Editing Late antiquity (section)

===The rise of Islam===
[[File:Byzantiumby650AD.svg|thumb|260px|The Byzantine Empire after the [[Early Muslim conquests|Arabs conquered]] the provinces of Syria and Egypt – the same time the [[early Slavs]] settled in the Balkans]]
Islam appeared in the 7th century, spurring Arab armies to invade the Eastern Roman Empire and the [[Sassanian Empire]] of [[Persia]], destroying the latter. After conquering all of [[North Africa]] and [[Visigothic Spain]], the Islamic invasion was halted by [[Charles Martel]] at the [[Battle of Tours]] in modern [[France]].<ref>For a thesis on the complementary nature of Islam to the absolutist trend of Christian monarchy, see Garth Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity, Princeton University Press 1993</ref>

On the rise of Islam, two main theses prevail. On the one hand, there is the traditional view, as espoused by most historians prior to the second half of the twentieth century (and after) and by Muslim scholars. This view, the so-called "out of Arabia"-thesis, holds that Islam as a phenomenon was a new, alien element in the late antique world. Related to this is the [[Pirenne Thesis]], according to which the [[Arab]] invasions marked—through conquest and the disruption of Mediterranean trade routes—the cataclysmic end of late antiquity and the beginning of the [[Middle Ages]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pirenne |first=Henri |title=Medieval cities; their origins and the revival of trade |last2=Halsey |first2=Frank Davis |last3=Pirenne |first3=Henri |date=1980 |publisher=Princeton Univ. Press |isbn=978-0-691-00760-1 |edition=3. print., renewed 1980 |location=Princeton, New Jersey |pages=26}}</ref>

On the other hand, there is a more recent thesis, associated with scholars in the tradition of Peter Brown, in which Islam is seen to be a product of the late antique world, not foreign to it. This school suggests that its origin within the shared cultural horizon of the late antique world explains the character of Islam and its development. Such historians point to similarities with other late antique religions and philosophies—especially Christianity—in the prominent role and manifestations of piety in Islam, in Islamic asceticism and the role of "holy persons", in the pattern of universalist, homogeneous monotheism tied to worldly and military power, in early Islamic engagement with Greek schools of thought, in the apocalypticism of [[Schools of Islamic theology|Islamic theology]] and in the way the [[Quran]] seems to react to contemporary religious and cultural issues shared by the late antique world at large. Further indication that Arabia (and thus the environment in which Islam first developed) was a part of the late antique world is found in the close economic and military relations between Arabia, the [[Byzantine Empire]] and the Sassanian Empire.<ref name="hoyland">Robert Hoyland, 'Early Islam as a Late Antique Religion', in: Scott F. Johnson ed., ''The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity'' (Oxford 2012) pp. 1053–1077.</ref> In recent years, the period of late antiquity has become a major focus in the fields of [[Quranic studies]] and Islamic origins.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/on1371946542 |title=Early Islam: the sectarian milieu of late antiquity? |date=2022 |publisher=Éditions de l'Université de Bruxelles |isbn=978-2-8004-1814-8 |editor-last=Dye |editor-first=Guillaume |series=Problèmes d'histoire des religions |location=Brussels |oclc=on1371946542}}</ref>