ABSTRACT
IN the words of Pirenne, there is no event in the history of the world ‘that can be compared to the rise of Islam in the seventh century in its universality and dramatic consequences. Within eighty years of the death of Muhammed (632), Islam extended from western Turkistan to the Atlantic Ocean. Christianity, which had embraced the entire Mediterranean coast, was confined to its northern shores. Three-quarters of the coastlands of this sea, once the focal point of Roman culture for the whole of Europe, now belonged to Islam.’ Pirenne may also have been right in his theory that the Mediterranean became, in consequence of the rise of Islam, a cultural, political and spiritual dividing line between East and West. In the case of commerce, however, this was not so.
