WHAT IMPACT ON THE ECONOMY DID ISLAM HAVE??
The impact of the expansion of Islam on the economy of western Europe has been the subject of enormous controversy among historians. There can be little doubt about the impact of Islam on the political and intellectual development of early medieval Europe : it was negligible in both cases. The impact was negligible not because western Europe had nothing to learn from Islamic civilization ; on the contrary, both in government, in which the Arabic countries had absorbed the Roman-Byzantine traditions of bureaucracy, and in philosophy and science, the western Europeans could have benefited greatly from Arabic instruction. But during the early Middle Ages there were no Moslems living under Latin-Christian rule, and, because the western peoples looked upon the Moslems as perverse and pernicious heretics, they closed their eyes to the benefits they could derive from association with the Arabic peoples.
The Latin-Christian peoples deprived themselves of the benefits of Moslem civilization through their self-imposed political and cultural isolation. Only at the end of the tenth century did the hatred [imagine that : Christians hating] that the Christians felt fot Mohammed's teachings begin to take second place to the obvious advantages that could be gained through study at Cordoba. THE GREATEST LATIN SCHOLAR OF THE AGE , THE FRENCHMAN GERBERT OF AURILLAC , WHO EVENTUALLY BECAME POPE, WENT TO MOSLEM SPAIN TO STUDY PHILOSOPHY AND MATHEMATICS. The education received from Arabic teachers made him so intellectually superior to his Christian contemporaries that for many centuries Gerbert was regarded as the possessor of mysterious powers of sorcery and black magic. It was not until after 1100 that the iron curtain between Latin Europe and Moslem Spain was effectively breached. The result was the importation of the Aristotelian corpus from Spain and Sicily into western Europe, inaugurating an intellectual revolution.
The economic effects of the expansion of Islam are by no means so clear, and the question of the effect of the emergence of the new power bloc in the Mediterranean in the seventh and eighth centuries on the economic relations between the East and the West is still debated. This controversy was the result of the last work of the influential Belgian economic historian, Henri Pirenne, entitled Mohammed and Charlemagne and published posthumously in 1936. Pirenne was a rarity ---an able and learned scholar who was also am original thinker, and the master of a vivacious and persuasive literary style.
What was Pirenne's thesis ? Briefly, it was that the expansion of Islam brought about the economic disintegration of the Mediterranean world. The advance of Islam produced the finl separation of East from West and the end of the Mediterranean unity that, Pirenne claimed, had continued to exist all through the period of the Germanic invasions. Africa and Spain, which had always been part of the Latin world, belonged henceforth to a culture centered in Baghdad. "The western Mediterranean became a Moslem lake ; the west was blockaded and forced to live upon its own resources. Fr the first time in history, the axis of life shifted northward from the Mediterranean." Cut off from Mediterranean life, western Europe reverted to a natural [that is, rural] economy and developed the new institutions of the feudal state and manorial society. The attractions of this clear, incisive, and cosmic thesis are obvious, and Pirenne was able to advance it with a considerable show of evidence. But several scholars writing after 1950 contended that the Mohammed and Charlemagne thesis is a gross exaggeration and oversimplification of the course of early medieval civilization.
Two distinct aspects of Pirenne's thesis must be sustained if his interpretation is to remain valid : first, that the Germanic invasions were not a turning point in economic history and second, that the expansion of Islam was the cataclysmic turning point.
Pirenne contended that in spite of the germanic invasions, the economic unity of the Mediterranean world was preserved in the fifth and sixth centuries and Merovingian France remained part of Mediterranean civilization. This view depends on a misreading, intentional or otherwise, of the picture of Merovingian society provided by Gregory of Tours. According to Gregory, there had not been a complete break with Mediterranean trade and culture, but there had been a marked decline of Mediterranean influence. In the economy of the sixth--century Gaul, trade and monetary transactions were not important ; Morovingian France was dependent to a large degree on landed wealth alone. The cities depicted in Gregory of Tours' history were political and episcopal centers, not commercial centers. The Roman curiales class had disappeared ; the trade with the eastern countries was carried on by easterners --- Syrians and Jews. Merovingian France, compared with Byzantium, was already an underdeveloped area in which agriculture was the basis of the economy and in which commerce was of little importance. This picture of the Merovingian economy, furthermore, has been substantiated by archaeological evidence. Obviously then, the economic decline of France and the disintegration of the economic unity of the Mediterranean world were well under way before Mohammed.
The economic effects of the expansion of Islam are by no means so clear, and the question of the effect of the emergence of the new power bloc in the Mediterranean in the seventh and eighth centuries on the economic relations between the East and the West is still debated. This controversy was the result of the last work of the influential Belgian economic historian, Henri Pirenne, entitled Mohammed and Charlemagne and published posthumously in 1936. Pirenne was a rarity ---an able and learned scholar who was also am original thinker, and the master of a vivacious and persuasive literary style.
What was Pirenne's thesis ? Briefly, it was that the expansion of Islam brought about the economic disintegration of the Mediterranean world. The advance of Islam produced the finl separation of East from West and the end of the Mediterranean unity that, Pirenne claimed, had continued to exist all through the period of the Germanic invasions. Africa and Spain, which had always been part of the Latin world, belonged henceforth to a culture centered in Baghdad. "The western Mediterranean became a Moslem lake ; the west was blockaded and forced to live upon its own resources. Fr the first time in history, the axis of life shifted northward from the Mediterranean." Cut off from Mediterranean life, western Europe reverted to a natural [that is, rural] economy and developed the new institutions of the feudal state and manorial society. The attractions of this clear, incisive, and cosmic thesis are obvious, and Pirenne was able to advance it with a considerable show of evidence. But several scholars writing after 1950 contended that the Mohammed and Charlemagne thesis is a gross exaggeration and oversimplification of the course of early medieval civilization.
Two distinct aspects of Pirenne's thesis must be sustained if his interpretation is to remain valid : first, that the Germanic invasions were not a turning point in economic history and second, that the expansion of Islam was the cataclysmic turning point.
Pirenne contended that in spite of the germanic invasions, the economic unity of the Mediterranean world was preserved in the fifth and sixth centuries and Merovingian France remained part of Mediterranean civilization. This view depends on a misreading, intentional or otherwise, of the picture of Merovingian society provided by Gregory of Tours. According to Gregory, there had not been a complete break with Mediterranean trade and culture, but there had been a marked decline of Mediterranean influence. In the economy of the sixth--century Gaul, trade and monetary transactions were not important ; Morovingian France was dependent to a large degree on landed wealth alone. The cities depicted in Gregory of Tours' history were political and episcopal centers, not commercial centers. The Roman curiales class had disappeared ; the trade with the eastern countries was carried on by easterners --- Syrians and Jews. Merovingian France, compared with Byzantium, was already an underdeveloped area in which agriculture was the basis of the economy and in which commerce was of little importance. This picture of the Merovingian economy, furthermore, has been substantiated by archaeological evidence. Obviously then, the economic decline of France and the disintegration of the economic unity of the Mediterranean world were well under way before Mohammed.
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