Did Charles Martel force a Muslim retreat at the Battle of Tours?

Answer 1

Charles Martel (the Hammer) commanded infantry that defeated the Islamic jihad at the approach to Paris, in the 700's after Christ. The invading Muslim forces had swept across France in an irresistible wave but were routed at Tours, their faith in divine victory shattered as they fled hundreds of kilometers back to Spain,leaving their slaves, treasure and dead behind.

Following their sudden bloody conquest of the Christian Middle-East and their adoption of western classical learning, Islamic society of the middle-east and north Africa was thought to be the most socially advanced and technologically adventurous communities adjacent to Europe during the pre-renaissance period. Almost inevitably, given genocide and forced conversion to Islam, assimilation to Islam was taking place on a large scale through both the Iberian peninsula and via drift through the Peloponnese and the Balkans. Partly this was through military advance by the Ummayid, the Ayyubid, and later the Ottomans; partly it was because Europe during the Age of the Saints was a mess, and people who didn't assimilate were liquidated.

Charles Martel was a minor noble, but a brilliant general, under the Merovingian dynasty in France. At the Battle of Tours Charles inflicted a stinging defeat on the Emir of Cordoba, Abdul Rahman al Ghafiqi, persuading the Ummayid in Spain to flee at the double back across most of France to their stronghold south of the Pyrenees (pretty much all of what we now think of as Spain and Portugal).

Without Martel's victory at Tours it seems likely that Abdul Rahman and his descendants would eventually have Islamised Gaul (Modern France) and possibly all of mainland Europe. It is difficult to speculate whether this would have been a good thing or a bad thing. Certainly the reign of Charlemagne - which Charles laid the foundation for - was a brilliant precursor to the High Middle Ages, and even the Renaissance; but in time Spain too integrated and benefited from its Muslim heritage and regained its autonomy.

Final opinion on the relevance of Tours is likely to be determined as much by religious and racial prejudices as by a reasoned and balanced evaluation of its long term implications. Religious and racial prejudice are the usual - though not necessarily the best - determinants of historical analysis.