Andre Wink on Akbar

Andre Wink’s Akbar is the tale of the Mughal Empire’s founding ruler, a narrative chronology of the titular character’s life, starting from his boyhood and extending through his long reign and on into the legacy that he left his heirs. The overall theme of the work seems to be Akbar’s brilliant intellect, a feature that Wink spares no amount of ink to examine in the greatest detail, seeming often in agreement with his constant source of wisdom, the Akbar-worshipping biographer, Abu-l-Fazl. At a mere 117 pages, Akbar is a fast-paced journey that benefits from engaging storytelling backed up by numerous source quotations. Coming to the throne as the third Mughal Emperor, Akbar was nonetheless the empire’s founder and builder, as his father and grandfather had merely laid the foundations amid strife and setbacks. But Akbar’s early years were by no means secure, as he was under the thumb of a regent and faced rival warlords in the Rajputs and other Hindu peoples. There were also troubles with the regents themselves, but these were shrewdly and harshly dealt with. While a child, Akbar was educated in the martial sciences, including artillery, and the arts – though possible dyslexia left him illiterate, thus prompting him to “develop his already outstanding memory” and other skills such as carpentry. Indeed, such was Akbar’s attention to detail that his son wrote that none knew of the emperor’s deficiency. Fittingly, Akbar is depicted by Abu-l-Fazl as being a righteous ruler with his mind bent untiringly upon benevolent conquest, the opponents of such a scheme suitably vilified. It certainly helped that Akbar had as his command a superb military, composed most notably of mounted archers in the tradition of Genghis Khan. Significantly, the Rajputs adopted this steppe warrior trend, incorporated by Akbar along with hordes of infantry, the human resource of India. Attention paid to artillery and alliances with the Rajputs further enhanced Akbar’s military potential. Akbar’s life was one of constant travel to preempt rebellion, a less than idyllic existence. Such a lifestyle meant that the court really did travel with the emperor, for when Akbar entered the wilderness to put down one such rebellion, his administrative proceedings were conducted on the campground. Such expeditions were often undertaken on the pretext of hunting and taming elephants, a convenient metaphor used by Abu-l-Fazl for taming the Mongol nobles. Wink suggests that Akbar appreciated the necessity of such taming, given the tenuous nature of his rule, and thus the emperor also undertook to transform his court through the adoption of etiquette unknown to Mongol nomads. So severe were the restrictions, and so seriously did Akbar take his measures, that it was not uncommon for the emperor to personally and publicly administer poison in the form of a gift to those courtiers who disappointed him. Despite such severity, the Mughal court came to embody all that was “civilized.” All this was a form of control for the increasingly centralizing state, and to hear Abu-l-Fazl tell it, even hunting became less about leisure and more about duty, even to the point of casting the pursuit as a disciplined spiritual experience. But far from simply demanding conformity from others, Akbar imposed a strict regimen on himself, in an effort to let no time be wasted. As for Akbar’s organizational genius, Wink’s opinion is that the historical community is divided over just how effective were the emperor’s policies, and whether some of the primary sources are reliable – yet Akbar’s personal contributions remain unquestioned. Much is made of “gunpowder empires” and the role of such weapons in Akbar’s success, but Wink does not find the argument convincing, as cavalry remained the chief means of war-making in Akbar’s India. Though rebellion was a serious matter and innumerable uprisings proved a persistent problem in Akbar’s reign alone, he nonetheless exercised enough power to rely upon the long-term loyalty of the nobles and landholders, and thus the security of his fiscal system. Yet for all the organizational wizardry going on, Akbar’s (detailed) surveys were haphazard affairs, rarely updated and highly inaccurate. And even though Abu-l-Fazl would have his readers believe that Akbar’s years were a time of messianic wonder, other accounts demonstrate that the lives of the peasants were no better than under previous monarchs, and in some cases may have been worse, especially in the first years and the latter, as famines allegedly reduced some of the masses to cannibalism. Significantly, some famines were likely a result of the constant movement of Akbar’s armies, though Abu-l-Fazl is careful to point out Akbar’s humanitarian efforts during one such episode. By all accounts, Akbar had a naturally (sometimes brutally) inquisitive mind. It would seem to Wink that, despite the emperor’s originally strong public faith, he was “on a collision course with Islam,” as expressed by contemporaries. At a point the historian Badauni reports that Akbar had become completely hostile to Islam, yet he did not go forward without a struggle, having to banish many clergymen and dissidents. In the spirit of disillusionment, Akbar channeled his predisposition for melancholy into a sort of Sufi mysticism, taking, as Badauni observed, the parts he considered best from all the faiths he encountered. This openness to outside religions translated itself in to practices hateful to Akbar’s critics, such as capitulating to Hindu demands and hiring the services of Catholic craftsmen. But the most bizarre of Akbar’s experimentation was the ambiguous pronouncement of his own divinity, caught up in the phrase “Allahu Akbar,” which traditionally meant “God is great,” but could be alternatively translated “God is Akbar,” and this is perhaps the case given the new salutation of “Allahu Akbar" used among the devotees of Akbar’s pseudo Sufi order. Understandably, Akbar’s desire for universal tolerance, as Wink sees it, was not appreciated by all Muslims (or even Christians) and provoked sharp criticism before petering out under Akbar’s successors. But the tolerance of non-Muslim religions, says Wink, remained a “cornerstone of imperial Mughal rule,” until the dynasty’s end. Though he backs up his words with plenty of quotations, Wink seems particularly taken with Akbar, often using rhetoric that describe the emperor’s critics as disgruntled bigots and utilizing the final chapter to gush over the ruler’s most winning qualities. Even Akbar’s more beastly side is here rendered benign, his penchant for simply co-opting wives and beautiful women whenever he pleased detailed in almost affably comic prose. This, however, is an excellent example of Wink’s own hyperbole, for while he readily admits whenever his sources are likely exaggerating, he nonetheless leaps upon the chance to relay that very information with authoritative flourish. As an introduction to the man, Akbar is an informative history. Easily read and divided into clear, chronological sections, it lays out the principal themes of the monarchy of India, its challenges and triumphs and shortcomings. Though perhaps restricted in length (it appears to be a part of the series, Makers of the Muslim World), one is given a convincing portrait of the man who created Mughal India.

Dystopian America: The Hunger Games

In light of the upcoming movie, a review of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is in order. Having just finished the book (and its sequel, Catching Fire), I am still in that reverie of reliving what most impacted me. As the general story is probably familiar to most and will be common knowledge after the movie's first weekend in theaters, I'll just devote a few lines to what stood out.

The inside of the jacket worried me a bit when it read, "equal parts suspense and philosophy," as I am not a huge fan of "philosophical" fiction. That is, given the postmodern state of morality and reasoning that has been building over the last century I was concerned about running headlong into intense scenes of the metaphysical and the existential, and probably a good deal of Western Civilization-bashing. But while the West does get knocked a bit, what I actually found was an exciting work tastefully flavored with insights into the flaws of our society that serve more as warnings than declamations.

Take the games themselves. Brutal gladiatorial matches are as old as tyrannies, but the setting and the delivery of the Hunger Games (the titular games event) are frighteningly familiar to contemporary audiences. Although the brutality and heartlessness is sometimes enough to turn one's stomach, the whole event eerily jives with our own culture, thriving as we do on MMA fights and reality TV shows like SURVIVOR and ORANGE COUNTY CHOPPERS. In most dystopian/post-apocalyptic stories that feature death-matches, the lowing crowd has the good grace to treat such combats that just that: a hearty bloodletting, each death celebrated by harsh guffaws and the swilling of hard liquor. But in the Capital of Panem, the rich fops ooh and gasp and faint from anxiety over the performance (for that is all it is to them) in tones uncomfortably familiar to American ears.

Then there's the Capital. As a freak show of high fashion and self-indulgence, the society is one big West-bash opportunity. Yet while I read about the garish costumes and the flippant habits of the Capital citizenry, I was struck more by the alien element applied to American life, as seen through an essentially American girl. While Katniss’ reaction to the pop-cultured Capital citizens is one of disgust, the narration does not wax preachy on consumerism or the notion of high living. Rather, it is the attitude of the society that she finds so repellent. Of particular interest to me was the scene when Katniss observes her prep team’s reactions to the whole event: rather than think of the children duking it out for the audience’s pleasure, Katniss explains, “it’s all about where they were or what they were doing or how they felt when a specific event occurred … everything is about them, not the dying boys and girls in the arena.”

Which offers a brilliant segue into the morality of Panem. In a fiction setting, whatever veneer is placed over the picture triggers the audience’s acceptance of reality. Thus the mystique of Ancient Rome allows viewers of Ridley Scott’s GLADIATOR to watch with satisfaction as Maximus hacks and slashes his way to glory with no moral consequences and no justification necessary. Likewise, by placing The Hunger Games in America, by having the characters ride trains, watch TV, and drink hot chocolate, author Suzanne Collins establishes Judeo-Christian morality as the defining measure of right and wrong: murder is evil, slavery is abhorred by the enslaved, and loyalty valued. Though cast in a sort of Dickensian pauper mold, Katniss' world is our world and Katniss is us. She lives by our rules and dreams our dreams and when she sees other Americans going about their lives without a care for the injustice inflicted upon the innocent in this caricature universe of Western indifference, she is repelled. And that, I think, is the most winning quality of Katniss Everdeed.

Panem represents what our Western world has been and what it might yet become if a valiant few are not willing to catch fire. As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said, “the opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference.”

An Historical Homeric Society … Or Not?

Snodgrass, A.M. “An Historical Homeric Society?” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 94 (1974), 114-125.

Upon first glance, the observant reader will notice that the title for Snodgrass’ critique of the “historic Homer” argument is endowed with a question mark, perhaps applied because the essay that follows it is one big string of largely unanswered questions. Indeed, Snodgrass is sadly one of those authors who imagines that his audience is best served by hiding his thesis in the last sentence on the last page. “Does Homer’s tale reflect a real society or one highly idealized?” This is the question that Snodgrass sets out to answer.

The analysis of marriage in the context of Homer’s usage of Greek versus anthropological findings inconclusively dominates the first half of the paper. In all marriages examined, an exchange of gifts is observed, and these are categorized three ways: Bride Price, when payment goes to the bride’s family; Dowry, when payment goes to the groom’s family; and Indirect Dowry, wherein the loot eventually goes to the couple to help kick-start the new family. Famous examples cited in the essay are the marriage of Hector to Andromache and Agamemnon’s offer of one of his daughters to Achilles. All three types of marriage can be found in Homer’s epics, says Snodgrass, who relies upon the original Greek – left conveniently un-translated – to reach this conclusion. Problematically, the very presence of three types of marriage-related gift exchanges within the same social strata – Homer being only interested in portraying the royal/noble elites of the mortal and immortal realms – hints at radical inconsistency, but Snodgrass calls upon “poetic misunderstanding” as justification for this. After much to-do about marriage custom and a good deal of semantic tiptoeing, Snodgrass ultimately determines that Homer’s world is a composite image of many practices and traditions. This is an important declaration, as it is the reader’s first hint as to the essay’s overdue thesis.

His examination of marriage practices concluded, Snodgrass spends the latter half of his essay addressing the notion of a historical Iliad/Odyssey. Though Snodgrass spends a great deal of ink dropping names, Sir M.I. Finley crops up the most often, for that man’s works, written to definitively establish the historical Homeric setting, inform much of Snodgrass’ own argument. To hear Snodgrass tell it, Finley was set on finding a TIME for Homer, using such evidence as ceremonial and Linear B tablets as markers to cordon off time periods for examination. The essay breaks these options down into four: the Bronze Age, the Migration Period, the Dark Ages, and the Geometric Period – the last being Homer’s own. Now moving in the realms of archeology – and perhaps with less Greek to reference – Snodgrass fires off a salvo of details explaining why he believes that the Bronze Age and the Geometric Period are the only viable contenders – and even these are challenged.

Metalworking is the first category of examination and here Snodgrass notes that Homer’s warriors use exclusively bronze weapons. As the Dark Ages were apparently the height of iron usage, Homer’s epic thus finds an uncomfortable place in that era. And to mix things up a bit, Homer himself was aware of iron, and historically it was utilized for weapons before being adopted for domestic purposes, as it appears in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Curiously, Snodgrass does not address the possibility that Homer’s use of iron may be restricted to his similes, thus removing that metal from the epic proper.

Burials are next on Snodgrass’ hit list as he quotes Finley’s belief that such epic rites are purely Dark Age – his opponents, meanwhile, shout for Geometric period. As the two are clearly nothing alike, Snodgrass conveniently sidesteps the problem by calling in literary license. That is to say, Homer’s burials were dictated by the requirements of the story. If Patroclus needed to be burned and celebrated with impromptu Olympics, then Patroclus would get a cremation and his Olympics, no matter the historical reality. Indeed, the funeral of Patroclus is considered by Snodgrass the highest form of art versus life – he imagines that such elaborate ceremonial would have been impossible in Homer’s time.

Similar inconsistencies can be found in heroic equipment. The vast array of glittering armor, well-made this-and-that, and epic brick-a-brack seem to fly in the face of archeology and anthropology, Homer’s light javelins’ convenient habit of morphing into heavy thrusting spears for heroic close combat being the most outstanding example in Snodgrass’ opinion. Moreover, the very presence of such conspicuous wealth again reflects a world of plenty, unlike the relative dearth experienced in the Migration and Dark Age periods – the proliferation of iron notwithstanding.

In any case, Snodgrass determines that if one must seek out a historical setting for Homer, the historical models, if any, are either Bronze Age or Geometric – both eras rich in movable goods, that all-important status symbol in Homer’s tales. Not only do the lists of goods necessitate a wealthy society, but the elaborate ceremonial and lavish living enjoyed by Homeric heroes could only exist in a society able to afford the expense. And beyond the proliferation of mammon, the epic world of Iliadic myth is pretty much business as usual – albeit the ground shaking war with Troy – with no mention of depopulation or disasters, a point of conspicuous embarrassment for historical Greeks.

In conclusion, Snodgrass winds down his essay by allowing room for historic inspiration, but ultimately declares that Homer was simply a good fictionist. At long last, there was no such historical society that could be called “epic!”

Newman’s "Safavid Iran"

The Safavids were the longest-ruling state in Iran after the founding of Islam, and its duration marks the boundary between the medieval and the modern. Such is Andrew Newman’s assertion, taking issue with what he calls the “conventional understanding” of Safavid history, that of a notional state exercising power, with modern Iran as the point of reference, a situation that Newman hopes to demonstrate is too simplistic. In his short work, Safavid Iran, Newman seeks to buck tradition by asking how the Safavids retained power, rather than examining their “decline.” Intended as a primer for specialists and non-specialists alike, Safavid Iran follows the rise and fall of an empire about which “an intimidating array of primary and secondary sources” has been written, largely in response to the Iranian Revolution. But however much Newman would like for his work to stand out, it is perhaps yet another entry in the “intimidating array,” as non-specialists shall likely find the book a challenge to engage.

The Safavid dynasty actually originated as a brotherhood of militant Sufis (Sufi Islam being a mystical denomination of Mohammed’s religion) that came to power in seventeenth century Iran, and as such their principal means of control was manipulation of the various forms of Islam. Their first shah, Ismail, is seen through his own writings as the ruler of a religious nobility that transcends and unites the urban and tribal elements from all nationalities and faiths in his new realm. In addition to their native Sufism, the Safavids embraced Twelver Shi’ism, a form of Islam in which it is believed that the Twelfth Imam, aka the “Hidden Imam,” will return as a savior to the Muslims. As a means of maintaining his control, Ismail tapped into this belief and encouraged a self-appreciating messianic message, cementing the position of shah as the “apex of the spirituo-political and cultural discourses of the polity’s key constituencies,” a policy that united his tribal (and rival) Tajik and Turkish subjects. As emperors died and passed on their authority, their sons each became the head of the Sufi order and many also propagated the Twelver ideology and messianic persona. But by the time of Sulayman I, Sufi Islam was under attack, though the shah was still the head of Safavid Sufism. Yet the very presence of criticism bespoke of a popular adherence to Sufism and a desire to explore the causes of natural and man-made disasters that proliferated during the empire’s latter years.

Having carved out a state through the gathering of nomadic tribes, it should come to no surprise that violence and factionalism characterized the first several succession disputes in the empire. The Safavids of Newman’s book seem to spend every other succession fighting yet another civil war and when not engaged in such struggles, fighting off the Ottomans and Uzbeks and regaining lost territories taken by the same (interestingly, the Safavids never seem to initiate international conflict but are largely seen as the subjects of unwarranted violence). Yet as the empire matured and the central administration solidified, the successions became more and more confined to the political center. This progression was remarkably steady and predictable: Ismail’s death in 1524 resulted in civil war to establish the dominant tribe – the royal person remaining above the bloodshed – though upon the demise of his successor, Tahmasp, extermination of royal contenders, familiar to students of European and Ottoman succession disputes, entered the political strategy. Following that fiasco, Abbas I (r.1587-1629) altered the dominance of tribal forces by creating a slave army called the ghulam, though the tribes did retain their importance. But with the ascension of Abbas’ grandson, Safi, the tribal struggles took backseat to a flurry of political assassinations and a healthy dose of external strife, while a new center of power drawn from Turks, Tajiks, and ghulam was established. By the ascension of Abbas II in 1642, interpersonal succession conflict was restricted to the court while the dominant government structure remained intact. Similarly, the customary external threats were also unusually quiet. Sulayman’s ascension in 1666 was the smoothest yet as the inner circle quietly elected Abbas II’s successor, the borders again remaining undisturbed. The rise of Sulayman’s son, Husayn, followed a similar path.

Despite the obvious excitement that should animate this Safavid history, Newman’s delivery serves to render the tale purely academic. Each chapter is broken up into largely the same categories of military overview, marriage lists, politico-religious interaction, and artistic expression of the new era, leaving the text with the feel of a catalogue of antiquarian scholarship. Information is Newman’s watchword, and the author mercilessly crams as much data onto each page as he can, often at the expense of the narrative. Safavid history is clearly brimming with drama and intrigue, yet Newman considers his task to be analytical in the larger scheme, eschewing potentially exhilarating adventure for truncated accounts of wars and interpersonal struggles. Such is the attempted coup by Ismail’s half-brother, Sulayman; his bid to oust his brother and gain popular support is delivered with dry indifference and his summary execution left uninterestedly ambiguous – one does not even get any idea of just how the plot failed. Such drama aside, it is the political alliances that interest Newman, and each chapter has its allotted section devoted to marriages and attempts at the same. As the Safavids depended upon unreliable and semi-autonomous tribes, such ties were key to promoting unity. But Newman seems preoccupied with enumerating in detail the various alliances and near-alliances engaged in through this practice, and in his characteristic fashion these accounts come across as catalogues with little apparent meaning for the monarch in question, the sheer volume of Dickensian interconnection leaving the reader groping through the seemingly random names and relations. But unlike a novelist, Newman treats the narrative of such events as a necessary evil, the task of coloring and invigorating the tale a chore to which he is not about so subject himself.

Semantics also enter the picture as Newman appears convinced that his readers (both specialists and non) are as concerned as he is himself with haggling over the proper word-choice to accurately reflect his erudite studies. Pity the casual reader who picks up Safavid Iran, for the author takes issue with words like “state,” a term troubling to Newman as it carries too many “preconceived notions;” i.e. “a highly centralized administrative apparatus with a monopoly on military and, in its totalitarian versions, political power and formal lines of administrative practice and procedure, as well as fixed, internationally agreed-upon borders, a single language, and a generally homogenous population.” Unless the reader comes to the same conclusion, he will be perplexed to find Newman attempting to alleviate all such unpleasant “confusion” by inserting “project,” “polity,” and “realm” as alternative terms, as though these first two somehow impart greater clarity. Much of Newman’s political jargon follows a similar pattern.

Safavid Iran is at its very basic level an informative introduction to the empire that divides the medieval Middle East from the modern. Though troublesome to follow at times, it nonetheless breaks down each epoch in detail so as to aid the reader in grasping the development of the empire, blow-by-blow. Whether Newman’s approach aids or hampers the reader is subject to opinion.

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Early Post-Roman Europe Synthesized

Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

For those historians with the interest and the patience to closely explore the factors leading to the Medieval world, consider Oxford historian Chris Wickham’s Framing the Early Middle Ages. A massive book (at a whopping 831 pages of proper text – to say nothing of the 110 page bibliography – it is 138 pages longer than Dante’s Divine Comedy, 101 pages longer than Grimm’s complete fairy tales, 64 pages longer than the complete Chronicles of Narnia, and if compared to my copy of The Lord of the Rings, a comparative page count would land the reader somewhere around the Battle of the Pelennor Fields), it is as detailed as its breadth will allow, spanning four hundred years of Europe after Rome and looking at nearly every region from the Pillars of Hercules to the Nile Delta. Wickham’s take on the world is one of economics and social constructs, forsaking church councils and political history for the gritty world of peasants and aristocrats, markets and towns, charting the progression from Rome’s fall in the fifth century to the formulation of the early European kingdoms in the ninth.

By taking a broad look at the post-Roman world, Wickham seeks to avoid unsightly teleologies (arguments that history has an ultimate end, such as capitalism, the Reformation, or the European Union) that must – in his view – come about through too narrow an examination. Wickham divides the post-Roman world into three parts: the eastern and western halves of the Mediterranean, and the “North,” which includes the British Isles and Denmark, but occasionally Francia. Despite such divisions, the whole work is a look at the Big Picture. Wickham is very good at what he does, viewing such broad subjects as church growth, Viking raids, and the roller coaster ride of the aristocracy as large movements that shape his world, preferring these over individuals and events; written records, lives of prominent men, and archeological finds are all stitched into the survey canvas, never a one taken as the marker of world change. Yet while Wickham wishes to avoid teleologies, he ascribes to a sort of reverse-teleology: it all began with the decline of Rome.

Although nationalistic politics are not the focus of his work, Wickham takes his fellow historians to task whenever the opportunity arises. On the hotly debated topic of Decline and Fall, Wickham adheres most strongly to the continuity argument, encouraging historians to look beyond their teleologies and accept that Roman military defeat and loss of lands did not necessarily translate into political death. Wickham sees a great deal of continuity in the post-Roman world – while acknowledging its confusion – such as the “strikingly ordinary” will of an aristocrat in the 530s, whose holdings, though of no great size, nonetheless resembled that of earlier estates. As for when estates and villas did vanish, Wickham cites C.R. Whittaker as he argues for the “destruction” of the traditional villa only in the sense that it came to reflect local peasant values rather than those of the leisure senatorial class. Even population decline, to which Wickham admits, is turned around to bolster his continuity argument, pointing out that the areas in the West that lost population were largely peripheral and thinly peopled to begin with, and in cases of total transformation he argues for consistent habitation under merely new forms of material culture and language.

Wickham might be said to adhere to a “soft decline” model, observing the continuity of cities where the curial class simply abandoned its tax-raising role and town authority devolved into a hierarchy of “leading men” as imperial authority waned. In a similar vein, in his book Barbarians to Angels, Peter S. Wells criticized the notion that demonumentalization of cities bespeaks of European decline, arguing instead that the locals simply had other needs once monument-loving Rome receded from the West. Wickham agrees with this conclusion in his look at the Syrian town Scythopolis and later points out the ongoing presence of regional urban elites – to say nothing of Italian towns that have hosted populations up to the present day. Where Wickham does see substantial and total collapse of the Roman heritage is in England, a view that lines up nicely with that held by Bryan Ward-Perkins. However, despite the severe decline in Roman standards, Wickham notes that British “field systems have often been shown to pre-date even the Romans.” Indeed, the peasants seem to have experienced the smoothest ride of all Rome’s abandoned subjects.

Wickham defines peasants as settled cultivators and pastoralists who control a measure of their own resources and labor, as compared to slaves, who utterly lack any claim to land and liberty. Much of Wickham’s book might be considered an apology for peasants, who were not always the servile rustics one pictures from novels or Hollywood movies, but could be wealthy, contributing members of society, many donating land to the Church. They were also rather free in the period from AD 400 to 800: political fragmentation throughout the post-Roman world was a boon to peasants as the level of autonomy enjoyed at the local level was proportionate to fragmentation of the state. Such freedom came in varying degrees. In northern Italy, though dominated by the aristocracy, peasants still apparently had the ability to choose whom to approach for patronage, and Wickham cites a number of them exercising the right to testify in a court case involving their patron. Conversely, in the Ile de France peasants were almost completely under the domination of their landlords, working estates owned by the aristocracy. On the far opposite end of the spectrum are the towns of the Eastern Mediterranean, such as Aphrodito, which was completely in the hands of medium to rich land-owning peasants, and Jeme with its nearly omnipotent headman.

Control of labor is a prominent theme throughout Framing the Early Middle Ages and there were extremes of labor control: on the micromanaging end Wickham finds late-Roman Senator Palladius’ Opus agriculturae, a manual on the surveillance of one’s tenants for the purposes of improvement; on the opposite end of the spectrum rests a Bavarian law code that left tenants to their own devices, the lord simply providing the seeds for planting and reaping the rewards come harvest time. Wickham’s inner Socialist comes out in his glowing yet pragmatic description of (mostly) egalitarian villages where surplus wealth was shared out amongst the less fortunate so as to maintain social appreciation and cohesion. Such households often had un-free laborers attached to them, especially in England, Ireland, and Scandinavia, but unfortunately for his Marxist model, Wickham reports that the evidence supposes that class exploitation did not occur – at least not on a large-enough scale to matter. But despite this supposed lack of exploitation, the stress of free versus un-free makes frequent appearances throughout Wickham’s work, and though most of the un-free help – an amount left undefined – were merely tenants and arguably had the liberty to own possessions, they nonetheless had no public rights – indeed, mutilation by masters was a debatable topic amongst the seventh century Visigoths. Moreover, it would seem that the West was a less-free place than the rather autonomous East. But what autonomy existed in the whole of the formerly Roman world was eventually eclipsed by aristocratic rule as the aristocracy consolidated their hold, translated the peasant mode of production to that of a feudal society, and reduced the remaining holdouts of peasant freedom.

Crucial to Wickham’s reverse-teleology is the Roman aristocracy, having established itself in the empire as the rightful rulers and leisure class. A part of the Roman aristocratic pedigree was their advanced education, an anomaly, in Wickham’s eyes, in the history of the world’s otherwise violent rulers. However, the elites owed their power to the Empire. In the West, the fall of Rome precipitated a dramatic social alteration in the upper classes. Dislocated from their old power and abandoned by a receding empire, these worthies were forced to adopt increasingly militant lifestyles and identities, or else join the Church – though Wickham is careful to point out that militarization did not necessarily mean “Germanization,” as many Gallic aristocrats retained their Roman culture. More important for the European aristocracy was the ownership of land, which went towards furthering their militant, political, and ecclesiastical goals. Where the Roman senatorial class had held stupendous amounts of private land, in the post Roman world the aristocracy was largely divided between those who managed to continue the Roman model of land owning, and those whose land-ownership vanished, if ever it existed at all. In Gaul/Francia, there was general continuity, with some aristocrats lording over properties held across the realm and others restricted to within a district. This latter state was mirrored in Lombard Italy, a fractious region, where holding territories outside of a small area was almost non-existent. In the East, the picture was somewhat different. For a start, the political systems were consistently stable and as such allowed more options for the aristocracy, largely broken down into the categories of town and military, the latter becoming increasingly important, just as in the West.

Throughout his book, Wickham demonstrates a wise – if sometimes obsessive – drive to cover his tracks, examining every argument and heading off counterarguments so as to bolster his position. This has its pros and cons. On the one hand, it certainly serves to cement Wickham’s credibility. He admits to choosing to focus on subjects of personal interest and knowledge and professes respect and appreciation for other forms of research into the social sciences. Wickham seems to know his own limitations and is upfront when appropriate, admitting when he has no understanding of languages and pointing out his own hypotheses. He also takes his time to justify his opinions in light of rival research or insufficient evidence, and routinely directs the reader to other chapters that will further understanding of a subject. But however helpful Wickham may think it to work his way out of any corners in which his colleagues might wish to trap him, the sheer amount of ink wasted on such asides – many of them quite lengthy and pointless – derails the flow of the chapter, distracting the reader from the content.

But the most negative aspect of Framing the Early Middle Ages is its readability. Wickham is an outstanding historian and a fine author, yet his book reads with terrible monotony, the history devolving into sterile, fleshless survey. Of particular note amongst the few exceptions is an anecdotal portrayal of an admittedly fictional northern European town called Malling. Here Wickham tweaks his style by launching into a detailed examination of the evolving social patterns within the imaginary village, of headmen and patronage, and what the villagers hear of changes in other towns. Stuffed unceremoniously in between his more conventional – and factual – discussions of peasant social norms, the Malling episode is jarring, yet more enlightening and entertaining than the rest of the chapter and reveals to the reader the greatest weakness of the book.

For such a work, narrative may be considered an extraneous superficiality, yet Framing the Early Middle Ages badly needs one. Peter Heather, writing along similar lines in his Empires and Barbarians, somehow pulled it off. But more than narrative, what is especially left wanting in Wickham’s book is a more lively delivery – again, achieved stunningly in Heather. Though Framing the Early Middle Ages’s usefulness as an outstanding resource should not be ignored, the lack of vitality on the page runs the risk of numbing turning away readers less committed to battling their way through unforgivingly dull and often repetitive prose. To be more than a good book, a survey must be lively. In this, Wickham disappoints.

For better or for worse, Rome fell, yet from its collapse sprang the kingdoms of Christendom and the societies that shaped the world of today. Though hardly exhaustive insofar as each subdivision of early European history is concerned, there are likely few other works that can boast such expansive and well-organized synthesis than Framing the Early Middle Ages. Though dry, this book in invaluable for anyone who wants a clearer understanding of the building blocks of the Middle Ages.

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Lewis' Crucible

David L. Lewis, God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008.

If ever a historian swooned over Islam, it was David Levering Lewis. In God’s Crucible, Lewis explores the rise of Islam in opposition to Europe and considers the possibility that the pivotal Battle of Poitiers in 732 was hardly a victory, but rather the lost potential of a Islamicized Europe, one where learning, sophisticated economies, and religious toleration would have sped up progress by several hundred years. Lewis strives to prove this thesis through a detailed history that demonstrates how Iberian Islam developed and influenced the budding medieval West and how, through the victory at Poitiers, Europe missed out on what he considers true greatness.

“Islam rose when Rome fell,” and so begins a high speed, yet detailed recounting of the declining Empire. The Rome of Lewis’ history is a monster with a troubled past, hell-bent on perpetuating a never-ending war with its equally hubristic neighbor, Persia. Together they dominate the known world, relegating the rather uninteresting Arabian Peninsula to the sidelines of trade and proxy struggles. Everything changes in the mid-seventh century when messengers arrive in the empires’ capitals, warning of the imminent arrival of Islam. The familiar story plays out in lively fashion until the reeling Constantinople is all that stands in the way of Islam’s advance.

Juxtaposed against the vivacious new empire is the badly declined West, a good two hundred years into barbarian domination. Beginning with reference to Belgian historian Henri Pirenne’s thesis of an Europe isolated by Arab domination of the Mediterranean, Lewis proceeds to outline the barbarian migrations into the Western Empire, paying especial attention to the Iberian Visigoths that are forerunners to the Islamic invasion of the peninsula. The same comes about in 711 as a disgruntled chieftain invites Muslim mercenaries over the straights of Gibraltar, whereupon they quickly subdue the peninsula for the Dar al-Islam.

Lewis looks upon the fallen West, its Roman institutions in shambles, and gives the very good impression that he envisions a land ripe for salvation at Muslim hands, an opportunity that it is not about to accept. Lewis unapologetically ascribes to the Brian Ward-Perkins school of Imperial decline and fall, viewing the careening descent of Rome as the death of a civilization. Europe by 476 has become a brutish land of hulking and feral barbarian warlords, its immigrant peoples best represented by the lawless and wild Saxons, “Allergic to civilization and immune to Christianity in their veneration of the gods of Walhalla.” In this harsh world, Clovis rises as king of his Frankish people, Salic Law in hand, breaking free of the old Roman mold to create a “European mindset.” But Lewis remains unforgiving, sniffing at the Merovingian dynasty, so lovingly detailed in Patrick J. Geary’s Before France and Germany, and pairing it down to “a succession of Chilperics, Dagoberts, Clothaires, and Sigiberts, as politically impotent in their final decades as they were symbolically indispensable.” Indispensable to their puppet-masters, perhaps, but not to Lewis. There is no mention of the complex and oft-violent hierarchy of episcopal politics that characterized Geary’s narrative; indeed, the church is left to flounder until the coming of Charles Martel and Charlemagne. The former Charles, Clovis’ descendant by politics and perhaps by blood, swiftly takes center stage just in time to intercept the first Muslim jihad into Francia. The first blow struck in Francia is actually turned away at Toulouse by a minor Frankish noble, Odo, but injured Muslim pride and a kind of Oriental Manifest Destiny assures a second invasion warranting pan-Frankish collaboration. Yet it is not famous Poitiers in 732, but Toulouse in 721 that saved Christendom, as it gave the nation-states the time required to become a military match for Islam. Nor is Poitiers the last battle for control of Francia: Odo gets a last hurrah in defeating the next assault sent to avenge Poitiers and thereafter the Franks engage in long defensive campaigns that result in the devastation of Gaul and the mutual bloodying of both powers. Yet Lewis doggedly adheres to his mantra that Islam can do no wrong by writing off the numerous Muslim defeats in France as the desultory bickering of neighbors, the real salvation of Europe being brought about solely by a distracting Berber uprising in Iberia and North Africa. By contrast, as the stupendous Carolingian crusade that Charlemange eventually leads into Iberia is similarly derailed by Saxon troubles back home, Lewis glibly asserts that it was Islamic martial prowess, not distraction, that turned back the first Christian counter-attack even before a proper war could be fought. To Lewis, all causation and agency is firmly in the Muslims’ hands.

The eventual withdrawal of the jihad marks the beginning of a power struggle that signals the rise of an Iberia independent of the Dar al-Islam where Lewis depicts the legendary convivencia that supposedly existed between Muslims, Christians, and Jews, a contrast with the violently intolerant Christian rulers whose mounting atrocities culminate in Charlemagne, who even goes so far as to invade Iberia in his abortive proto-crusade. After Charlemagne’s retreat, Europe strengthens itself – though Lewis ponders whether it would have been better to just capitulate – and Iberia goes on its utopian way of self-improvement. The Pyrenees become a boundary of intermittent and unending warfare between Muslims and the Christian mountain kingdoms. What follows is the Spanish Reconquista of Iberia, a time of “reciprocally reassuring ignorance and … an addiction to war as the substitute for the complexities of coexistence.” This assumes that “coexistence” – see “Islamic rule” – was preferable to Christian independence.

The doomed hero of God’s Crucible is not a man, but a nation: Andalusia, Islam in Europe, a caliphal state that is more than willing to share its cultural achievements if the Franks will but humble their overweening pride and submit to Islamic lordship. Within the hallowed urban halls, along the paved colonnades, and in the gentle shades of its imported palms the three monotheisms (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) enjoy “interdependence that was to distinguish Islam in Iberia for several centuries. But for such a peaceful land of coexistence, one might wonder why the abortive Carolingian campaign of 770s stirred up “Unrest among the amir’s Christian populations.” This subtle contradiction is representative of a problem running throughout God’s Crucible.

Lewis permits himself a curious idealism regarding Islam, signaling his preference by calling the Christian calendar “presumptuous” – despite adhering to the Common Era designation that follows the exact same dating system – and almost religiously delivering his dates in pairs, first the Common Era and then the anno Hegirae (AH), dated from Islam’s founding exodus from Mecca. Much of the rhetoric is merely passing – Clovis and Charlemagne are cast in the “hulking” mold of their ancestral Odoacers, while the Muslim philosopher kings are descendants of astute businessmen – but Lewis goes to great broken-record lengths to prove his tolerance thesis, largely ignoring the fiscal tyranny of Islam, which results in a popular revolt when a Spanish ruler raises taxes. Indeed, Lewis takes great liberties with his assumptions, even claiming (without a footnote) that if one had taken a poll after an unusual Christian uprising in Spain, “all faiths would have shown an overwhelming disapproval.” What Lewis means is that he cannot fathom why Christians living under the yoke of Islam would ever dream of objecting.

To bolster his shaky claims, Lewis carefully juxtaposes Christian violence with Muslim tolerance, the latter allegedly made possible through the dhimmi system, a protection racket by which non-Muslim subjects faced extortion (the infamous jizya tax) and severe social constraints in exchange for religious freedom. Lewis cheerfully lists the strict proscriptions against religious expression, legal sanctions, and social restrictions, briskly passing over them all as “a considerable improvement” when compared to the way that Christians treated one another. Lewis expects his readers to believe that such restrictive living was preferable to that of Christian lands, yet vilifies the Christian Visigoths for committing nearly identical crimes against their indigenous Spanish Jews. It is indeed curious to note that, for all its supposed toleration, Islam oversaw speedy conversions across the empire (causing the rulers to worry about the loss of jizya income ), where just a generation before the people had been risking life and limb in avoiding conversion to merely a different form of Christianity. Ultimately, the rhetoric is shamelessly in favor of Islam: when the Muslims conquered half the known world and more besides, they simply brought unity and progressive society to a crumbling civilization. But when the Christians go a-crusading into Spain and Palestine, Lewis calls them “homicidal.”

Insofar as reading material is concerned, God’s Crucible is a brilliant book. Engaging, authoritatively delivered, and chatty, it makes strong claims with some reasonable arguments entering the picture even as Lewis wistfully imagines an Islamic world without Carolingia. Where it falls short in its central argument, it more than makes up the difference insofar as the condensation of seven hundred years of history is concerned. As for its more problematic declarations, few books on the subject are as likely to encourage further reading.

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