It was once popular to suggest that the Islamic world might have swept across all Europe, had not the Muslims been twice thwarted in their attempts to capture Constantinople (in 673 and 718) and then defeated in 732 at Poitiers by Charlemagne’s Frankish grandfather Charles the Hammer. In fact, important as these reversals were, a fundamental and profoundly limiting weakness within Islam had already shown its face: intractable and embittered religious and political division. At their core, these issues related to disputes over the legitimacy of Muhammad’s caliphal successors and the
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