Mohammed and Charlemagne (1937)

Henri Pirenne (1862-1935)
Edited by Jacques Pirenne assisted by F. Vercauteren. cf. Pref.
"Translated by Bernard Miall from the French of the 10th edition."
"First published in 1939."

Now and again we have to fill in the holes in our education. This is a book I've talked about for a couple decades without actually having read it. The Pirenne thesis, that the true break between the ancient and medieval worlds and the true genesis of the West as we know it occurred with the Arab conquests in the Levant and North Africa and not with the Germanic conquests in Europe, has long been one of the core historical debates of the period, and a debate of particular interest for those of us with an interest in Islamic history and the history of the places caught between the Islamic and Christian worlds. While Pirenne is often on the losing end of the debate, and the specific arguments made by him are considered simply off base by most historians, the debate persists because Pirenne points out some fundamental dynamics of the age missing from Gibbon and his heirs and from other major historians of the period.

The book shows its age. A number of Pirenne's points are rather poorly argued, and the arguement throughout is plagued by insufficient support. It was a posthumous work, not finished and barely annotated at Pirenne's death, and in many ways is more of an outline for further work than a finished book. Indeed, the lack of detailed support makes Pirenne an easy target for more thorough though less brilliant scholarly opponents. All too often Pirenne gives us conclusions and tells us they're obvious, despite being highly controversial and difficult to support. As one example, as he talks about the role of the Jews in the late ancient world, his conclusions seem to belie his prejudices rather than his studies. He describes Jews as 'mostly' or 'substantially' engaged in banking and money lending, even while noting the significant size of the communities. The idea that the Jewish population was so thoroughly wealthy and so limited and ghettoized in its occupation seems unsustainable; given the size of the community, there would simply be too many bankers! What were his Syrians to do? Nonetheless, shining through what is at the core of a rather poorly argued work is a little bit of absolute genius, a twist of profound historical insight.

Oddly, having been exposed to the genius of the thesis for a long time, I almost find the flaws in the work more interesting than his presentation of the thesis itself. If it is the debate you are interested in, you can probably dispense with the original work laying out the theory; the kernel is here, but the analysis has long since left this book behind. But for pure historiographical interest, this one is a fascinating and fairly quick read. ( )

Just finsihed this text. It kept me going 'till the sun came up...

http://tinyurl.com/cj2cs ( )