade of slaves. The pope rebuked them for it. Already, in 836, the treaty between Naples and the Duke of Benevento granted the merchants of the city the widest commercial liberty within the duchy. But it forbade them to buy Lombard slaves for the purpose of selling them again. Yet these same vendors of human flesh won, in 849, a great naval victory off Ostia for the Pope. Saint Januaries was to Naples what Saint Mark was to Venice. Of these cities, Amalfi was the most purely mercantile. In other respects there was no understanding between these cities and the Duke of Benevento. There was no understanding even between themselves. Around 830, Naples, to better resist the Duke, obtained support from the Saracens. It allied itself with them again around 870 against Amalfi and the, in 880, against the Byzantine influence, which under Basil I and onward had increased its pressure. At this moment Gaeta also effected a rapprochement with the Saracens, but then reverted to the Pope, who made concessions to its hypatos. In 875 some ships recruited from all the Southern cities, in cooperation with a Saracen fleet, pillaged the Roman coast and Louis II declared that Naples had become another Africa. In 877 Pope John VIII sought in vain, by means of money and excommunication, to detach Amalfi from the Saracens. However, that same year this city undertook to protect the coast of Southern Italy from Saracen attack.
At first sight, nothing could appear more confused than the policy of these commercial cities. It is explained, however, by their constant and exclusive anxiety to protect their commerce. Their alliances with the Muslims did not prevent them from resisting bitterly any attempt at conquest from them. In 856 the Saracens, with the object of obtaining possession of Southern Italy, which they attacked simultaneously through Bari and from the West, made an attempt upon Naples and destroyed Misenum. Although these basically Greek cities were perfectly willing to trade with the Saracens, they had no intention of falling under their yoke, nor of allowing them to obtain control over their home waters. Their policy in this respect was precisely like that of the Venetians. They distrusted everybody but themselves and had no intention of obeying anyone. But they were implacable rivals and had no hesitation in allying themselves with the Muslims in order to destroy one another. Thus, in 843, Naples helped the Muslims to wrest Messina from the Byzantine Empire to which Naples itself belonged. But the subjection of these Greek cities to Byzantium was now nominal. They took action only when their prosperity was directly threatened; and, due to the cover of the Byzantine fleet which, in its constant struggle against the Saracens, kept the Muslim fleets in check without being able to re-impose its hold on these mercantile centres, they could afford doing so. They lived as much by pillage as by regular trade. Plus, they needed to maintain a precarious status quo and thus secretly supported the Muslims in their conquest of Sicily. They needed to maintain the trade open with these since the Orient was monopolized by the Byzantine Venice.

To summarize the situation: the Christian Mediterranean was divided into two basins, the East and the West, surrounded by Islamic countries for which trade with the few Italian ports was nothing more than a very late extra activity to their raids into Gaul and Italy, their trade routes all leading towards Baghdad.
Christian navigation continued active only in the Orient and the furthermost point of southern Italy remained in communication with this Orient. Byzantium succeeded in preventing Islam from obtaining the mastery of the sea and, thus, Italy. Ships continued to sail from Venice along the Adriatic coast and the coast of Greece to the Constantinople. They frequented the Muslim ports, where they were tolerated. No Muslim merchants ever anchored in their ports with peaceful intentions. It was though enough and, between their ties with Byzantium and the traffic with the Muslims, an advanced civilization survived in southern Italy, with cities, a gold currency and professional merchants; in short, a civilization which had retained its ancient foundations.
In the Occident, on the contrary, the coast from the Gulf of Lyons and the Riviera to the mouth of the Tiber, ravaged by war and the Saracen pirates, whom the Christians, having no fleet, were powerless to resist, was now merely a solitude. The ports and cities were deserted. The link with the Orient was severed and there was no communication with the Saracen coasts. There was nothing but death and the Carolingian Empire was, as I previously asserted, a purely inland power.
And in this context is inserted Pirenne’s conclusion that:
Quote: For the first time in history the axis of the Occidental civilization was displaced towards the North. The classic tradition was shattered because Islam had destroyed the ancient unity of the Mediterranean.

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What about the huge economic success called Muslim Spain, do you think this occurred without exports?

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You are not asking the right question. Exports towards?
The Islamic countries surrounding the Mediterranean, the war of conquest having come to an end by the beginning of the Xth century, constituted a world apart, self-sufficing and gravitating exclusively towards Baghdad.
It was towards this central point that the caravans of Asia made their way, and there ended the great trade route which led to the Baltic by way of the Volga. It was from Baghdad that produce was exported to Africa and Spain. The Muslims themselves did not trade with the Christians, but they did not close their ports to the Greek cities of southern Italy either. They allowed them to bring in slaves and timber and to carry away whatever they could sell in Italy.

Even when looking a bit back, when Damascus was the first capital of the Caliphate. Spices were still imported, papyrus was still manufactured, the seaports were still active. Once they paid taxes to the conquerors, the Christians were not molested. But the direction of commerce was changed. Not to mention that it should go without saying, with an actual war in progress, the conqueror did not allow his subjects to travel and trade with the conquered. When peace was somewhat restored after the first terrible waves, the commercial activity of the conquered provinces was already redirected along new trade routes. Even the Scandinavians, whose merchants frequented the shores of the Black Sea, were suddenly compelled to follow the new path along the Volga connecting the Caspian with the Baltic Sea. Of this we need no further proof than the many Oriental coins found in Gothland (basically, the Scandinavian peninsula, for those who can’t place it fast).

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And finally, to use one of Pirenne's arguments against him, do you really think there would have been so many pirates and raiders in the Mediterranean if the seas had been empty? As Braudel noted, a pirate often became a merchant and vice versa depending on time, place, and opportunity. If there had been nothing to gain, there would have been no raiders of the seas.

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Yes, you can only fall into this argument because you do not understand what piracy meant. Saracen pirates in particular made their fortune by raiding the ports of coastal settlements of Gaul, Italy, Dalmatia, Sicily and whatever islands were there still not under Arab control. They were basically amphibious war parties which singed the shores of the northern Mediterranean, leaving only death behind; the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Gulf of Lyons was their playground. Even the destruction by a tempest of a Saracen pirate fleet of a hundred ships in 813 only checked for a time the razzias of the Spanish Arabs, which continued to pillage Civita Vecchia, Sardinia, Corsica and Nice, returning with hundreds of captives every time.

But I kept giving the Gulf of Lyons as an example. Lets look to Italy.
Everything to the north of the Byzantine cities was completely at the mercy of the Saracen pirates. Brindisi and Tarento were ravaged in 838, Bari conquered in 840. In 841 Muslim pirates ravaged Ancona and infiltrated the Dalmatian coast as far as Cattaro. Lothair, in 846, made no secret of the fact that he feared the annexation of Italy.
Same year seventy vessels attacked Ostia and Porto, and the pirates advanced, ravaging the country, to the very walls of Rome, profaning the church of San Pietro. The garrison of Gregoriopolis was unable to check them. They were finally repulsed by Guide di Spoleto. In 852 the Pope had to create a new city, Leopoli, to take the place of Civita Vecchia, now emptied by the terror which the Saracen pirates inspired. Didn’t prevent the latter to ravage the Roman Campagna in 876 and 877, the Pope hysterically calling upon the Empire to send its fleet and cut them off. Byzantium was too caught in southern Italy and Sicily to spare anyone at the time though. Thus the Pope bought off the pirates by an annual payment of 25.000 mancusi of silver. And theses were simply razzias. In 883 the Abbey of Monte Cassino was burned and destroyed. In 890 the Abbey of Farfa was besieged; it held out for seven years while the Saracens burned everything around it with impunity. Subiaco was destroyed and the valley of the Anio and Tivoli were pillaged. They shipped so many pirates in that they created a stronghold not far from Rome, at Saracinesco and another in the Sabine hills at Ciciliano. The Roman Campagna became a desert: reducta est terra in solitudinem. Peace was restored only in 916, when John X, the princess of southern Italy and the Emperor allied. At the same time, Constantinople sent a few galleys to Naples forcing it to abandon its alliance with the pirates and only when that city turned against them, the above mentioned could defeated the Saracens at Garigliano.

Therefore, the statement that, after the conquest of Spain and Africa the Western Mediterranean became a Muslim lake is clearly justified. The Frankish Empire, with no fleet, was powerless against the Saracen pirates which established pirate havens along the coast of southern France and northern Italy. In 911, the bishop of Narbonne was unable to return to France from Rome because the Saracens from Fraxinet controlled all the passes in the Alps. Saracen pirates operated at their leisure out of the Balearic Islands during the whole 10^th century.


To be continued with my response to MND :bow:

Hello MND

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Originally Posted by MND

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Originally Posted by Nowake

The thread doesn’t touch one bit on Islamic advances in physics, medicine, astronomy, cartography and especially mathematics, and it never will. That is progress the Islam civilization as a whole, not even just its Arab component, has developed and shared.

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I am sorry but I must disagree entrierly on this. Medicine was copied from India. The Feudal system was copied from India. Who invetned the number zero? The Indians did. Why are the Muslims so acknowledged? Being a Frenchmen, I know how everyone calls us ''cowards.'' which is not true, but everyone is giving credit to them! Look at the Chinese or the Indians! The Indians were the first to use maths and use zero. Everything they wrote down was by their scholars, saints, Brahmins. The Astronomy came from the Indian sages, no, it was from the anicents! I don't believe they made a advance in physics. The ancient greeks and romans created the first maps. Not Islam. And anyway, they didn't influnce europe, only in medicine did they do that. Otherwise Europe changed itself. The Ottoman empire was weak. They had no great power as they once used to be. So why say that the gift of Islam gave anything to Europe? I don't see the reason why.
The Chinese were ,among the romans to create a sort of ''ancient modern time'' meaning their ages simply resembled ours in which we live in today. They used paper money, their huge advancements in their army. And Confucius, who wrote his books was a clever scholar. Sun Tzu wrote the Art of War, which greatly influenced Napoleon Bonaparte and the Samurai in Japan, including the world.

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It would simply take too long to refute all your arguments, plus I’d actually need to document myself on a few aspects and I lack the energy for that.

Thus, I will simply focus on the Arab contribution to mathematics to disprove your main assertion.

The mathematics which was absorbed by Muslim scholars came from three primary traditions: Greek mathematics, Hindu mathematics, and practitioners of mathematics.
The Greek mathematics component of Islamic knowledge includes the geometrical classics of Euclid, Apollonius, and Archimedes, as well as the numerical solutions of indeterminate problems in Diophantus' Arithmetica. It also includes the practical manuals of Heron.
The second tradition, Hindu mathematics, includes their arithmetic system based on nine signs and a dot for an empty space, as well as their algebraic methods, an emerging trigonometry, methods in solid geometry, and solutions of problems in astronomy.
The third tradition, “mathematics of practitioners," includes the practical mathematics of surveyors, builders, artisans in geometrical design, merchants, and tax and treasury officials. This mathematics was part of an oral tradition which “transcended ethnic divisions and was a common heritage of many of the lands incorporated into the Islamic world.”

Medieval Islamic mathematics not only reflected these three sources but also gave a primary importance to the Muslim society that sustained it. This can be seen in al-Khwarizmi's application of his algebra to the Islamic inheritance laws. Islamic mathematics in the eighth through the thirteenth centuries was marked with a steady development in conic theory in geometry, methods and theories of solving general geometrical problems, treatment and definitions of irrational magnitudes, trigonometry, algebra, and the geometrical analysis of algebra.


And here I could just break into a long talk on algebra, as it is the sub-branch in which Islam innovated the most. It’s a bit more challenging to go for Geometry though, seeing as the Greeks had already innovated so much. I’ll exemplify through Abu Sahl Wayjan ibn al-Kuhi. He lived around 940-1000 CE. He was from Kuh, a mountainous area along the southern coast of the Caspian Sea in modern Iran. Abu Saul worked in the Baghdad and is considered one of the greatest Muslim geometers (unsure about the spelling there) in the 10th century. Though Abu Sahl worked on many treatises on geometry and astrology, his explanation of the construction of a regular heptagon best shows his innovation as a geometer and his contribution to Islamic mathematics by providing solutions to “impossible" problems within known mathematical theories.

Archimedes Archimedes' construction of the regular heptagon was unexplained and unique in Greek mathematics, and so served more as a proof of the existence of a regular heptagon than a construction of it. Archimedes' regular heptagon followed this explanation: Begin with a square ABDG and its diagonal BG. Archimedes then drew a line from D so it crossed BG at point T, the side AG at point E, and the extension of side BA at point Z. Then, the triangle AEZ has the same area as DTG. Next, Archimedes drew KTL parallel to AG. He proved that K and A divide the segment BZ so that the segments BK, KA, and AZ form a triangle and so that BA x BK = ZAsquared and KZ x KA = KBsquared. Then, he forms triangle KHA so that KH = KB and AH = AZ, and draws a circle BHZ. Finally, Archimedes proved that dBH is 1/7 of the circumference of the circle.

Abu Sahl analyzed the problem backwards, what you could call Construction by Reduction, considering an already constructed heptagon and reasoning backwards. If his chain of reasoning can be reversed, then Abu Sahl has the proof of what is required starting from a given to the finished heptagon. The analysis was provided in a treatise dedicated to King `Adud al-Daula, the Buwayhid ruler of modern-day Iraq and Iran under the Abassid caliph Al-Muti. His result showed that constructions which did not fit into any theories could be fitted into the theory of conic sections, a new development in geometrical thought.

Now, I don’t expect anyone to follow this and I cannot use the correct mathematical symbols here sadly. Suffice to say he solved it within three reductions. The first reduction: from Heptagon to Triangle, the second reduction: from Triangle to Division of Line Segment and the third reduction: from Divided Line Segment to Conic Sections. Through synthesis, Abu Sahl thus reduced the divided line segment to the construction of two conic sections. Using synthesis, he puts the steps back in order to begin with conics and end with a regular heptagon: First, create two conics with intersection point T, which determines the lengths of ET and TZ. These produce the segments GD = ET and EB = TZ with the property that the line EBGD is divided at B and G so that

GE x EB = GDsquared and DB x BG = BEsquared

Thus, given BG, we can construct the line segment EBGD, then the d(ABG), and finally our regular heptagon.
Abu Sahl was the first to note that given a class of curves beyond a straight line and a circle (the class of conic sections), it was possible to construct in any circle the side of a regular heptagon. His proof showed that the construction of a regular heptagon belonged to an intermediate class of problems which had no previous solution and which required at times cubic curves. Abu Sahl limited both the level of difficulty of the problem and the means to solve it, placing the problem within the context of the known mathematical theory of conic sections.


Leaving that aside, it must be noted that one important aspect of Islamic mathematics, in contrast to Greek mathematics, is the close relationship between theory and practice. For example, mathematical works discuss solutions to problems which arise when creating modules for use in Islamic tessellations, relating to the Islamic architectural decorative designs. Mathematicians took into account the objections of artisans to their theoretical methods, and artisans also learned to understand the differences between exact and approximate methods.

Another example is the mathematical instrument, the astrolabe. It used “the circle-preserving property of stereographic projection to create an analogue computer to solve problems of spherical astronomy and trigonometry." This is a good example of the intersections of mathematical traditions and Islamic culture, as the astrolabe was a Greek invention but Muslims added circles indicating azimuths on the horizon, which proved useful in determining the direction of Mecca. However, the construction of these circles was not just for religious purposes, but instead stimulated geometrical investigations. Mathematics blended together with Islamic culture in a way that is quite distinct from any of the three mathematical traditions from which Muslim mathematicians acquired their knowledge.


I would also like to close by asking the rest of our readers to make a clear distinction between the assertion I made i.e. that Greek knowledge would’ve been parsed to Europe through the Roman Empire’s provinces of the Eastern Mediterranean – in the absence of Islam – even more proficiently that it happened historically, and the completely unrelated statement that the Islamic advancements in sciences were merely plagiarism.

I ask you to consider only the geographical position and you will see why it is false and completely different. Islam was uniquely positioned to distil the approaches of India, Babylon and Byzantium and it built on them up to the point where it radiated back its synthesis to the benefit of those cultures. In its absence, that entire space would not have been able to constitute itself into a homogenous bridge over civilizations, with one language and one culture for Muslim polymaths from Spain to India to use in communicating the information they were receiving from such disparate corners of the world, disseminate it and combine the Greek theorem-shaped thinking with Indian numerals. Hossein Nasr correctly writes about a distinctly Muslim approach to science, flowing from Islamic monotheism and the related theological prohibition against portraying graven images. In science, this is reflected in a philosophical disinterest in describing individual material objects, their properties and characteristics and instead a concern with the ideal, the Platonic form, which exists in matter as an expression of the will of the Creator. Thus one can "see why mathematics was to make such a strong appeal to the Muslim: its abstract nature furnished the bridge that Muslims were seeking between multiplicity and unity.”


To conclude, science was an area embraced by the entire Islamic civilization, which absorbed the knowledge of the three greatest –separate– civilizations the world had known and in its process of syncretism, it improved and innovated each field. You cannot even draw an analogy between it and the position that, prior to their destruction, the Greek heritage would’ve been more proficiently relayed for the Occident by the thriving, direct descendants of said heritage.

Then think about it this way, ok, say, there is no Islam, the Romans and the Sassanids are murdering each other en masse, life is being handicapped, and millions have died, no doubt they would still be fighting until they run out of men :/ , a never ending cycle .

Just to say that Nowake's posts are a pleasure to read :2thumbsup:

As I'm relatively tired right now and I see that Nowake has made several excellent posts concerning very specific examples of how the scientific advances in the Islamic Middle-East influenced Europe, I will only touch upon two subjects:

1. The idea that Islam was indifferent at best, or hostile at worst towards scientific advances in general.
2. My own perception of how science was able to flourish in several places in the Islamic world

Generally, the first idea has been repeated several times throughout history(and in particular, during the last few decades), for political reasons. The opposite theory (that Islam is inherently very friendly towards science) has also been repeated (for a slightly longer period) but has been especially popular amongst apologists for Islam in the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

The problem with either supposition is that it outright denies the diversity in Islam that has been present since essentially, Muhammad's death. Apart from the Sunni-Shi‘a split, differences can also be seen within the philosophy within Sunni Islam, in particular in the hostilities between Mu‘tazilite and Ash‘arite theology.

My point here being that we cannot automatically assume that “Islam” on its own was typically hostile or friendly towards science; policy concerning science fluctuated between dynasties and rulers; we find that the Fatimid Caliphate in North-Africa was generally quite friendly towards science (the interesting issue here being “why”?), as was the early ‘Abbasid Caliphate. I'll try to highlight the reason for their perceived friendliness towards science in the second part of my post.

Generally, there have been several ideas concerning Islam's hostility towardsscience. These are generally outlined in three assumptions:

• Science in the Islamic world was completely dependent on previous Greek and Indian texts
• There was no scientific innovation in the entirety of Islamic history; texts were translated without any additional input
• Science in the Islamic world was dominated by the work of non-Muslims: Syriac Christians, Zoroastrian Persians and particular small group, Sabians (in north Iraq)

These assumptions all generally have different, underlying assumptions: Muslims are essentially incapable of performing science, are incompetent in reproducing or improving upon the works of non-Muslim or pre-Islamic scholars and were generally incapable of doing anything more than to simply translate.

A simple glance at the works of Islamic scholars throughout history will automatically dispel these ideas; while it is true that al-Khwarizmi based his theories on Hindu numerals (the Arabs stil lcall them “Indian numbers”), he also actively improved on these theories and practically applied these theories; Omar Khayyam greatly improved the Persian calender, which was then not improved upon until well into the 20^th century.

As Nowake very rightly pointed out, the fact that science was largely improved uponin the Islamic world should not mean that progress made by the Byzantines or within Western Europe was completely irrelevant. Scholars in the european Middle Ages could have very much been dependent on both. It is not a mutually exclusive situation.


Now, I would like to point out that George Saliba wrote a book called “Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance”. Although I am sceptical of several things in particular, especially the fact that he only looks at astronomy, he made an excellent point in addressing why science was so actively pursued during the ‘Abbasid Caliphate.

First of all, he sees no direct causal relation between the presence of Mu‘tazilite philosophy and the friendly climate in Abbasid Baghdad. Other notions, including the one Fragony mentioned (that Saliba calls the “pockets of transmission” theory) are dispelled in the same way. Although his book has its own problems, henotes something very interesting the first chapters:

Essentially, after the ‘Abbasids came to power and moved the capital from Damascus to Baghdad, there was a shift in power: whereas traditionally, Persian families were typically associated with the royal bureaucracy, the situation became less clear. The ‘Abbasids were more welcoming of conversion to Islam than the Umayyads had been, and to that extent, offices were less associated with ethnic groups thanthey had been.

As such, several influential Persian families were confronted by the fact that they were in a less favourable position than they had been. Generally, these families possessed a monopoly in supplying astronomers, astrologers, mathematicians, physicians, geographers, etc. To be able to compete with new bureaucrats, they re-established their scientific superiority. This resulted in a competitive scientific community, which led to a rapid increase in scientific research. This was also very much welcomed by the rulers in Baghdad.

Now,when we look at the same situation in Fatimid Cairo, we find that at the point that the Dar al-Ilm (House of Knowledge) was founded, a very peculiar Caliph by the name of al-Hakim ruled the Caliphate. Although he was tradionally accused of being prone to fits of misogynistic and anti-Judæo-Christian madness, contemporary Jewish and Chrisitan writers were quite positive about his rulership. We also find that the Fatimid Caliphate (ruling over a Sunni majority as an Ismai‘ili dynasty) were very active of elevating Christians and Jews to important bureaucratic positions, to offset Sunnite political enemies.

So two conclusions could be drawn:

• In Baghdad, scientific activity was pursued by a bureaucratic elite for employment reasons; this movement was actively supported by the authorities

Now, I'd have to do some real research in order to properly support these claims, but they are interesting hypotheses to use. Additionally, I hope it also serves to help people understand that scientific activity was common in the Islamic world. However, it was certainly not limited to Fatimid Egypt or Abbasid Baghdad; scientific pursuit also existed in Umayyad al-Andalus and Safavid Iran.

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Originally Posted by Fragony

The gift of islam to Europe and mankind in general is war, simple as that.

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In my eyes, one could easily say the same thing in regards to Christianity, or really any other religion. To me, these sort of statements are blaming a religion for the actions of people.

As for "THX for not burning them", unless I'm mistaken it's much more than Christian conquistadors did in regards to Mayan texts when they conqured America.

Anyway, interesting opinions from everyone. Rather educational, too.

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Originally Posted by DAX

In my eyes, one could easily say the same thing in regards to Christianity, or really any other religion.

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Sure you could, but you would be wrong

Ah, of course, wiping out the Incas and Aztecs, the Crusades, not to mention the countless holy wars against brethren of the same faith, the Reformation and its hundreds of associated wars were all decided on a game of poker and its predecessors. Of course the trade in millions of men and women was completely in accordance with the spirit of the Bible. And none of the Dutch national heroes, including a certain Jan Pieterszoon Coen massacred the entire population of an Indonesian island, during their golden age did they? And Good old King Leopold II, of your southern neighbours was such an enlightened chap as well, doling out free amputations for the sheer joy of it. Civilized lot, those Christians.

It would be just as inflammatory and ridiculous to say that Christianity's only contribution to civilization is coming up with countless forms of torture.

Sadly, for the majority amongst us we are only being educated in different versions of stupidity, mostly based on idiosyncrasies. It is easy to pick a few select events and portray it as the hole picture. Reality of course is a far more complicated picture, and far less suitable for political grandstanding, whether from the left or the right. Retroactively distorting the facts to fit a political agenda is the norm rather than the exception.

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Originally Posted by d'Arthez

Retroactively distorting the facts to fit a political agenda is the norm rather than the exception.

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Yeah you are right about that.

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Originally Posted by Conradus

I'm agreeing with most of what you post, but the last time I checked the Danube was quite a defenisible border? Main problem was when they couldn't even defend that one.

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...which should tell volumes about its actual strategic defensibility. One look at the map reveals an immediate problem, namely, that the thing is any good only on the north-south axis; it's useless against an enemy coming down the Danube valley, nevermind from the central or western Balkans, and as the middle reaches had been lost already well before the Western Empire went out of business...
Another minor problem is that it's part of the corridor that leads from the Pontic steppe to the Great Hungarian Plain, the western terminus of the Great Steppe Belt - meaning that if you try to hold it you can expect almost regular trouble with steppe nomads drifiting westwards. (Not that they're going to leave you alone if you draw the line further south, anyway, but at least that way you're not right in their way.)
And a northern frontier at the highlands of the northern Balkans was obviously rather worrisomely right in Constantinopole's back yard with pretty much no strategic depth to buy time with; small wonder the city got fitted with a set of very formidable walls on its landward side...

@ Frags: did you already manage to forget your original nonsensical claim, which is mainly what the Sumerian reference was aimed at? Europeans have never had any problems caving each others' skulls in whether Islam existed or not, and indeed its arrival on the scene only provided an occasional distraction from the traditional Euro pasttime of ****ing up your neighbour for giggles and phat lewts. Hell, the latecomer Ottomans aside Muslims pretty much weren't even a meaningful military concern in Europe after something like the 900s, outside the Iberian peninsula of course - where the dizzying array of squabbling princedoms and whatnots of both denominations never had any trouble making cross-confessional alliances against their coreligionists...

Hello gang :happy:
I’ve waited to have an afternoon when I absolutely had nothing better to do. It took a bit longer than expected kek. I would welcome a bit more focused and documented arguments for, and especially against (The Wizard, bugger you, come back!) my exposition by the by. On that note, Hax, a pleasure to go through your input – I was sufficiently well read on el-Hakim, yet the bit about the competitive nature of the scientific world in Islamic Persia added unexpected colour to my knowledge of the region in the period.



Now, my following post is a reply to Watchman.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I first feel obliged to note that I do not wish this to be a grumpy thread :shrug:
I.e. your “foot”, your allegations of “BS”, your parody of the way I “argue that ‘teh Muzlums’ demolished” this or that, they come across as rather peevish, together with the generally definitive and quarrelsome tone you adopt. Plus, throwing an angry accusation of “nerve-gratingly smug historical solipsism” towards me is definitely one of the low points of this discussion, which I began politely and which I treated seriously and honestly; I appreciate you at least put some effort in the wording of it, if not in an argument to back it up.

I hope you will read this as a well-meant observation and not a scolding by the way. It’s only a plea for manners :bow:
Also, apologies for my mishap, my "second post" referred to this entry.

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I'd point out that to argue that "teh Muzlums" demolished the Roman Empire is BS right on the face of it, though - for the faith didn't even exist yet when the ailing Western Empire collapsed under the Germanic migrations, and the Eastern Empire (AKA "Byzantium") went on truckin' for a whopping eight centuries or so after losing the Middle East to the Arabs...

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Yes, this is why I thought your previous view to be rather generic before – which is not to say a generic view is in any way wrong, I have my own and no one can delve into each and every subject in the course of a lifetime. This view of the Germanic invasions is very limited and fails to take into account a plethora of indices – all of which refute it.
It’s a tiny bit galling to remember Wizard’s rejection of Pirenne on the face of the time that passed since his thesis (argument which I refute in one of the above posts only to find myself now confronted with a theory first established in the time of Gibbon’s 18^th century The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which I think a tad dated in this new millennium.
Do not misunderstand though, I do take it seriously and I thank you kindly for expressing your view; I shall do my best to comment on it below. Three main lines of approaching it. I wish to look at the demography, morality & horizon and, finally, the organization of these Germanics.



Demographical comparison
*Ahem* As a matter of fact, the newcomers were in a very small minority. The population of the Empire is estimated at around 70 million for the period. The lowest estimate projects it at 50 million; I’ll settle for that; it is enough for the Germans to disappear in the mass of the population.
Accounts like Utropius’ estimate the Visigoths admitted to the Empire by Valens to around 40.000, out of which 8.000 were warriors. This is consistent with the figures for the battle of Adrianopole. They would have been augmented subsequently by other small Germanic groups fleeing across the Danube, slaves and mercenaries. Still, when Wallia entered Hispania in 416 he had around 100.000.
Gautier estimates the tribes of the Vandals and Alans, men, women, children and slaves to have numbered around 80.000 when they crossed the straits of Gibraltar, a figure given by Victor de Vita with which he agrees; in fact, a rather accurate figure because one only had to calculate the capacity of the fleet. At the time, Roman Africa’s population stood at around 7 to 8 million, which means the Roman population would’ve been a hundred times more numerous than the host of Vandal invaders.
The Burgundi numbered around 25.000 men, of whom 5.000 would be warriors.
In the 5^th century, the total population of Italy may be estimated at 5 or 6 million according to Doren, while the Ostrogoths numbered around 100.000; 20.000 of them were warriors.
Even if I inflate these numbers a few times over, I cannot lead the entire Germanic element across the 5% mark; i.e. of the total population of the Empire; it is likely it was quite a bit lower though.

Here I feel the need to make a parenthesis however, because these numbers should not be simply crunched.
(As a matter of fact, a minority can “transform a people when it wishes to dominate it effectively, when it has only contempt for it, regarding it as fit only for exploitation.”
And here is the answer to the great dilemma which attempts to determine why the Arabs, who were certainly not a lot more numerous than the Germans, were not, like the latter, absorbed by the population of the regions which they had conquered, whose civilization was superior to their own. There is only one reply to this question, and it is of the moral order. While the Germans had nothing with which to oppose the Christianity of the Empire, the Arabs were exalted by a new faith. It was this, and this alone, that prevented their assimilation. For in other respects they were not more prejudiced than the Germans against the civilization of those whom they had conquered. On the contrary, they assimilated themselves to this civilization with astonishing rapidity; they learnt science from the Greeks and art from the Greeks and Persians. In the beginning, anyway, they were not that fanatical and they did not expect to make converts of their subjects. But they required them to be obedient to the one God, Allah, and His prophet Mohammed, and since Mohammed was an Arab, to Arabia. Their universal religion was at the same time a national religion. They were the servants of God.
“Islam”, as you know all know, signifies resignation or submission to God, and “Muslim” means subject. Allah is the One God, and it is therefore logical that all His servants should regard it as their duty to enforce obedience to Allah upon the unbelievers. What they proposed was not, as many have thought, their conversion, but their subjection. And this subjection they enforced wherever they went. After the conquest they asked nothing better than to appropriate the science and art of the infidels as part of their booty; they would cultivate them to the glory of Allah. They would even adopt the institutions of the unbelievers insofar as these were useful to them. For that matter, they were forced to do so by their own conquest. In governing the Empire which they had founded they no could no longer rely on their tribal institutions; just as the Germans were unable to impose theirs upon the Roman Empire. But they different from the Germans in this: wherever they went, they ruled. They conquered their subjects; they alone were taxed; they were excluded from the community of the faithful. The barrier was insuperable. No fusion was possible between the conquered populations and the Muslims. What a contrast between them and Theodoric, who placed himself at the service of those he had conquered, and sought to assimilate himself to them!
In the case of the Germans, the conqueror spontaneously approached the conquered. With the Arabs it was the other way around; the conquered had to approach the conquerors, and they could do so only by serving Allah, as the conquerors served Him, and by reading the Koran, like the conquerors; and therefore by learning the language, the sacred and consummate language of the conquerors.
There was no propaganda, nor was any such pressure applied as was exerted by the Christians after the triumph of the Church. “If God had so desired”, says the Koran “He would have made all humanity a single people”, and it expressly condemns the use of violence in dealing with error. It requires only obedience to Allah, the outward obedience of the inferior, degraded and despicable beings, who are tolerated, but who live in abjection. It was this that the infidel found so intolerable and demoralizing. His faith was not attacked; it was simply ignored; and this was the most effective means of detaching him from it and leading him to Allah, who would not only restore his human dignity, but would also open to him the gates of the Muslim State. It was because his religion compelled the conscientious Muslim to treat the infidel as a subject that the infidel came to him, and in coming to him broke with his country and his people.
The German became Romanized as soon as he entered Romania. The Roman, on the contrary, became Arab. It is true that well into the Middle Ages certain small communities of Copts, Nestorians and above all Jews survived in the midst of the Muslim world. Nevertheless, the whole environment was profoundly transformed. There was a clean cut: a complete break with the past. Wherever his power was effective, it was intolerable to the new master than any influence should escape the control of Allah.
His law, derived from the Koran, replaced Roman law, and his Arab language replaced Greek and Latin.​)



The life of the Germanics within the Empire. As said, the Germans wished neither to destroy nor to exploit the Empire. Far from despising it, they admired it. They did not confront it with any superior moral strength. Their heroic period ended with their settlement. The great poetic memories that remained, like the legends of the Nibelungen, were developed at a much later date, and in Germany. Consequently, in every case the triumphant invaders accorded the provincials a juridical status equal to their own. The truth is that in every respect they had much to learn from the Empire. It was not as though they were gathered into compact groups. With the exception of the Vandals, they were dispersed amidst the Roman population in accordance with the rules of “hospitality”. The distribution of the domains made it necessary to comply with the agricultural usages of the Romans.

As to marriage, or their relations with Roman women, it is true that until the reign of Reccared, in the case of the Visigoths, in the 6^th century, there was no connubium. Yet this was a juridical, not a social obstacle. The number of unions between Germans and Roman women must have been fairly constant, and the child we know to always speak the language of his mother – as thoroughly documented. Evidently, these Germans must have become Romanized with astonishing rapidity. There is no document to be cited confirming the continuation of the Germanic language in the occupied territories. As for the Ostrogoths, Procopius asserts that there were only a few in Totila’s army to speak Gothic, a few isolated individuals from the North.

The Gothic language would have been retained only if the Goths had brought with them a culture comparable to that of the Anglo-Saxons. But they had no such culture and they were much too close to Rome. There’s not a single text or charter in the Germanic language. The liturgy in the Churches was sung or recited in the Germanic tongue initially, yet no trace remains shortly thereafter. The Franks of the pre-Merovingian epoch were perhaps alone in drafting the Salic Law in the vulgar tongue, and the Malberg Glosses would contain vestiges of that language. But Euric, the earliest Germanic legislator whose texts have come down to us, wrote in Latin and all the other German kings did the same.
There is another irrefutable argument. If the Gothic language had been preserved it would have left some traces in the Latin tongues. Now, apart from certain borrowed words, no such traces are found. Neither the phonetics nor the syntax of the Latin languages betrays the faintest Germanic influence. Some borrowed words exist in the French language, that is to say, where from the 4^th century the population was in contact with the Germans. There was no such borrowing of words in Aquitaine, Hispania (Visigoths), Africa (Vandals) or Italy (Ostrogoths). And the Germanic additions to the French language number around 400 words.

For a time, no doubt that Aryanism slowed this process. It’s importance can’t be exaggerated though. Look at who favoured it. The only kings inclined towards it were the kings of the Vandals, and they did so for military reasons. Gondobald was suspected of being Catholic anyway. Sigismond was a Catholic from the year 516. However, there were still Arians in 524. And then came the Frankish conquest, which was accompanied by the triumph of orthodox Catholicism. After all, Aryanism was never very influential, even among the Burgundi. Soon it had disappeared everywhere. The Vandals abandoned it when conquered by Justinian in 533; among the Visigoths it was abolished by Reccared (586-601). Moreover, this Aryanism was superficial, for its suppresion was nowhere followed by any disturbance. According to Dahn, the Gothic language may have disappeared at the time of Reccared’s acceptance of Catholicism.

It is therefore difficult to see how the Germanic element could have maintained itself. The indispensable condition of its survival would have been the constant arrival of fresh recruits from Germania. But neither the Vandals nor the Visigoths – who had no longer any contact with Germania – received such recruits. The Ostrogoths may possibly have remained more or less in touch with the Germans by way of the Alpine passes. As for the Franks of Gaul, once the country was conquered, no further Barbarian contingents made their appeared – and Gregory of Tours confirms this.

However, I suppose it may be argued that the Germanic Law survived – that there was Roman law for the Romans, and Germanic law for the Germans; true only to a point. Because even in the legislative measures of Euric this Germanic law was already interpenetrated with Romanism. And after Euric the Roman influence became more and more marked, as I will detail below.
Among the Ostrogoths, there was no special code in force; they were subject tot he Roman law of the country. But as soldiers they were amenable only to the military tribunals, which were purely Gothic. This is the essential thing to remember: the Germans were soldiers and Arians (initially) and it was perhaps in order to keep them soldiers that the kings protected Aryanism initially. Among the Burgundi and the Vandals the influence of Roman over Germanic law was as manifest as among the Visigoths. For that matter, it cannot be expected that the pure Germanic law would be preserved where the consanguineous family, the Sippe, the essential cell of the juridical system, had disappeared. Plus, there were many laws relating to personal property, just as there were laws relating to the connubium. Germanic law survived only in countries colonized by the Anglo-Saxons, the Salic and Ripuarian Franks (which were situated in the very northern reaches of Gaul at the time), the Alamans and the Bavarians. Outside of Belgium, there were hardly any Salians by the way, apart from the magnates about the king. You won’t find a single allusion to this law and its procedure in Gregory of Tours either. Thus, as said, its sphere of application was confined to the extreme north.
And, as I wrote in an earlier post, there is no mention of rachimburgii to the south of the Seine. No sculteti, no grafiones. The Malberg Gloss proves, moreover, that the code was established for a procedure in which the Germanic language was employed. How many of the Counts, nearly all of whom were Roman, could have understood it? All that it tells on agrarian usages and the arrangement of the houses holds only for the North, colonized by the Germans. The Salic law simply could not be applied south of the Loire, by dint of its rudimentary nature if nothing else, since Roman private property continued to exist well into the Meronvingian epoch.

I suppose you can imagine the Germans as a fierce people, bringing with them the morality of the blood-tied warbands. A people in whom personal ties of loyalty came before subjection to the State. That’s cute, yet so very untrue. It is at the same time a romantic theory and for a while a dogma among certain Germanic historians, fond of citing Salvian and his comparison of the moral decadence of the Romans with the virtues of the Barbarians. But these virtues did not survive the establishment of the Germans in the midst of the Romanized population. You find, in the chronicle of pseudo-Fredegarius, at the beginning of the 7^th century, Mundus senescit. And on every page of Gregory of Tours you find the traces of the grossest moral decadence: drunkenness, debauchery, cupidity, adultery, murder, abominable acts of cruelty and a perfidy which prevailed from top to bottom of the social order. The court of the Germanic kings witnessed as many crimes as that of Ravenna. Germanische Treue was always a convenient fable. Theodoric had Odoacer assassinated after swearing to him that his life will be spared. Gontran begged the people not to assassinate him. All the Visigoth kings, with rare exceptions, died by the assassins’ knife.
Among the Burgundi, in 500, Godegesil betrayed his brother Gondebaud that Clovi might benefit. Clodomir, the son of Clovis, had his prisoner Sigismond, king of the Burgundi, thrown into a well. The Visigothic king Theodoric I betrayed the Romans. And Genseric horribly abused the daughter of the Visigothic king, his daughter-in-law. The court of the Merovingians was a brothel; Fredegond was a frightful wild creature. Theodahat had his wife assassinated. Men were always lying in wait for their enemies, and an almost incredible amorality was universal. The story of Gondebaud is characteristic. Drunkenness seems to have been the usual condition of all. Women got their lovers to murder their husbands. Everybody could be purchased for gold. Among the people, piety did not rise above the level of a crude thaumaturgy. There was a partial disappearance the urban vices, of mimes of courtesans, though not everywhere. There were still to be found among the Visigoths and above all in Africa, among the Vandals, although the latter were the most Germanic of the southern Barbarians. They were effeminate, living in luxurious villas and spending much time at the baths; the poems written under Huneric and Thrasamund are full of priapic allusions.

Thus, to draw the line on this bit. Establishment within the Empire meant the German character of the invaders was effaced in all but name quite quickly. Romania sapped their vitality, and the example was set first by their superiors.
At first, of course, the kings were imperfectly Romanized. Euric and Genseric knew but little Latin. Yet fast, very fast, we get to Theodoric, the greatest of them all, who was known as Dietrich of Berne beyond the Alps, but who was Byzantine to his core. At the age of seven, his father gave him as hostage to the Emperor, and he was educated in Constantinople until he was eighteen years of age. Zeno made him magister militum and patrician, and in 474 even went so far as to adopt him. He married an imperial princess. In 484 the Emperor made him Consul. Then, after a campaign in Asia Minor a statue was raised to him in Constantinople. His sister was lady-in-waiting to the Empress. In 536 Evermud, his son-in-law, promptly surrendered to Belisarius, preferring to live as a patrician in Constantinople rather than defend the cause of his fellow Barbarians. His daughter Amalasontha was completely Romanized. Theodahat, another son-in-law, boasted that he was a follower of Plato.
And even among the Burgundi, what a fine type of national king was Gondebaud (480-516) who, in 472, after the death of Ricimer, succeeded to him as patrician of the Emperor Olybrius and on the death of the latter had Glycerius made Emperor and then, in 480, himself succeeded to his brother Chilperic as king of the Burgundi! Accounts note he was highly cultivated, eloquent and learned, was interested in theological questions and was constantly in touch with Saint Avitus.
It was the same with the Vandal kings. And among the Visigoths, the same development may be remarked. Sidonius praises the culture of Theodoric II. Among his courtiers he mentions the minister Leo, historian, jurist and poet, and Lampridius, professor of rhetoric and a poet. It was Theodoric II who in 455 made Avitus Emperor. These kings were entirely divorced from the old traditions of their peoples; even among the Franks there was the royal Chilperic, the poet.

As time went on, the process of Romanization became accentuated. Gautier remarks that after Genseric the Vandal kings re-entered the orbit of the Empire even before being reconquered. Among the Visigoths, Romanization made constant progress. By the end of the 6^th century, Aryanism had disappeared everywhere.
Once again, it was only in the North that Germanism held its own, together with paganism, which was not extirpated there until the 7^th century. When the Austrasian armies entered Italy in aid of the Ostrogoths, they disgusted them, who would probably have preferred to own allegiance to Byzantium rather than the Franks.

In short (I get to say it as well, yay) Romania, somewhat diminished in the North, survived as a whole. It had, of course, altered for the worse. In every domain of life, arts, literature, science, some regress was manifest. Gregory of Tours rightly notes it also. Romania though survived by virtue of its inertia. There was nothing to take its place, and no one protested against it. Neither the Church nor the laity conceived that there could be any other form of civilization. In the midst of the prevailing decadence only one moral force held its own: the Church, and for the Church the Empire still existed. Gregory the Great wrote to the Emperor that he reigned over men, the Barbarians over slaves. The Church might quarrel with the Emperors of Byzantium, but it remained loyal tot hem. Had not the Father told it that the Roman Empire existed in accordance with the will of God, and that it was indispensable to Christianity? Had it not modelled its organization upon that of the Empire? Did it not speak the language of the Empire? Had it not preserved the law and culture of the Empire? And were not all its dignitaries recruited from the ancient senatorial families?



Finally, I want to take a closer look at each of these states you claim to have pulverised the Western Roman Empire. I have to begin by observing though that it should be obvious that the tribal institutions of the Germans could not be preserved in the new kingdoms, found on the soil of the Empire, in the midst of the Roman population. They were able to survive only in small kingdoms, like those of the Anglo-Saxons, which were peopled by Germans. No doubt the Germanic kings installed in the Empire were national kings to their peoples – reges gentium. They called themselves reges Gothorum, Vandalorum, Burgondionum, Francorum. But for the Romans they were Roman generals to whom the Emperor had abandoned the government of the civil population. It was as Roman generals that they approached the Romans and they were proud to bear the title on such occasions; Clovis went on a cavalcade when he was created honorary consul. Under Theodoric, an even simpler state of affairs prevailed. He was really a Roman viceroy. He promulgated no laws, just edicts.

The Ostrogoths.
They merely constituted the army.
All the civil magistrates were Roman and as far as possible the entire Roman administration was preserved The Senate still existed.
All the power was concentrated in the king and his court – that is, in the consecrated palace. Theodoric assumed only the simple title of rex, as though he wished his Barbarian origin to be forgotten. Like the Empress, he lived in Ravenna. The division of the provinces was retained, with their duces, rectores, praesides and the municipal constitution with its curiales and defensores, and the fiscal organization. Theodoric struck coins in the name of the Emperor. He adopted the name of Flavius, a sign that he had adopted the Roman nationality. Inscriptions call him semper Augustus, propagator Romani nominis. The king’s guard was organized on the Byzantine model, and so was all the ceremonial of the court. The organization of the judiciary was entirely Roman, even for the Goths; and the Edict of Theodoric was thoroughly Roman. There was no special law for the Goths. As a matter of fact, Theodoric opposed the private wars of the Goths and their Germanic barbarism. The king did not protect the national law of his people.

The Goths constituted the garrisons of the cities, living on the revenues of their lands and in receipt of a salary. They could not undertake civil employments. They could not exert the slightest influence upon the Government, apart from those who, with the Romans, constituted the king’s entourage. In this kingdom, ruled by their king, they were in reality foreigners, but well-paid foreigners: a military caste, whose profession furnished them with a comfortable livelihood. It was this fact, and not their alleged national character, that bound them together, and explained the vigour of their resistance under Justinian. The Gothic concept of royalty was long lost. Theodoric was merely a functionary of Zeno’s. Almost as soon as he had arrived in Italy the Church and the population acknowledged him as the representative of the legal order. The personal power of the king was exercised by sajones, who, for all their Gothic name, were merely an imitation of the Roman agentes in rebus. In short, the Goths were the military basis of the royal power, which in other respects was Roman.

The Vandals.
The Roman influence was not that profound among the Vandals. In this case, despite of the fiction of the treaties, there was really a complete break with the Empire and it would be absurd to regard Genseric as merely a functionary. His position may be contrasted with that of Theodoric. Instead of considering and flattering the Roman population as Theodoric had done, he treated it with severity and persecuted its religion. There was no question of the tercia here. The Vandals were established en masse in Zeugitania (that would be Northern Tunisia for you gang) dispossessing or expropriating the Roman landowners. They lived on the revenue of their “colonies” and were exempted from taxation. Their organization in “thousands”, which Procopius calls chiliarchs, was entirely military.

Yet, of course, despite the rupture with the Empire, there were no Germanic features in the organization of the State.
All Germanic law, or rather, all Germanic institutions, had disappeared when, in 442, Genseric, having crushed an insurrection of the nobles who were endeavouring for their own advantage to preserve the relics of the tribal organization, established an absolute monarchy. His was a Roman government. He struck coins which bore the effigy of Honorius. The inscriptions were Roman. Genseric’s establishment in Carthage was like Theodoric’s in Ravenna: there was a palatium. It did not meddle with the economic life of the country, or deal with the realities of daily existence. It seems that ulterior Vandal kings even continued to sent presentations of oil to Rome and Constantinople. When Genseric established the order of succession to the throne he did so in a codicil drawn up in accordance with the prescriptions of Roman legislation.

The Romanized Berbers continued, under the Vandals, to live as they had lived in the preceding epoch. The chancellery was Roman; there was a referendarius at its head. Under Genseric the termi of Tunis were constructed. Literature was still practised. Victor Tonnennensis still believed in the immortality of the Empire. The kings followed the paths laid down by Rome. For example, in 484 the edict of Genseric against the Catholics was modelled upon that which Honorius published against the Donatists in 412. And we can see from this edict that the classes of the population had remained exactly the same. In short, among the Vandals there were even fewer traces of Germanism than among the Ostrogoths. It is true that Africa, at the time of their establishment there, was the most flourishing of the Western provinces, and from the first they were subject to its influences.

The Visigoths.
Hispania and Gaul had not suffered so greatly from the invasions and, moreover, were not so completely Romanized as Italy and Africa. Yet there too the Germanic character of the invaders was modified in an equal degree by Roman manners and Roman institutions. Among the Visigoths, before the conquest of Clovis, the kings lived in the Roman fashion in their capital of Toulouse, and later, in Toledo. The Visigoths established in accordance with the rules of “hospitality” were not regarded as juridical superiors to the Romans. The king adressed his subjects as a whole, as populus noster. But each people retained its own laws, and there was no connubium between Romans and Germans. Perhaps the religious difference, the Visigoths being Arians, was one of the reasons for this absence of lawful union between the old Roman citizens and the invaders. The prohibition of the connubium disappeared under Leovigild (dies in 586) and Aryanism under Reccared. A community of law between Romans and Goths was established under Reccesvinth. The sortes of the Goths were exempt from taxation. The provinces were retained with their rectores, or judices provinciarum, consulares, praesides; they were divided into civitates. Accounts note there was nothing Germanic about their agricultural organization.

The king was absolute: dominus noster gloriosissimus rex. He was hereditary, and the people did not participate in the power of government. The king appointed all his agents. There were both Germanic and Roman dignitaries at his court, yet the latter were by far the more numerous. The prime minister of Euric and Alaric II, Leo of Narbonne, combined the functions of quaestor sacri palatii and magister officiorum of the Imperial court. The king had no bodyguard of warriors, but domestici of the Roman type. The dukes of the provinces and the comites of the cities were mainly Romans. In the cities the curia was retained, with a defensor ratified by the king. The Visigoths were divided into thousands, five-hundreds, hundreds and tens, with military leaders with vague attributions. It does not appear that the Romans of the kingdom of Toulouse, while this endured, were subject to military service, so that the situation there was the same as among the Ostrogoths. For a time the Visigoths appear to have had, in the millenarius, a separate magistrate, like the Ostrogoths, But under Euric they were already amenable to the jurisdiction of the comes, who presided in the Roman fashion with the assistance of assessores, who were legists. There was not the faintest trace of Germanism in the organization of the tribunal.
The Code of Euric, promulgated in 475 to regulate the relations between the Goths and the Romans, was drawn up by Roman jurists; this document is completely Romanized. As for the Breviary of Alaric (507), which affected the Romans, it is an example of almost purely Roman law. The Roman taxes were still collected and the monetary system was also Roman.
The king’s functionaries were salaried.
As for the Church, it was subject to the king, who ratified the election of the bishops. With few exceptions, there was no real persecution of the Catholics. As time went on, the Romanization became more marked. Leovigild (568-586) suppressed the vestiges of special jurisdiction for the Goths, authorized marriage between the two races and introduced the Roman laws of the family among the Visigoths.
At first the royal insignia were Germanic, but these were later replaced by Roman insignia. The king’s authority was a public function and not a mere personal tyranny. The old military character of the Barbarians was disappearing. The Visigoths had so diminished in number that in 681 Ervigus compelled landowners to enrol in the army part of their armed slaves.
Under Reccared (586-608) the amalgamation of the two judicial systems was completed. This is proved by the Liber judiciorum promulgated by Reccesvinth in 634. It is Roman and ecclesiastical in spirit, for after the conversion of Reccared the Church played an enormously important part. The eighteen Council which assembled between 598 and 701 were convoked by the king. To these Councils he summoned lay members of his court, who sat side by side with the bishops. The councils were consulted on civil as well as ecclesiastical affairs.

The Church, whose dignitaries the king continued to appoint, was thoroughly royalist, even in respect to the Arian kings. When Athanagild revolted against Leovigild the Church remained loyal to the latter. It claimed the right to elect the kings in conjunction with the magnates in 633.
This, however, did not in any way modify the absolutism of the monarchy, which was supported by the Church: Nefas est in dubium deducere ejus potestatem cui omnium gubernation superno constat delegata judicio. Chindasvinth, elected in 642, had 700 aristocrats, who attempted to oppose his omnipotence, put to death or reduced to slavery.
The king depended on the support of the Church only in order to hold his own against the aristocracy. But the Church, whose bishops he appointed, was servile in its obedience. There was no theocracy. The monarchy was evolving in the direction of the Byzantine system. The election of the kings, which was initially believed serious, is not seen as a phantasmagoria. In reality there was here, as in Byzantium, a mixture of inheritance and intrigue and sudden acts of violence. Leovigild married a Byzantine princess, which did not prevent his repelling of the Byzantines. And these Visigoth kings had spatharii just like the Emperors.

The Burgundi.
The Burgundian kings, whose ephemeral kingdom was annexed by the Frankish kings in 534, were on the best terms with the Empire, once they had succeeded in obtaining possession of Lyons. The Burgundi were established, like the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, in accordance with the rules of hospitalitas.
Sidonius describes them, at the time of their settlement, as naive and brutal barbarians, but their kings were completely Romanized. Gondebaud was magister militum praesentialis. Their courts were full of poets and rhetoricians. King Sigismond boasted that he was a soldier of the Empire and declared his country was part of the Empire. These kings had a questor Palatii and domestici. Sigismond was a tool of Byzantium, who received the title of patrician from the Emperor Anastasia. The Burgundi fought against the Visigoths as soldiers of the Emperor of course.
Thus, they regarded themselves as belonging to the Empire. They reckoned their dates from the accession of the consul – that is to say, of the Emperor; the king was magister militum in the Emperor’s name.

In other respects, the royal power was absolute and unique. It was not divided; when the king had several sons he made the viceroys. The court was peopled mainly by Romans. There was no trace of warrior bands; there were pagi or civitates, with a comes over them. He had beside him, in order to administer justice, a judex deputatus, who was likewise appointed by the king and who dispensed justice in accordance with the Roman usages.
The primitive Sippe had disappeared, although the memory of it survived in the name of the Faramanni (free men). The Roman municipal organization was in force at Vienne and Lyons. The organization of the taxes and the currency was also entirely Roman.
The Burgundian king, like the Visigoth king, paid salaries to his agents. In this thoroughly Romanized kingdom the Burgundi and the Romans had the same juridical status: “una conditione teneatur”. Here, although this was not the rule in the other so called federate Germanic States, the Romans served in the army and enjoyed connubium with the Burgundi.

Thus, the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals and Burgundi were governed in the Roman manner. There was hardly a trace, or none at all, of the “Germanic principles”. Under the new kings the old system of government survived, though doubtless in an imperfect form. There was only one novelty: service in the army was gratuitous, thanks to the distribution of land. The State was relieved of the terrible war budget which had formerly crushed the people.
Enough of this though, I’ve more than stated my case. For more overall considerations on the Barbarian kingdoms and a few details on the Frankish state, see my post.




“There could be no greater mistake than to suppose that the idea of the Empire disappeared after the dismemberment of the Western provinces by the Barbarians.” There is not justification for doubting that the Basileos who reigned in Constantinople his extended his theoretical authority over the whole Empire. “He no longer governed, but he still reigned.” And it was toward him that all men’s eyes were turned.

The Church above all, for which the Empire was a creation of Providence, could not dispense with him. The head of the Church in Rome, and the city of Rome, acknowledged him as the legitimate sovereign of the ecclesia. With the exception of the king of the Vandals, the Barbarian kings regarded him as their master, striking his effigy on their coins and they solicited and obtained titles and favours from him. Justinian adopted Theodebert, as Maurice later on adopted Childebert.

It was to Constantinople that the kings submitted their disputes, and it was there that they endeavoured to concoct their intrigues. The Emperor himself made no concessions; it was therefore quite natural that when the occasion offered itself he should seek to recover his property.
Byzantium had a navy which gave it control of the sea. It was supported by the Church. In Italy, it could count on the support of the great Roman families, and in Africa it could rely on the friends of the refugees of the Vandal aristocracy, who had sought in the Imperial Court a refuge against the persecutions of the provincial monarchy. Perhaps, too, it counted on the revolt of the provincial population. Very importantly, Justinian recovered Africa, the wealthiest of all provinces, which was not be part with it until the Arab conquest. It is no wonder that he managed to restore the direct authority of the Roman Empire over all shores of the Mediterranean in just a few decades. The period that followed was one of the most depressing in Byzantine history, with Lombards, Slavs and Persians throwing themselves all at its border in Italy, the Balkans and the Middle East.

Yet half a century of strife later the Empire had prevailed again and for a few decades it would've no adversary to feel threatened by – both Visigoth Hispania and Merovingian Gaul were incapable of offensive action against it, not to mention they had nothing on the Byzantine naval superiority, which was retained in front of the Muslims even after the latter conquered so many of its naval bases – for at least a century when the Arabs emerged. Islam spawned just as Romania had finally absorbed the last remnants of the Germanic peoples and was ready to once more undergo genuine civilisational progress.

'@ Frags: did you already manage to forget your original nonsensical claim'

No, why

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1. The idea that Islam was indifferent at best, or hostile at worst towards scientific advances in general.

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An idea which is clearly debunked if you have ever picked up a book that covered any time period between say 700-1300

Anyone who extrapolates the current geopolitical climate to this time has no buisness discussing history

Except for Fragony, becuase Fragony makes me laugh

The Islamic world was the refuge of a large portion of the wisdom and learning of the Classical era. The Europeans descended into the Dark Ages while the Islamic world was largely unaffected. Economically, scientifically, and culturally they were unimpaired by the momentary fall of the West. In fact, the Islamic world built upon the learning of the famed ancient civilizations of the Carthaginians, Greeks, Egyptians, and of course the Romans. The invention of zero, as a number and concept was an Islamic concept and very important for mathematics. Algebra is named after it's Islamic inventor.

Mathematical theory owes much to the Islamic world. As does architecture, which for a long time was superior in many ways to anything made anywhere. The construction of domes for example was largely a possibility only to the Muslims for a long time. (The size and scale they constructed these domes was truly unprecedented, as well as being more complete than highly prized Western architecture's Parthenon in Rome. Which has a large hole in the top to both let out smoke from sacrifices and because sealing it was for the ancient Romans an impossibility due to the dome's size.) In Western Europe a dome comparable to the massive Islamic domes would not be completed until Le Domo in Florence was finished in the Italian Renaissance.

Other devices such as Archamedian screws lived on in the Islamic world, allowing for ease in the transportation and movement of water. Water clocks allowed for citizens of a city to reliably tell time long before the clock was invented. Health sciences were also more advanced than in Europe. The old hospitals of Heron of Alexandria did, and still do operate in the Middle East and North Africa. These hospitals advocated the need to treat patients on an individual basis, which prevented disease. Heron did not seem to understand this, nor did he leave any clue to the contrary, but he did believe patients needed to be kept apart for whatever reason. Perhaps a phobia that spared lives. His surgeries included a delicate operation that uses simple tools to remove cataracts, and being time tested and effective is still performed in rural areas of North Africa all these years later. The surgery involves a thin tool used to remove the cataract from the eye, actually penetrating the iris and cutting the cataract out. (My eyes are watering right now, the idea just makes me feel faint. But it's better than going blind no?)

Today, in markets in Marrakech merchants sell ice and icecream in large markets devoid of electricity, they are carrying on a tradition of transporting luxury material for the wealthy using old time honored methods to defy the desert and their harsh climate. Melons grow in the seemingly barren land, providing food and water to people in the region. (These melons, specifically from Azberjan and Georgia, the Caucus region were also brought to Russia for they were highly valued and sought after in Russia.) The procurement of food, salt, water and ice show great ambition and skill on the part of the gatherers and merchants of the Middle East. The other methods of preserving food also show great resilience and wisdom.

History as we know it owes much to Islamic scholars. Ibn Battuata gives us a good glimpse into his world, and what it was like to travel in his day. Ibn Battuata, in 1369 traveled farther than any traveler did until the steam age. Even surpassing the West's great explorer Marco Polo. Other scholars give us the reports and preserved wisdom of mathematicians, philosophers, Imams, travelers, and generals. The great Islamic chroniclers of the Crusades give us the Islamic view of the crusades. And not just this particular view, but insight into the men the history reports about. Shahinshah in Jerusalem, Saladin, Nur-al-Din, Il Gazhi of Aleppo, etc. Men the Catholic or Byzantine histories might not have reported on, having insufficient material to do so anyhow.

The legacy of Islamic history, culture, science, and art, (I didn't touch on art but as an art student, trust me, there's plenty good to be said of Islamic art.) is something we must appreciate and value, we must accept it because it is quite simply the truth. The Islamic world preserved much knowledge that was lost in the dark ages and added to it, thus daily life was enhanced by the generations of Islamic culture that we have all built upon. To say that an one culture is better than another is what I would call nationalistic propaganda, but certainly in these ages the Islamic world was having it's Golden Age. (Just as China, Italy, England, etc all had Golden Ages.) I would not use base terms like better, but in terms just of development the Islamic world was simply more developed during these Golden Ages. Nowdays, this may not be the case, but to refute the glory of the past is a pointless and vain endeavor. (Arguably to do so merely validates the same point.) One thing is for sure, tomorrow I am going to enjoy one of my favorite luxuries brought to me by the Islamic world, coffee. Thank you some anonymous Turkish fellow, my morning would not be the same without your discovery!

Salaam

Walaik as Salam.

But the zero was Indian :)

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Originally Posted by Lazy O

Walaik as Salam.

But the zero was Indian :)

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Assyrian in fact

The Parthenon's Greek all right, he means the Pantheon.

Though stating that the architecture of domes is due to muslim influence seems to be forgetting the Hagia Sophia which was built before Mohammed started preaching his new religion.

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Originally Posted by Conradus

The Parthenon's Greek all right, he means the Pantheon.

Though stating that the architecture of domes is due to muslim influence seems to be forgetting the Hagia Sophia which was built before Mohammed started preaching his new religion.

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Hagia Sophia is a bit of an oddity, can't think of anything similar in the christian world, while it's dome structure was seen as a marvel of engineering. No idea why it wasn't copied. Would love to see it in person one day.

I.e. your “foot”, your allegations of “BS”, your parody of the way I “argue that ‘teh Muzlums’ demolished” this or that, they come across as rather peevish, together with the generally definitive and quarrelsome tone you adopt.


That was directed at me I think, it's normal that Scandinavians get emotional if you don't absolutely adore everything Islam and point out historical facts that aren't 100%OK

But Watchman I can back up my claim of the gift of war very easily, and had you not lost your self-control you could have read my full post. It's war that led to the age of discovery because trade routes been jammed, it's a direct cause. If I take a fast glance I don't think Nowake touched the other route, the Silk-route, that was jammed likewise and for the same reason, wih the same consequences. So yeah the gift of Islam to Europe is war, capice et presto? Yes? Good axe-boy

Uff, I understand why you replied as you did and I wouldn't label it as uncalled for - *whispers* and he's no Scandinavian, don't push his finno-ugric buttons.

Yet would you please consider recasting your very last sentences and, in doing so, transferring the emphasis from the specific instance to the abstract concept without, of course, in any way impairing the conceptual integrity of the theme?


:bow:

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Originally Posted by Nowake

would you please consider recasting your very last sentences

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Nah I kinda like them, what I lack in tact I compromise with style. Not my fault Scandinavians can get a bit unpleasant when you say something that goes against everything they know to be true. History is important we shouldn't leave an inch for revisionism, it's just the right thing to do. And the respect we are supposed to have is based only on revisionism. Things weren't like that, at all. So easy to blast holes in their canvas and imho they could use the fresh air

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It's war that led to the age of discovery because trade routes been jammed, it's a direct cause. If I take a fast glance I don't think Nowake touched the other route, the Silk-route, that was jammed likewise and for the same reason, wih the same consequences. So yeah the gift of Islam to Europe is war, capice et presto? Yes? Good axe-boy

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Critical research failure.

The fact that you are only referring to the Age of Discovery and the importance of trade through the Silk Road means that in fact, you are denying everything else, including the fact that important Muslim scholars worked in Sicilian Normandy, for example. Additionally, if you had read my or Nowake's post, it would be obvious that there were many other things that were developed in Islamic societies that have entered Europe in Medieval times. A personal example is the concept of the English university; according to my Professor of History, P.M. Sijpesteijn, it is generally accepted that the universities at Cambridge and Oxford were modelled after madrasas that Crusaders had encountered in the Levant.

Additionally, wouldn't you agree that the Portuguese attempts at monopolising Indian naval trade was much more an economic desire rather than a necessity borne out of what? Islamic hatred towards the West? Ottoman attempts at discriminating Europeans? I'm sorry, but there is absolutely nothing that suggests that trade routes were actively being jammed by Islamic dynasties.

I'm sorry, but you're going to have to better, way better to suggest that there was some sort of Occidentalist thought that predominated the policies of Islamic societies in the 15th and 16th centuries, because frankly, as a student of Arabic, it's just a waste of my time. Seriously.

You will have to do much better than pimping your knowledge of history in general, that goes for you as well Nowake. The meditatian jam and the decline of the routes to the east are very very important, if not vital to the development of the western world, it was a necesity to find other ways. As for influence you guys are confused about the existance of a humanistic tradition in the arab world and what it meant for Europe, there wasn't all that much exchange. Nobody is disputing a golden age but that was before all that, it's not the same thing, It wouldn't even be hard to argue it was the other way at the time around as arab humanists were really western style humanists from the muslim world. Avaroes is a good example of that, know any more, can think of only a few

I only disagreed with your choice of words Frag. I had asked Watchman to abstain from further rude statements, you had to know I would respond similarly if you talked to him as to some type of mutt.

And you have to know by now I had actually argued extensively in favour of your below-quoted statement – with the crystal clear caveat that we are only talking about Muslim humanists of Greek tradition, not about Muslim scientists:

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It wouldn't even be hard to argue it was the other way at the time around as arab humanists were really western style humanists from the muslim world.

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In the second half of this post.



And while I am at it.
Tsar Alexsandr.
I will leave aside the plethora of inaccuracies one easily finds in your post, the most glaring having already been pointed out by the rest of the gang, and only plead against such a futile gesture overall.

In this thread, we had already made a clear distinction between the futile disputation of the undeniable Muslim advances in science and the totally separate debate over the role of Islam in preserving Greek philosophy. I thus have to ask, what was the point of your post other than swerve this discussion off the straight road it had just returned to and into the swamp of cultural scorecarding? And the following:

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The Europeans descended into the Dark Ages while the Islamic world was largely unaffected.
Economically, scientifically, and culturally they were unimpaired by the momentary fall of the West.

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Is a display of genuine disregard of the anterior replies, all of which heavily nuanced or completely refuted this type of statements.
If you would like to participate, you are free to do it in any way you wish as the thread is public, yet personally I would ask you to do so by arguing on the basis or against the previous contributions. I would call it a minimal courtesy.


:bow:


EDIT: Completely slipped my mind before hitting submit, yet this short clip recording a talk given by Astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson will probably speak with more authority on these matters than I would - please disregard the title, for 85% of its short length it focuses on Arab science more than flatteringly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oxTMUTOz0w

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Originally Posted by Fragony

Hagia Sophia is a bit of an oddity, can't think of anything similar in the christian world, while it's dome structure was seen as a marvel of engineering. No idea why it wasn't copied. Would love to see it in person one day.

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Well the Greek Orthodox cultures and Russian Orthodox cultures did produce domed architecture (St. Basils as well as any number of Russian cathedrals showcase this.) Hagia Sofia is indeed Greek but the many mosques of the Middle East were larger built by the Muslims. Dome's were not a unique feature of Muslim architecture as much as a specialty.

While we're talking about domes I'd like to point out India's Taj Mahal was built by the Mughal warlord Shah Jahan who was of course also an Islamic ruler, which of course has a prominent dome.