Honestly, this whole rabbit hole started kinda dumb. Was rummaging through some musty old stacks at that bookstore down near the canal – you know the one, smells vaguely of cat pee but finds the wildest stuff? Tripped over this massive, leather-bound atlas labeled “Forgotten Borders” or something pretentious like that. Cracked it open, practically sneezed dust bunnies, and this one map just caught my eye. Europe way up there, Abbasids down covering like half the known world. And scribbled right over Spain, faded ink: “THEY KEPT FIGHTING.” Boom. That was it. Had to dig.
The Frustrating Start
Tried hitting my usual online spots first. Big mistake. Typed “Europe vs Abbasids” expecting epic battles. Got… nothing solid. Just scattered mentions in long Wikipedia entries about something called “Crusades” ages later? Felt wrong. Where were the real clashes? Who threw the first punch? Kept hitting dead ends like “Carolingian-Abbasid relations.” Sounded boring as hell. What I wanted was swords clashing, armies marching, not diplomatic relations. Felt totally lost, thinking maybe that map scribble was just some dude’s doodle.
Down the Weird Research Path
Scratched my head, decided screw it, started brute-forcing timelines. Pulled out notebooks (old-school, I know) and just made columns. Stuck Europe stuff on one side: Frankish kings, that Charles the Great guy, Byzantine emperors. Abbasid stuff on the other: Harun al-Rashid, his kids fighting each other, all that caliph drama. Started scanning both sides year by year, looking for overlaps. Painfully slow. Coffee kicked in, felt like a detective.
Suddenly tripped over something bizarre. Saw references to “Franks” in southern Italy getting tangled up not with the Abbasids directly, but with this Abbasid puppet state? Sicily? Wait. Sicily? Under Muslim rule? That blew my mind. Always pictured Romans and pizza. Found some Byzantine chronicles, translated badly – piece of junk translation site froze three times – talking about them begging Frankish help against Muslim raids centuries before the Crusade hype. That was the hook!
The Messy Deep Dive
Okay, focus shifted hard. Ditched the big “Europe vs Abbasids” angle for now. Zeroed in on southern Italy, late 700s AD. My desk became a warzone:
- Printed maps everywhere: Seriously, stuck bits of paper to the wall showing Byzantine leftovers, Lombard lords fighting everyone, little Muslim emirates popping up. Looked insane.
- Primary sources turned into riddles: Trying to read Frankish monk complaints about “Saracen pirates” felt like deciphering alien code. Stuff like “And lo, the pagans came upon us with great fury…” Yeah, thanks buddy, super specific. Found mentions of a guy named Abd al-Malik ibn Salih raiding deep into Byzantine land around 792AD? Had to cross-reference Byzantine panic logs.
- The “Oh!” Moment Hiding in Plain Sight: Then it clicked, reading some Frankish annals late one night (probably 3 am). Charles the Great wasn’t just chilling. He was actively making deals with the Abbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid himself, against their mutual enemies… which included the Byzantines sometimes! So while Charles’s guys were knocking heads with Abbasid-aligned pirates raiding his Italian buddies (like that raid on Charles’s ally Benevento around 812AD?), he was sending fancy gifts to Harun in Baghdad. Pure politics. It wasn’t one big “Europe vs Islam” brawl. It was messy, smaller fights driven by local power grabs, greed, and weird temporary team-ups, all under the shadow of these two massive empires eyeing each other warily.
Realized the “Long Fight” wasn’t one continuous war. It was hundreds of little skirmishes, pirate raids, sieges, betrayal, failed alliances, grinding away in places like Italy, Sicily, and the Med coasts over centuries, decades before anyone yelled “Deus Vult!” Felt like uncovering layers of dirt on an old coin.
The Point
So yeah, started looking for some giant holy war and found something way gnarlier. Found ambition and cash trumping religion every time in these early clashes. The big empires used smaller players as pawns, beat each other up indirectly, stole land, got raided back. That scribble on the map wasn’t lying about a long fight, just way more chaotic and dirtier than I ever imagined. Learned my lesson too: never trust the big headline. Dig down into the messy little stories first. Bet that bookstore cat pee smell got into my brain.
