Islamic Civilization

Trade

 It is the generalised Western historians’ distorted writing on the role of Islam and its civilisation, which keeps forcing the issue to be discussed, and with respect to every matter. In respect to trade, hence, it is impossible to deal with the Islamic impact without having to address the issue of the Pirenne  theory, first.  

The Pirenne  Theory

 In the early 1930s, Pirenne  held in his Muhammad and Charlemagne that the advance of Islam led to the collapse of economic activity around the Mediterranean, thus driving Europe into the dark ages.[1]In more detail, he said:

`European civilisation formed around the Mediterranean by the successive work of Egypt , Syria , Phoenicia, Greece  and Rome. The latter, the last worker of an admirable work, has gathered in one single state all the people it was the inheritor. The empire founded by it, including all, is thus an Empire that was essentially Mediterranean.’[2]

Pirenne  goes on:

`From Byzantium , Asia Minore and Egypt  Jewish  merchants, but above all Syrian merchants continued their supply of it (the West) with luxury goods, rich cloth, and fine wines. By their intermediary it received the gold that was necessary for its currency and the papyrus that was used by copyists and clerks of chancelleries.’[3]

Until:

`Islamic invasion of the Mediterranean, to my opinion, it is to this event which must be attributed the cut which separates Antiquity of European history from that which we call usually under the name of the Middle Ages. In closing the sea and in isolating by this the one from the other the West and the Orient , it had put an end in fact to this Mediterranean unity, which had constituted for thousands of years the most striking character, and the condition itself of traditional development of civilisation in that part of the world.’[4]

Thus, for Pirenne , the advance of Islam in the east and south in the late 7^th century destroyed the cultural and religious unity of the Mediterranean, and killed the Roman world. An Islamic irruption, which led to a two century disruption of economic and commercial contacts between the Middle East  and Western Europe, hence forcing economic activity to shift from south to north, giving rise to the Dark Ages . Thus, here, unlike previous matters, it is not just that Islam had no role in the positive changes which took place in medieval Western Christendom   (learning, universities, birth of modern science, development of art and architecture…), but also that Islam destroyed Western civilisation.

Pirenne ’s theory became and remained a convenient foundation for his followers to see in the Islamic advance of the 7^th-8^th century an explanation to Europe’s centuries of darkness, a convenient theory which earned Pirenne great fame.[5] For Wiet et al, for instance:

`Reference must be made here to the views brilliantly put forward by the great Belgian historian Henri Pirenne .’[6]

Pirenne  had been `spreading the good word,’ Coville says,[7] delivering lectures world wide, explaining how it was Islam, instead of the `Barbarian’ invasions of three centuries before (late fifth AD) that had broken a hitherto cohesive and prosperous civilization.

Pirenne ’s theory was flimsy, though, mainly based on the fact that imports of gold and papyrus had `disappeared’ during the Islamic advance. And so it hardly resisted the tests of time and more solid challenges. Some scholars do not accept that the Carolingian period was, economically speaking, a period of regression, but believe, to the contrary, that there were more commercial transactions during this than in the preceding era. Others are in agreement with Pirenne with regard to economic regression in the Merovinigien period, but do not accept that the domination of Islam on the Mediterranean basin as its main cause.[8]

Amongst such latter scholars is Perroy, who outlines the main defects of Pirenne ’s theory by first demonstrating that Islam as a faith had no problem with trade. To the contrary, the Prophet  was a trader; his followers crossed the world from The Sudan to the Volga, from China  to Madagascar to trade; and it was, in fact, Islam that awakened Western trade[9] (more on which further on). Besides, explains Perroy, the decline of trade between east and west of the Mediterranean was anterior to Islam, and in the period in question, the 8^th century, Byzantium  kept its trade with its possessions of Southern Italy and the Adriatic. Moreover, if there was little traffic beyond that limited sector, it was related to the internal evolution of the West and to monopolistic policies pursued by Byzantium.[10] Perroy, finally, notes, that the passage from gold to silver between 650 and 700 is neither a sign of the collapse of civilisation as believed by Pirenne, nor it is of a definitive exhaustion of the stocks of gold of the Occident.[11]

Further attacks on Pirenne  came amongst others from Lopez, Lombard  and Genicot.[12]Lopez points out that gold did not become scarcer after the Muslim advance, but instead, in the 8^th century and after, both Muslim coins and their imitations seem to have been fairly common.[13] Lopez also refers to Sabbe (an earlier follower of Pirenne) to highlight that the trade of Oriental purple-dyed and embroidered cloths was never interrupted in Western Europe, and the diminished use of Oriental cloths among the laymen (if there was a diminution) was largely due to fashion change.[14]

  Taking the opposite view from Pirenne , Lombard  affirms that the Muslim advance, occurring at a time of exhaustion in Europe, re-established and amplified international commerce and contributed to the recovery characterizing the Carolingian Empire, and that Muslim currency in particular infused new blood into commercial relations.[15]  Lombard goes even further, holding that it was the Muslim advance, which led to the West regaining contact with Oriental civilisation and, through the Muslims with the major world movements in trade and culture. `Whereas the great barbarian invasions of the fourth and fifth centuries,’ Lombard holds, `had caused an economic regression in the West under the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties, the creation of the new Islamic Empire brought with it an astonishing development in this same area.’[16]

Genicot, too, referring to Ganshof, notes that the ports of Provence  (France) had not stopped their activity from the 8^th to the 10^th century,[17]and suggests that the decline of the exchange economy could have other causes than the Muslim irruption, especially the state of anarchy of the Frank monarchy after Dagobert.[18]

And for Lopez to conclude:

 `If neither the `disappearance' of papyrus nor that of gold currency is connected with a sudden regression in trade caused by the Arab conquests, the thesis of Pirenne  has little support left.’[19]

 Pirenne ’s theory is further undermined by the fact that historians, who looked at the domestic history of various parts of Europe noted the decline taking place in the Roman empire even earlier than the 5^th; the decline that gripped the Christian West , thus, taking place centuries before Islam was even born. Some historians, i.e Lewis, have even noted that Muslim control of the Mediterranean did not begin in the 7^th or 8^th century, as Pirenne stated, but did in the late 9^th and early 10^th centuries;[20]a five century gap between European decline and Islamic rise in the area, which makes Pirenne’s theory untenable.

Rather than the Muslims causing the decadence of trade, facts, instead, prove that modern trade, in all its foundations, owes to Islam, just as the following shows.