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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
Why did Christianity decline relatively to Islam in wide areas of the Mediterranean world during the European Middle Ages? The problem has deserved more attention than it has received from historians, for the pattern is not a consistent one and the decline where it took place, cannot be explained on the grounds of Moslem military superiority alone. The first generation of Moslem conquerors that so decisively defeated the Byzantine armies were plunderers who sought booty and revenge for past wrongs suffered at the hands of the Byzantine authorities or simply from the agricultural and urban populations of the east Roman frontier provinces. Confronted with undreamed of success, they had little idea of establishing either civil government or settling in the areas they had conquered. They had little desire also to convert their new Christian subjects, for that would diminish the flow of tribute exacted in exchange for protection. Yet as time went on, Christianity in the eastern Mediterranean showed none of the survival and recuperative power that characterised the Orthodox Church in the Balkans during the five centuries of Ottoman occupation from 1390–1912. Of the areas overrun by successive Moslem invaders down to 1400 only Spain, Sicily and Crete re-emerged as Christian territories.
page 210 note 1 See my, ‘Old and New Rome in the Age of Justinian’, in Relations between East and West in the Middle Ages, ed. Baker, D., Edinburgh, 1973, 25Google Scholar.
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page 210 note 3 Ch. Courtois, Les Vandales et l'Afrique, Gouvernement Général de l'Algérie, Paris 1955, 343–352Google Scholar.
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page 211 note 2 See Ch. Courtois, Les Vandales et l'Afrique, 349. The arrival of the ‘grands nomades’ as invaders of North Africa was ‘un événement décisif dans l'histoire de la Berbérie’.
page 211 note 3 Ibid., 344–5.
page 211 note 4 See Gautier, E. F., Le Passé de l'Afrique du Nord: les siècles obscurs, Paris 1937, 264–280Google Scholar, for the geographical significance of the battle sites between Berber and Arab in the seventh century. In Numidia, as in Anatolia, the effect of the dominance of the nomad tribes was that the country reverted from settled agriculture to transhumance, ibid., 280.
page 211 note 5 See Picard, G. Charles, La Civilisation de l'Afrique romaine, Paris 1959Google Scholar, and Raven, Susan, Rome in Africa, London 1969CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for illustrations.
page 212 note 1 Herodian, Historia, ed. Stavenhagen, K., 1922, viiGoogle Scholar. 4. 14.
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page 212 note 5 Berthier, A., L'Algérie et son Passé, Paris 1951, 149Google Scholar, referring to Tiddis.
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page 213 note 4 Ibid.
page 213 note 5 Ibid.
page 213 note 6 Ibid., 77.
page 213 note Procopius, De Bello Vandalico, iii. 8. 18 and compare Corippus, Iohannidos, vii. 307–15, the Louata performing human sacrifices in the mid-sixth century.
page 214 note 1 Ibn Khaldoun, op. cit, i. 212, referring to the situation circa 670.
page 214 note 2 Ibn abd al Hakam, op. cit. 31–3, and Ibn Khaldoun i. 211 (duress).
page 215 note 1 The situation in Asia Minor in the three decades from the accession of Constantine ix in 1042 to the battle of Manzikert is excellently described by Vryonis, S., The Decline of Mediaeval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamisation from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century, University of California Press 1971, 85–96Google Scholar.
page 215 note 2 Michael Attaliotes, ed. Niebuhr, Bonn, 213–4. Most of the damage at this stage was being done by Turcomen tribesmen and not by the victorious troops of Alp Arslan.
page 215 note 3 Nicetas Choniates, De Manuele Comneno, vi. 5, ed. I Bekker, Bonn, 245–6.
page 215 note 4 For the activity of these tribesmen against the Byzantines during Manuel's campaign of 1175–6 and afterwards, see Nicetas Choniates vi. 6, 248–9 and 254–257.
page 216 note 1 Thus, Ramsay, W. M. (Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, Oxford 1897, 695Google Scholar) emphasises that the greatest danger to the Byzantines during the twelfth century came from the nomads who were constantly harrying the Christian settlements regardless whether there was a state of war or peace between the Turks and Byzantines.
page 216 note 2 Historia Peregrinorum, ed. Chroust, A., MGH, N. S. v, Berlin 1928, 156Google Scholar: ‘Hii sunt praedones qui soliti devastare terras finitimas ipsum eciam soldanum inquietere non verentur’. Compare also, Hebraeus, Bar, Chronicon, ed. Abeloos, and Lamy, , Louvain 1872–1877, I. 732Google Scholar. (Turcoman raids in Melitene circa 1250).
page 216 note 3 Historia Peregrinorum, 155 referring to ‘Turci sive Bedewini’ nomads, ‘Horum innumera multitudine …’, in the area of Laodicea, then deserted by its inhabitants (A.D. 1190).
page 216 note 4 John Cinnamus, Historia, ed. I. Bekker, Bonn, 190–1, and 198–9. See Vryonis, 188–9, and Ramsay, loc. cit.
page 216 note 5 Thus, Ramsay's Cities and Bishoprics, ii. 373, referring to the area of Phrygia between Ushak to the north and Uluburlu and Chonae to the south, and ibid., 696.
page 216 note 6 Nicetas Choniates, vi. I, 227–8.
page 216 note 7 Anna Comnena, Alexias, ed. A. Reifferscheid, xiv. 6, 284.
page 216 note 8 Vryonis, op. cit., 192–3.
page 217 note 1 For instance, see Brice, W. C., ‘The Turkish Colonisation of Anatolia’. Bull, of John Rylands Library, 38, 1955, 18–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 26–7.
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page 217 note 3 Vryonis, op. cit., 298. Christianity was not immediately extinguished upon the Seljuk takeover in 1306. The cathedral was appropriated but the bishopric was not terminated, and the citadel of Sardis came back into its own as a Christian refuge. The American excavations at Sardis in 1972 established that a large cave on the acropolis had been used by the Christians. Frescos had once covered its walls and graves were found in the southern part of the rectangular major space. See Hanfmann, G. M. A., Anatolian Studies, (1972), 56–8Google Scholar. (I am grateful to Mr. G. J. Clement of Edinburgh University for the additional information.)
page 218 note 1 See, Michalowski, K., ‘Open problems of Nubian Art and Culture in the Light of Discoveries at Faras’, (= Kunst und Geschichte Nubiens in christlicher Zeit, ed. Dinkler, E., Rechlinghausen 1972, 12)Google Scholar.
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page 218 note 4 The Arabic authors who write about Nubia record very few hostile incidents between the Nubians and Egyptian rulers in the whole period 800–1200. There was a Beja revolt in 855, the refusal of the Nubians to pay customary dues to Egypt which led to Prince George's mission to Baghdad in 836, the Nubian raids into Egypt of 950–960 and the Nubian-Egyptian war of 1171–75, but these are episodes in the otherwise peaceful co-existence of the two kingdoms and religions.
page 218 note 5 This seems to have been undertaken as a sort of re-insurance by the family of Saladin to secure a base in the event of their expulsion from Egypt. An attack on the Yemen for the same purpose was also considered. Thus, for instance, Ibn Khalkikan (d. 1281), Wafayat al ay ān, Section 127, ed. Abbas, Ishan, Beirut, 1963–, I. 306–9Google Scholar.
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page 219 note 2 Similarly at Colchester, see Morris, J., The Age of Arthur; a history of the British Isles, from 350–650, London 1973, 76Google Scholar.
page 219 note 3 Thus, Dinkler, E., Grossmann, P. and Diebner, B., ‘Deutsche Nubien-Unternehumgen 1967’, Archüologischer Anzeiger, 1968, 4, 720–38Google Scholar; W. Y. Adams, The University of Kentucky excavations at Kulubnarti, 1969Google Scholar (=Kunst und Geschichte Nubiens, 141–55) and E. Dinkler, Die deutsche Ausgrabungen auf die Inseln Sunnarti, Tangur und in Kulb, 1968–1969Google Scholar, ibid., 259–81.
page 219 note 4 Adams, W. Y., ‘Post-Pharaonic Nubia in the Light of Archaeology ii’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 51 (1965), 175–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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page 220 note 1 Adams, ibid., ii, 177.
page 220 note 2 Ibn Said, published in Monumenta Cartographica, iii. 5, fols. 1080–1090, re Section iv of his Kitab Jugrafiya. He dates these events to 1224 A.D. In their war against the Nubians in 1287, the Egyptians employed nomads as allies. See Baybars ad-Dawadan, ed. Dr. Musad, , Cairo 1965, 209Google Scholar.
page 220 note 3 Khaldoun, IbnKitab al-Ibar, ed. Maktaba, , 3rd ed., Beirut 1960–1967Google Scholar, referring to the immigration of the Juhayna Arab tribes across the Red Sea from Hejaz into the Eastern Desert and their overthrow of the Nubian kingdoms (ii. 516). Also Adams, Post-Pharaonic Nubia, iii. 150.
page 220 note 4 See Michalowski, K., Faras: die Kathedrale aus dem Wüstensand, Zurich 1967, 38–9 and 96–102Google Scholar.
page 220 note 5 Adams, loc. cit., iii, 153–6.
page 220 note 6 See Plumley, J. M., The Bishop's Scrolls from Q'asr Ibrim, London (Egypt Exploration Society) 1974Google Scholar.
page 221 note 1 Alvarez, , ‘A true relation of the lands of the Prester John’, published as The Prester John of the Indies, ed. Beckingham, C. F. and Huntingford, G. W. B., Cambridge 1961, 129 and 460–1Google Scholar.
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