Within the national collective imagination, the Battle of Poitiers remains considered a key moment in the history of France. Taking into account textual and material sources relating to the Islamic presence in the south of Gaul, however, makes it possible to weight the importance of this event.
In 2016, the announcement of the discovery of three Islamic burials in Nîmes had caused a stir. Identified by the orientation of the body of the deceased in the direction of Mecca, all three dated from VIIIe A century, these graves had come to pay precious material data to a file – the Islamic presence in the south of current France – which remained almost textual. In fact, by taking into account sources hitherto unknown, or ignored, but also by updating analysis grids, the history of the Islamic conquest, which has enabled the formation of an empire extending from the Pyrenees to the Industry, has been perpetual renewal since the 1980s.
Poitiers, Frankish victory and French myth
Behind “ The other battle of Poitiers The book proposes a synthesis of this Islamic presence in Septimania-that is to say the old Narbonnaise, which would correspond to the current Languedoc. Philippe Sénac makes an original contribution, with the ambition to offer updated interpretations on a forgotten story. Aware of writing in a socio-political context marked by tensions around Islam, he intends to get out of what we could call the “ Dictatorship of the event (P. 5-12, 119-123). In historiography as in French popular memory, the Islamic conquest remains in fact crushed by the “ Battle of Poitiers », Won by Charles Martel in 732.
Abundantly glossy, this event recently had the honor of a new study. In a masterful book published in 2015, William Blanc and Christophe Naudin indeed both analyzed the event itself, taking up the available documentary file ; But also (and above all ?) Showed how historiography, medieval, modern or contemporary, had interpreted it. Their study had shown how the Battle of Poitiers had ended up being decked out, from the 20th century, of a major political significance – and new. Importance “ media Acquired by this event has therefore created a distorting prism, which has simplified, even caricatured, interpretations, crushed the nuance, and left in the forgetting of other aspects of the Islamic presence in Gaul.
Consequently, the author’s objective is to restore the importance of this Islamic presence on the Gallic coast of the Mediterranean, unjustly neglected – but that the reader is not mistaken: Poitiers is not replaced by another major battle. In this regard, this publication is a new extension of the work of Philippe Sénac, which has been dedicated since the 1980s to the study of relations between the Frankish, Merovingian or Carolingian world, and the Islamic world – marked by publications which, for some, have become essential references. This work thus constitutes the counterpart of a book published more than forty years ago, which treated – already – of the Islamic presence in Provence.
Texts, currencies and seals: the sources of a region on the sidelines
Philippe Sénac is based on the achievements of recent research, to contribute to the historiography of the conquest. The analysis is based on the confrontation of Latin texts – for some well -known historians – and Arabic texts, among which a number have been published in recent decades. This is particularly the case for the work of the great Andalusian historian Ibn ḥayyān (976-1064), whose Muqtabis fī aḫbār ahl al-Andalusthe reference chronicle of the first centuries of Al-Andalus, was partially rediscovered in manuscripts preserved in Morocco, and of which fragments are cited by many posterior authors. This is also the case with ḫalīfa b. Ḥayyāṭ (777-854), whose story of the Islamic conquest has so far been underused.
It should not be forgotten, however, that, for the Arab authors, the Narbonnaise was a distant margin, one of the Western extremities of the Islamic world. Having only parcel information about it, they can often provide us as best as possible, even disjointed or even contradictory, or even contradictory stories, a fortiori Because they write, for the oldest that we keep, almost a century after the loss of this territory attached to Regnum Francorum By Pépin the brief in the second half of the 750s.
One of the major contributions of this work is to take full account of the data from material culture, in particular the currencies and the seals, which are presented at the end of the work (p. 95-106). Philippe Sénac’s recent work has indeed demonstrated that the analysis of this type of documentation could provide solid information on the conquest of the Wisigothic toledo kingdom by the armies of the Omeyyad caliphs (711-714), about which the texts are sometimes evasive, and often problematic in their interpretation.
South Gaul at a crossroads
From this fairly large corpus-whatever one can regret that it is not entirely exhaustive, in particular with regard to the Arabic texts, the author draws a convincing portrait of pre-Islamic septimania, province of the Wisigothic Kingdom of Toledo (p. 25-37). The conquest strictly speaking by Muslims remains poorly known-its date, for example, is still not established with certainty, even if the author defends the hypothesis that it had to be carried out in two stages, first in the extreme the end of the 710s, then in the early 720s (p. 39-50, 53-57). This is the occasion for a digression on the battle of Toulouse which, although overshadowed from the VIIIe A century in Frankish historiography by the victory of Charles Martel, obviously had much more important geopolitical consequences (p. 45-48).
The modalities of the provincialization of the Narbonnaise, which de facto became a territory administered by the Omeyyad Caliphs of Damascus, are however poorly known, for lack of precise data (p. 60-70). However, it seems that it was not considered a province (Wilāya) as of right, but rather as a dependence on the province of Al-Andalus, which had herself won its autonomy vis-à-vis iffrīqiya only several years after the conquest. Be that as it may, Islamization seems to have been particularly tenuous there – a major argument based in the total absence of the region, and in particular its capital of Narbonne (Arbūna) in the rich corpus of Andalusian biographical literature, which nevertheless made it possible to identify more than 13,000 scholars (p. 66).
If some military activities carried by the Muslims are still reported, the geopolitical dynamic began to reverse in the mid -730s. In 737, Charles Martel took over Avignon and inflicted on his opponents with a defeat in Sigean, on the banks of the Berre. On the other hand, the following events remain confused, both in Latin sources and the Arab sources. Taking advantage of the internal bustle of the Andalusian state, divided by the arrival of the young Prince Omeyyade ʽabd al-Raḥmān ierwhich finally took power in 756, it was finally Pépin le Bref who managed to take over Narbonne (759), where he installed a monetary workshop and a bishop.
Nothing certain on the other hand as to the future of the lands which extended between this city and the Pyrenees, which perhaps returned to the free fold on the occasion of the expedition of Charlemagne against Zaragoza in 778 (p. 71-83). And if thereafter, campaigns were carried out against the Narbonnaise by the emirs of Cordoba (793 and 841), they had no geopolitical impact – except to illustrate that the conquest of Barcelona by the future Louis Le Pieux (801) did not allow to protect Carolingian septimania, still targeted by raids at the beginning of XIe century (p. 85-93).
Conclusion
With this rich and documented work, Philippe Sénac therefore returns to an episode undoubtedly marking in the memory of local populations-the memory of the Islamic presence has variously crystallized there, from the current toponymic repertoire to the folklore of modern times, passing through chivalrous literature (and in particular the Guillaume d’Orange cycle) (p. 108-117).
He managed to establish in a convincing manner that it was in Septimania that the sons of the conflict between the Kingdom of the Franks and the Muslims came from Al-Andalus have formed. In doing so, he demonstrates that the geopolitical consequences of the Battle of Poitiers were ultimately, from a historical point of view, only very improper.
Another merit of this book is the prudence of the author, which is careful not to pour into essentialism or catastrophism, in the line of his previous work: Philippe Sénac endeavors in particular to show that religion has never seemed to be a relevant prism in the eyes of the Latin authors when it comes to defining the conquerors, or that the conquest then the Islamic occupation that popular history usually associates them (p. 63-64).
Thus, beyond its scientific contributions, this work also reminds that, for the historian, salvation is in sources-which it would be unwelcome to interpret in the light of a later or, and still, contemporary Islamophobia.