ABSTRACT
Although the early Christian advances in Iberia may not have owed much to the local Muslim economies being weakened by climate change or other ecological factors, one should still ask whether North Africa from Tangier to Gaza did experience ecological stress and, if so, how Europe was affected. To seek an answer, the geophysical assessment should focus mainly on the Mediterranean and its littoral west of longitude 60°E: in effect, a line through Corfu and Benghazi. It is instructive to treat (as in the next chapter) the sea area to eastward as part of a climatic zone that embraces Persia. Given the hydrological dominance of the mighty Nile, Egypt should likewise be set apart.
