What I mean is: what battle, fought in France IIRC, prevented much of Western Europe from being Muslim?
Are you thinking of the Battle of Tours (732–33), won by Charles Martel?
Thanks Piper! More than likely, there’s my answer!
The above is the standard answer. However it is flawed.
The real answer is no battle saved Western Europe. The Muslim advance was already at the end of its logistic rope - They had neither the manpower ( nor, shortly, the cohesion ) to sustain a conquest of France. The Battle of Poitiers ( Tours ) was not particularly decisive, though it was a sharp check. The Muslim general advance into France had already petered out in the 720’s - Poitiers was the result of a punitive raid against the Duke of Aquitaine ( a persistent foe, virtually independant of the French crown ), rather than the advance of a conquering army. And at that the raids continued after 732 - Arles was sacked in 735, for example. The most dramatic effect of Poitiers was to the internal politics of France, with the rapid rise of Charles Martel and his effective campaign to curtail regional nobles and centralize his rule - for example the aftermath of Poitiers allowed him to bring both Aquitaine and Burgundy to heel. As another example, his campaign in southern France in 739 was aimed less at Muslim bases, than their local ally, Duke Maurontus of Marseille.
Although it is often claimed that ‘the Arabs retreated back behind the Pyrenees’ after 732, that is in fact incorrect - the last gasp of Arab rule in southern France came in 759, with the loss of Narbonne.
- Tamerlane
There was no French Crown in 732. France didn’t begin to emerge until the Treaty of Verdun in 843.
Regards,
Agback
I think Tamerlane means the Merovingian dynasty of the Franks.
Couldn’t you have picked a better word than “saved” for the thread title?
Well, if you consider Prohibition a battle that was won by the “wets,” then I guess America is much less likely to embrace Islam if it means washing down your hotdog with sherbet instead of Falstaff at Comiskey Park.
What poster saved the SDMB from historical inaccuracy?
Tamerlane.
It looks to me that Charles Martel and company exploited the incident for P.R. purposes, to build up his career as a leader of France. His immediate descendants also founded much of their prestige on it as a basis for taking over the government. They had a vested interest in blowing up the achievement out of proportion to its real significance.
To corroborate Tamerlane’s perspective, here is the view from Islam and the Destiny of Man by Charles LeGai Eaton, page 17.
If you can include the Austrians as western then I would say Europe (esp. central and Eastern Europe) were much longer under the shadow of “Islam” than the 6th century. Not only did Europeans mount unsuccessful crusades against the Ottomans in 1366, 1396, and 1444, but Turks were (unsuccessfully) besieging Vienna as late as 1529 & 1683. Austria was still battling Turks in Peterwarden and Karlowitz – the outcome at the beginning no where near certain as late as the 1710’s.
BTW Turkish Islamic rulers ruled in the Balkans as late as 1917. It was not as the OP suggested the end of Christianity in those lands – ruled by the Turks for 500 years. Horrendous things happened – it was awful to be a Turkish subject – but you could stay Christian if you chose. IIRC this was true in the Spanish Muslim areas up until the 1490’s too.
The OP is about America, so was the implication that the French, if under Isalm before 1066 might have then spread that religion to England, and then to America? Of course it’s hard to know how ther rest of history would’ve played out if France had come under Islamic rule. Especially since a good chunck of Spain was under Islamic rule and that didn’t stop it from eventually spreading Catholicism around much of the globe in the 16th and 17th centuries after kicking the Moslems out of their country.
Of course you are both correct - I should have said “Frankish crown”. Ten lashes for me ;).
…and after Prince Eugene died and Austria got itself involved in ill-advised war with the Ottomans in an alliance with Russia in 1737-1739, they ended up getting their asses kicked and in the concluding Treaty of Belgrade they lost almost everything they had gained at the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718. Probably the Ottoman Empire’s last big triumph, if primarily a defensive one.
If we are considering modern Turkish Thrace as European ( and why not, since it is ), then Muslim rule will probably last longer in Eastern Europe than Western Europe. But hasn’t yet ( though of course Islam has persisted better in the east, with regions like Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina being predominately Muslim to this day ). Western Europe = 711-1492 ( with the last centuries of Nasrid rule in Granada being technically as vassals odf the Spanish crown ) or 781 years. Eastern Europe = 1354-2003 or 649 years.
They still do today - Thrace is in the Balkans ;).
Depends where and in what time-period we’re talking. In many areas, Greece in particular comes to mind, the imposition of Ottoman rule was a distinct improvement over local Christian nobility.
Wouldn’t have happened, I tell ya ;). Charles Martel could have got his ass handed to him at Poitiers and all it would have meant is perhaps the lingering of Muslim rule in Septimania a little longer and maybe ( but possibly not, they had other things going for them ) averting the rise of the Carolingian empire - A momentous change to Western European history, but not one that is likely to have facilitated Islamic conquest. The Umayyad dynasty, soon to be disenfranchised in Damascus and reborn in Spain, was shortly to have their hands full with other matters.
- Tamerlane
I would like to point out that in the East, the presence of the city of Constantinople provided a check on Muslim expansion. There were a numer of important battles between the Christian Byzantines and the Muslim Arabs. Over the centuries, the Moslems did succeed in slowly grinding the Byzantine state down untill I believe in the 1400’s Constantinople finally fell. But it’s presence held the Muslim expansion more or less in check. By the time Constantinople fell, Christian Europe had risen to the point it was a forgone conclusion the European culture would become the dominant culture.
Actually the most important pressure on the Byzantine state was Turkish, not Arab.
Rubbish, utter rubbish. The Ottomans clearly represented a real threat to “Europe” or rather the European Chrisitan state order, and it is not at all a foregone conclusion that Europeans would “rule the earth” in the 15th or even 16th centuries. The balance of power really goes over in the 17th century, although certainly the 16th was likely key in terms of the Islamic world being outflanked, as it were.
Yeah, sorry to nit-pick here, but I also have to say that I take exception to the wording of the title.
monty, yes IA “saved” leaves much to be desired!