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Unit 4: Roman Empire’s reinvention

Byzantium; Connections with the western and Eastern world
After the fall of rome in the 5th century, the eastern empire, also called the Byzantine Empire, survived until
1453. Its capital was Constantinople (Istanbul nowwadays). They used Greek instead of Latin.
Imperial policy was always to centralize and conform. religious heresy was often a problem. The most
important heresy was monophysitism, a belief that Christ had a single, immortal nature and was not eternal
god and mortal man in one and the same person. Another major disagreement that arose in the East
concerned the veneration of images. These various divisions resulted in a schism between the Eastern
Orthodox church and Western Latin Roman Churches in 1054.
Orthodox christianity had a different organization, it didn’t depend on the pope.

Islam: Emergence and expansion

(Islamic History: a very short introduction – Adam Silverstein – Chapter 1)
In the 7th century Muhammad became in contact with jewish peple after being forced to flee from mecca. at
the age of 40, he began to receive revelations that would become verses of the Quran, which he shared
with his friends and family, and eventually with others in Mecca. His monotheistic message was
inconsistent with the polytheisctic culture. His monotheistic message signaled the importance of prophets.
The spread of Islam and the Muslim conquests began with the unification of Arabia by Prophet Muhammad
starting in 622. After Muhammad's death in 632, Islam expanded beyond the Arabian Peninsula.
Muhammad’s death set off two chain reactions, in the one case leading to the emergence of Islamic sects
and in the other to the emergence of an Islamic empire.

 Certain groups considered the Prophet’s death to be the beginning of an era. It was the beginning of
an era for those Muslims who submitted to the rule of the caliph or `successor’, who acceded to
leadership shortly after Muhammad’s death.
 Others considered it the end of an era for those tribes whose conversion to Islam had been
inextricably linked to Muhammad himself; now that he was dead their contract with him was void.
Some tribes retained their new religious identity (which was fine) but withheld their taxes and
allegiance

There were Expansive wars and raids with a new religious message and Many people convert to islam in
order not to be attacked
It was the spread of Arabic and Islam, however, that represents the most significant consequence of the
early conquests. While the pivotal victories over the empires occurred during the reign of the second caliph,

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`Umar (r. 634-44), it was under the Umayyad caliphs (r. 661-750) that Arabic culture and Islamic rule
spread - to some degree or another - from the Iberian Peninsula to the Punjab, more or less fixing the
frontiers of the Islamic world for centuries to come.
The period between the seventh to the fifteenth centuries is considered as the ‘Golden Age of Islamic
Civilisation’. During this period, there was great emphasis on the pursuit of knowledge of medicine,
mathematics, geometry, architecture, astronomy, classical philosophy.

The Carolingians (The Franks)

(Medieval Europe – Chris Wickham – Chapter 4)
The carolingians were a dynasty. They were a family that expanded. Charles Martel, the maior who took over
Francia in the 710s, initiated the run of conquests that mark out the eighth century in the Carolingian world,
as we saw in Chapter 2. The Carolingian family was descended from him, and later medieval writers named
it after him.
Charlemagne was crowned imperator, emperor, by the pope in Rome in 800. This title revived the idea of the
Roman Empire and it gave the message that Christianity could get people close to what they used to have
in Rome. The franks provided protection for the church and and in return they received sanctation in their
victories and appropriation of desired territory.
Charlemagne, Pippin’s son, and sole ruler by 771, carried this on in grand style. Charlemagne established a
new palace at Aachen in the 790s, and by the time his only surviving son Louis the Pious succeeded in 814
it had become a real capital. In the late ninth and tenth centuries, waves of Vikings, Magyars and Muslims
invaded

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In the late ninth and tenth centuries, waves of Vikings, Magyars and Muslims invaded western Europe. Local
populations came to be more dependent than ever on local strongmen for security. The Middle Ages were
characterized by a chronic absence of effective central government and the constant threat of famine or
foreign invasion.

Unit 4