Approaches to the environmental history of L ate A ntiquity, part 1: The rise of I slam

Since the 19th century, scholars have examined the end of the Classical world and the beginning of the medieval world, or “Late Antiquity” in the centuries from 300–900 C.E. through the lens of environmental history. Environmental determinism, based on the use of history by colonial historians, employed elements from geography, climate, and landscape studies to explain the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Islam in Arabia, and the destruction of the formerly fertile lands of the Roman Empire by marauding Bedouin. Recent studies stress the importance of intensive regional study while reversing the view of general environmental catastrophe and economic decline once thought to accompany the Arab conquests of the late antique Levant.