Talk:Battle of Tours

message: Fri August 31st, 2007
I am reading Ivan Gobry ‘s  book : Charlemagne, fondateur de l’Europe (Edition du Rocher)
On page 22, Ivan reports:
Cette memorable journee fut celled u Samedi 17 Octobre 733. La date traditionnelle de 732, apprise par tous les ecoliers ne figure que dans la Chronique de Moissac, redigee au IX siecle. Les autres auteurs indique celle de 733. Les historiens arabes celle de l’an 115 de l’hegire qui est l’equivalent de 733.
He insiste that Charles could not have enrolled his army a year earlier and that Charles was reported to strategically waited for the “Sarrasins” to waste their power and ambition enjoying their plunder and the women they raped.
PierreC9
:Ivan is a religious historian, and a sub-par one at that. The Saracens(note) would have easily established motive dominance and prime positioning had Martel followed that time table.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.56.240.4 (talk) 11:34, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Old talk 

message: In order to uphold the quality of Wikipedia:Good articles, all articles listed as Good articles are being reviewed against the requirements of the GA criteria as part of the GA project quality task force. Unfortunately, as of November 16, 2007, this article fails to satisfy the criteria, as detailed below. For that reason, the article has been delisted from WP:GA. However, if improvements are made bringing the article up to standards, the article may be nominated at WP:GAN.
Although the article currently has a good number of inline citations, several sections throughout the article are lacking sources, including multiple quotes. Go through the article and add an inline citation for any statement that a reader may question over its verifiability. If you can find sources online, feel free to include those, although book sources are always great, which this article uses a lot of. However, the rest of the article looks fine considering meeting the broad, NPOV, and image requirements. I have listed the many statements that should be sourced, and if sources are added, please do consider renominating the article again.
Need inline citations:
#"According to one unidentified Arab, "That army went through all places like a desolating storm.""
#"The Umayyad horsemen then utterly devastated that portion of Gaul, their own histories saying the "faithful pierced through the mountains, trampled over rough and level ground, plundered far into the country of the Franks, and smote all with the sword, insomuch that when Eudo came to battle with them at the River Garonne, he fled.""
#"As Herman de Carinthia wrote in one of his translations of a history of al-Andalus, Eudes managed a highly successful encircling envelopment which took the attackers totally by surprise — and the result was a chaotic slaughter of the Muslim forces."
#"According to the Arabian sources the Franks drew up in a large square, with the trees and upward slope to break any cavalry charge."
#"Most historians through the centuries have believed the Franks were badly outnumbered at the onset of battle by at least 2-1"
#"But Gibbon believes, as do most pre and modern historians, that Martel had made the best of a bad situation."
#"The battle was still in flux when Frankish histories claim that a rumor went through the Umayyad army that Frankish scouts threatened the booty that they had taken from Bordeaux."
#"According to Muslim accounts of the battle, in the midst of the fighting on the second day (Frankish accounts have the battle lasting one day only), scouts from the Franks sent by Charles began to raid the camp and supply train (including slaves and other plunder)."
#""All the host fled before the enemy", candidly wrote one Arabic source, "and many died in the flight"."
#"Gibbon makes the point that he did not move at once against Charles Martel, was surprised by him at Tours as Martel had marched over the mountains avoiding the roads to surprise the Muslim invaders, and thus the wily Martel selected the time and place they would collide:"
#"According to Creasy, the Muslims' best strategic choice would have been to simply decline battle, depart with their loot, garrisoning the captured towns in southern Gaul, and return when they could force Martel to a battleground more to their liking, one that maximized the huge advantage they had in their mailed and armored horsemen."
#"Martel believed it was vital to confine the Umayyad forces to Iberia and deny them any foothold in Gaul, a view many historians share."
#"Santosuosso notes that 'Uqba b. Al-Hajjaj converted about 2,000 Christians he captured over his career."
#"Western historians beginning with the Mozarabic Chronicle of 754 stressed the macrohistorical impact of the battle, as did the Continuations of Fredegar."
#"The first camp essentially agrees with Gibbon, and the other argues that the Battle has been massively overstated—turned from a raid in force to an invasion, and from a mere annoyance to the Caliph to a shattering defeat that helped end the Islamic Expansion Era."
#"However, Creasy has claimed: "The enduring importance of the battle of Tours in the eyes of the Moslems is attested not only by the expressions of 'the deadly battle' and 'the disgraceful overthrow' which their writers constantly employ when referring to it, but also by the fact that no more serious attempts at conquest beyond the Pyrenees were made by the Saracens.""
#"has argued that the military defeat at Tours was amongst one of the failures that contributed to the decline of the Umayyad caliphate: "Stretching from Morocco to China, the Umayyad caliphate based its expansion and success on the doctrine of jihad--armed struggle to claim the whole earth for God's rule, a struggle that had brought much material success for a century but suddenly ground to a halt followed by the collapse of the ruling Umayyad dynasty in 750 CE. The End of the Jihad State demonstrates for the first time that the cause of this collapse came not just from internal conflict, as has been claimed, but from a number of external and concurrent factors that exceeded the caliphate's capacity to respond. These external factors began with crushing military defeats at Byzantium, Toulouse and Tours, which led to the Great Berber Revolt of 740 in Iberia and Northern Africa.""
#"Watson adds, "After examining the motives for the Muslim drive north of the Pyrenees, one can attach a macrohistorical significance to the encounter between the Franks and Andalusi Muslims at Tours-Poitiers, especially when one considers the attention paid to the Franks in Arabic literature and the successful expansion of Muslims elsewhere in the medieval period.""
#"The mozarabic chronicle a Contemporary source which describes the battle in greater detail than any other Latin or Arabic source  states that the franks outnumbered the muslims and were better equipped and that agrees with muslim account and common sense. "
Links/page numbers that should be converted to inline citations:
#"Essentially, many modern Muslim scholars argue that the first Caliphate was a jihadist state which could not withstand an end to its constant expansion. [3]" Convert the link to an inline citation.
#"The great German military historian Hans Delbruck said of this battle "there was no more important battle in the history of the world." (The Barbarian Invasions, page 441.)" 
#"Louis Gustave and Chalres Strauss in Moslem and Frank; or, Charles Martel and the rescue of Europe said "The victory gained was decisive and final, The torrent of Arab conquest was rolled back and Europe was rescued from the threatened yoke of the Saracens." (page 122)" 
#"Antonio Santosuosso points out in his book Barbarians, Marauders and Infidels: The Ways of Medieval Warfare, on p. 126 "they (the Muslims) called the battle's location, the road between Poitiers and Tours, "the pavement of Martyrs.""
#"Historian Robert Payne on page 142 in "The History of Islam" said "The more powerful Muslims and the spread of Islam were knocking on Europe’s door. And the spread of Islam was stopped along the road between the towns of Tours and Poitiers, France, with just its head in Europe.""
Again, if you address these issues and check the article against the rest of the GA criteria, consider renominating the article at WP:GAN and let me know and I'll look it over again (so you can avoid the current month+ backlog). If you feel this decision has been made in error, you may seek remediation at WP:GA/R. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I have updated the article's history to reflect this review. Regards, --Nehrams2020 10:02, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: GA Sweeps Review: Delisted

message: Perhaps there should be details as to where the battle took place, in a separate section and not having to  scatter landscape information throughout the article? --Sunsetsunrise (talk) 01:35, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Geography? 

message: In the "background" section...the first paragraph. It is definitely not objective, but is there a reference for it? the_ed17 18:45, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: That works. =D the_ed17 04:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV 

message: This article needs some cleaning up.  How many times is it necessary to repeat that the Franks held the high ground, that they had no cavalry, that the Umayyad had not scouted the North, etc.? Eulalie Écho (talk) 18:22, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Repetitions 

message: Was reading through the article and noticed that at one point it says that one of Charles biggest advantages was his professional army, then a few paragraphs it states that he had no standing army.  This seems a bit contradictory to me, does anyone else think so?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.91.9.215 (talk) 07:45, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. A professional army as opposed, or at least evolution of, to a levy was a Martel devolpment.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.56.240.4 (talk) 11:28, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Better re-read your history books. The Asian Mongols, Turks, and Magyars all regularly terrorized the Europeans of the Middle Ages and won many battles. In Classical times, the Asian Huns were constantly defeating Roman armies in the West and the East.  The Arab muslim armies were able to beat both the Byzantine professional army, and the Crusader states, many times.50.111.5.54 (talk) 20:31, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contradiction 

message: "Charles's grandson, Charlemagne, became the first Christian ruler to begin what would be called the Reconquista from Europe."
I think Pelayo and his heirs get the honors in that area. 
Cranston Lamont (talk) 20:30, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  First to Fight? 

message: The illustration at right, used in the text, has been provided with a spurious date in Internet links, which would make it an illustration of this event. I have corrected its caption and repositioned it where it illustrates Christian and European views (in 1822-27) of Saracen invaders, which have colored the traditional historical assessment of the battle of Tours.--Wetman (talk) 23:01, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Schnorr von Carolsfeld fresco

message: Is it really necessary for Gibbon's to have his opinion 'validated' by saying basically Gibbons (and every historian that ever lived and mattered) said that...? Soxwon (talk) 17:09, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, that's not accurate.  A few revisionists have questioned the importance vis a vis the new leftist political school, but the vast majority - and certainly just about every Western university - is firmly in the camp that this battle checked muslim expansion into the Christian West.50.111.5.54 (talk) 20:37, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gibbon's Gang 

message: "(see Postmodernism)" starts a paragraph.  This needs elaboration or it needs to be removed. patsw (talk) 17:27, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  (see Postmodernism) 

message: The mozarabic chronicle a Contemporary source which describes the battle in greater detail than any other Latin or Arabic source states that the franks outnumbered the muslims and were better equiped and that agrees with muslim account and common sense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zaid almasri (talk • contribs) 20:06, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: While some of the higher-end figures might be a bit farfetched, are you actually suggesting that in over twenty years, the Muslim army in Iberia could not have grown into the tens of thousands? I think that you may want to consider the possibility that new troops from the rest of the then-still-expanding Muslim world may have arrived to help conquer Europe in the name of Islam. And what about Iberian natives who converted to Islam? Are you suggesting that none of them might have joined the Caliphate army?--L1A1 FAL (talk) 21:20, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relative size of forces 

message: Removing a sourced quote from a major 20th century figure regarding the macrohistorical importance of the article subject in a section on 20th century views of its macrohistorical importance is both asinine and vandalism.  "Well durr I don't think Hitler counts as a historian durr" is not a valid counterpoint. --NEMT (talk) 02:49, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: With this standard in mind, I'm going to keep an eye out on the literature for what Mussolini may have said about the battle. And Stalin. And the Roosevelts, Teddy and F.D. both. Finding something by Charles de Gaulle would be choice, him being French and all. Heck, maybe Donald Trump has waded or will wade in. Get enough such, and the section won't look so much like it does now. Like a bozo nose on a runway model. ô¿ô 01:33, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hitler quote 

message: In section 4.2 it says: 'Contemporary Arab and Muslim historians and chroniclers were much more interested in the second Umayyad siege of Constantinople in 718, which ended in a disastrous defeat.' There are no extant histories by 'Arab and Muslim historians' of that date, and even were there there should surely be a citation there.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.67.63.121 (talk) 14:51, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arabic historiography 

message: There is a lengthy section on the size of the armies, ranging from x to y, with figures for each side going as high as 80.000. Then, it says "Charles Martel's force lost about 1,500 while the Umayyad force was said to have suffered massive casualties of up to 375,000 men". Besides this number being completely out of proportion to the size of the army, it would mean that each Frank would have to have killed 250 men!!!!!  Rui Gabriel Correia (talk) 23:10, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of Ummayad casulties - 375,000 

message: I think that this article may be having a POV issue. It seems that in the last few months, an Arab/Islamic point of view, especially in regards to the infobox, has been injected into this article, particularly now that the infobox is essentially according to "Islamic sources" with no exception. I think it would be in the article's best interests that some of these recent edits be either verified, or corrected and re-cited.--L1A1 FAL (talk) 21:13, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: *:This blown-up infobox needs a lot of work. The numerous "according to Islamic sources" tags and all those links to the same book (why in caps?) have to be slimmed down a bit, especially since our primary sources, Merovingian or Umayyad, do not supply half this much in reliable evidence. The sections "Belligerents", "Strength", and "Casualties and losses" are cumbersome bordering on silly. I have already reconciled the first two points mentioned here, and would like to invite others to tag along. Trigaranus (talk) 10:36, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV? 

message: From the article: "The Umayyad attack was likely so late in the year because many men and horses needed to live off the land as they advanced; thus they had to wait until the area's wheat harvest was ready and then until a reasonable amount of the harvest was threshed (slowly by hand with flails) and stored. The further north, the later the harvest is, and while the men could kill farm livestock for food, horses cannot eat meat and needed grain as food."
Horses don't normally eat grain, but fibrous grasses and hay, hence their rumen. Grain is only fed for fattening such an animal for slaughter.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.232.35.28 (talk) 07:13, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Horses eat grass, and also hay (i.e. grain stalks): they can digest cellulose, but they don't have a rumen. The breakup of cellulose happens with the help of bacteria in their cæcum, a “dead-ended” organ connected at the junction between the small and large intestines. However, they are also fed grain, especially oats, even in countries like Britain where slaughtering horses for food is considered an abomination. Tonymec (talk) 21:32, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

text: Military horses tend to be fed grain if available in order to shorten the time spent feeding rather than in actual military movement and activity. If horses are eating grass only, hours per day can be lost to grazing, depending on how green and thick the grass is. Much more time if competing with concentrated masses of other horses denuding the area of grass. Plus horses with bellies full of grass may be a little sluggish for vigorous movement. Of course Asian-Islamic style horse raiders more likely spread out thinly over immense areas in very small groups to graze. This could well have been the cause of having inferior numbers on the actual battle while having superior numbers in the region. That is the size of the main Islamic camp would be limited by recently looted grain and excess forces dispersed out of easy command range.
24.162.54.29 (talk) 21:23, 19 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Horses need grain? 

message: I wonder why the "Conclusion" reads as it does, particularly why the "traditional" view (i.e. Tours was a world historically significant event in the tradition of Edward Gibbon) is given so much weight and the scholars used to support it.
	
Neither Huston Smith, Robert Payne (author), nor Victor Davis Hanson seems to (have) be(en) specialists in the issues at stake here (mainly the interaction of early medieval Europe and Islam).
: Smith's field is religious studies and not with a focus on neither this period nor area.
: Payne seems to have focused far more on popular histories of China and biographies and was a professor of English literature.
: Hanson is a specialist in Classical Greece (and its warfare and agriculture in particular) and "Carnage and Culture" (the origin of the rather long quote) is a highly polemical/politicised work, which, as a historian, I find highly dubious in its central thesis about an essentially "Western" tradition of warfare with a continuity (to put it bluntly) from Ancient Greece to the Pentagon. I would certainly be very cautious about using it, as it seems is done here, as the clinching argument for the importance of Tours.
So basically, why are these 3 scholars given "the final word" on the importance of the Battle of Tours?
If you check the recent episode of In Our Time (BBC Radio 4), the scholars there were all very cautious about both our extant sources on the battle (emphasising their vague, fragmented and partisan nature) and were clearly on the side of downplaying "Gibbon'esque" importance assigned to this battle. (See, or rather listen to: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03pm7dv)
: Mojowiha (talk) 11:48, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Completely agree. The so-called "Conclusion" is just three more opinions. Thee's no evidence provided that those opinions are in any way "conclusive". I've therefore moved them to the tradioal view section and deleted the "Conclusion" heading. Unless it can be shown that the balance of scholarly opinion is one way or another, then any conclusion is either not possible or just a synopsis of the previous two subsections. DeCausa (talk) 15:48, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Troubling (POV?) ''"Conclusion"'' 

message: this sourced edit was removed. Why? In ictu oculi (talk) 16:33, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Presumably because it's a different battle. That was earlier in the campaign and against the Acquitanians. The Muslims won that one. (They lost the Battle of Tours.) We have an article on it under Battle of the River Garonne. Your edit should go in that article. Also the redirect you created Battle of Bordeaux (732) should refirect to that article. DeCausa (talk) 18:49, 29 June 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added it to the other article and changed the redirect. DeCausa (talk) 05:16, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Also called "Battle of Bordeaux"

message: Interesting article, but it would be better if we just quoted the few sources we have, and left the analysis to God, or someone else who was there. 
This is a sea of conjecture. For instance "see the Battle of Hastings" - that was 300 years later, and Charles could not have been influenced by it.
I know its tempting, but please, stick to the facts. Some things are just lost to history.
Cheers Ben Billyshiverstick (talk) 04:22, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you miss the point that among the facts of the Battle of Tours and the depiction of it as a significant event in European history by Gibbon and the contrasting opinions on this interpretation. It would make little sense to just quote the primary sources and "let people make up their own minds". Also, the reference to Hastings is not positing any kind of causal connection between the two, but an illustration of what happened in an early Medieval battle in cases "of infantry being lured into the open by armoured cavalry." Now I've changed the section because I think it misses the point by making a false analogy as it's highly doubtful that the Umayyad Caliphate forces were comprised (mainly) of armoured cavalry. Something like the Battle of Adrianople (378 AD) or probably some of Martel's earlier battles, particularly his use of the feigned retreat at the Battle of Amblève two decades earlier would be better analogies - even though cavalry was arguably less important to the armies of the Franks and their European opponents than to the Arab armies. Mojowiha (talk) 09:18, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  IMHO some extraneous analysis going on here 

message: Because they are causing a Checkwiki error #72: "ISBN-10 with wrong checksum", I removed the ISBN from these entries:
* "The state of Islam in Al Andalus", written by Mohammed Abdullah Annan, ((The first era-The first section, from the conquest until the beginning of the era of Al-Nasir)). Fourth edition, published by Khanji library in Cairo. . Page 96
*"The state of Islam in Al Andalus", written by Mohammed Abdullah Annan, ((The first era-The first section, from the conquest until the beginning of the era of Al-Nasir)). Fourth edition, published by Khanji library in Cairo. . Page 99
I have tried unsuccessfully to locate the correct ISBN on the Internet. This invalid ISBN appears in many articles of the Arabic Wiki. Knife-in-the-drawer (talk) 15:56, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bad ISBN 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I have read that the battlefield was actually closer to Poitiers than Tours. This article says it is “somewhere between the cities of Poitiers and Tours”. I can live with that, although it would be nice to cite the latest consensus on the exact location. What I can’t live with is the geographical coordinates of the city of Tours. That is incorrect and misleading.
Could someone knowledgeable of the history and with the editing skill to display the coordinates please fix this. Humphrey Tribble (talk) 21:42, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Location of battlefield 

message: I wna here it 103.255.150.224 (talk) 00:51, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Battle of Tours,[6] also called the Battle of Poitiers and, by Arab sources, the Battle of the Highway of the Martyrs (Arabic: معركة بلاط الشهداء, romanized: Maʿrakat Balāṭ ash-Shuhadā'),[7] was fought on 10 October 732, and was an important battle during the Umayyad invasion of Gaul. It resulted in the victory for the Frankish and Aquitanian forces,[8][9] led by Charles Martel, over the invading forces of the Umayyad Caliphate, led by Abdul Rahman Al-Ghafiqi, governor of al-Andalus.