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terranean (1991) and Peter Heather’s Empires and barbarians (2009), de-
ploying the First Millennium because it embraces not only the flourishing
and the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, but also the emergence of
Europe, roughly as it is still configured, by about 1000. The major Silk Road
exhibition at the British Library in 2004, which demonstrated with unusual
clarity the interactive vitality of civilizations along the Central Asiatic trade
routes, rather than just transmission of goods from one end to the other, also
took the First Millennium as its frame of reference, invoking the fall of Kho-
tan to the Turkish Karakhanids in 1006^108 —although no reference was made
to the Karakhanids’ high cultural level, or explanation offered why their ar-
rival, after that of so many other invaders, should constitute such a defining
break. (Perhaps it helped that they were Muslims?)
Among investigations of religion, only Peter Brown’s The rise of Western
Christendom: Triumph and diversity, A.D. 200–1000 (2003^2 ) gets close to
exploiting the full chronological range of the First Millennium. But the focus
here is on Christendom and only secondarily the world of Islam, mainly as
perceived by Christians.
There are also, especially in the last decade, works that, while adopting
periodizations other than the First Millennium, nonetheless call in question
the idea of a major caesura c. 600–650, which is the main obstacle to the First
Millennium. Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, in The corrupting sea
(2000), argue for the great continuities of Mediterranean life such as eco-
nomic diversification in the face of an unpredictable climate, irrespective of
the ancient/medieval distinction.^109 In his Origins of the European economy:
Communications and commerce, A.D. 300–900 (2001), Michael McCor-
mick rejects the notion that the seventh century has to be turned into an in-
superable obstacle to research. His example is followed by Chris Wickham in
his two books, Framing the early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean
400–800 (2005), and The inheritance of Rome: A history of Europe from
400 to 1000 (2009), albeit with reservations about the extremer forms of
“continuitism.”^110 The focus of all these works is European and/or Mediter-
ranean, but they embrace the Arab- Islamic world as well.^111 They are sensi-
tive to the material evidence. They also suggest that pressures to conform to
108 S. Whitfield (ed.), The Silk Road (Chicago 2004), e.g., 16, 287.
109 Their neglect of this distinction is chided by W. V. Harris, “The Mediterranean and ancient
history,” in id. (ed.), Rethinking the Mediterranean (Oxford 2005) 36.
110 E.g., Wickham, Inheritance [1:26] 8–9, 75, 216–17. Note the preference for starting c.
300/400, even in works that explicitly adopt the First Millennium as their frame: M. McCormick,
“Movements and markets in the First Millennium,” in Morrisson (ed.), Trade and markets [2:113] 51–98.
But where noninstitutional aspects of Christianity are in play, as in the present work, this is a less attrac-
tive option.
111 On Iran see now Pourshariati, Decline and fall [1:22], e.g., 464.