Communication Between Islam and Christian Europe During the Middle Ages

I. Islam, after the conquest of the countries bordering on Arabia, spread rapidly throughout the north of Africa, Spain, the south of France and southern Italy, and extended its dominion over the Balearic Isles and Sicily. The effect of war in imparting to the belligerents an intimate knowledge of each other is notorious: but in times of peace, too, contact between the two civilisations of Christianity and Islam was established across their eastern and western frontiers through the medium of commerce.