Charles Martel - The battle of tours

[Didz]

My main period of historical interest is the Napoleonic period and the 1815 campaign in particular. I only really began to read up on the Moors after I saw the excellent program "Islam in Europe: When The Moors Ruled in Europe".

I was curious also about apparently contradictory records suggesting that the Moors were black skinned when other reports described them as fair skinned with red hair. I still haven't resolved that issue entirely but the process has been enlightening if at times quite confusing. I get the impression that the entire process of Arabic expansion and the consequent spread of Islam was a sort of organised chaos with powerful families and individuals rising and falling from power in a seemingly haphazard fashion. It doesn't help that to my western eyes many of their names seem to change from one reference to the next and I'm finding it extrememly difficult to keep track of whether some of these records refer to the same person or not.

What is apparent to me anyway, is that Islam is not some sort of unified faith with a common goal, as is often implied by western leaders, it is and always has been a very fragmented religion and presenting the spread of islam as some sort of universal mission is far too simplistic and creates a smokescreen over the real historical events that brought it about.