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106 Part I The Early Middle Ages
Northmen, which lays waste our realms, deliver us, O God.” And in the northern Italian peninsula: “Against the arrows of the Magyars be thou our protector.” Like the barbar-ians who had both troubled Rome and revitalized it in the fourth and fi fth centuries, the invaders of the ninth and tenth centuries would eventually bring good as well as harm to the European West. But at fi rst contact, Muslim pirates, Viking raiders, and Magyar horsemen infl icted suffering and terror.
Map 5.2 The Viking, Magyar, and Muslim Invasions, c. 800–1000 In the ninth century, Europeans faced threats on all sides. To the east, they faced Magyars who raided deep into the Holy Roman Empire and down the Italian peninsula. To the south, they feared Muslim raiders who harried the French and Italian coasts and all islands in between. And to the north and west, they dreaded the sight of Viking ships. The Danes and Norse ravaged western coasts, whereas the Swedes swept through central Europe, following the Dnieper to the Black Sea and Constantinople.
Ni l
e
Po
Rhô
ne
Sein eDniester
Loire
Ebro
Tagus
Danub
Dnieper
Danube
Rhine
Dvina
Elbe
V istula
V olga
0
0 250 500 kilometers
250 500 miles
A T L A N T I CO C E A N
M E D I T E R R A N E A N S E A
B L A C K S E A
Novgorod(820)
Kiev (882)
Tours
Paris
Aachen
Constantinople(860, 907, 941)Rome
(846)
Marseilles
Lechfeld (955)
Viking settlements
Vikings
Muslims
Magyars
B Y Z A N T I N E E M P I RE
F A T I M I D C A L I P H A T E
A L - A N D A L U S859
853
870
875
D A N E S
S W E D E S
M A G Y A R S
NO
RS E
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