The Fate of the Roman Cities of the Near East and North Africa

by Emmet Scott (January 2012)

The great Roman cities of the Middle East and North Africa some of the most iconic archaeological sites on earth. There are literally hundreds of them, in various states of preservation. In most cases the pillars of temples and public buildings still stand, like the “bleached bones” (as Kenneth Clark described them) of classical civilization. The Roman cities of Europe tend to be in a much poorer state of preservation because they were not abandoned. In Europe settlements such as London, Paris, Trier, Regensburg, Cordoba, etc, were occupied continuously from ancient times, and the fine cut stones of the temples and palaces were reused and remodelled on numerous occasions throughout the Middle Ages. And because people still lived in the localities many meters of debris came to cover the Roman settlements. It was not so in the Middle East and North Africa; here the great classical settlements were (with a handful of exceptions) abandoned and never reoccupied.

The abandoned cities usually now stand in semi-arid territories, landscapes that have not been cultivated for many centuries, though it is evident that they were extensively cultivated in Roman and Byzantine times. Historians are in no doubt that the majority of the abandoned cities were deserted because of the collapse of agriculture in the surrounding countryside. These settlements, with their large populations, needed productive farming communities in order to survive. The desertification of the territories in which they stood would have been a death sentence for them. But what caused the agricultural collapse?

This is a question that has exercised the minds of historians, natural historians and climatologists for over a century. It is a question of great importance, for it holds the key and the answer to a far greater conundrum: What caused the collapse of classical Roman civilization? We have to be very clear here: During the seventh century, when the Roman cities of the Middle East and North Africa were abandoned, the centre of classical civilization was precisely those areas. The great cities of Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt in particular, metropolises such as Ephesus, Antioch, Alexandria, Heliopolis, etc were where the vast majority of the wealth and population that had constituted the Roman Empire were located. These regions had a thriving economy and an enormous and growing population.

Studies here have revealed the co-existence of large and small holdings, but also a general trend, in the years extending from the fourth to the early seventh century, towards the break-up of the bigger estates and the growth of villages composed of relatively well-to-do independent farmers. (Ibid.) During this time an enormous system of cultivation and terracing made great expanses of the Middle East and North Africa fertile and productive. It was the existence of this agricultural infrastructure that permitted the existence of the late classical cities, and conversely, it was the destruction of the same infrastructure which led to their abandonment. But what could have caused such a catastrophe?

We should note that even those who continue to argue for a radical climate change in the seventh century are nevertheless compelled to admit the great destructiveness of the Arabs in the regions they conquered. The latter is revealed by excavation, and is fully supported by contemporary written accounts.

Yet even allowing for the destructiveness of the Arabs, and for their habitual misuse of agricultural land, this in itself does not explain the rapid and complete degradation of the cultivated territories of the Middle East and North Africa. After all, we must suppose that native husbandmen would not lightly have permitted incoming Arab nomads to graze their goats on carefully tilled and planted fields. Furthermore, the Middle East and North Africa had seen numerous invasions before, some of them very violent indeed, but none of them led to the complete destruction of the agriculture of the region. What was so different about the Arab Invasion?

In order to answer this question we need to consider the unique nature of Islam and in particular its application of political and social control through sharia law.

As might be imagined, such oppressive conditions meant that Christians and Jews lived in permanent fear of the predatory attentions of Muslim neighbors, with the result that, over the centuries, the pressure to convert to Islam, or to emigrate from the Muslim-controlled territory, became almost irresistible.

The latter is a clear reference to the Bedouin custom of permitting their herds to graze on crop-land.

One does not have to be a genius to imagine the impact of such conditions on trade and commerce.

Emmet Scott is a historian specializing in the ancient history of the Near East. Over the past ten years he has turned his attention to Late Antiquity and the declining phase of classical civilization, which he sees as one of the most crucial episodes in the history of western civilization.

here.

To comment on this article, please click here.

here.

If you have enjoyed this article and want to read more by Emmet Scott, please click here.