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The Arabs did not take the city. The new caliph Umar ordered Maslama to retreat. Natural disasters now dovetailed with existential threats: the volcano beneath the Aegean island of Thera exploded, pumping jets of smoke and launching tsunamis. Just as modern rulers consult scientists, medieval potentates turned to theologians. In Constantinople, the people wondered if their revered religious images – icons – were graven images banned in the Ten Commandments. The caliph had just banned such imagery, and though Constantinople had survived, he was victorious on many fronts. Emperor Leo and many others concluded that their own idolatry explained their disasters. The emperor’s campaign to destroy icons launched ninety years of eikonomachia – a self-destructive battle between iconoclasts and iconophiles, each keen to win salvation after death, that cost thousands of lives and consumed Constantinopolitan politics.

Far to the west, Arab forces advanced along the coast of north Africa, converting Berber tribes, until they reached Tangier (Morocco), whence they could see the coast of Europe.

In 711, Tariq bin Ziyad, a mawla of the governor of Ifriqiya, Musa bin Nusayr, was invited into Spain by a noble dissident, whose daughter had supposedly been raped by Rodrigo, king of the Visigoths who had ruled there since Roman times. Sailing across with 7,000 Berbers, he landed at the rock later named after him – Jibral Tariq, Gibraltar – and then killed Rodrigo and took the capital Toledo. Tariq’s superior Musa arrived to assert official control over the new province, al-Andalus. But the conquistadors were recalled to Damascus by Caliph Walid, suspicious of overmighty freelancers, and both died in prison. The Arabs seized much of Spain, though they never reached the less lush north, which remained under Christian warlords.

Al-Andalus was the ideal launchpad for raids across the Pyrenees into Francia. In 719, the Arabs conquered Septimania (Narbonne); in 721 and 725, they attacked Toulouse.

In 732, the governor of al-Andalus pursued a Berber rebel into western Francia and then galloped northwards towards Paris. But while Spain had fallen easily into their hands, here the Arabs encountered a different breed of enemy, the Franks under their dux, Charles, who was about to win his nickname: the Hammer.

THE HAMMER AND THE PLAYBOY CALIPH: CUNTS ON A LION’S BROW

Charles had something to prove. He was the son of his father Pepin’s concubine, not his chief wife, and they did not choose him as heir.

In the last years of the Roman empire, a Germanic war-band chieftain, Clovis, based in northern Gaul – Neustria – had declared himself king of the Franks, conquering much of Roman France and Germany, naming his Merovingian dynasty after his grandfather Merovec. Roman order gradually vanished: some cities almost emptied; coins were less used; slavery declined; epidemics raged; bishops and lords, ruling from their manors, amassed the best land and controlled the peasantry, who became servi – serfs. Yet the Merovingians – who marked their sanctity by growing their hair very long, a dynasty of Frankish Samsons – feuded among themselves, splintering into smaller realms. In the 620s, a nobleman named Pepin, who owned estates in Brabant, became mayor of the palace for the king of Austrasia – northern Germany and the Low Countries – founding his own dynasty but it was a dangerous game: his son and son-in-law were executed by Merovingians. In 687, his grandson, also Pepin, united the kingdoms with himself as dux et princeps Francorum under the nominal king.

Pepin had sons by Plectrudis, chief wife, but he also had a son by his concubine Alpaida named Charles. But when his legitimate sons died, Plectrudis persuaded Pepin to leave the throne to their grandson. In 714, Pepin died and Plectrudis promoted his grandson and imprisoned Charles – but he managed to escape. By 719 having defeated all contenders he emerged as duke-prince himself, and for the rest of his life he fought a war every summer and never lost one.

In late 732 al-Ghafiqi, the Arab governor of al-Andalus, led 15,000 Arabs into Francia, defeating Odo, duke of Aquitaine, before heading north. But Odo warned Charles, who, mustering around 15,000 Franks, rode out to stop the Arab invaders. For seven days, near Tours, they faced each other. When the fighting started, al-Ghafiqi’s light cavalry disintegrated against the armour of the Frankish knights. When Charles made a feint to threaten their booty, the Arabs broke and al-Ghafiqi was killed. The Arabs withdrew overnight. The encounter was far from decisive – it was just a raid. The Arabs still held Septimania and they were back raiding soon afterwards. But Charles saw himself as Martel, the slayer of the infidels, a latter-day Maccabee – the Hammer – and champion of Christ.