{"id":101639,"date":"2026-04-01T03:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T07:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=101639"},"modified":"2026-03-31T12:49:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T16:49:56","slug":"the-fall-of-rome-and-the-rise-of-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/04\/01\/the-fall-of-rome-and-the-rise-of-islam\/","title":{"rendered":"The fall of Rome and the rise of Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gustavo Jalife<\/a> points out that a work from nearly a century ago identified the rise of Islam as being far more disruptive to western civilization than the fall of the western Roman Empire (and the surge of Islamic power destroyed the Persian Empire and nearly toppled Constantinople as well):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Expansion of the Caliphate: Mohammed, 622-632 (red), Rashidun Caliphate, 632-661 (orange), and the Umayyad Caliphate, 661-750 (yellow).
Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

In Mohammed and Charlemagne<\/em> \u2013 posthumously published in 1937 \u2013 renowned historian Henri Pirenne (1862-1935) advanced a thesis at once simple and much contested: that the true rupture between Late Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages was not the fall of Rome in the fifth century, as traditionally held, but the expansion of Islam in the seventh. The Germanic kingdoms, he argued, had preserved much of the Roman economic and cultural architecture. Trade across the Mediterranean continued; cities, though diminished, remained nodes in a wider network sustained by the circulation of goods and by administration. For the Romans, the mare nostrum<\/em> was a highway rather than a barrier. <\/p>\n

If a good article starts after it ends, one might say that a civilisation reveals itself most clearly not in its proclamations, but in the modification of its habits \u2013 when what was once assumed becomes contested. In such subtle alterations, Pirenne discerned the end of the ancient world.<\/p>\n

With the Islamic expansion the greater part of the Mediterranean’s southern and eastern shores fell under Muslim control, from the Levant and Egypt to North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. The sea was no longer a unified Roman basin, but a divided one. Authority and function shifted: the Mediterranean ceased to operate as a shared commercial zone. Long-distance trade dwindled, the flow of goods between East and West was disrupted and with it the urban and monetary life that depended upon it. Only then did Western Europe withdraw inward, shrinking into the medieval world as it is recognised today.<\/p>\n

The argument has been debated, qualified, and revised. Yet its inner core endures: civilisations are sustained not merely by armies or laws, but by the invisible fibres of exchange \u2013 commercial, intellectual and cultural \u2013 that bind their parts together. Sever those threads and, without even the cut of a sword, a whole order may vanish into a rumour.<\/p>\n

To draw a parallel with present-day Europe is to tread on disputed ground. The language of “invasion” is often employed with more heat than light; yet to deny that significant demographic and cultural changes are under way would be equally unhelpful. The question, then, is whether Pirenne’s model can illuminate what many believe is a tragedy without reducing it to a farce.<\/p>\n

The spread of Islam in the seventh and eighth centuries was a series of military conquests. The Arab fleets that took North Africa and Spain, the armies that crossed into Gaul, and the long struggle for control of the Mediterranean were enterprises of war and empire. Contemporary migration into Europe, by contrast, occurs largely through civilian movement, legal and illegal. However, both historical processes demonstrate that massive migratory movements, whatever their specific nature, do not merely add numbers to a population; they introduce new networks, new loyalties, new values and new norms that eventually fracture the existing state of affairs.<\/p>\n

Before the eighth century, the Mediterranean economy continues to function, vibrant and connected. After the eighth century, that system is shattered. The sea is closed. Trade disappears. Europe faces an empire whose only wealth is the land, where the movement of goods is reduced to a bare minimum. Far from advancing, society regresses.<\/p>\n

Pirenne’s thesis gains thrust and edge in presenting the Islamic expansion as embodying a fundamental alteration in coexistence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gustavo Jalife points out that a work from nearly a century ago identified the rise of Islam as being far more disruptive to western civilization than the fall of the western Roman Empire (and the surge of Islamic power destroyed the Persian Empire and nearly toppled Constantinople as well): In Mohammed and Charlemagne \u2013 posthumously […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,25,62,7,11],"tags":[262,47,1221,703,1343],"class_list":["post-101639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-economics","category-europe","category-history","category-religion","tag-culture","tag-islam","tag-mediterraneansea","tag-middleages","tag-romanempire"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-qrl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101641,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101639\/revisions\/101641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}