his201 - lect 2 - week 7

Lecture 13

Pirenne Thesis II:

Mohammed and Charlemagne

What was the impact of the Islamic Empire on Western Europe?

Economic and cultural rupture or continuity?

CAUSE EFFECT

Crisis of the Third Century

After the so called "good emperors" Rome went into serious decline. That decline was the result of long term policies to the Germans, centralised administration, lax attitudes to corrupt officials, battles for the throne and a rotting economy.

The reasons for the rot that set in are not entirely clear, but inflation became a big problem towards the end of the 3rd century. Ramifications of a crisis such as this are large. Trade did not collapse in the 3rd century, but it did slow down. More people began to rely on rural life rather than the big city markets. We know from references within sources of the ancient Roman historians after the 3rd century A.D and also archeological evidence of trading, how many ships were running in the mediterranean in the 3rd century compared to the 2nd and 4th.

Dioclesian is regarded as one of the saviours of the empire. He capped prices, lifted taxes on merchants and buried cheap coinage.

Dismantling Pirenne's Thesis

Third-century crisis

Fifth-century fractured state of Europe

Why would Muslims not trade with the West?

Ports from Italy, Southern France, continued trading with the east. Maybe this is another stumble in Pirenne's Thesis, he certainly doesn't offer any solution to this obstacle. And maybe there isn't a simple answer. While Pirenne's Thesis faces some potentially crippling hurdles, the fundamentals of the theory does still offer a bases from which to understand this period. The question is why did it happen? Was it as dramatic as he suggests?

Muslims did not want to trade with the West - because they had much better options open for trading closer to home. Baghdad - a new centre, in mesopotamia. The traditional base for lucrative trade. The East had trading routes to the far East which they inherited from the Persians. If the Muslims weren't interested with trading with Western Europe, these are the reasons why.

Baghdad was emerging as the cultural capital of the empire. There is a cultural continuity. There are a few waves of the transfer of Western culture to the East. From Greco-Roman culture to Arabic. The first wave comes with Alexander. The second wave came with the Nestorians, during the 5th and 6th centuries there were Nestorian Christians migrating East. They began to run missionaries in Persia to escape persecution. These missionaries set up a school of theology near the future site of Baghdad. They also taught anatomy, as some of the students became physicians. During the whole diffusion of knowledge in the East the Arabs became quite prolific in the translation of ancient texts they found. In fact they were so prolific in their translations they had translated almost everything they got their hands on by 1000ad.

Arabs practised natural philosophy only because of what they can do with their knowledge. Practical knowledge was key for the Arabs.

Astrolabe

Anatomy and physiology interested the Arabs.

There was continuity of the culture characteristics of the Greco-Roman world. Secondly, at least in the scholarly world there was still dialogue between the West and the East.

There was never a clear and abrupt rupture of Western Europe as Pirenne's Thesis suggests. There is a need to always exercise caution when understanding a theory of rupture and such a simple theory of cause and effect.