A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

In the south, the threat still came from the Muslims, now known as the Saracens, who now
occupied Sicily. The Abbasid Empire was falling apart, but the Muslims had learned the art of
seafaring and were the chief pirates of the Mediterranean. Like the Vikings, they raided and
plundered far from home - although, being in the slave trade, they were less likely to slaughter their
victims. In 846 they even reached Rome and sacked St Peter’s. They established themselves a base
on the coast of Provence and even became a menace on the Alpine passes, taking particular
pleasure in seizing Christian prelates on their way to Rome and demanding large ransoms. The
pilgrimage to Rome, which had been popular since the seventh century, became more dangerous
than ever before. The Church tried to forbid women pilgrims to go, since males who put them up
for the night were likely to demand payment in kind and the lady usually ended as the local
prostitute in some remote part of France or Italy. The Arab pirates made the sea more dangerous
than it had been since the days of the Cilician pirates. They practically strangled trade between
Rome and Byzantium. In northern Italy, the pirates had established a fortified camp on the river
Garigliano and raided as they felt inclined, from Rome to the Alps. Finally, the warrior pope John
X formed alliances with various princes and persuaded the Byzantine fleet to bottle up the river
mouth. They besieged the impregnable fortress, starved the Arabs into submission, then went in
and slaughtered every one of them. It must have been a satisfying moment, and princes and counts
all over Europe must have daydreamed grimly about doing the same to the Slavs or Magyars or
Vikings on their own doorsteps. In fact, the German emperor Otto the Great did succeed in
inflicting a crushing defeat on the Magyars at the battle of the Lechfeld, in 955. The Magyars then
decided to settle down, occupied the land we now call Hungary, and became a nation of peaceful
farmers and horsebreeders.
All this explains why, when we think of the Middle Ages, we think of castles and towers and
walled cities with battlements. Walls were the only defence against the raiders. Yet gradually the
raids ceased as Vikings, Magyars and Slavs settled down to farming. The Normans continued to
raid all over the Mediterranean, although even they settled down after William the Conqueror
became king of England - not, however, before they had retaken Sicily from the Arabs and sacked
Rome (1084).
The Arabs were also in retreat. By the year 1000 - the year the early Christians believed the world
would end - their power was coming to an end in Spain; in 1034 and the following year, the
Byzantine fleet, manned by Scandinavian mercenaries, decimated the Arab pirates and raided
Moslem strongholds in north Africa. Yet, oddly enough, this downfall of the Arabs was not
particularly beneficial to Byzantium. As Baghdad grew less important, the trading routes from the
east into Europe began to pass it by; and since Byzantium had been on the trading route to
Baghdad, it also suffered. Besides, a new and dangerous power was arising to the east of
Byzantium: the Turks. They were swiftly becoming the Vikings - or the Huns - of the
Mediterranean. The reason, as usual, was the growing population. The Turks were a tough nomadic
people who had few towns; but in the late tenth century they overthrew their Persian overlords and,
by the year 1000 Turkestan was ruled by the ‘mighty Mahmud, the victorious lord’ (as he is called
in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam), who extended his empire as far as India. After the death of
Mahmud in 1030, a strong clan called the Seljuks made a bid for power. They took over Baghdad,
conquered Armenia from the Greeks, and finally controlled all of Asia Minor - so that the land that
had been the home of Helen of Troy, and the refuge of the Cilician pirates, finally became Turkey.
The clash with Byzantium was inevitable, and in 1071 the Turks inflicted total defeat on the
Byzantine army at the battle of Manzikert, in Armenia. The Byzantine emperor, Romanus, was
captured and ransomed, but was murdered later that year; the great Turkish leader, Alp Arslan, was