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May 21, 2025 • 78 mins
folks, we are back with our series on Al-Andalus, aka Muslim-controlled Medieval Iberia, and it's time to talk about one of the most famous incidents in its 700-year history: the Battle of Tours. though it was a large battle for the time and contemporary accounts give us a decent picture, Tours and Christian leader Charles Martel have been the benefactors of over a millennia of propaganda, painting it as the first salvo in the big, "civilizational conflict" between Christianity and Islam. we discuss what actually happened, why the truth matters, and why contemporary and postmodern scholars agree but everyone in between certainly did not.
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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I had this like nice thing this weekend though, where well,
it's kind of sad, right because in my Bockle flats,
like we're we're all pretty tight and we hang out
a lot, and one of our neighbors has to move
out after living there for seventeen years because her landlord
is selling her flat. And I know, and it's just

(00:21):
like and it was so interesting, right because the neighbors
were all hanging out.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
We're having a party, right.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
I magically survived to hangover, probably through my power of
just like being a fairly regular drinker anyway. But you know,
like let's not let's not analyze.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
While Eleanor wasn't hungover on Sunday. We don't need to
go into all that.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
But I was noticing this like really quite interesting sort
of breakdown politicularly where like my neighbor who was moving out,
I think she's gonna be like either super young boomer
or like older gen X, Right, and then like all
of the zoomers were too cool to hang out with
us in the building. Ed you know what fair fucking

(01:02):
play like good, Like you don't need to hang out
with the zeamers.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
We're all like come over, drink drink this free wine.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
You see us hanging out outside, and they're like, yeah,
I gotta go and look, you know what fair play
to you. But we were like saying to Sarah, yeah,
it like fucking sucks because like her landlord is like
selling all his properties because they're going to bring in
like the like smallest modicum of taxation on landlords uh
in the UK. So all of these flats are suddenly

(01:28):
getting sold and she's like, yeah, you know, he owns
thirteen flats, And the millennials are like, what the fuck
that's like so immoral Jesus Christ, you know, like I
mean like like this is disgusting. I can't fucking And
she's like, no, no, no, he's a nice man like,
but I'm like the dude who had you paying rent

(01:52):
for seventeen years, who's now kicking you out of his flat,
a flat that I hasten to add he paid like
forty five thousand pounds, so he's just like made money.
Hand over a fist off. My neighbor now kicking her
out so that he can like get some other giant
payout payday and she's got to move out like two
more zones, like, which is so in like we have

(02:14):
like these circles, so it's like the zone one is
the middle and then da dada. So now she's gonna
be like way the fuck out there, and she's still like, no, no,
my landlord is fine, and like all millennials are like,
I'm building a guillotine right now. I'm gonna like starch
public like registry and I'm gonna go find this address.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
And I just thought it. It was like really interesting, kind
of like the.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Dichotomy there, and then like you know, it was also
Eurovision this weekend, and and then she was like, well,
I'm gonna go watch Eurovision, and like all of us
were like, oh, we're not, and she's like, why don't.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
You like Eurovision.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
We're like we all like Eurovision, but Israel's in Eurovision,
so like we're not We're not watching because of well,
like you know, the pink washing. And she was like, oh,
well I don't think about that bye, and we're just
like okay.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
And I didn't hear it. I didn't hear a god
damn thing about about Eurovision, to the point that when
I saw like somebody quote tweeting an article about a winner,
I was like, did they they have Eurovision and I
didn't know about it, and I didn't.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Well, I mean, the thing is like, yo, I gotta
tell you what, all the comrades, as far as we're.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Concerned, Eurovision didn't go down. I'm not joking.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Like Israel put all this money into like running ads
in Australia and America being like please vote for Israel
in the Eurovision, so like they came as a result,
you know, because like everyone's boycotting right like, and then
the people who aren't boycotting are just watching Eurovision like
normal people and voting for who they want the most.

(03:50):
But Israel is like running this thing where everyone is
like calling in twenty times for them from like America
and you know, fucking like Australia and all this stuff.
And then they're like, see everybody loves us, and it's
like nohing, oh my god, Like it's just that you're
the only ones left watching, right and it's like.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
And you still got second, and you still couldn't win.
You rigged the whole thing. The whole thing was pulled out.
It was rigged, and you couldn't do it. Like that's
the thing. I don't know who won. I don't care
they could be the second coming of Abba. Or they
could be you know, one of those things, one of

(04:33):
those like Icelandic groups that wins every so often or
something that's like, nah, we do the the the icy beats, yeah,
or something, and they're just like not the icy Beats
and you're like, yeah, man, that's cool. Whatever, Like it
could be the it could be the worst mumblecore rap
shit in history. They could be the coming of Abba.

(04:54):
But like, still, you didn't win. The whole thing's geared
for you. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Yeah, yeah, I think it was Austria.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
I think Austria one, but I don't But I don't know.
I don't know, Like I don't know what the songs
are because I'm just like, because you're not going to
catch a girl participant.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
Do they play the songs on the radio after? Is
that like the thing? I mean, I don't listen to
the radio here.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
Really, I mean not here, babe.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
They don't really play Eurovision songs on the radio here,
do they No. It's like I mean, in theory maybe,
but it's like I mean, to be fair, like we
usually have dogshit songs in the UK.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
So I just meant like they like there's like a
winning song ever, like yeah.

Speaker 4 (05:37):
Since.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Okay, so Justin's take on this is if it's a
really good song, they'll put it on the radio. But
the UK hasn't had a good song since arguably books
Phizz is making your mind up. So you can go
listen to that afterwards for a little treat.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Oh, Gena G. That's right, Gena G.

Speaker 4 (05:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah, she had a very small dress on. You know,
that's what Eurovision is all about. That's what Eurovision is
all about, small clothes. I mean, I think the first
time I ever saw it, wait, no, that wasn't the
first time. It was much after that, but I just
think of him fondly. There were these real oiled up,
shirtless irishmen this one year. God, what a time to
be ill, like they were just so oily luke. Oh

(06:23):
the Polish milk maids who were like jacking off, like
the like butter churns.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
That was memorable.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
But we're boycotting that bullshit and it sucks because I
love Eurovision so fucking much. But I can't even I
can't even be watching it. But you know what I
could do is I could go watch like videos of
old ones Man when there was like the Estonian guys
who dressed up like pirates ship that was so good.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
You know, it is like it has such a cultural
hold on Europe, and like for good reason I didn't
and like I couldn't tell you like a thing like there.
I couldn't tell you a thing about it, about what happens.

(07:10):
I know, like a couple of bands that are really
famous and I kind of like have gotten their starts
there and like, but other than that, it's just like
some kind of like competition. And when I found out,
like for a long time, I thought it was like
a cultural thing, so I was like, we're gonna show
up and do like our cultural ways or something like that.
So you have like people doing likes and shit like that.

(07:34):
And then I was like, oh, it's just a concert
and oh that's fun, like okay, cool, like but like
I had a come like one million percent different idea
of what it was than what it actually was. Like
I thought, you know, like everybody was kind of like,
here's are you know, whatever our uh whatever music we

(07:59):
have that we kind of like or whatever, and that
was it. And then finding out it's just like this
huge like loo battle of the Battle of the bands
for the weirdest fucking shit you've ever heard, and occasionally
the best electronic music ever, and you're just like.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Cool, like fundamentally, Luke, this is our culture, but it's
like our beautiful European culture and like the always sunny
way where it's likes or I'm European, you know.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
I know I am. I am not hating. I am
simply saying that I was badly mistaken about exactly what
Eurovision was.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
Probably like it's probably like a I don't know, like
five or ten years ago, and I was like, oh, okay,
And I don't know why I thought that, because I
knew Abba came from it, but I guess maybe I
thought that, like they I don't clean Dion.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, yeah, who represented Switzerland?

Speaker 3 (09:02):
About to say she's not.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
No, but she represented she represented Switzerland. Yeah, I mean
there's not euphoria song Like that song is real. That's
a real song, you know.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
Uh, you know, like you occasionally get real songs.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
But it's like, yeah, I mean it just sucks because
we can't have nice things anymore.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
So uh, and it's such a nice thing.

Speaker 3 (09:23):
You remember that Planet of the Bass song that was yeah,
a couple of years ago. Yeah, that that is all
Eurovision songs.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
To me, ideal. Like, I get really annoyed when because
there's you have two options.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
You have the Planet of the Bass song or well
actually three, or you have some like an insane metal
from a lot of the the like the Nordic countries
will occasionally send metal and you're like, great, fantastic, And
then the other option is that like sometimes people just
send these sincere ballads and it's like, get the fuck

(10:06):
out of here. I hate it. I hate it every
time someone sends a ballad. I'm like, get I don't
want to see a ballad. I don't want to hear
abaid I. Also, I mean, the cute thing I'm telling
people is that I'm boycotting Eurovision until Australia is kicked
back out again because I don't think that Australia belongs.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
I think that Australia should be allowed to vote, but
I don't think that they should be allowed to participate.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
But why should they be allowed to vote? Ah, you know,
they should be allowed to vote thing. Canada almost certainly should.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
I want them to have participation without representation. That's what
I think that the Australians should have, Okay, I don't,
I'd like I And it's so funny because like the
first one they said, and they were like, oh yeah,
we said a really good song.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
I'm like my good brothers.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
My brother's in hooning, my brother's in gooning, my brother's
in christ That song was not good.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
That was a bad ballad.

Speaker 3 (11:01):
And it's it's going to dot gun out there from
the Olympic regun w the dub.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
Centism, you know, Like I'm doing Australian references now, I'm
like a send machine Gun Filatio. That's who I want
to see representing Australia. But if you're gonna come at
me with some boring ass ballad like I don't want
to see it. Yes, I'm making references to Australian bands
from the odds. I don't even know if machine Gun
Flatio exists anymore. But I tell you what, Paging Mister
Strike is a banger of an album that, yeah, of

(11:31):
course you haven't believe look at Australian band.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
I've heard a couple of songs by Australian bands in excess.

Speaker 2 (11:40):
Kylie Minogue, Things of this.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
Nature, Minute Work, The Safety dance. Hello, they taught me
I could dance if I want to.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
That's so true, That's so fucking true.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
Actually, I'm trying to think of any other Australian bands.

Speaker 4 (11:55):
I know.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
Was Silver Chair from Australia, Yeah, they were there, Nies.
Who are those ones who did Prisoner of Society and
west en Riot little Australian band I can't recall anyway.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
I'm sure there are. I'm sure some Australian persons going
to tell us why this is rude and offensive?

Speaker 1 (12:19):
I love hate Yo, You're looking at a girl who
has seen the Hilltop Hoods in concert like five times,
like including here in London, like when the Hilltop has
come to London, I go because I love Australian rap
slash Adelaide based rap apparently, so you know, like, don't
don't worry about what I'm willing to see it in concert, Okay.

Speaker 3 (12:40):
I after this, I'm going to listen to whatever this is,
and these people do not this. If this does not
have ristine Australian accents while rapping, I'm gonna be furious
if they do the English thing where they lose it
when they start singing.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
So I'm immediately sending you YouTube videos of the Hilltop
Hoods because you're going to be so delighted.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
I need I need the word war to be rhymed
with the word na oh, I.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Mean so true, so true. Uh God, Like, I gotta
tell you the Hilltop Hoods are the ones to go
to for all of your Australian based needs if that's
what you want, and that's what I want.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
I don't want, like, don't give me this iggy Azalia.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
I'm pretending that I don't have an accent ship like
I want do not put on an American accent.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
I want you to like ride with it.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
So yeah, that her awful song would have been so
much better. She did just like fast things fast and
the like what like.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
Realist.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
Yeah. If she had been doing that, fine fine whatever
that we would like at least it would have been funny.
Instead it was just bad.

Speaker 5 (13:59):
I'm still in the mode of business right right.

Speaker 4 (14:10):
You know.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Actually, new New New One.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
Australia can stay in the Eurovision, but only if they
send Alia and she has to rap with her real accent, or.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
They send Nicole Kidman. They just send Nicole Kibman out there,
and they're like and just like what am I supposed
to do?

Speaker 2 (14:28):
Like, I don't know, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (14:30):
What do you do?

Speaker 3 (14:30):
What are you famous for? She's like, I'm an actress.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Hugh Jackman, he can sing, and dad he can?

Speaker 3 (14:36):
He can't? Yeah he can and he loves to do it. Yeah,
you can get him out there. We all love it.
Does he still I don't does he still really have
an Aussie accent anymore?

Speaker 2 (14:46):
When yeah, yeah he does.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
It's just you know, I saw this like hilarious comment
online lunch on, like a video of like Margot Robbie
doing press and this woman was like what she insist
on having an Australian accent.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
She knows how to talk properly. She's just doing this
to show off.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
This woman is like, once you learn how to do
an American accent, just like keep doing it.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Like it's very funny.

Speaker 3 (15:21):
I cannot. I cannot talking properly people slandering a good
Aussie accent.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
It's one of it's one of our best accents.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
It is like I tell, I tell you what if
if I met an Australian woman when I was younger,
like they could have talked to me and they just
be like, oh wow, that's.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
How you end up anything married in my experience, just
like you know, that's what that's.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
How they fucking get you.

Speaker 3 (15:45):
He starts talking about the Milanda Gildachuk and you're just like.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
Mat next thing you know, you're on You're living in
Newtown for three years and your wife.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
To the fuck up.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
That's all.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
That's all I'm saying is like you meet, you meet
an Australian accent at the wrong age.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
That's all over for you.

Speaker 6 (16:00):
So yeah, mm hmm, what what a shit show?

Speaker 2 (16:11):
We should do our job instead. I'm talking about.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
Folks. If you're Australian, right in and uh.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
Hey you got that's a really bad one. Uh.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
If you're Australian, ride in and tell me who your
favorite Ozzie Rules football team is.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
It should be the Swans.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
I don't know. I have no opinion about that except
one time. Uh, when we lived in Denver, me and
my wife were really really high and we're late and
on ESPN sometimes in the middle of the night, they
show fucking Ozzie Rules Football here and we just watch
like slack job for like two hours. This is great.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
I don't do it often because I'm not staying up
that late, but yeah, it was pretty fun to watch.
I like Ausie rules football and rugby and all that.
It's nice, you know, but I prefer my British American football.
But what is it?

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah my boorish.

Speaker 3 (17:11):
My boorish improper football. Yeah anyway, Yeah, let's that's a
lot like aland that is yep, because they have uh
ball sports there too.

Speaker 4 (17:26):
Yeah, there we go, baby.

Speaker 3 (17:59):
Hello, and welcome back to We're Not So Different, a
podcast about how I've never done a bad segue. My
name is Luke. I'm an amateur medievalist, and as always
I'm joined by doctor doctor Ellen. I can't even, I
can't even or a I don't know many. Yeah, and

(18:27):
I'm here with doctor Eleanor Yaniga, who is anything but Hello.

Speaker 5 (18:32):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
Today we're gonna talk about al Andelous again. But uh,
first we got a question. I got a couple of questions.
First from Gaffzie. My impression of the Renaissance papacy is
that it was viewed as an Italian institution and whoever
was pope was more than likely going to be from
the Peninsula. Is this accurate? And if so, how slush?
When did the state of affairs arise? Where their periods

(18:56):
where popes were more likely to be from some other
nationality like German or friends. How did that affect things
in Rome?

Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yeah, so the thing about the papacy is really, if
you're being honest, it's mostly an Italian institution of the
popes two hundred and.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Seventeen, I've been Italian. I was looking this up.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Fun fact, any pope that is called Pious, Boniface or
Paul was Italian, which is really helpful. That's a really
helpful thing to kind of remember. And but like it's
just mostly you get Italian. So yeah, you're like, you're

(19:38):
not wrong, You're goddamn right. Second, up is France? Unsurprising, right,
because what ends up happening with that is, you know,
obviously during the avenue and papacy, like that's what's going down, right,
is it's just like it's it's time to France.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
That isn't saying that there weren't others.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
So like Sylvester is the second he's one, you know,
and you get the the occasional ones from around the shop,
like in the High Medieval period, it's more likely that
you're gonna get the dudes from around the shop, like
you know, oh, here and there. It's like, oh, we're
we're having you know, like there's Adrian, right, like the

(20:20):
one English pope and guys like that.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
You know.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
But in the very earliest bits of the papacy, you
get popes from a lot of different places, so you
know the levant like so you'll have like a bunch
of Syrian popes, right, like that's that's the thing that exists,
or African.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Popes, you know, people who've come from Tunisia.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
There's a couple of Byzantine popes for example, and so
like all of these things are coming about at the
time when you would expect like very very early on
year one hundred, year two hundred, things like that. Same
with like there's like one Portuguese one from.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
From pretty early on.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
You got a couple of Spanish popes and they come
in like exactly when you think that they're going to
come in, so end of the fifteenth century, beginning of
the sixteenth so like when Spain is incredibly powerful, Yeah
you get a pope. So yeah, like you're bang on here.
This is one of the things that happens if you
are in a cultural ascendancy in the medieval and early
modern period. You are more likely to get a pope

(21:22):
on the throne because of the way that political influence works,
just fundamentally fundamentally, whereas kind of like now, you know,
we were talking about it the other day, like you
can have an American pope now because America is like
becoming suitably uninfluential, right, But for the most part, I mean, yeah,

(21:44):
popes are popes are Italian, Like I mean, it's like
by a measure of hundreds, the popes are telling.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
So yeah, like if you call the Renaissance.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
Babe see Italian, I'm not mad about it at all, Slash.
I think that's you know, probably the way that it is.
It's just that we're kind of being Italian papacy brackets
bad because it's like that's when you get Borgia of
popes and things like that.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
Yeah, I think the only one that wouldn't really be
Italian is the very earliest ones, like Eleanor was talking
about the African ones, you know, Peter obviously, those early
early ones, and then like the last the post World
War two era. Basically other than that, I.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
Mean, I guess they've.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
Been It's it's real Italian in the you know, between
like three hundred or so and you know, nineteen forty or.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
Whatever, Like, I mean, I guess you get the one
Dutch pope in the Renaissance mix. But that also makes
sense because of how the Dutch were really important in
the sixteenth century. So that's that's Adrian the sixth So yeah,
like that's the thing. But yeah, I mean, if you
were like posts popes are usually Italian, that's just true, homeboy.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
Yeah, any anytime. Yeah, I think you know, basically the
only time you get German ones is when the Holy
Roman Empire was kind of in descendancy and they could
put someone on the throat on the paper throne without uh,
without them having to be an anti pope m.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
Hm oh yeah for sure. And it's like, you know,
you get you got like four Germans and an Austrian.
I think, yeah, you know, it's it's.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
More likely that you're gonna get French Holy Roman imperial popes,
but you know, but you do get them, get you gotta,
that's for sure.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
Yep, Gussie, Yeah, thank you, thank you very much for
the question. Uh, the papacy an Italian institution with roots
outside of that. Man, it's really funny, like like they're
never gonna elect it now their Italian pope. Ever, they're like,

(24:02):
now we got to reach more people.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
Like yeah, like the Italians we got we got their
asses locked down, Like like what are you trying to prove?

Speaker 3 (24:11):
That may have shocked me more about about Pope Leo
than than anything like coming here, Like, no, dog, why
aren't you in Africa? Like you got to do? You
either got to do the Africa and the African guy
or uh, the the East guy. Yeah like you yeah anyway,
uh whatever, it's their institution to run. It's not my business. Yeah, Gasie,

(24:34):
thank you very much. Next, we got one from dog Spotter.
How much money could one make if they went back
to the golden age of trade uh in Venice with
a magic computer that always had power and didn't break
down with excel or equivalent, assuming that no one killed
them to take it. Would one family buy them out
and give them all, give them all of the accounting

(24:55):
job sellaries for life, or would Venetian merchants be able
to work as a grea with this tech. I'm not
the person skill issue, but could a revolutionary good corporate
finance accounting person make a bajillion florins? Or would there
be other issues.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
I think the major issues that you're going to end
up getting like amalgamated into one of the families.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yes, I've thought.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
About this for a really long time, and I think
that like, yeah, I think the Medichi you are just
going to be like you work for us, right because fundamentally,
the thing that is happening is that we have individuals
who are the ones who are loaning out the money.
So you're going to end up working for them like
they are bank because that's what they are. I don't

(25:39):
see a way of doing individual accounting for several people,
Like I mean, if what you want to do is
make a lot of money, you do it by going
to the Medichi and being like, hello, I can do this,
I can do this all. And that's how you would
bargain it, which would make it easier for them, you know,

(26:00):
and they could get the leg breakers out whenever they need,
et cetera, et cetera. It's I don't think that there's
a way where you play various families off against each
other because of how these people behave, And I don't
think that you're gonna make as much money if you're
doing it with the more piecemeal people. So you're gonna
want to just sell it to the highest better and

(26:21):
I'm going straight to the Medici door. I'm going knock knock,
doc hello. I have basic Excel skills.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Thanks.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
I'm the only person with the password to turn this on.
If you kill me, you don't get it. If you
let me live, you get more money than you have,
or I can take Downstreet to someone else and they
can have it anyway to me, Like, I mean, yeah,
you're gonna want to get in with one of the
big banking families. But there is like there is kind
of a hard cap on the sheer amount of money

(26:48):
you could make in the Middle Ages, simply because the
economies of especially Europe and West Asia the levant at
that time had not been heavily monetized enough for you
to be able to get like a billion florins. A

(27:11):
billion florins would like destroy their economy by like on
an exponential like a million florins. One person having that
many at one time would almost certainly decimate their economy.
So like anything above that is just going to do it.
You don't get the monetization like that until the Spanish

(27:32):
conquest of the Americas and they start getting those obscene
levels of gold and silver in and even at that point,
it's just going straight through Spain into their creditors. So
you know, in order to start getting those like huge
amounts of money, you really have to go to like
sixteen oh three, sixteen o four, the East India Company,

(27:54):
when that gets established and when like the growth, the
exponential growth happens, and that's you know, two hundred some
odd year to three hundred years after the Venetian you know,
monetary Golden Age. So yeah, yeah, not you can make
a lot of money, but I think there would be

(28:16):
a cap on it because a billion florins what would
they do? What would they do with a billion florence?

Speaker 2 (28:24):
You know, I just don't know that you could even
make a billion of florence. I don't think that there
is enough metal, you know, like yeah, like I.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
Just don't think that you can you can do it
in terms of like what mining is and what the
you know.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
Gold and silver resources of Europe are at the time.

Speaker 3 (28:42):
You know, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't. Yeah, I don't
think it's possible. Yeah, look they're okay, here's here's a
good thing. There are at press Or as of twenty nineteen.
The last time there's a report, the US Mint said
that there are five hundred and four million cores in
circulation of the United States. So even in our economy

(29:05):
with three hundred and fifty billion I'm sorry, three and
fifty million people, we only have five hundred million quarters,
you know, so like anything anywhere closing like a million
number at that point is going to uh just like
light their economy on fire times a million. But you

(29:26):
know what, it's a fun hypothetical, So who cares.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah, totally topletely, it's a nice one to think about.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, dog spotter, thank you very much for
the question. If you want to ask us questions like those,
please do subscribe to the Patreon at patreon dot com
slash w NSD pod. You can't get access to our discord,
you can ask us questions. You get two bonus episodes
a month, and we got one coming at the end

(29:52):
of the week. Folks, it's time to visit our good
friend Cassine and Or and the face communists in space,
bourgeois libs that that that make the world turn, that
make our lives a little bit better through their fun
little stories. God, there are there are a lot of
idiots in this season, and I really love some idiot gas.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
It was it was making me, it was making me giggle.
So I'm ready to that. I've had to hold back
today because I have a lot to say.

Speaker 6 (30:23):
But that's yeah, yeah, uh yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
So anyway, uh yeah, subscribe pictureon dot com slash wnctpod
five bucks a month and uh yeah, it's great, you
should do it. But anyway, on to the main show. So, folks,
today we're doing our second episode in the series on
al Andolous and it's a big one because we get
to talk about the real story behind the Battle of
Tours and Charles Martel and then the broader collapse of

(30:49):
the Umiad Caliphate in the levant West Asia and Africa
at the hands of the Abasids, leaving only a rump
state in Iberia known as the Umiyad State of Cordoba
that last until ten thirty one. After this, the series
will speed up a little a little bit more to
cover the rest of Muslim rule and Iberia. It's just
that these early years are crucial to understanding what actually happened,

(31:12):
what's just later propaganda, and why it matters a lot
to our current situation. So following their invasion of the
Iberian Peninsula, which began in seven to eleven CE, the
Umids successfully made treaties with bought off or defeated the
locals in battle, creating the formal Muslim controlled state of
all Ontoluse by seven seventeen. By seven twenty one, the

(31:35):
invasion period had mostly ended as the Umiads, despite suffering
a couple of defeats in Austurias and at Toulouse, had
fully destroyed the Visigothic Iberian leadership. Following the Battle of
a Guadaletta, Muslim forces controlled the entire peninsula up to
the Pyrenees, save for a small strip in the north
known as Austurias, as well as a small spit of

(31:58):
land in southwestern France encompassing the city of Narbon. With
these borders were relatively stable. The situation in Iberia entered
a period of relative calm and stability for about a decade,
as the Umiyad leadership solidified its hold and mostly stopped
the efforts and territorial expansion. Periodic rebellions broke out, mostly

(32:19):
fueled Biostorian holdouts and atter the greats Machinesis in Aquitaine,
but they were successfully suppressed. The Andalusians likewise continued rating
across the Pyrenees and up through Narbon. But that's it. However,
in seven point thirty one, Odo, the great Christian ruler
of Aquitaine, formed an alliance with the Umiyad rulers of
Iberia to stop their raids into his lands. If you

(32:42):
are familiar with popular accounts of the era, you might
be surprised that a Christian Gaulish leader would allie with Muslims.
But as you're going to see, the popular narrative is wrong,
at least according to contemporary and modern historians. In reality,
Odo was more unnerved by the infringements of his sovereignty
by the powerful Christian leader Charles Martel and the Franks

(33:03):
to his north, who were preparing to invade, then he
was of any Muslim threat for Iberia. Auto didn't care
about some civilizational struggle between Islam and Christianity. He had real,
actual material problems, like saving his kingdom and his skin.
Thus Odo did Thus, Odo did the only sensible thing

(33:24):
a medieval ruler would do. Impressed by an aggressor, he
formed an alliance with another strong local power, marrying his
daughter off to a Berber prince named Uthmond, at the
time the governor of the state that would eventually become Catalunya.
In theory, this should have solved Odo's rating and Martel problems.
There's just one little hiccup in the planet. Namely, many

(33:46):
of these Iberian Berbers had long simmering resentment against the
Umids and Salt turrebel So it was that till later
in seven point thirty one, Uthman murdered a local Christian
bishop who was under the protection of Muslim leadership, and
then seceded from the broader Umiad state. Suddenly, Odo was

(34:07):
in deep shit. He had betrayed the Umiad Caliphate and
wouldn't be given leniency, and he had deeply offended Charles
Martel by making the alliance in the first place. Almost
immediately Martel broke broke their peace treaty and began attacking
Occutane from the north, which Odo himself personally defended. Then
at the same time, Abdul Rochman al Gaffiki, an Umiad commander,

(34:30):
brutally suppressed Uthman's rebellion, killing him and sending Odo's daughter
back as a captive to serve in a harem in Cordoba.
Odo then had to turn his attention south against Algafigi
and his massive rating party, who had pressed beyond Narbone,
ransacking as far as Bordeaux. When they arrived, Odo's forces

(34:52):
were comprehensively smashed outside of Bordeaux at the Garonne River,
and he was left with no choice but to crawl
back to Charles and beg for help or face annihilation.
Charles agreed to help, but Odo gave up his Cherish sovereignty,
accepting overlordship and becoming a Frankish vassal. Meanwhile, the Muslim
forces pushed up into central France near the Loire River

(35:14):
to deal with Odo's betrayal. As a result, Charles, Odo
and their combined forces move south to counter Gaffigi near
a small town known as Tours eleanor without you know,
going into all you know of the of the specifics,
What is it from here? What is the conventional narrative

(35:37):
of the Battle of Tours that you were very likely
to hear from let's say, around at least around one
thousand CE until maybe ten years ago.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
Oh yeah, so this is you know.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
The umiad lusts in his heart for France apparently, you know,
like and and they were coming over the mountains with
eighty thousand troops in order to take over Frankia and
continue there hated Islamic rule at but luckily Charles Martel

(36:18):
was out with a plucky bunch. It's like like a
plucky bunch of like twenty thousand troops or whatever.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
A ragtag a bunch of twenty thousand troops that he
just casually had moving through the medieval countryside at the time.
Twenty thousand people in France at the time. That's a
whole lot of fucking people.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
That's like so much. That's so much. I mean, like
these are just huge numbers in the first place. But
we'll get into that in a bit.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
And that they meet outside tour and God wills that
you know, they hated Umiid are killed and it's like
it's a it's a blood bath. They all win, and
they are taught such an important and valuable lesson that
they never come over the purities again.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
Hooray.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
You can you can throw a roll into this if
you say you yeah, pretty much, you.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
Know, yeah, Frankie, Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
Yeah, uh yeah. So I mean that's the thing. This
is a foundational piece of the civilizational struggle between Islam
and Christianity. You know that they've supposedly been fighting this
like ever long battle, even though I don't know, Spain
was close to majority christ the area of Spain was

(37:44):
close to majority Christian.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Let's not let you.

Speaker 1 (37:51):
Know, statistics get in the way of a good story
about the Umiad, you know.

Speaker 3 (37:57):
Yeah, or the fact or the fact that they controlled
so in Italy and Sicily for a long time.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
Or like like you know, whatever, any.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
Any of the other examples. The point is that like
this is the thing, and this is a result of
at least according to the scholar the people who wrote
at the time, which are very which are few and
far between, and modern scholars, is that it was a

(38:27):
big battle, especially for the time. It was like huge
fucking and it was a hard fought battle. The Muslims
definitely lost. They took a lot of casualties in the process,
most of which happened when they were fleeing, of course,
because that's when a lot of anyway, But you know,

(38:48):
it was a hard fought thing. And then Martel's own
like family propagandistism work. But much later after that this
became like a cause de celeb were like medieval Christian
writers beginning in the eleventh century and on it, and

(39:09):
it started to take on this, you know, twenty thousand,
three hundred and seventy thousand Muslims and defeated, and you're
just like, what the fuck. So, yeah, let's talk about
the actual Battle of Tours, which is interesting. We're not
going to do the whole battle thing because we're not
a military history podcast, but I do think it is

(39:30):
kind of important to talk about this stuff. And one
thing is the sources. As we said last time, there's
one Christian source for this time period. It is the
Chronicle of seven fifty four, which was written by was
written over time by a monk, and it.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
Was shoutous monks, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
Shout out anonymous monks, and it was you know, published
in the medieval sense after his death. You know, it
was passed around and you know it was copied down
by people, et cetera, et cetera. There are a couple
of Islamic source, very scattered Islamic sources. And then we
have the Venerable Bead, who mentions the Battle of Tours

(40:11):
as well, although at this point and in this instance,
he's more like, yeah, it happened, you know, there you go,
and all right, so based on that, what we know
is a battle occurred near the town of Tours or Poitier.
This sometimes is called the Battle of Poitier, even though

(40:33):
there's a much more famous Battle of Plothier. And I
don't know why you'd try to rejig it now, you know.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
It doesn't matter whatever we're calling it.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
Try to argue with historians. I'm calling it Tours. Anyway.
At least twenty thousand Muslim soldiers were there. They were
laden with booty from ransacking Bordeaux, which was wealthy even then,
and had either heard rumors of additional wealth at a

(41:00):
very sacred shrine in the city of Tour or in
the town of Tours, or we're just going to continue
rating until they got stopped, and then they got turned back.
At the same time, Charles Martel had about twenty thousand
soldiers with him under his control. Auto the second, Auto
the Great was his second in command. And yeah, the

(41:26):
there was a big fight. It was very hard fought.
It lasted a good while. The Muslims got the advantage
for a little while. The Martel actually formed squares. If
you're familiar with Napoleonic warfare. Obviously he's not for it's
not the same principle, but that's what it looked like.
According to reports, he has a square, they are able

(41:48):
to fend off the infantry. They have like FEALANX shields
with them, So this is like an old style Greek
battle mixed with you know what, we would see his
Napoleonic stuff. So it's kind of cool like that. But
the Muslims broke through once, but Martell's forces were able

(42:09):
to push them back, and after hard brutal fighting, they
fled because Odo took some of his troops around, burned
a baggage, burned and looted the baggage for the Union soldiers,
and they were like, oh shit, we gotta go back,
we gotta do that. It turned into a route and

(42:30):
probably seven thousand or so of them died or were
injured in the in fleeing, and they fled back south
of the Pyrenees, and they stayed there pretty much the
whole time. They did push a little bit north up
to Oral later through Narbone, but they didn't go through

(42:53):
the Pyrenees into the center of France again. And yeah,
that's pretty much what we know. Oh and most military
historians now agree that Martel's the thing that actually helped
Martel win the battle more than anything else was that
they got the jump on they they they were able

(43:14):
to sneak around and get the jump on Gaffiki and
his troops, which Gefficke should have sent out scouts, but
you know, it does happen sometimes. Anyway, they were off
on a bad foot, and yeah, the Christians one a
very sound victory, and that was that. Now here's you

(43:39):
know that that that's that's the thing. So after this,
eleanor Charles Martel and especially his his family starts embellishing
this and they start and almost immediately it starts to
take on a little more mythic proportions. And yeah, so

(44:01):
they're just all of a sudden, it's not just we
thought we fought off a rating party. They went back.
You know, they clearly weren't trying to do territorial expansion
that far, because they would have garrisoned all those towns.
They had gone like a Bordeaux and garrisoning Bordeaux would
have taken it. You know, it would have taken a

(44:21):
lot of minute. It doesn't matter how many, but you know,
they're not doing that. So eleanor what is what is
Martel's spin on this?

Speaker 2 (44:31):
Yeah, like Martel's spin on it. It's like, what's so
kind of.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
Crucial about this as well is that, you know, if
you go back to the Chronicle of seven fifty four, also,
they're like Martell had way more men. Yes, that's like
the one of the really important things about it. They're like, yeah,
but then they found them and they killed them and
like thank.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
You, right. But so Martel's spin on this is that.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Basically this was, you know, an expansionist army that's coming
over the Pyrenees, and there's just so many of them.
It's just like the most the most omids that have
ever been Like sometimes you get figures up to like
almost half a million, which is like, okay, is that
every umiate.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
Like not only every umid in the peninsula, but also
a sizeable chunk of all the Christian and Jewish men
in the area. Yeah, it was like, yeah, let's go
do this. This is great. I fucking love fighting frenchmen.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
And like, oh, famously, like the Ubid armies are made
up of like the Arabic.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
Guys, because that's exactly because of the.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
Stratisfied nature of society and how it works, you know,
or like sometimes the berber guys, but you know, like
one way or another, right and what why we know
that that's definitely not the cases as you say, you know,
where there are no garrisons. And if there's one fucking
thing the Ubians were really good at doing, it was
like garrisoning a position in order to expand, right, like

(45:59):
kind of their thing.

Speaker 4 (46:00):
Sort.

Speaker 3 (46:01):
They would have signed the same treaties with all the
other people that they signed to take over Seville and
Cordoba and Barcelona. They would have signed all those same deals,
but they didn't because that was not the point. And
like nothing shows that like they were coming for the
rest of Europe, but they were.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Yeah, but you know, this is a really useful thing
for Charles Martel because basically he is in the process
of dynastic expansion and dynastic creation.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
Right, So here we go, we.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
Have got a story that is going to help establish
the Carolingians.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
Right.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
Why is it that the carolin Jeans are fit to
rule this much land? Well, they are the great defense
against these expanding Islamic hords.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
They have a college.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
Don't we want an emperor et cetera, et cetera, and
we are the ones who are set up well in
order to do this. And now this ends up having
like some shakedown effects, right, because you start getting it
spread around, like we get it coming up in the
Libra Pontificalis, for example, so like the Liber Pontificalis for

(47:19):
those not in the know, is one of our great
sources where it's like, this is where you get the
lives of the saints, this is where you get like,
this is how the papacy establishes itself is by reading
by writing the Libra pontific Ellis. They're like, yeah, yo,
just fyi, this is the reason why we are a
good pope. So it's telling very specific religious stories and

(47:43):
it more more particularly is attempting to tell the story
on the side of Odo the Great and less less
Charles Bartel, where they're like, oh, yeah, we really like
Odo the Great. He's cool and he won this really
great and impressive battle and isn't that incredible? Right, So
they're jumping on the badwagon for particular reasons, which are

(48:07):
you know, for the papacy, it's important to kind of
establish good versus evil myth with the Muslims.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
You know, they're they're aye in Sicily.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
They're they're like, I don't I don't care for this, right,
So they're telling a particular story about that. Later on,
your boy Paul the Deacon, he comes up and writes
about this in the History of.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
The Lombards, and like he's like just.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
Spouting off numbers for who was involved that are like
in no way attached to them.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
Three hundred and fifty thousand Muslims, all of their teeth
sharpened to the finest points. They they rip the float,
and you're just like, what the fuck is that? Like
the quotes from the later like stories about this are

(48:58):
fucking insane, and I mean see how they got built up,
because you know it's i mean, from a Christian perspective,
it's a cool story, but like at the same time,
you're just like, what the fuck is this ship?

Speaker 1 (49:08):
Yeah, Like we're getting into like real Paul Bunny and
Ass territory at this point in time where they're like,
we're just making this the biggest and most outrageous story
that we possibly can and so this is like big, big, big,
and obviously the Carolingians are like, hell yeah, brother, that's
exactly how this went down, because that's really easel for them.

(49:32):
And you know, one of the things that happens is
the Obians do stop kind of rating as much. But
you know, as we're going to get to it's because
they've got other fish to fry. You know, they're they're
and they're kind of like it's not really worth the
rating parties, which is all they were really trying to
do was raid, right, Like.

Speaker 3 (49:48):
That's the fucking nerd Gibbon. Uh, he's so Edward Gibbon
in the uh the The History of the Decline follow
the Roman Empire says that that had had Charles fallen,
the Umid Caliphate would have easily conquered a divided Europe.

(50:12):
I need you to think about in your own mind.
At this time Europe has no giant, strong entities. But
I need you to just think about how many people
it would take to conquer even just France, even the
area that we know today is France, forgetting the isles

(50:33):
north of that, forgetting Scandinavia, forgetting Central and Eastern Europe.
Just France. It's gonna take a fuckload of people because
there are a lot of human beings in that area,
and there have been for a long time because it's
nice to grow wheat and grapes there and people like
that stuff. How like, given, I'm given's analysis obviously, but

(50:57):
he's not stupid. He understands some of the stuff. But
that like that sentence right there is like how can
you have credibility after this? You could not conquer They
would need two and a half times the people they
took to conquer Hiberia for that probably.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
And like in the second first place, you're exactly right,
you know, there are simply not enough omids on the
face of the planet to make this possible, like we
do we do not have the population, like in terms
of the military numbers.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
To make this happen. It just it just won't do.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
And in the second place, don't threaten me with a
good time, right, like oh no, and then what would
that do given like, oh, you would still be able
to like worship freely and you would be like giving
your taxes to another bunch of people, like a calm
the fuck down.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
Right, like calm the fuck down.

Speaker 3 (51:55):
And given thought that Christianity was the reason the Roman Empire.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
Fell, I'm just it's it's like it's.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
Such that makes sense. How I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
Keeping like it's it's incredibly like.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
A twentieth century view of the world, which is like
religion is bad, but actually like unless it's like the
scariest religion is is when there is Muslim and so
Christianity is better than that.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
But actually, like war, it's like just shut the fuck up,
grow up, grow up. And it's like, I mean, it's
it's all just on.

Speaker 3 (52:31):
The bandwagon or don't. Either you're an atheist or an
agnostic or you believe in Christianity.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
Like whatever, yeah, whatever, it like, I get it. Englishmen,
Like I get it. You are like white supremacy pilled.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
That's fine, Yeah, that's fine, you know, but it is
very like it is the sort of thing that I
can imagine like getting into an argument with like you know,
online atheists about in the Ear of Our Lord two
thousand and two. So it's interesting because like this this
view really does shape the twentieth century view of the
entire thing, but it also just is like so incredibly

(53:10):
lacking in rigor from a historical perspective, because you know,
all you got to do is go back and look
at the original chronicles and they're just not saying.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
That that happened. Now.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
Mind, like the chronicles, as you said, like from the
eleventh century onwards start telling this story again, like real big,
and it's like, yeah, what else was happening in the
eleventh century, Oh, the Crusades, right, And so they've got
a vested interest in being like, oh yeah, they were
so big, it's gary and they were going to like
and they thrown to beat me up and they said that,
you know, my mom was ugly, and it's just like, dude,

(53:45):
grow up, you know, like it's it's fine, Like you
can see exactly what it's doing.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
And it's this useful myth.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
And it's a useful foundational myth and a useful myth
in terms of when you are attempting to send a
bunch of French guys to the Aunt to attempt to
take over Jerusalem, right, because this is like it creates
a story wherein the Muslims are at war specifically with Franks,

(54:12):
you know, with with the French French speakers, and so
now it's like, oh, yeah, so now go take the
fight to them, right, turn about as fair play sort
of sort of by the.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
Here, yeah, and I mean, like you like I meant
to read it earlier, but like the the brief synopsis
of this battle in the Chronicle of seven fifty four
really is one of the most even sided accounts you
will find. There's very little hyperbole in here. God does

(54:45):
not miraculously come down and touch the shields of the Christians.
It it goes quote, while Abdul Abdul all Rothmann Algafiki,
I'm sorry God, They okay, sorry, While I'm Uel Robin
Algafiki was pursuing Odo, he decided to despoil Tours by
destroying its palaces and burning its churches. There he confronted

(55:08):
the consul of the Consul of Austrasia, which is Europe,
by the name of Charles, a man who, having proved
himself to be a warrior from his youth and an
expert in things military, had been summoned by Odo. After
each side had tormented the other with raids for almost
seven days, they finally prepared their battle lines and fought fiercely.
The northern peoples remained as immobile as a wall, holding

(55:31):
together like a glacier in the cold regions. In the
blink of an eye, they anihilate the annihilated the Arabs
with the sword. The people of Austrasia, greater in number
of soldiers and formidably armed, killed the king Algafiki when
they found him, striking him in the chest, but suddenly,
within sight of the countless tints of the Arabs, the

(55:53):
Franks despicably sheathed their swords, postponing the fight until the
next day, since night have fallen during the battle. Rising
from their own camp and dawned, the Europeans saw the
tents and canopies of the Arabs all arranged just as
they appeared the day before, not knowing that they were empty,
thinking that inside them were the Saracen forces ready for battle,
they sent officers to reconnoiter and discovered that all the

(56:16):
troops had left. They had indeed fled silently in the
night in type formation, returning to their own country. That's it.
That's the whole thing, you know, And that's it. So
there's nothing of like this, you know, Like Charles gave
a big stirring speech about how like they had to
rescue European Christendom, which was not a thing then at all,

(56:38):
a thing until the Crusades, at least not the way
we think about it. Actually probably until after the that's
a different story, but you know that was definitely not
a thing at this time. And yeah, it's just, you know,
it's a battle and it happened, and it was important
in the sense that it like stopped this push, and

(57:02):
it was a very large battle, having between forty and
fifty thousand soldiers, and in the early Middle Ages, that
was like that's a lot, a million, a million, but yeah,
like it was, Yeah, it's it's just a battle. And
I think, you know, I don't want you to think
that we're just harping on this to harp on it,

(57:22):
but like it is important, and like people see this
as like some kind of like hinge point in history
for like the turning of this relationship, and it's not
the hit that hinge point is probably the first crusade,
but this is a you know, the entire Deis vault

(57:45):
Opus day, let's redo the crusades thing. Yes, it's obviously
based on their crusades, but it also goes back to
this stuff. And oh, I'm Charles Martell and blah blah blah.
And look, I'll give Martella's credit. He was a good warrior,
he was apparently a good leader, of soldiers. He did
good stuff Martel, which means the Hammer is a fucking

(58:05):
great name. I'll give him that. But you know, yeah
he won and that and it was that, there was
you know, all this other shit.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
Yeah, fully, you know, like shout out to Charles the
Hammer Martel. Great sounds sounds like a fucking wrestling name.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
Absolutely love it does.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
Yeah it does.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
But you know we have to harp on about it
because this is so misused.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
You know, this is exactly one of those things where
it's like massive hinge point and it's like, babe, it
was a skirmish, right, It was a skirmish between a
rating party and a better and more equipped force who
were reinforcing what would be the frontier.

Speaker 2 (58:46):
That's it, and it is you know, useful in.

Speaker 1 (58:49):
Terms of like a dynastic turning point if what we're
talking about is, well, how does propaganda work? And how
did these things work? But you should be fundamentally fucking
embarrassed of yourself as a historian, and if you believe the.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
Proper yid.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
Like that, that's our entire job, our whole last job
is to be like, yeah, why are they saying this?

Speaker 2 (59:11):
Who said it?

Speaker 3 (59:12):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (59:13):
And follow the breadcrumb's bag. But if like you're you're
taking anybody at face value, let alone the fucking Carolingians,
then babe, I don't know what to tell you.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
Yeah, media studies.

Speaker 3 (59:28):
Yeah, it's you know, not good versus evil, not anything
like that. It's just you got pushed back past the
Pyrenees and that's where you stayed. They didn't try to
push them off the peninsula. They could even if they
won't even finest wish, he did not have enough soldiers
to remove all of them, like, and at this point

(59:51):
they had been in some parts of the peninsula for
over twenty years. Like it not. You know, that's that's
an you know, that's an adult lifetime to many too
many people, you know this time, you know, it's it's not.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Yeah, and I think that it's fundamentally also, that particular
view just misunderstands how multicultural life was on the peninsula,
how many Christians there were. And then these Christians are
not like going to Charles and being like, oh Charles,
please free us, it's like to go do it. They're
just like, oh, yeah, whatever, Like these these things don't
matter to that, you know, like we don't have correspondence

(01:00:28):
being like I beg you to break my chains or whatever,
so you know, and and there would be and we
would have great sources for work because we have great
sources from the Iberian Peninsula at this point.

Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
Yeah, they just don't the all the stuff doesn't add
up to anything more than a rating party was stopped.
It was in central France, which is a long way
like they were a long way north of Bordeaux at
that point anyway, But like, you know, you're just not

(01:00:59):
it's it's not that thing. It's just a battle that
took place and they lost, and they would win future battles,
and you know that was that, and yeah, it's the
thing about it. You know. The stuff that's interesting about
all of this is just that the way that we

(01:01:24):
think about Spain, Spain is a late forming thing, even
like even in the early modern period. That is, like
you know, Castilla, Cassias and Aragon and all that sort
of shit, and they're like different principalities, different kingdoms, and
eventually they got meshed together. But like that's not a

(01:01:47):
thing at this time. And these people weren't yearning to
be freed from the yoke or whatever. It was just
they ruled, they doesn't you know, you gotta pay taxes anyway.
Does it matter if it's a use or a you know,
tex on X, what's the difference? Who cares? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
And I think that if you spend a lot of
time in Spain now, which I do because I love it,
it becomes very clear when you go to different regions
that they're really fucking different, right, Like a Catalonia is
nothing like castille Leon, which is nothing like you know, Galicia,
or like, you know, you go to Granada and things
are just completely different. Again, the accents are really different country.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
They fucking language isolict It is not connected to anything else,
like to Spanish, what are you like?

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
Yeah, yeah, they're Celtic. You know they have Yeah, yeah
you don't you know who fucking longs to be freed
from the yoke of whatever?

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
The Castilians like sorry, the Catalonians and the Basque and
the Basque want the fuck out, like they're like, I'm
not Spanish hello. So you know, like all of these
ideas are so modern where it's like none of them
how you know this idea or this wish you know,
like you know, go to Barcelona right now and ask,

(01:03:06):
you know, an actual Catalonian what they fucking think of
Spain and you know, get ready for them to like
go there to tell.

Speaker 3 (01:03:13):
You how much it's just a continuation of uh, Franco's
bullshit and all that. And I mean then some a
lot of ways it is there some ways at least
I know, but like, yeah, they don't. It's not a
you like if you think like people in America talk
about secession like ho ho, Texas is going to succeed
or whatever. Like no, they the Catalans and the Basque

(01:03:38):
people's they are like, dear EU, please let us hold
sovereignty referendum on this, and the and the EU is
being cross.

Speaker 4 (01:03:49):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:03:51):
Other people are talking to you and they're being like,
don't do that, because that's gonna get like because if
that happens, an idea and like you're gonna and uh, you.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
Know, Breton like the Brittany's probably got a guy like
the Breton Brittany.

Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
How how many German states are just gonna be like
I don't know about all this, dog I'm good, you know,
like it's yeah, yeah, it's yeah, it's you know, it's
a fine and weird place. Spain as like a corporeal entity.
Exists for like, I don't know, it's still around I

(01:04:30):
guess like five hundred or so years, but everybody's been
trying to leave it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
Yeah, like can I go now?

Speaker 3 (01:04:37):
Yeah. Surprisingly, though after the Battle of Tours, you know it, Uh,
it turns a little it gets a little chill for
for a while. In seven thirty five, the Umians did
push a little farther north of Narbonne to Oral. Uh.

(01:05:00):
But they're going to lose all of that shortly anyway,
due to a big thing that happens not anywhere near Spain.
But yeah, in in later on, around like seven forty,
the Berbers there's a Berber revolt in North Africa and
that extended up into Iberia, and the Berber rebels in

(01:05:26):
North Africa were able to kind of carve something out
for them, but the Umids put down the ones in Iberia.
But things started to break up because the wider Umid
Califate was not doing so great, and by seven two

(01:05:48):
Alandulous starts to break apart into some smaller competing states
and fiefdoms, though they were still Muslim in character. But yeah,
about this time, perhaps unsurprisingly, it's really hard to administer
the seventh largest land empire in history in the eighth century.

(01:06:12):
That's not a very easy thing to do, especially when
it spread out over such a vast distance. It's not like,
you know, if you were in China where you could
control like you know, it's not it's not technically the
same thing. So the Umids, uh, man, it's uh, they
just fall apart. And when they fall apart, they fall

(01:06:32):
apart fucking hard. What what happened to the Umids? Why
why couldn't they Well.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
So what happens with the Ubiids is, uh, they be
living too high on the hog. They were very busy
being fancy little lads.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
Last time we talked about how the real plum jobs
are given to their cousins, you know, and and they're
really spending a bunch of time trying to keep it
in the family. And the reason they're keeping it in
the families they're wealthy and they enjoy being fancy and
having a bath and eating a fig and like what's
over there. And so when we have the Berber revolts,

(01:07:12):
this is like the first symptom where what the Berbers
are saying when they do this is you are insufficiently pious.

Speaker 3 (01:07:20):
Yeah, you like.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
You be drinking.

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):
You are, you know, just not actually caring that much
about the tenants of Islam. And you are oppressing all
of us and like taking our taxes and you're not
you're not giving back what we need. So right, Like
that's that's something the Berbers are saying. Meanwhile, back on
the Arabian Peninsula, there are a group called the Abbasids

(01:07:47):
who heartily agree with this, right, and they're they're jumping
on the back wagon, right. And the Abasids are coming
to us via the prophet Muhammad's uncle and that is
who they are coming out of. So they've got like
a nice pedigree to them as well, so they can
trace themselves back to the prophet brilliant great And right

(01:08:09):
after the Berber revolts, they're like, can we do that?

Speaker 3 (01:08:14):
Oh shit, okay, right, and.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
So and they go in on it.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
And in particular they are really able to exploit the
discontent with the Umiads on the peninsula. Like in particular,
they're drawing from the heartlands, you know, they they are
kind of like a drawing in you know, kind of
like Iran places like that. And everyone is like, yeah,

(01:08:40):
I think that. I think homeboys are too big for
their breeches, and a lot of people agree with them.

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
A lot of people agree with them.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
They're like, yeah, okay, like whatever, let's like let's let's
topple these guys. And the other thing that the Abysins
do really well is they go to all the non
believers and they're like, damn, doesn't it suck how you're
like a second class citizen but your parents around here,
and like people are like, damn, yeah, that does suck.
I would like to not be a second class citizen.

(01:09:09):
So you get the non believers on board as well,
which is absolutely key to such an incredibly disparate empire. Right, So,
and they just fall over like a deck of cards.
Now again, like as we were saying about the physicals

(01:09:30):
in Spain, this is partially showing us like how well
administered they actually were, because you just like blow and
the house of card falls over. Ye you know, I
guess it's just like oh, yeah, like you needed all
those bits to work, and it's still really well centralized.
But yeah, it's just kind of about dissconnect there where

(01:09:51):
people from the Muslim side don't like that they're not
Muslim enough, and people from the non believer side don't
like how they are basically treated as completely second class.
So yeah, they just go pop out in the Middle
East and you know, largely across the coast of Africa

(01:10:11):
as well.

Speaker 3 (01:10:12):
Yeah, they the unions. Man, they really thought they were
something special and that they were the only ones, and
that wrinkled a lot of people. Plus like, how are
they ever going to keep control of the fucking like,
how are you going to control of berbers in Morocco

(01:10:34):
in Tunis in the year like seven forty, How are
you going to do that? You do not have enough
people to form a giant land army and an ultra
giant fleet to go over like it's not like you
just don't have that. And you know, they, I mean,
they found out a hard lesson that many others found out,

(01:10:55):
which is that regardless of what you do in Anatolia
and how much you kind of burn it and everything,
those walls in Contantinople, you cannot get via them, like
you can't. And so they like kind of rantacked their
Anatolia and got to the walls and were like fuck.
And then they immediately got pushed out of Anatolia again.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
And that's where they were putting all their energy.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
They were putting all their energy into, like let's go
fuck with Constantinople.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
And it's like, maybe, why don't you just like keep
people happy? And they didn't want to. But that's you know,
Empires their expansionist by nature.

Speaker 3 (01:11:28):
Yeah, yeah, and I mean the uh, the the Abbosid
Caliphate is just it's just a slightly smaller version of
the Umids. And they start to take over in about
seven fifty and they are going to rule lands throughout

(01:11:55):
the Middle East, North Africa, and West Asia until twelve
when the Mongols when he ron when Laku comes through
the Mongols and just sieges and decimates bag Dad. But yeah,
it's Sia uh siya Umid's They there was a huge

(01:12:21):
purge at the end and they thought they got everyone,
but there was you know, there was just one guy.
Just one guy escaped and he was like fuck that shit.
I do not want to die. I do not want
to uh. I don't want to go out like that.
And he took uh, you know, he secreted himself across

(01:12:46):
the Mediterranean. His name was Abdu r Robin. The first
he fled and uh he landed in Spain with his
followers drummed up some more follows, defeated the leader of
the small Emirate of Cordeba at the time, and over

(01:13:09):
the next twenty five years, proceeded to unify Iberia after
they've broken out into the competing fiefdom. So there's one
in like Barcelona, Cordoba, I think zaragosas something like that.
There were more and they he rolled them up over
twenty five years and established the Umid state of Cordobo,

(01:13:32):
which lasted from seven fifty six to ten thirty one.
And yeah, they got.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
It, did because they theyave it the Mosquita and we
love the Mosquito folks.

Speaker 3 (01:13:45):
Yeah, yeah, it gave us. You know, it's funny that
they just like turn these negative they just turned these
negative externalities into to this thing, and the Umids look
like they're all but lost. And then like it's some
fucking movie. The last son who was stuffed out of

(01:14:10):
the palace in like a box. I don't know if
that's true, but like whatever, and they shoved him on
a boat. He goes lands in Spain in the last place,
like the farthest place away where the abbassets can't really
attack him, and takes over Iberia in twenty five years,
and even with all that upheaval, even with the Yumid

(01:14:33):
stick breaking into constituent parts for a while, none of
the Christians tried to push them off the.

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
They don't care.

Speaker 3 (01:14:42):
They didn't care.

Speaker 2 (01:14:43):
That was the point.

Speaker 3 (01:14:44):
The whole point is that at this point, if they care,
they don't care enough to actively do anything about it.
So it's like a minor nuisance where they just didn't
care at all. Now that were there people in Asterias
who care, clearly, and I'm sure there were. I'm sure
there are people in South Francia who definitely cared as well,

(01:15:06):
but didn't really matter. Uh, yeah, they did eventually. I
think when was it. It was a couple of you.
It was just after the Umi state of Cordoba was
set up. They lost narbone narbone, and so they were

(01:15:27):
fully pushed south of the Pyrenees. Yeah, that was its Sep.
Fifty nine, So you know, from that point on, it's
just south of the Pyrenees. And now we get to
see how long they can hold onto this, because while
it's not a thing right now, the first precursor crusade
events are going to be called down on these people

(01:15:52):
in the eleventh century, So hey.

Speaker 2 (01:15:54):
Check this out they lost their narbone or.

Speaker 1 (01:16:00):
Yes, yes, I'm a public intellectual.

Speaker 3 (01:16:04):
I love it.

Speaker 6 (01:16:05):
Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, folks. As we said, I'm gonna
take I'm gonna start moving a bit faster with things
the next time. But yeah, we wanted to talk about
this because yeah, it's neat and it's also funny that

(01:16:26):
the It's very funny to me that the contemporary scholars
and the postmodern scholars completely agree, and basically everyone in
between who's not a specific Muslim scholar is like, oh, yeah,
this is a civilizational thing, you know, like the battle
of good versus evil.

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
Man Like, I guess it looks like that if you
never read a fucking book.

Speaker 3 (01:16:46):
Some fucking monk is like, yeah, they fought. Charles Martel's
a dick in Odo cool, Like we kind of like Odo,
I do. I think he's very interesting. That's why I
wrote the intro about him, because I just find like,
he's like cool, I'm gonna allie with them. Oh fuck
the guy I allied with his idiot. Oh fuck, they

(01:17:08):
took my daughter into a harem of.

Speaker 2 (01:17:13):
Oh there's the reason why he gets to be at
the great that's all that is true.

Speaker 3 (01:17:18):
Hmmm, that is true. I like uh. I like Odo
though uh he abdicated when into a monastery, which I
always think is a fun way for people to And yeah,
as I said, next time we'll be back. We'll talk
about the rest of the Umiad state of Cordova and
all that. And then uh, when this kind of does

(01:17:40):
start to become in a European Christendom thing and they
start getting old, up jumped and up aty about these things,
but yeah, we'll get uh, we'll get to that, Eleanor
what's going on with you?

Speaker 1 (01:17:56):
Yeah, I mean at the minute, not much checked me
out on the social at going medieval. I made a
good and Or joke last night, and I'm very proud. Yeah,
very you know, special interest overlap. I think you should
leave an and.

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):
Or together at last.

Speaker 1 (01:18:12):
Yeah, but you know, I got a lot of things
in the work, none of which have come to the fruition.
But if you follow me on the socials, you can
see there when they come out. So yeah, that's a
smart thing to do.

Speaker 3 (01:18:23):
Yeah. Yeah, you can find me on the social media.
Luca's amazing. You can find my old show about Star
Wars called A People's History of the Old Republic. If
you want to check that out and hear me gap.
You can listen to it wherever you're listening to this otherwise.
Thank y'all so much and we'll see you next time.

Speaker 5 (01:18:43):
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