Not in one moment, nor in one day, was the issue decided. Six days the
armies fought, and through all Abd-er-Rahman and his fanatical horde
held their own. But on the seventh day Charles led a battalion of his
biggest, fiercest Germans straight against the Moorish center.
Abd-er-Rahman himself was slain; his army, appalled by this
circumstance, was broken and beaten, and faded away toward the South.
Charles Martel made sure his victory by another successful campaign. The
Moors were driven out of France forever. In their stead Charles himself
reigned. He had saved Europe to Christianity. Yet for his lack of
docility, the church execrated him.
If Abd-er-Rahman had overrun France, as he would surely have done if a
less redoubtable and terrible antagonist than Charles Martel had faced
him at Tours, he would next have turned his attention to Germany. With
its fall, Italy and Rome would have invited his attention. There he
would have found few but priests to oppose him, and the empire of the
East, attacked in the rear as well as in the front, would speedily have
succumbed. No Saint Cyril would have gone forth to convert the Russians
and Bulgarians, who would promptly have been Tartarized.
As we have seen, nothing could have saved England or Ireland. The
prophet's world-conquest must have been accomplished.
What then? Would the western world have remained at the stage of
cultivation in which we see Arabia to-day? There is no reason to suppose
that that would have been quite the case. It was not so in Moorish
Spain, which rose to a high level of culture. Christianity would not
have been suppressed. It was not suppressed in Turkey or Spain. But it
would probably have been ruled, dominated, forced into odd corners, and
to some extent Moslemized. Learning would not have languished, for in
certain important forms it flourished in Spain. The western brain, the
Aryan genius, must have had its way in many intellectual respects. Yet
the cast of European thought would surely have been sicklied over with
oriental contemplativeness.
The "hustler" never could have existed under Moslem rule. The speculator
never would have risen, because he would not have been tolerated. The
Moslem doctrine forbids censuses and statistics, treating them as a form
of wicked curiosity concerning the rule of God on earth. Pictorial art,
and sculpture, which the Koran regards as idolatrous, would have been
sternly repressed. Literature would have been great along the line of
poetry; science great along the line of mathematics.
The western woman would have been orientalized. So far from forming
clubs, she would not have been permitted even to pray in the mosques.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account