1989 SHORTER NOTICES IOO3 Visigoths in the Iberian peninsula, but also years when a limited number of Western pilgrims and travellers continued to journey to the Holy Land and to bring back accounts which, whilst regarding the Muslims and their faith - or lack of it, increduli — with repugnance, nevertheless provide precious information (however exiguous) on the 'Saracens' in their newly acquired con- quests and in their Arabian homeland. In a book based on his 1969 Frankfurt dissertation, Abendland und Sarazenen: das okzidentale Araberbild und seine Entstehung im Friihmittelalter (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1986; pp. 290. DM 1 58), Ekkehard Rotter has undertaken to study what became known about Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/CIV/413/1003/383918 by guest on 01 October 2021 the Arabs to the Latin West during the period c. 570-740, from such Christian travellers' accounts and from the works of contemporary chroniclers like Frede- gar and Isidore of Seville. The terminus ad quern is a significant one, as the author observes, in both West and East, with political upheavals involving the Merovingians and Carolingians in the Frankish lands and the Umayyads and Abbasid caliphs in the Islamic ones. The information in itineraries of pil- grims like the Anonymous of Piacenza, Arculf and Willibald is discussed; historians of early Islam have indeed long been familiar with the accounts of the latter two as providing valuable snippets, where indigenous Islamic literary evidence is lacking, about the precise forms of the first mosques in Jerusalem and Damascus. Westerners were not very interested in the question of the origins of the Arabs, but the chroniclers did speculate about the origin of the term 'Saracens' and its synonyms. (Descendants of Sarah, hence parallel to the derivation of the sister term 'Hagarenes' from Hagar? 'Saracen' as a malformation of Syri/Syriginae: 'Syrians'? Perhaps, indeed, topographical in origin, Hagarenes as dwellers in Arche = Petra, and Saracens therefore as devotees of the local Nabataean deity Dhu '1-Shara? Cf. pp. 68 ff.) Much of this speculation tied in with material from the Old Testament, but the ambiguity and vagueness of this last only made it more easy to put forward solutions, satisfying at the time, of problems which, however, continue to vex present-day historians of early Arabia and the Arabs. The second half of the book eschews a chronological account of events - much described elsewhere, though still full of problems - and deals with Western Latin historiography's picture of the pre-Islamic Saracens and their relations with Byzantium; the Arab con- quests in the Near East and North Africa and the maritime conflicts; the abor- tive Arab siege of Constantinople in the early years of the eighth century; and, finally, the invasions of Spain and France and the decisive check to the Muslims at Poitiers by Charles Martel. A closing chapter shows how the Church, incapable of really understanding the causes of the Arab upsurge and the collapse of organized Christianity in the conquered lands, speedily came to a stereotyped view of the Muslims as something like a renewed biblical plague, 'gravissima Sarracenorum lues' (Bede), which only gradually over ensu- ing centuries came to be modified. The whole of Rotter's study is richly docu- mented and stimulating, and it forms a useful prolegomenon to the studies of, e.g., Daniel and Southern on the later medieval Christian views of Islam. University of Manchester c. E. BOS WORTH Roger Collins's The Basques (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986; pp. xiii + 272. £14.95) 's one °f tne first volumes to appear in a series entitled 'The 1004 SHORTER NOTICES October Peoples of Europe', whose purpose is to 'provide a comprehensive and vivid picture of European society and the peoples who formed it'. Yet in the period from the Roman conquest to the later twelfth century, with which the book is primarily concerned, the Basques are an elusive subject. For most of the time the indigenous sources are meagre or non-existent, and it is necessary to rely on the scrappy evidence surviving from those who came into contact with the Basques. There is thus no definite information about the society and economy of the Basque region between the time of Strabo and the eleventh century, and even the exact geographical extent of the district is usually in Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/CIV/413/1003/383918 by guest on 01 October 2021 considerable doubt. Inevitably there are many questions which cannot be answered with any degree of certainty, and theories must mostly remain hypo- theses. Collins has nevertheless produced a very interesting and lucid discussion of the surviving sources, which are subjected to a thorough and perceptive investigation. He seeks to extract as much as possible from the evidence, while resisting the temptation to read too much into it. The arguments which are advanced provide a persuasive interpretation. The Roman period, for example, is seen to be characterized by a close interrelationship between the Basques and Rome, rather than by continuous conflict or isolationism, though good reasons are given for doubting whether the final conversion of the Basques occurred as early as has sometimes been supposed. It is further suggested that in the post-Roman period the economic ties linking mountain and lowland areas were disrupted: only the mountain-dwellers were any longer thought of as Vascones, although in the sixth and seventh centuries - when the region had become a frontier zone between Frank and Visigoth - these were extending their influence both to the north and to the south. The fragmentary evidence about the early history of the Duchy of Gascony and the Kingdom of Pamplona is also fitted into a plausible framework. Throughout the book the closely- argued text is admirably supported by numerous maps and apt photographs. Yet, despite observations about matrilineal inheritance customs and patterns of settlement, one is left with a shadowy impression of the Basques as a people. Except for part of the reign of Sancho el Mayor in the earlier eleventh century, the Basque area did not form a political entity, and the Basques themselves seem to have possessed little sense of common identity. The most obvious common element was language but, since in pre-fifteenth-century sources Bas- que occurs in only one document, this does not provide a very productive approach to their early history. The book, while offering a balanced and pene- trating assessment of the evidence, is therefore a survey of a region rather than a study of a people. University of Durham A. J. FOREY Early medievalists in particular will welcome the latest addition to Helvetia Sacra. Abteilung III: Die Orden mit Benediktinerregel. Band I: Friihe Kloster, die Benediktiner und Benediktinerinnen in der Schweiz, ed. Elsanne Gilomen- Schenkel (3 vols. Berne: Francke Verlag, 1986; pp. 21 jo. SFr45o the set), for it contains fundamental documentation and the fruits of the most recent research on the development of monasticism in Switzerland in the early Middle Ages. The volumes have, however, been a long time in the making, and the.