During the 1920s Belgian historian Henri Pirenne came to an astonishing conclusion: the ancient classical civilization, which Rome had established throughout Europe and the Mediterranean world, was not destroyed by the Barbarians who invaded the western provinces in the fifth century, it was destroyed by the Arabs, whose conquest of the Middle East and North Africa terminated Roman civilization in those regions and cut off Europe from any further trading and cultural contact with the East. According to Pirenne, it was only in the mid-seventh century that the characteristic features of classical life disappeared from Europe, after which time the continent began to develop its own distinctive and somewhat primitive medieval culture. Pirenne’s findings, published posthumously in his Mohammed et Charlemagne (1937), were even then highly controversial, for by the late nineteenth century many historians were moving towards a quite different conclusion: namely that the Arabs were actually a civilizing force who rekindled the light of classical learning in Europe after it had been extinguished by the Goths, Vandals and Huns in the fifth century. And because Pirenne went so diametrically against the grain of this thinking, the reception of his new thesis tended to be hostile. Paper after paper published during the 1940s and ‘50s strove to refute him. The most definitive rebuttal however appeared in the early 1980s. This was Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe, by English archaeologists Richard Hodges and David Whitehouse. These, in common with Pirenne’s earlier critics, argued that classical civilization was already dead in Europe by the time of the Arab conquests, and that the Arabs arrived on the scene as civilizers rather than destroyers. Hodges and Whitehouse claimed that the latest findings of archaeology fully supported this view, and their work was highly influential. So influential indeed that over the next three decades Pirenne and his thesis was progressively sidelined, so that recent years have seen the publication of dozens of titles in the English language alone which fail even to mention his name. In Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited historian Emmet Scott reviews the evidence put forward by Hodges and Whitehouse, as well as the more recent findings of archaeology, and comes to a rather different conclusion. For him, the evidence shows that classical civilization was not dead in Europe at the start of the seventh century, but was actually experiencing something of a revival. Populations and towns were beginning to grow again for the first time since this second century – a development apparently attributable largely to the spread of Christianity. In addition, the real centres of classical civilization, in the Middle East, were experiencing an unprecedented Golden Age at the time, with cities larger and more prosperous than ever before. Excavation has shown that these were destroyed thoroughly and completely by the Arab conquests, with many never again reoccupied. And it was precisely then, says Scott, that Europe’s classical culture also disappeared, with the abandonment of the undefended lowland villas and farms of the Roman period and a retreat to fortified hilltop settlements; the first medieval castles. For Scott, archaeology demonstrated that the Arabs did indeed blockade the Mediterranean through piracy and slave-raiding, precisely as Pirenne had claimed, and he argues that the disappearance of papyrus from Europe was an infallible proof of this. Whatever classical learning survived after this time, says Scott, was due almost entirely to the efforts of Christian monks. The Pirenne thesis has taken on a new significance in the post 9/11 world. Scott’s take on the theory will certainly ignite further and perhaps heated debate.

Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited: The History of a Controversy

History

Emmet Scott

Europe

New English Review Press

According to Bernard Lewis, the doyen of Middle Eastern studies at Princeton University, during “most” of the Middle Ages, “it was neither the older cultures of the Orient nor the newer cultures of the West that were the major centers of civilization and progress, but the world of Islam in the middle. It was there that old sciences were recovered and developed and new sciences created; there that new industries were born and manufacture and commerce expanded to a level previously without precedent.” (Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? (2002), p. 156) Lewis’ comments may be regarded as fairly representative of contemporary academic thought. Indeed, the civilized and progressive world of medieval Islam is often contrasted favorably with that of medieval Christianity, which is almost universally viewed as backward and hidebound by superstition. Yet it is questionable whether in any other field of study an opinion so diametrically opposed to the truth has ever gained such wide currency. At the dawn of the tenth century most of Europe was a rural backwater. All of the lands east of the Elbe (and almost all east of the Rhine) were barbarian-infested wastelands without a trace of literate civilization. Those to the west, in Gaul and Britain, and even in Italy, were not much better. Yet by 1492, when Columbus set out on his great voyage of discovery, Europe stood on the verge of world domination. The continent, from the Atlantic to the Urals, was full of towns and cities built partly of stone and brick, with dozens of universities and a thriving economy. The whole of Europe was crisscrossed with roads which conveyed an astonishing array of wealth and produce from one region to another. Printed books were everywhere, and literacy was extremely common, even among the relatively poor. In the Islamic world we see the same process in reverse. The House of Islam began the tenth century as possibly the most splendid civilization on the earth. It possessed great cities like Baghdad, Samarra, Damascus and Alexandria, some of which had about 500,000 souls. Its civilization at the time was suffused with the spirit of Sassanid Persia and Byzantine Syria and Egypt, whose wealth, learning and population it had inherited. Yet five centuries later the whole region was a declining relic, in some places a wasteland. The contrast with Europe could not be greater. In his new book The Impact of Islam, historian Emmet Scott explores the origin of the “progressive Islam” myth, and comes to some startling conclusions: It was Christianity, he finds, not Islam, which civilized barbarian Europe between the tenth and eleventh centuries. What Islam did bequeath to Europe at this time was war, piracy, and a massive revival of the slave trade – just when Christianity had almost succeeded in killing it off. Even worse, by their example, the Muslims seem to have influenced the growth in Europe of several toxic ideas between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, ideas which were to have far-reaching consequences. Amongst these were the concept of “holy war” (utterly alien to Christianity), the use of violence to suppress religious dissent, the judicial use of torture, and the acceptability of violence against the Jews. All of these things were found in Islam before they were found in Christianity. In addition to this, Scott finds that the Turkish conquests in Europe from the fourteenth century onwards severely stunted the development of those regions, and that the example of the Ottoman slave trade, which was massive, in all likelihood inspired the Spaniards and Portuguese to initiate the Atlantic slave trade during the sixteenth century.

The Impact of Islam

A Guide to the Phantom Dark Age

Scott confronts conventional historians and looks at the evidence, archaeological and textual, for the proposition that three centuries, roughly between 615 and 915, never existed and are "phantom" years. The author shows in detail how no archaeology exists for these three centuries, and that the material remains of the seventh century closely resemble those of the tenth, and lie directly beneath them. This is the first book on this topic in the English language, though Heribert Illig's books on the same topic, 'Das erfundene Mittelalter' and 'Wer hat an der Uhr Gedreht?' have been best sellers in German-speaking Europe.This theory is startling, fun and fascinating as it has implications for everything we know about today's nations, cultures and religions... And it is unnervingly credible.

Algora.Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Emmet Scott. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Emmet Scott

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Emmet Scott. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited: The History of a Controversy

The Impact of Islam

A Guide to the Phantom Dark Age