Textbook Tours

by Cliopatria

Barely related reading: Chris Bray notes some oddities and ironies in the new Iraqi Constitution and The Little Professor is grading student writing.

Meanwhile, I'm reviewing the textbook (Brummet, et al., Civilization, Pearson/Longman, 11e) for my section on Islamic societies tomorrow, and I ran across a passage that made me stop and ... well, think (and blog):

The Muslims in Spain seem never to have had serious intentions of expanding their territorial holdings across the Pyrenees into what is now France, but they did engage in seasonal raids to the north. One such raiding party was defeated by Charles Martel near Tours in 732 in a battle that Europeans portrayed later as a decisive blow to Muslim expansion in Europe. But the Byzantines indeed delivered such a blow: in 717 the Byzantine emperor Leo III won a major victory over the Muslims that halted the Umayyad advance into eastern Europe. (p. 208)

A few things jumped out at me, most of them logical non sequiturs in the passage:

Tours is indeed a considerable distance from the territory of al-Andalus, which suggests either an abortive expansion or a short-term incursion. I'd certainly thought the former was the standard understanding. Doing World History is an exercise in constant revisionism, because there's no way we can easily keep up with changing interpretations in every field. Though sometimes the textbooks represent a minority view as standard....
Even if the Muslim raids were"seasonal" it doesn't necessarily mean that expansion was not desired. It might just mean that it was hard. The fact that a"seasonal raid" made it all the way to Tours and seriously challenged the might of Martel suggests something more than a little looting was at stake. Is it possible that the"seasonal raids" view has an element of"sour grapes"?
The implied connection between Western and Eastern European theaters isn't intuitively logical: expansion stymied on one front often finds an outlet on another (and indeed, the next paragraph is about the eastward expansion into central Asia). I do like the way World History textbooks have resurrected the history of Byzantium and made it a central actor on the world stage, as it should be in this semester;"Western Civ" never handled the Eastern empire all that well.

I know that World textbook writing is, by definition, the art of leaving out everything you possibly can, but there's clearly an argument going on here and it could use a bit of elucidation. So, I'd like to throw this open to folks who know this region/era better than I: any medievalists (European or Islamic) or historiographers want to help clarify the situation for me?

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More Comments:

Jonathan T. Reynolds - 10/20/2005

World History Connected [ http://worldhistoryconnected.press.uiuc.edu/ ] is currently putting together a special issue on World History textbooks. Should be out in the Spring.

Andrew D. Todd - 10/18/2005

Well, I think you have to remember that medieval and early modern armies were hypermobile. They lived off the country, which meant that they had to move constantly in search of fresh supplies of food and plunder. The professional foot soldier of the middle ages, with his steel sword and shield and helmet and leather jacket, would also have some kind of horse, probably only a scrubby little pony, but it could still carry him fifty miles in a day. If you read the Icelandic Sagas, you find accounts of men riding into ambushes and then dismounting to fight. To give an example of what this meant at army level, in the tenth century, the Magyars, from a base around Budapest, raided into the German empire, and out the other side into France and Italy. Their line of maximum advance ran approximately: Hamburg, Flanders, Paris, Orleans, Toulouse, Carcassone, Rome, Macedonia, Thrace. By Magyar (or Viking) standards, the Muslims were notably unadventurous.

Brian Ulrich - 10/18/2005

I'm not sure it could have been that many decades earlier, as Spain was only conquered c. 715, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Abd ar-Rahman had some interest in France if it proved weak enough.

And the Umayyads setting up shop there when it was beyond their control isn't quite so ironic when you realize it was also beyond the Abbasids' control! The foundation of the Idrisid dynasty in Morocco is similar.

Jonathan Dresner - 10/18/2005

No: That's why I asked. It seems to be that we do know a fair bit about them, but there was no indication in the text how that conclusion came about.

That's a problem mostly with the textbook form rather than with the authors as such. At some level you have to trust the writer, because it can't be footnoted and sourced the same way an article or monograph, or even a narrative history.

I shouldn't say "can't": there's no technical reason why textbooks today couldn't have electronic versions with citations, footnotes, sources. What there is, though, are economic and time constraints.

It's particularly interesting reading a section of a textbook which is about scholarship that you know well: often you can tell what the sources are (and often you can tell what sources they haven't read). One of the reasons I like this textbook, mostly, is that the Asian sections are written by someone who really does know the field and presents it fairly. But even there, sometimes something will jump out and I'll think "where did that come from?"

Keeps us on our toes, so to speak.

Grant W Jones - 10/18/2005

Do the textbook authors explain how the know the intentions of the Moslems in Spain?

Jonathan Dresner - 10/18/2005

Thanks, Michael and Brian!

The relative isolation of the frontier is something that world historians have some trouble with, honestly. I'm always a little taken aback at the relatively uncomplicated view of (mostly early) empires presented in most world history texts as useful, unifying and uniform. The freedom of Muslim Spain from Umayyad control seems ironic when it's there that the Umayyad leadership escapes when the Abbassid dynasty comes to power.

Michael R. Davidson - 10/18/2005

. . .or more precisely, a not-so-important event. At least amongst the early medievalist crowd, it has been almost entirely uncontroversial, at least since I started as a graduate student in the mid-90s, to view Tours as an insignificant event in the context of Islamic expansion. The expansion into western Europe had halted decades earlier, and the object of the 'invasion' or 'raid' was to loot a rich Christian shrine rather than effecting expansion. It has been traditionally overblown since an important battle of Tours fit in nicely with the meta-historical narrative of 'Western Civilization'.

That said, Tours does have significance with respect to the Carolingian rise to power - Charles Martel's victory was certainly not a hindrance to the careers of Pepin and Charlemagne.

Cheers,
Mike Davidson

Brian Ulrich - 10/18/2005

To me, 717 is the more important date. A key objective of the early Muslims was the conquest of Constantinople - some have suggested ideological reasons for this based in the Umayyad conception of their state. Maslama's defeat pretty much put an end to that.

As for the rest, however, someone need to be careful when talking about "the Muslims." Leaders out on the frontier had a great deal of independence, especially in Spain, which was cut off from effective Umayyad control at least by the 740's. Poitiers is quite a bit to the west of place I know about, so I can't say much more than that. Charles Martel wasn't taking on the might of the entire caliphate at that point, but rather just what had wound up in Spain and maybe the Maghreb.