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Mohammed and Charlemagne Henri Pirenne Meridian Books 1959 Paperback by Henri Pirenne

This magnificent 284 page piece of scholarship was first published in English in 1939 by W.W. Norton, and reprinted more than a dozen times afterwards. My copy, published by Meridian and Barnes and Noble in October 1961, is the sixth Meridian printed after its first 1957 issue of the book.

But the book had more than a dozen publications in French as well. The Meridian edition was translated "by Bernard Miall from the French of the 10th edition published by Librarie Felix Alcan in Paris and Nouvelle Societe d'Editions Brussels.

The author concluded that the Germanic invasions did not destroy the unity of the ancient world or the Mediterranean. By the 5th Century, there was still a Roman culture, even without an Emperor in the West. The regions by the sea had preserved that culture, and spawned the innovations that followed--monasticism, Christian conversion of the Anglo-Saxons and so on. Moreover, much of this culture emanated from Constantinople, which remained, in the year 600, the left of the world.

But "the break with the tradition of antiquity" was caused by "the rapid and unexpected advance of Islam." The result was "the final separation of East from West, and the end of the Mediterranean unity." Whereas before, Africa and Spain had been part of the Western community, Islam attracted them to "the orbit of Baghdad." The root of the change was "another religion, and an entirely different culture. The Western Mediterranean, having become a Musulman lake, was no longer thoroughfare of commerce and of thought" it had always been before.

The Catholic church, interestingly, gained power in Europe, precisely because the Emperor was completely distracted by the advancing "Musulmans," which meant the church no longer had a political counterweight or rival. During the protracted anarchical transitional phase, from 650 to 750, "the tradition of antiquity disappeared...."

The most important section of the book, in my view, is the first chapter in Part II, "The Expansion of Islam in the Mediterranean Basin." Here Pirenne compares the effects of the Germanic invasions to the Islamic conquests. The invading Germanic tribes had "promptly allowed themselves to become absorbed" by European civilization.

But Mohammed's "propaganda" gave "his people a religion which it would presently cast upon the world, while imposing its own dominion." The early interpretation of John of Damascus, of Islam as a sort of schism, like all previous heresies, had already put the western empire "in deadly danger."

The Arab conquest also "brought confusion and chaos upon both Europe and Asia" thanks largely to its unprecedented swiftness and brutality. Pirenne compares it only to the victories of "the Mongol Empires of Atilla, Jenghiz Khan and Tamerlane." But of course, Tamerlane was also Muslim.

Unlike the German tribes, moreover, the Musulmans "were exalted by a new faith." With this, the Arabs required the subjection of conquered populations. "And this subjection they enforced wherever they went."

The conquered, alone, were taxed, and they were "excluded from the community of the faithful. The barrier was insuperable." The Koran, moreover, requires "only obedience to Allah, the outward obedience of the inferior, degraded and despicable beings, who are tolerated, but who live in abjection."

Henri Pirenne (1862-1935) was born and educated in Belgium, and from 1886 to 1930 was professor of history at the University of Ghent. He received "many foreign academic honors.

It's a shame that Pirenne and his body of work have not retained their deserved rankings among contemporary scholars of Islam.

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