Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited: The History of a Controversy (10 page)

T
he questions raised by the Revisionists who deny that Europe experienced a Dark Age and who insist that Roman civilization survived into the Middle Ages is one that shall be revisited as we proceed throughout our study. We shall also have occasion to return to the apparent disappearance of material remains throughout Europe during the seventh to tenth centuries, as well as to the important question of the nature of Islam and the nature of Islam’s impact upon Europe during the seventh century. For the moment, however, it is incumbent upon us to examine in some detail the arguments presented by Henri Pirenne’s most influential critics. These, after all, revolutionized the debate, and largely sidelined Pirenne in the 1980s. But how valid were their arguments?

We have seen that, as a rule, those who attacked Pirenne agreed with him regarding the reality of a European Dark Age. For them, however, the Dark Age was not caused by Islam, but by the inherent decadence of Roman or Mediterranean civilization at this time. The Muslims, they held, did not destroy a thriving and expanding classical culture but merely replaced a decrepit and dying relic.

The most comprehensive, complete and thorough assault on Pirenne came in 1982 with the publication of Richard Hodges’ and David Whitehouse’s
Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe
. In this book Hodges and Whitehouse, two archaeologists with extensive field experience, reiterated the criticisms outlined above and sought to provide these with archaeological support. Perhaps because of the emphasis they placed upon archaeology – which is, after all, a form of “hard” science – Hodges’ and Whitehouse’s book proved to be extremely influential (notwithstanding its brevity), and remains one of the cornerstones of the anti-Pirenne camp.

In
Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe
, Hodges and Whitehouse concluded that classical civilization did survive the fall of the Western Empire, but that it survived in a weakened and enfeebled state. They argued that during the fifth and sixth centuries the population of the western provinces declined dramatically, and that by the year 600, or very shortly thereafter, virtually all trade between the western Mediterranean and the East had ceased. This was several decades before the arrival of the Arabs on the world stage, and it meant essentially that the Arabs had nothing to do with the collapse of late Roman culture.

Echoing earlier criticisms of Pirenne, Hodges and Whitehouse also pointed to the thriving trade which existed between the Arab world and the Far East during the seventh to eleventh centuries, as well as between the Arab world and Scandinavia (and some parts of southern Europe) during the ninth to eleventh centuries. This latter trade brought much gold and luxury products to Europe in the critical years of the Dark Age and gave the lie, so they held, to Pirenne’s claim that the Arabs had terminated all trade between Europe and the East at this time.

We need to look at both these assertions in some detail.

Hodges’ and Whitehouse’s conclusion that the western Mediterranean and western Europe was in some kind of economic and cultural death-spiral before the appearance of Islam was based primarily upon archaeological data from Italy and North Africa. Spain is not mentioned by the authors and Gaul is covered in little more than a page or two. North Africa is represented primarily by Carthage, with only passing reference to other regions and settlements. In Italy and Carthage, say the authors, archaeology reveals a declining and dying civilization at the end of the sixth century. Carthage, they note, “was the capital of the imperial province of Africa until it fell to the Vandals in 438. Before this most of the vast crop of North African corn destined for Italy passed through Carthage, as did huge quantities of olive oil.”
[1]
In other words, Carthage was a major centre of late Roman civilization during the fourth and fifth centuries, and the evidence of excavations from the city must be seen as of central importance to our knowledge of the epoch. They note that large-scale excavations during the 1960s and ‘70s sponsored by UNESCO made it possible to re-examine the traditional narrative regarding Carthage’s decline – namely, the narrative which held that Carthage only declined after the Arab Conquest. The American and British teams in particular concentrated on the latest phases of the city’s occupation; in the process handling vast amounts of pottery, including hundreds of thousands of amphorae sherds and high-quality African Red Slip tableware. Analysis of this pottery, in conjunction with parallel studies of coins, induced M. J. Fulford and John Riley to offer alternative interpretations of Carthage’s final centuries.
[2]
Hodges and Whitehouse quote Fulford as follows:

“In the early fifth century (c. 400-425), only about 10 per cent of the amphorae can be assigned to East Mediterranean sources. This percentage is doubled by c. AD 475-500 and, in the groups deposited at about the time of Belisarius’ invasion … 25-30 per cent of all the amphorae can certainly be attributed to sources in the East Mediterranean.”

Riley arrived at the same conclusion, though both he and Fulford found that the proportion of imported amphorae dropped dramatically after 534. By around 600 it was found that the incidence of eastern Mediterranean amphorae was negligible.
[3]
Fulford found that Vandal coinage issued in Carthage was widely circulated around the Mediterranean, and that by contrast, after Justinian re-established an imperial mint at Carthage coins from regions in the eastern Mediterranean found at the city amounted to a tiny fraction of the numismatic collection as a whole.
[4]
“The impression” conveyed by all of this, according to Hodges and Whitehouse, is that “Carthage enjoyed a buoyant economy in the late fifth and early sixth centuries [under the Vandals],” but that after its reincorporation into the Empire by Justinian the city went into decline.
[5]
The authors note that, “The last phase of occupation in several buildings near the city wall betray the pitiful condition of Carthage in the seventh century.” We are told that,

“The British excavators uncovered a comparatively well-preserved mud-brick building, L-shaped in form, dating from the late sixth or early seventh century. After its abandonment the zone was used as a burial ground. Henry Hurst, the excavator, writes that ‘late burials occur commonly within the former urban area of Carthage, as in other sites of Byzantine Africa, and are conventionally interpreted as representing a late stage of decline, economically and in terms of population, when large areas of the city were redundant and the traditional regulations relaxed.’ A further building over this graveyard has been interpreted as the home of refugees from the Arabs, who arrived in the province in 695-8. By then, the city was only a shadow of its former self and must have resembled the decaying industrial towns with which, today, we in the West as beginning to become familiar.”
[6]

* * *

So much for North Africa. In Italy, which is the only other region of the West examined by Hodges and Whitehouse, the authors claim to find the same pattern of economic stagnation and decay. Whilst they freely acknowledge that the great basilicas and palaces of Ravenna and Rome (and several other parts of Italy) built during the fifth and sixth centuries signal at least some continuity with classical traditions of fine art and architecture, for them these represent merely the last flickerings of light in the glowing gloom. After the time of Justinian, they argue, in the middle of the sixth century, such achievements become extremely rare in Italy, and by the year 600 they cease completely.
[7]
The termination of major architectural works, they hold, is reflected in the archaeology of individual settlements and communities.

An example that they cite of the latter is Luni, a small Roman port near La Spezia on the Adriatic, where excavators found that “material trampled into the thin floor surfaces [of the buildings] … indicates that ‘Byzantine’ copper coinage continued in use until about 600.”
[8]
In addition, we are told, eastern Mediterranean amphorae and Syrian glass were being imported. “After about 600, on the other hand, the material standard of life appears to have suffered a further decline – imports from other parts of the Mediterranean are rare, although analysis of the refuse implies that there was no significant alteration in the diet.”
[9]
Interestingly, Bryan Ward-Perkins, the excavator of Luni, was of the opinion that the town’s impoverishment in the seventh century was due in large measure to the decay of the classical drainage system in the food-growing territorium.
[10]
Much of this territory reverted to marsh. “It is clear,” say Hodges and Whitehouse, “that Luni was barely operating as a port when the Lombards ousted the last Byzantine governor in 640.”
[11]

This “decaying” of the classical drainage system, accompanied by the silting-up of harbors and the burying of late Roman settlements under a layer of subsoil, is a phenomenon encountered throughout the Mediterranean at the end of the classical period, and is a topic we shall return to at a later stage.

At this point, Hodges and Whitehouse take a retrospective look. “These glimpses of late Roman trade suggest two working hypotheses. First, the arrival of the ‘barbarians’ in the late fourth and fifth centuries damaged, but did not destroy, the commerce of the central and western Mediterranean: Rome continued to import oil and wine (and many other things) after the Gothic invasion; under the Vandals, Carthage may actually have experienced a boom in trade with the East; Luni was still receiving foreign goods in the sixth century. … Secondly, however, the situation had changed completely by about 600: Carthage had virtually ceased trading with the East and at Luni imported luxuries disappeared.”
[12]

Hodges and Whitehouse admit that “these are large hypothesis built on flimsy evidence,” though immediately afterwards they promise to supply more compelling data in future sections and chapters. In fact, the only other evidence they do provide centers around a series of settlements in southern Etruria, in Rome’s immediate hinterland, which were excavated in the 1960s and 70s. Archaeologists, led by Bryan Ward-Perkins, the Director of the British School at Rome, found, between the third and sixth century, a sharp decline in the occurrence of a type of high quality imported pottery known as African Red Slip Ware. The decline was fairly precipitous after about 250, and by 600 only a few sites contained the expensive ceramics. “In round figures, therefore, the total number of small-holdings and villas known to have been occupied in the Roman Campagna seems to have fallen by well over 80 per cent between the first century and the mid-fifth century. The decline began in the second and third centuries and for a while ran at just under 30 per cent per 100 years. It accelerated to more than 50 per cent for every hundred years between the third and fourth centuries and thereafter continued, but at a slower pace.”
[13]

The authors considered the various alternatives as to what this might mean:

“How can we explain this phenomenon? The possibilities are: (1) quite simply, a decline in the use of ARS [African Red Slip Ware] (our evidence, remember, consists entirely of the distribution of potsherds); (2) a change in the pattern of settlement involving the replacement of many small sites by fewer large ones; (3) migration from the countryside to the country towns; (4) migration to Rome; (5) a decline in the population of the countryside and the country towns and of Rome itself.”
[14]

According to the authors, “None of the first three possibilities satisfactorily explains what happened.” What then is their explanation? “We are left,” they say, “with (4) migration to Rome and (5) an overall reduction of population. The present evidence suggests that these were important factors. All the information from the South Etruria survey tells the same story: an uneven, but continuous decline in the number of rural sites known to have been occupied which, if we are correct in rejecting explanations (1)-(3), represents an uneven, but continuous decline in the rural population. Rome, on the other hand, if the figures for the dole … are even remotely indicative, also experienced an overall decline, but with periods of growth in the fourth century and the second quarter of the fifth.”
[15]
“These observations,” they continue, “are consistent with the view that an overall reduction in the size of the population may have taken place between the second or third century and the mid-fifth century (and after), but that on two occasions the population of Rome was ‘topped up’ by immigrants from the Roman Campagna. This reduction in the total population may well have been smaller than the reduction in the number of identified sites implies, but we find it difficult to believe that no reduction took place.”
[16]

In summary, the authors conclude that, “By 600 the Western Empire was in the final stages of political and economic decay, and within the space of only one more generation the Eastern Empire too experienced a shift towards political and economic collapse. In other words, the transformation of the Mediterranean was well advanced before the first Arab incursion. By the time Carthage was besieged (in 698) the city was a shadow of its former self, and its decay appears to be typical of cities, large and small, all over the Mediterranean. The creation of an Islamic empire in the later seventh and early eighth centuries was partly a product, not a cause, of the economic transformations detected by Pirenne.”
[17]

Other chapters of the book explore the thriving trade which existed between the Islamic world and South Asia during the seventh to eleventh centuries, as well as between the Islamic world and northern Europe at roughly the same time. These chapters need not concern us for the present, and shall be dealt with at a later stage.