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Entry: The Wines of Provence and the Armies of Allah Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_wines_of_provence_and_the_armies_of_allah#1564 Post contents: I'm not going to comment on the so-called Dark Ages of western Europe, but will observe that the supposed glories of Islam during this period, to the extent that they really existed, owed nothing to Islam. Rather, Muslims had the fortune to conquer what had been the most highly civilized areas of the ancient world. All of Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean littoral had previously been first Greek, then Roman, and were Christianized under the Romans. Egypt of course had its own great culture even before the Greeks. "Islamic civilization" lived off the cultural and intellectual capital of these ancient societies. By contrast, most of western Europe had been the raw frontier of the Roman empire, or was never even conquered by Rome (e.g. most of Germany, Britain north of Hadrian's wall, and all of Scandinavia). Under Catholic Christianity, the peoples of these disadvantaged places developed the architecture of Chartres and Notre-Dame, polyphonic music, representational painting and sculpture, the great wines of France and Germany, and more - NONE of which would or could have happened if Islam had succeeded in crossing the Pyrenees. All in all, not too bad a list of accomplishments for the descendants of a bunch of barbarians. Sent at: 2008 10 07