always the Pope and later in the 700s it was shared with Charlemagne. The combination of these two managed to keep the Arab invasions at bay. But the Christians did benefit with their contact with the Islamic culture. The aggressiveness of the Arabs forced Western Europeans to rely on their own resources and to develop their own heritage and culture.
             By diverting the focus and energies of the Byzantine Empire, the Arabs prevented it from expanding into Western Europe allowing the Franks and the Lombargs to gain power and by controlling their Mediterranean access to eastern trade and cultural influence was diminished. There was a lot of creative interchange between these two cultures. The Arab civilization taught western farmers irrigation, the tanning of leather, refinition of silk and educated their scholars.
             Relations between the two during those times were not always antagonistic. In 802, Charlemagne received from the caliph, Harun-al-Rashid, a white elephant. In truth the Christians made not only a great amount of wealth from their contacts with the Arabs with a whole deal of knowledge which led to their ascendancy of power during the Renaissance years. Civilization in Western Europe gained much more than it could have ever before. Another fact about the Islamic civilization was that they were quite tolerant and practical race. Their tolerance of certain religions like the Jews provided more distaste between Christians and themselves. This was an antagonism until recently when the Arabs revolted against the new state of Israel. "For instance, during the siege of Constantinople in 730 when Leo III managed to repulse the invaders, he also got ideas to change certain parts of the Christian religion. He forbade the uses of images in eastern churches and tried to enforce the!
             ban in the west, even though his efforts insulted the western churches."(Marlow, 9)
             In 1071, the Byzantine Empire was handed a ma...