This was a century of continued Arab Moslem expansion from southern Spain across north Africa through the entire Middle East and into Central Asia and India. No significant challenge appeared from Christian Europe which was only beginning to be organized into recognizable states and which was having internal religious problems of its own.
After 338 eastern bishops agreed that all visible symbols of Christ were blasphemous, Emperor Leo III (Leo the Syrian) laid down the Iconoclastic policy in A.D. 754 of no imagery or statuary in the church, in direct opposition to the Italian, Roman Church's concepts. The resulting controversy involved the entire Catholic world and started the schism between the eastern and western churches which then became the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic church, respectively. Toynbee (Ref. 220) believes that this is the birth of two new societies, originating as off-spring of the old Hellenic Society. Meanwhile the papacy in Rome tied its ambitions to the new realm of Charlemagne, who was creating a ghost of the old Roman Empire and in A.D. 800 Pope Leo III[133] crowned Charlemagne as the Holy Roman Emperor. Before this the invasion of the Lombards into Italy and the interference of Pepin in Italian affairs marked the first steps in limiting the political power of the papacy. (Ref. 184) After 750 Christendom enjoyed a respite from foreign attack and invasion.
The Moslem boundaries, extending from Spain to India were farther than they ever would be again. The splitting of various factions, which had begun even in the last century, continued in this one. There was religious dissension against the Omayyads and in A.D. 744 a disputed succession to the throne started a decade of revolution and civil strife. By A.D. 750 Harun al Rashid emerged as Caliph of a new Abbasid Dynasty. (Ref. 8)
Yehudai Gaon outlawed any deviation from Babylonian religious usage and raised the Babylonian Talmud to quasi-scriptural status, leaving permanent effects on all Jewish culture.
Back to Africa: A.D. 601 to 700
In the last chapter we told of the collapse of Axum. Apparently as a last gasp. the Axumites made an unsuccessful attack on Mecca in A.D. 702 which was followed by Arab retaliation and Butzer (Ref. 270) says that it was at that time that the port of Adulis was destroyed and many Red Sea islands seized. At the same time the Christian monarchy had to withstand ravaging attacks by pagan Beja. (Ref. 83) After 765 Axum was almost completely abandoned.
The horn of Africa was not affected by the Bedouin Arabs, but the people there still retained close ties with Arabia. Of the three kingdoms of the middle Nile which had originated in the 6th century, the two northern ones now merged to form the Kingdom of Nubia, with a capital at Dongola, exerting its influence from the 1st to the 4th cataract of the Nile and west to Darfur. The country was Christian, prosperous and used a highly decorative pottery and developed a lucrative slave trade to Egypt. There was a gradual peaceful infiltration of Moslem Arabs into the area. Farther south at the confluence of the Nile was the Kingdom of Alwa, with its capital at Soba. It resisted the Moslem faith a little longer. (Ref. 83, 271)
Egypt was entirely under Moslem Arab control with supervision direct from the caliph in Damascus and later Baghdad.
This entire region was now under Moslem control, subject to the caliph in the Middle East. As mentioned in the last chapter, the Berbers of Tunisia and Morocco adopted Islam as they had previously adopted Christianity: with neither was it a total embracement and they, in addition, clung also to older tribal beliefs. Although called "Berbers" by the Arabs they called themselves "Imazighen", "Men of the Land", and their tongue, totally unlike the official Arabic, was Tamazight, still spoken today. (Ref. 104) The great Roman ports all over the Mediterranean were allowed to decline. Although they could sail the Indian Ocean, the Arabs ignored Mediterranean shipping routes and went overland with of central Tunisia, was the administrative center for the Arab Empire in the Maghrib. (Ref. 83)
Although the Omayyad Dynasty controlled the entire Moslem world in the first half of the century, as was intimated above, the Abbasids took over in A.D. 750 with Caliph Harun al Rashid establishing a capital at Baghdad. By A.D. 788 Morocco had declared its independence from Baghdad and Tunisia followed just after the turn of the new century. The new Moroccon Empire was to last over a millennium. (Ref. 8, 222)
About A.D. 700 people from the upper Nile moved into Chad, just east of Nigeria, and established a string of cities. At about the same time traders were becoming ever more daring in crossing the Sahara to obtain gold and slaves. The increasing use of camels greatly facilitated this traffic and the traffic, in turn, seemed to monopolize the supply of gold and slaves and thus developed more systematic and larger operations. Ghana seems to have come under the control of a new dynasty in this century and this may have been the transfer of authority from Berber to Negro rulers.
Merchants of south Arabia, the Persian Gulf and northwestern India had long traded along the east African coast for palm oil, ivory, tortoise shell, rhinoceros horn and slaves. Finally some of the Asians settled in east Africa and they were soon joined by religious refugees from Oman and Shirax on the Persian Gulf . These Asians were responsible for the beginning of a chain of independent settlements all along the coast. They became city-states and because Arab shipping soon supplanted earlier traffic, all soon became Moslem. Excavations on the shore of Lake Kisale in northern Katanga (between Angola and the Great Lakes) indicate that in this 8th century there was a dense population using fine pottery and elaborate copper jewelry. This may be the original home of the Luba people (Ref. 83)
The population on Madagascar now included Indonesians, Arabs and Negroes, the later probably originally slaves or concubines. The Negroes multiplied more rapidly, probably because of greater resistance to malaria, but there was much intermarriage and soon a unique "Malagasy" people emerged. (Ref. 83)
The central rain forest of Africa and the semi-arid south remained untouched by civilized men, although the Bantu-speaking tribesmen continued to spread their settlements through the forest of the Congo basin and still farther south. The Leopard's Kopje people were still in control of Zimbabwe. (Ref. 139, 176)
Back to The Near East: A.D. 601 to 700
During their three centuries of control the Arabs spread citrus fruits and almonds across the Mediterranean, even to Spain, and rice and sugar cane cuttings (from Persia) and saffron to the west. (Ref. 211) In addition they had mastered techniques of spinning and weaving silk and they transmitted seri-culture to the west via Sicily and Spain. Europe, however, was slow to accept silk. (Ref. 122) About A.D. 750 the Arabs brought the decimal system from India, but it was not used in Europe for another 500 years. (Ref. 21)
This entire NEAR EAST, including our four designated territories of ARABIA AND JORDAN, MEDITERRANEAN COAST AREAS, IRAQ AND SYRIA and IRAN, were now all joined as the central area of the giant Arabian Moslem Empire. As a result of military maneuvers the farmlands of Palestine were laid waste, not to be entirely reclaimed for 12 centuries. (Ref. 222) As the Moslem armies went through Spain and into France to be stopped finally at Tours in 732, some dissension appeared at home and by A.D. 749 there was open rebellion and a massacre of the Omayyad family at their capital, Damascus.
The Omayyad caliphs had forgotten their desert origins and had degenerated. Caliph al Walid II, who delighted in swimming and drinking in a pool of wine, was killed in a Yemenite revolt in 744. The last of the Omayyads was Marwan II, defeated and killed in the Battle of the Zab, associated with the general massacre of the family. The caliphate then became hereditary in the Abbasid family, beginning with Harun al Rashid, who changed the capital from Damascus to the newly built city of Baghdad in 763. The Abbasids stayed orthodox (Sunni), in spite of support they had had from Shi'ites while coming into power. Baghdad was a circular city 1.5 miles in diameter, ringed by three lines of walls and its construction involved 100,000 laborers. (Ref. 118, 137, 222)
Harun al Rashid was a great general, administrator and judge, who initiated many changes including the abolition of all distinctions between Arab and non-Arab Moslems. His administration supported any activity that would bind minority groups tighter to the central authority. The main military support came from Persian converts of eastern Iran and they out-fought the Arab garrisons of Iraq and Syria. The Abbasids completed the process of Persianizing the institution of the caliphate. Persians who served under the caliph increasingly filled the high offices of state and the entire administration was reorganized on Persian lines, with an efficient fiscal system, a good postal service from one end of the empire to the other and the establishment of trade routes to India, China, Ceylon and the Mediterranean. The Islamic world was united by a single religion, single language and a nearly unitary culture. The administration, culture and geographical limits in the Near East were about the same as the old Achaemenid Empire of the 6th century B.C. Paper mills were operating in Baghdad and the harem-eunuch system was developed along with purdah (veiled women). It should be noted that large numbers of east African Negro slaves were purchased for agricultural work and they were harshly treated. (Ref. 49, 220, 213)
Arabic, the youngest Semitic tongue, had in those early times a highly developed oral, but virtually no written tradition. There was much poetry depicting the life of the proud Bedouin. In the new Islamic Empire, Arabic became the chief instrument of everyday speech as well as of culture, replacing Aramaic, Coptic, Greek and Latin. Arabic also had enormous influences on other Muslim languages, such as Persian and Turkish. (Ref. 68)
Asia Minor is the one portion of our chosen NEAR EAST classification that was not included in the paragraphs above, as the Christian Byzantines kept a tenuous hold on a part of this region, necessitating a separate consideration.
The Emperor Leo III (717) who announced the Iconoclastic policy, was an Isaurian, the first oriental on the throne. He carved out a brief ghost of the old Byzantine Empire, like Charlemagne's Empire in the West, turning the Eastern Church into a sort of department of state. But this Byzantium was a peculiar post-humous existence of the antique civilization and it was almost sealed off from western Europe, partly by the Greek 456 language, partly by a religious difference but chiefly because it didn't want to get involved in the bloody feuds of the western barbarians. It had its own eastern barbarians to deal with. In Constantinople and other cities a series of plagues and earthquakes had drastically reduced the populations. Bubonic plague killed 200,000 between 732 and 736 and then after a terrible earthquake in 740 there were not enough local people left to repair the damage. Intermittent warfare with the Arabs added to the drain of manpower. The second great siege of Constantinople by the Arabs occurred in 717-718 with attacks by both land and sea. The defenses held and Constantine V actually took the offensive, carrying the war into Syria in 745 and destroying a great Arab armada and reconquering Cyprus in 746.
Another campaign followed in Armenia and there were nine successive campaigns against the Bulgars, with ultimate victory. (Ref. 222, 119)
Still, by 771 the Byzantine Empire had shrunk down to primarily the western 2/3 of the Anatolian peninsula, along with Greece, Sicily, a few islands and a narrow coast line along Dalmatia. Intermittent battles along with pay-offs to the Arabs continued throughout the century and at the end there was much family stress in the emperor's house, with Irene, mother of Constantine VI, eventually having her son killed so that she could reign, herself, as Empress.
The Byzantium-Moslem wars and the cruel repressions which followed each conquest or revolt had ruined and decimated this country. Under the Abbasid rule from Baghdad the situation became even worse and the population of Armenia was reduced to poverty.
Back to Europe: A.D. 601 to 700
In these early Middle Ages, the deadly black stem rust began to ravage the wheat fields, producing famine in various areas of southern Europe. The disease had been brought in, unknowingly, with the barberry bush by the Arabs. The barberry was valued for the curative potion (the stem) and the brilliant berries, edible in a preserve. (Ref. 211)
In this century Crete, previously under Byzantium control, along with most of these islands, had some bases established by the sea-going Venetians. Cyprus was taken by the Arabs and then reconquered by Byzantium. (Ref. 222)
For some centuries now the great classical and early Christian centers of the lower Balkans, - Athens, Corinth, Thebes, Salonica and others, had lost all contact with the world of which they had been an integral part. In 726 Greeks revolted against the Byzantine Leo III, sending a Greek fleet toward Constantinople but they were defeated by the imperial navy using an incendiary mixture called "Greek fire". (Ref. 222) As the century ended the Slavs were once again beating down on the borders of this country.
As in the last century the Balkans were filled with Slavic peoples, mixed here and there with Bulgars and Avars. In the new kingdom of Serbia the Serbs accepted the Greek Orthodox form of Christianity while the Croats adopted the Roman form. Stress inevitably followed so that by the end of the century the Croats had formed their own independent kingdom. (Ref. 8) The Danube Bulgars had continued to move west into the Balkans, taking land from Byzantium. Tervel, king of the Bulgars, actually exacted tribute from Emperor Justinian II. He was followed by King Sevar, the last of the Dulo Dynasty. (Ref. 206) Periods of war and peace between the Bulgars and Byzantium alternated throughout the century.
The Lombards, who now filled northern Italy, fought by bow and arrow from horseback and were essentially a warrior people. As a papal state emerged where a pope (though not an emperor) still lived, it was threatened by the Lombards and the pope finally requested the Frank King Charlemagne to invade the area. At the end of the century Charlemagne complied and Lombardy became a province of the Franks. In an attempt to regain prestige to match that of Byzantine, Pope Leo Ill eventually teamed up with the Frank king to extend the Church's domain, with the result that the pope became the spiritual ruler and Charlemagne the temporal emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. By this time, Rome had dropped in population from about 1,000,000 in A.D. 400 to under 100,000, principally because of famine after the cessation of the giving of free bread. Gradually a coalescence of the Lombards and the Roman people developed with the result that there was a substantial Lombardic contribution to the Italian language and to the artistic and literary fields. The Latin language continued to be Latin, but further and further removed from the classical standards. Cases had all but disappeared by this time and the language has been called Proto-Romance. (Ref. 137, 213)
NOTE: Map 34: Lombard Kingdom Before Its Conquest by Charlemagne in 774 and
Map 35: Expansion of the Papal States 756-817
Maps taken from Reference 97
Naples, Amalfi and Venice continued as independent states with Venice actually helping the Moors enslave some Europeans. (Ref. 222) The first European medical school was founded in this century at Salerno, in southern Italy. Sardinia was invaded by Moslem forces in 720 and in this and the next century Sicily was exposed to sudden, devastating raids by Moslem free-booters. (Ref. 137, 83)
The use of the heavy plow (see pages 439 and 443) in northern Europe accounted for an increase of food and a consequent increase in population. Although there continued to be Merovingian kings in the Frankish kingdoms of Austrasia and Neustria up until 7529 throughout this century the real administration of western Germany, as well as of France, was under control of the House of Pepin, later called the Carolingian Dynasty, all descended from Pepin of Landen and Arnulf, the Bishop of Metz. Among these descendants was Charles Martel, Mayor of Austrasia and Neustria from 714 to 741 (See FRANCE, below), and Pepin III, the Short, Mayor of Neustria and king of the Franks from 747 to 768. It was this Pepin who first responded to the pope's pleas for help against the Lombards and did manage to force them out of Pentapolis and Ravenna. Thereafter the Carolingians maintained a protectorate over the papacy in Italy. (Ref. 180, 119)
In 768 Pepin III's son, Charles the Great (In France - "Charlemagne" and in Germany more correctly "Karl the Great"), became king of Austrasia, Neustria and northern Aquitaine, while his brother, Carloman, ruled over southern Aquitaine, Burgundy and Septimania. Charles (or Karl) was a typical German, six feet in height, a superb swimmer and athlete. He married a Lombardi princess but soon repudiated her and conquered all of Lombard Italy as well as Venetia, Istria, Dalmatia and Corsica. The Bavarian duchy had begun an eastward expansion that drove a wedge between the southern Slavs and the main mass of Slavic people to the north by 758, thus isolating the Balkan groups. Karl incorporated Bavaria into his kingdom in 778 and in the next year took Carinthia (southern Austria) and Vienna became a Carolingian-Frankish border fortress. Saxony fell to Karl in 785 and so all Germany, Austria, Bohemia and even a portion of Hungary came to be a part of his domain. As a result the more northern Slavs were pushed back east of the Elbe River, creating "New Germany", a distinction that has persisted in some degree to this day. The Elbe now roughly corresponds to the border between present East and West Germany. The history of the region of Brandenburg (later Prussia) begins when Karl the Great established forts along the Elbe to keep out the Slavs. (Ref. 180, 137)
In Hungary Karl's troops reduced the Avars to a mere remnant, as they were crushed between this Frankish army and a Bulgar attack from the east in 796. Switzerland was a part of the original possession of the Frankish Empire, included in the regions known as Burgundy and Alamannia and it was administered primarily under Neustria. (Ref. 137)
Charlemagne's Empire was Roman Christian and Germanic, all in one. Economically and socially it never attained to that cohesion and unity that characterizes a thoroughly civilized state. Beer had b