Of all the battles surveyed in this book, Tours has, beginning with the contemporary chronicles up until the modern era, been one of if not the most celebrated in the West. For although the Mediterranean was lost, and although raids on the coastline became a permanent feature, Islam was confined to the Iberian Peninsula, leaving Western Europe to develop organically. Thus, well into the twentieth century many Western historians, such as Godefroid Kurth (d. 1916), still saw Tours as “one of the great events in the history of the world, as upon its issue depended whether Christian Civilization
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