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Out of Arabia
Imagine two persons at both ends of the spectrum Orient-Occident, a Roman emperor and an Arab Caliph. Nothing seems different. Yet the first was the son of an Arab sheikh of a city adjacent to the Syrian desert, the second had blue eyes and blond hair. The first was the Roman emperor Philip, said the Arab, who reigned in the third century and celebrated the millennium of Rome, the second Caliph Abderrahman III, ruler of Andalusia at its peak in the tenth century.
Arab history is often viewed as beginning with Islam. But the Arabs have a history going back thousands of years before-one, furthermore, intimately bound up with European history and identity. Arab kingdoms in the Near East had a dramatic impact upon the Romans from the first century BC, and by the third AD Arab emperors were ruling in Rome itself. Even long before the Romans, the Arabs' forbears, the Phoenicians, were exploring the coasts of England and West Africa and colonizing much of Spain, Sicily and North Africa in the early first millennium BC. The Arabs were to continue this tradition of world penetration long before the European "Age of Expansion." Islam, therefore, was as much a culmination as a beginning.
Out of Arabia - Phoenicians, Arabs, and the discovery of Europe
by Warwick Ball.
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Imaginons deux figures aux deux bouts du spectre Orient-Occident, un empereur romain et un calife arabe. Rien ne semble plus différent. Et pourtant, le premier était le fils d’un cheikh arabe d’une ville syrienne jouxtant le désert, le second avait les yeux bleus et les cheveux blonds. Le premier était l’empereur romain Philippe, dit l’Arabe, qui régna au IIIe siècle et célébra le millénaire de Rome, le second le calife Abderrahman III, souverain de l’Andalousie à son apogée, au Xe siècle. Ainsi commence le livre de Warwick Bal.
Out of Arabia - Phoenicians, Arabs, and the discovery of Europe
by Warwick Ball.
Photo : The Great Mosque of Paris - France
Out of Arabia
Imagine two persons at both ends of the spectrum Orient-Occident, a Roman emperor and an Arab Caliph. Nothing seems different. Yet the first was the son of an Arab sheikh of a city adjacent to the Syrian desert, the second had blue eyes and blond hair. The first was the Roman emperor Philip, said the Arab, who reigned in the third century and celebrated the millennium of Rome, the second Caliph Abderrahman III, ruler of Andalusia at its peak in the tenth century.
Arab history is often viewed as beginning with Islam. But the Arabs have a history going back thousands of years before-one, furthermore, intimately bound up with European history and identity. Arab kingdoms in the Near East had a dramatic impact upon the Romans from the first century BC, and by the third AD Arab emperors were ruling in Rome itself. Even long before the Romans, the Arabs' forbears, the Phoenicians, were exploring the coasts of England and West Africa and colonizing much of Spain, Sicily and North Africa in the early first millennium BC. The Arabs were to continue this tradition of world penetration long before the European "Age of Expansion." Islam, therefore, was as much a culmination as a beginning.
Out of Arabia - Phoenicians, Arabs, and the discovery of Europe
by Warwick Ball.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Imaginons deux figures aux deux bouts du spectre Orient-Occident, un empereur romain et un calife arabe. Rien ne semble plus différent. Et pourtant, le premier était le fils d’un cheikh arabe d’une ville syrienne jouxtant le désert, le second avait les yeux bleus et les cheveux blonds. Le premier était l’empereur romain Philippe, dit l’Arabe, qui régna au IIIe siècle et célébra le millénaire de Rome, le second le calife Abderrahman III, souverain de l’Andalousie à son apogée, au Xe siècle. Ainsi commence le livre de Warwick Bal.
Out of Arabia - Phoenicians, Arabs, and the discovery of Europe
by Warwick Ball.
Photo : The Great Mosque of Paris - France