>> False. There was a LOT of trade in the Roman Empire.
What percentage of a person's purchases came from outside his region?
As I look around, almost everything I have from clothing to the TV to the computer to even my furniture is imported from somewhere else. I was going to say only my food is locally produced, but that is not quite true either. A lot of my fruits, rice, lamb, spices, and so much more come from elsewhere. Compared to our lives, the Roman provinces were damn self sufficient.
>> By definition it ended Byzantine-Persian wars, and began Byzantine-Ummayid wars...
No time warps please. Byzantines were defeated in Syria by the Persians under Khusran Parvis (in A.D. 615) while Muhammed was still considered rebel in Arabia. In the next decade or so I think Syria changed hands a couple of times. Given that Damascus and not Mecca became the capital of the Ummayids after the collapse of Persian Empire, it is unlikely that the Byzanties had a strong presence there even if it was their in theory. North Africa was not an integral part of Rome and they did not care much for it.
The point remains that Persians went well into Europe several times (and I think at couple of times even into Italy itself) but the Ummayids at best hit into Turkey and rarely made it as fars to the Black Sea. Surely this allowed Romans to catch their breath from 800 years of war...the main problem for the Byzantines at that time were the Slavs and related tribes.
The Persian Empire did not collapse till 650 (but more practically till 670). Here you can read more about the Byzantines and Islam fordham.edu Notice how much of their losses was before anyone had even heard of Islam. Here is one of the passages:
The Effects of the Persian Invasion
Despite the final victory in 628, when the Byzantine forces marched back to Constantinople they traversed areas of the empire that had been permanently and severely affected by the Persian campaign of 613-19. In particular, the spacious classical cities of antiquity had been destroyed and abandoned, marking a complete change in living patterns. The same process had taken place in the European provinces, producing new settlements. Other communities fled from their cities to islands. According to the Chronicle of Monemvasia, the bishop of Patras arranged for his flock to sail to safety in Sicily, where they remained for over 200 years. Only in the early ninth century did they return to Greece. While urban communities sometimes managed to preserve a certain cohesion, even as refugees, many fled in disorder. Everywhere life was ruralised, localised, and restricted. Provincial nobles and wealthy landowners may have sought refuge behind the walls of their fortified villas; those with houses in the capital maintained their aristocratic ways and added to the permanent membership of the Senate. In the confusion that afflicted the countryside, tied serfs and slaves probably tried to break free from their owners' estates, to become independent in new village or castle communities, where they could occupy and farm their own lands. The disruption of large-scale estate cultivation and regular agricultural activity, plus the lack of contact between different regions, gradually reduced the economy to a subsistence one. In place of organised exchange through markets with important goods available for sale, self-sufficiency became close to the norm - in manufactured goods as well as foodstuffs. |
