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Emmet Scott, Mohammed & Charlemagne Revisited: The History of a Controversy, New English Review Press, 2012.
Reviewed by Laina Farhat-Holzman.
Scott is part of a growing body of revisionist Islamic scholars who are revisiting what had become the unquestioned history of Islam. We have all been told that Europe descended into a Dark Age upon the fall of Rome to the Germanic "barbarian" invaders in the 5th century, and that it was rescued from this darkness by the energetic arrival of a new religion, Islam, which saved and transmitted the "lost" classical culture. There has never been an explanation for why Europe was dark for five centuries after its collapse, not to revive until the 10th century, if Islam's Golden Age (supposedly the 8th- 10th centuries) was so glowing. What was that Golden Age really like that it could not influence events and culture just across the Mediterranean?
An early 20th century scholar, the Belgian Henri Pirenne, was the first to dispute this theory. He claimed that contrary to the notion that Europe's Dark Age was caused by the barbarians, he said that Europe quickly recovered from these invasions and that the invaders themselves wanted nothing more than to become "Roman" themselves. These invaders pledged fealty to the Emperor in Byzantium, used gold coins with the emperor's profile on them, and engaged in a flurry of church and palace building by the 6th and early 7th centuries. What really brought this civilization to a screeching halt was the new barbarian invasion, Islam.
Scott is a supporter of Pirenne, whose work was much criticized by scholars of the prior theory. His "revisiting," however, is built on a foundation of archeology, much of it within the past century since the death of Pirenne. Rather than just accepting the conventional wisdom, Scott takes note of actual "facts...