Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 2 1913.djvu/393

 CHAPTER XII

THE EXPANSION OF THE SARACENS (continued)

AFRICA AND EUROPE

We are dividing the history of the expansion of the Saracens into an Asiatic-Egyptian and an African-European order of development. This division is founded not on outward, but on internal reasons. Even at the present time Islām in Northern Africa presents an appearance quite different from the Islām of Asia and Egypt. The reason for this must be sought in the totally different composition of the population. The Aramaic element of Nearer Asia and Coptic Egypt offered much less resistance to the Arabian nationality and the Arabian language than did the Persian element in Mid-Asia. The Berbers or Moors of Northern Africa take up a middle position between these two; they certainly accepted Islām and Arabian culture, but they remodelled them, and preserved their own nationality in their customs and to a large extent also in their language. Moreover, an encroachment of Islām into Europe in so significant a form as that experienced in the Middle Ages would have been scarcely conceivable without the great masses of the Berbers, who were always on the move. Later too the Saracens of Southern Europe continually appear in political relations with Africa. The history of Islām in Europe is therefore indissolubly connected with its history in Northern Africa, whilst on the other hand it is in reality merely associated with the history of the Eastern Caliphate by a certain community of culture and religion.

The commixture of Arabs and Berbers, which gave the impress to the whole of the Islām of the West, was a slow process. Centuries passed, but in the end Islām has attained what Phoenicians and Romans strove for in vain. These two great colonising nations always settled principally in the towns on the coast, and doubtless assimilated the Berbers crowding round them; in spite however of all the settlements of colonists by Rome, the flat country and especially the hinterland remained in Berber hands. As Mommsen says, the Phoenicians and Romans have been swept away, but the Berbers have remained, like the palm trees and the desert sand. With the destruction of the