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732] power, certainly encouraged a vigorous expansion in connexion with his policy of restoration; but the attack of the Saracens was no longer successful, and as early as 759 the Arabs had to relinquish Narbonne, their last base north of the Pyrenees, to Pepin. The Saracen assault was therefore apparently broken by the battle of Tours or Poitiers — but only apparently, for that which might be regarded as cause and effect was but a chronological coincidence. Every movement has its limits, and the migration of the Arabs would not have been enough to place the requisite forces of men in the field for a permanent occupation even of Spain if they had not sought them outside their own limits among the Berbers. By joining the Arabs and conquering Spain for them, the Berbers carried the Saracen movement into another new country, but at the same time they made it heterogeneous, and as an addition to the internal Arabian feuds they created a new one, that between Arabs and Berbers. This strife, still latent during the first years of victory, came to light about the time of the battle of Tours or Poitiers. But a further cause rendered additional Saracen raids into Gaul impossible. In the northern corner of Spain a remnant of the opposition against the penetration of Islām had preserved its independence as a State; year by year this small State grew in size, and in a short time it inserted itself like a wedge between the Arabian magnates and the Pyrenees. On this was founded the legend of St Pelagius, which is treated more fully in another part of this work.

Under these circumstances the expansion of the Muslims came to a natural standstill from internal causes, and the consequences of the battle of Tours or Poitiers must therefore not be exaggerated. The plundering of these towns would decidedly not have resulted in a permanent occupation of Gaul by the Saracens. Their defeat before Constantinople was of vastly greater significance. The fall of Constantinople would have entirely remodelled the history of the East, as in fact it did, seven centuries later.

The battle then of Tours or Poitiers marked the extreme point of advance of the Saracens into Western Europe, but it was not the cause of the sudden stoppage, or rather recess of the movement. That fact lay, as above stated, in the feud between Arabs and Berbers. This strife was bound to be so much the more fatal for the Arabs, as at the same time the discord between Ḳais and Kalb in the East made its influence felt in the West also, and thus broke up the compact unity of the hitherto paramount nationality. The details of this process have little value for the history of the Saracen expansion treated in these chapters. A brief description of the principal events will suffice to explain the other great advance of the Saracens against Mid-Europe (Sicily, Sardinia, and South Italy).

The whole of the western portion of the empire of the Caliph, the so-called Maghrib, i.e. Northern Africa and Spain, was placed after the