Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The Heraclian epoch (610-717)

External Problems

Muhammed and Islam

Page 20

In the sixties of the seventh century, simultaneously with the attempts to seize Constantinople in the East, the Arabian army began its westward movement in North Africa. At the close of the seventh century the Arabs took Carthage, the capital of the African exarchate, and at the beginning of the eighth century they occupied Septem (now the Spanish fortress, Ceuta) near the Pillars of Hercules. About the same time the Arabs, under the leadership of their general, Tarik, crossed from Africa to Spain and rapidly conquered from the Visigoths the larger part of the peninsula. From the name of Tarik came the modern Arabic name of Gibraltar, meaning the mountain of Tarik. Thus in the early part of the eighth century the Muhammedan menace to western Europe appeared from a different direction, namely, from the Pyrenean peninsula.

It is interesting to note how fast and how deep the Arab language and culture spread over Spain. A large number of urban Christians adopted Arabic culture though they did not adopt Islam; there were enough of them to constitute a social class, called by the epithet of Arab origin Mozarabs, that is, arabicized. In the ninth century the bishop of Cordoba, Alvaro, complained in one of his sermons:

Many of my coreligionists read verses and fairy tales of the Arabs, study the works of Muhammedan philosophers and theologians not in order to refute them but to learn to express themselves properly in the Arab language more correctly and more elegantly. Who among them studies the Gospels, and Prophets and Apostles? Alas! All talented Christian young men know only the language and literature of the Arabs, read and assiduously study the Arab books. ... If somebody speaks of Christian books they contemptuously answer that they deserve no attention whatever (quasi vilissima contemnentes). Woe! The Christians have forgotten their own language, and there is hardly one among a thousand to be found who can write to a friend a decent greeting letter in Latin. But there is a numberless multitude who express themselves most elegantly in Arabic and make poetry in this language with more beauty and more art than the Arabs themselves.

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