Roper, an Oxford professor and one of Britain’s most famous twentieth-
century historians, had this to say in a book aimed at the general public:
By the time of his death in 632, the Prophet of Islam had already
conquered Arabia, and his successors, immediately afterwards, set out to
conquer the rest of the East. This Moslem conquest first of Syria and
Egypt, then of North Africa and Spain, cut Europe off from the
Mediterranean [...] The old world had ended by the eight century; a new
world did then begin; and among the causes of the change we cannot
exclude the Moslem invasions. — The Rise of Christian Europe,
Norwich, 1965, pp.72-73.
The work of Belgian historian Charles Pirenne is the basis for Trevor-
Roper’s remarks: Pirenne’s book Mohammed and Charlemagne, which
blames the Dark Ages in Europe on the rise of Islam, was published in
1935, and translated into English in 1992. ↵
dana p.
(Dana P.)
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