Philip II recognized how bad things were when he came to power, but his rule also didn’t do much for the long-term viability of the Castilian economy.

Some might argue that the Habsburgs wound up ruining Castile.

Yes, it was Visigothic Spain, but my understanding is that even under the kings which ruled during the height of Spain’s imperial phase, there wasn’t a lot of economic and intellectual vitality. They had splendor from all the gold that came in through the mercantile system, but from what I’ve read they were still heavily dependent on the Italians for commercial services and others for finished goods.

Incidentally, I agree with your original point regarding the ephemeral nature of the new medievalism. Gangs, transnational mafias and terrorist groups will never provide the stability that feudalism did. It wasn’t very economically productive, but the old system sustained society and civilization. Today the failure of these groups leads to either total anarchy – e.g. Somalia and Sierre Leon – or the rise of a hyper-repressive regime which is the only way out of the chaos – e.g. Islamist Sudan or the Taliban’s Afghanistan.

It was Visigothic Spain after all, not the Spain of Charles V or Phillip II.

Regarding the clash of civ idea, my comment two above makes the same point in more detail. I don’t know if you noticed that or not.

I do agree with Chirol that Muslim rule improved the situation in Spain economically. When the Umayyads came in, Spain was in horrible shape, with bandits everywhere and nothing to boast of in terms of economic or intellectual development. The “Splendor of Al-Andalus” is I believe overblown at times, for while the Muslim rulers were relatively tolerant for their time, Christians and Jews were still legally subordinate, as is always the case under Islamic law.

Also, in what sense was “Spain” better off under Moslem rule? Certainly it was better for Moslems living in Spain, but less wonderful for Christians. Don’t buy too much into the myth of Al-Andalus, at least not on borrowed funds.

For those who want to understand the dynamics of this period in more detail, I suggest reading chapters 3-7 of my book, The Arab World: An Illustrated History.

Sidenote: Regarding the role of gangs, see an excellent study put out by the U.S. Army War College, Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency.

Now to address Chirol’s main argument:

The Muslim states which created what we could call the “Muslim Core” stretching from the Indian subcontinent through the Arab world to Spain did create an interconnected “core” in some key respects, thus creating a kind of “free trade zone” in which merchants, preachers, writers and scientists could travel across territories peddling their goods or ideas. That Arabic was the administrative language for most of this area helped, and Arabic function somewhat like English today in another regard; educated Turks and Persians learned Arabic, but Arabs rarely learned the languages of others.

Take Islamic Spain as an example: documents indicate that there were 13,000 weavers just in Cordoba, Spain, who made garments which were traded all over the Mediterranean and beyond. On the intellectual side, think about Ibn Rushd/Averroes (1126-98) and Ibn Sina/Avicenna (980-1037), whose works in philosophy and medicine were known across the Muslim Core as well as in Europe (the latter names were the European names). The former was from Spain, and the latter from what is now Uzbekistan (but his works travelled through Spain). None of this would have been possible without the Islamic “free trade zone.”

With regard to the long paragraph, a few points:

(1) Remember that political control by both the Umayyads (661-750), based in Damascus, and the Abbasids (750-945, or maybe some later date), based in Baghdad, over everything west of the Nile River was either slight or nonexistent. Even during their strongest periods, North Africa was to a large degree controlled by unruly Berbers or dissident Kharijites, who were (broad generalization here) basically militant Muslims. Spain was taken by the Umayyads politically but militarily mainly by the Berbers, and an anti-Arab Berber revolt was barely put down by reinforcements who founded a second Umayyad dynasty in the 740s just as the original Umayyads were going down in defeat to the Abbasids. And then in 800 the Abassid Caliph Harun al-Rashid granted the Aghlabs independent rule over Abbasid north Africa (mainly Tunisia) in exchange for some token tribute and a formal recognition of sovereignty. But the Abbasids had no control.

In 909 the Aghlabs were overthrown by the Shia Fatimids, and they came to rule not only Abbasid north Africa but took Egypt in 669. So from 669 on, the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad had nothing west of the Sinai.

(2) Even in the “core” areas of Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Arabia, the Abbasids had a hard time maintaining control and were figureheads by the end of the ninth century. It was under Mu’tasim (833-842) that the Abbasids shifted from dependence on Persian troops to the migrating Turks from Central Asia, and this within a century led to real power in Iraq and Syria being held by Turkic military factions. I date the real end of the Abbasid caliphate to 945, when the Shia Persian Buyids took over Baghdad and made the Sunni Abbasids figureheads, but they were figureheads of their Turkic guards already.

(3) The first crusade took Jerusalem in 1099 from the (Shia) Fatimids, were were ruling Palestine from Cairo. It barely caused a ripple, since none of the commercial centers of the Muslim world had been taken. Even the Fatimids made peace with the Christians in order to maintain their trade with the Italians. The Latin states survived in large part due to Muslim indulgence, since they weren’t a major threat. The Muslims continued to fight amongst themselves as much as they fought the Christians.

(4) The Mongols did sack Baghdad in 1258 and kill every member of the Abbasi family they could find, but by this point the Abbasid caliphs had been figureheads for a very long time. There was a brief and partial revival of Abbasid power under Caliph Nasir (1180-1225), but it was very tenous and they didn’t even completely control Iraq. The Seljuks, who had previously ruled Iraq, were about to retake it in the early 13th century, but were crushed by the Mongols. The Abbasids would have likely gone down anyway.

(5) I wouldn’t credit the Ottomans with maintaining what existed of value in the Arab world. They ruled much of the Arab world from 1517-1918, and it was a period of total stagnation for the Arabs; printing presses weren’t legalized for Arabic and Turkish writings until 1795. The Ottomans were great warriors and had an incredible elan, but I think they were successful in large part because they faced weak enemies. The Europeans they faced were divided, weak and backward, and the Mamluks they defeated to take the Arab world refused to use gunpowder as a matter of principle. What does that tell you.

So I would expand on the economic, cultural and scientific aspects of this argument, but modify some of the others.

“Thus, neo-feudal lords have created their own fiefdoms all over the world. Whether they are favelas in Brazil, slums in the US, narco-states in Columbia, or tribes in the Middle East and Central Asia, large portions of humanity have moved backwards into primary loyalties, what some consider to be the most basic social units, the tribe or gang. “

Feudalism was enormously stable as a social and political system, most likely because of the absence of (or very low levels of localized) market activity. Today’s ” neo-feudal” groups are operating in an era of globalized markets and increasing transaction rates. In other words, don’t count on these groups being able to make their temporary fiefdoms ” stick” unless they have something else going for them beyond guns. The rate and flow of exchange-and thus creative destruction – is too high.

Dan Nexon: Do you have any links with more info on that. I’d be interested as I wasn’t aware that so much had already been done.

Yago: Read more about Muhammed and Charlemagne for an explanation of the theory.

Elizabeth: Ironic in the sens that the Arabs thought of us then, the same as we think of the Arabs today. While Europeans were burning witches and bartering, the Arabs were translating and reading Greek texts, pioneering new forms of navigation and more. After all, when the crusaders reached the Middle East, they were astonished at how developed the heathens were.

And can you really say the muslims lands were “much better off” than Christian Europe? Was there that much of a difference? Certainly today the difference between America and Ghana are enormous, but you cannot call Al-Andalus a “core” while France a “gap”. The Arabs were stopped at Poitiers for something.

The grinding interdiction of Mediterranean trade away from Western Europe changed world history.

Ditto to Dr. Nexon. You may be interested to know that the term “New Middle Ages” spanned into a whole sub-discipline in Japanese political science, evaluating what many in the Japanese academic world believe to be the decline of American global power in the 1990s. It was Paul Kennedy-light, and the quality of the scholarship so poor that only one meager tome was ever translated, and which is not currently available on Amazon.com (a brief synopsis of that work in Japanese is here).

Anyway, I’m sure you know the problems with Pirenne’s argument, so we won’t go there.

I think Don Meinig’s nuclei and regions would be a better way to study the ancient and medieval worlds.