Dutch on islam

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

by roman empire i take it you mean the byzantines?

Bit of a grey area in the "Dark Ages" - up until the 11th Century you can legitimately call it the "Roman" Empire - It was the Eastern Empire which lost North Africa to the Muslim Arabs, not the Germanic Barbarians.

I thought we had ready established Rome fell from within and out to Christians.

Also a civilisation who's economy relies on conquering to prosper deserves to be conquered. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Um - no Rome fell to internal decay and a lack of a machinery to manage a large Empire effectively, Edward Gibbon's thesis that the Christians were to blame is down to his attempts to excuse the Muslims (with Gibbons, also originates the attribution of the Alexandria-burning to Christians in the 4th Century).

The adoption of an apocalyptic-salvation religion is a symptom of the decline, not a cause.

The notion of the "Arab Muslim horde" sweeping through the old remnants of the Roman Empire and completely destroying it has been discarded and thrown into the rubbish bin. There's no archaeological evidence anywhere to support a conquest of that type.

In France, Spain, Italy - they speak Latin, they are nominally Roman Christians. In North Africa - they speak Arabic, they are nominally Muslims.

I'm not talking about physical destruction, physical genocide, I'm talking about a massive cultural shift, where the previously similar people in Carthage and Rome have become cultural divorced. That is the destruction of the Roman Empire, not episodes of mass-burnings.

I'm also talking here about cultural memory, not historical wars. Ask a Spaniard about the Reconquesta, or a Greek about Hagia Sophia.