57. "Muslim civilization, like Western civilization, is derivative - a civilization of the second degree, to use the terminology of Alfred Weber. It was not built on a tabula rasa, but on the lava of that fluid, lively and motley civilization which preceded it in the Near East. So it was not with the preaching of Muhammad, or the first decade of dazzling Muslim conquests (632—42), that the biographv of Islam began. Its real origins lie deep in the immemorial history of the Near East."

- fernand braudel, a history of civilizations