Two

The Emergence of Sibling Cultures

(c.600–c.750)

THE RISE OF ISLAM in the Arabic world and its triumph over territories that for

centuries had been dominated by either Rome or Persia is the first astonishing fact of

the seventh and eighth centuries. The second is the persistence of the Roman Empire

both politically, in what historians call the “Byzantine Empire,” and culturally, in the

Islamic world and Europe. By 750 three distinct and nearly separate civilizations—

Byzantine, European, and Islamic—crystallized in and around the territory of the old

Roman Empire. They professed different values, struggled with different problems,

adapted to different standards of living. Yet all three bore the marks of common

parentage—or, at least, of common adoption. They were sibling heirs of Rome.

Saving Byzantium

In the seventh century, the eastern Roman Empire was so transformed that by

convention historians call it something new, the “Byzantine Empire,” from the old

Greek name for Constantinople: Byzantium. (Often the word “Byzantium” alone is

used to refer to this empire as well.) War, first with the Sasanid Persians, then with

the Arabs, was the major transforming agent. Gone was the ambitious imperial reach

of Justinian; by 700, Byzantium had lost all its rich territories in North Africa and its

tiny Spanish outpost as well. (See Map 2.1.) True, it held on tenuously to bits and

pieces of Italy and Greece. But in the main it had become a medium-sized state, in

the same location but about two-thirds the size of Turkey today. Yet, if small, it was

also tough.

SOURCES OF RESILIENCY

Byzantium survived the onslaughts of outsiders by preserving its capital city, which

was well protected by high, thick, and far-flung walls that embraced farmland and

pasture as well as the city proper (see Map 4.1 on p. 116). Within, the emperor (still

calling himself the Roman emperor) and his officials serenely continued to collect the