PS re the Ummayad Caliphate: What If They Had Won?

My friend Bill Riddle, a military history buff, commented re my thoughts on the Cordoban values of seeking and sharing learning and embracing diversity of ideas and beliefs.  Bill wondered what might have happened in Europe, to Europe, had the "Moors" won the Battle of Tours/Poitiers.  That battle was for control of half or more of what today is France; it took place near the north central towns of Tours and Poitiers in 732. That was before Abd al-Rahman became Emir of Cordoba, in 755, but had the Ummayads controlled the Pyranees and Acuitaine, the southern half of today's France, when they installed Abd al-Rahman, our world might look quite different.

Western historians, particularly Gibbon and various churchy 19thC types, portray Martel's victory at the Battle of Tours, or Poitiers #1,* as having saved Christianity and Western Europe from the dreaded Moors, a decisive turning point in the struggle against Islam, driving the infidels back below the Pyranees.

Well, the victorious Franks struggled on in the grip of their church and in the ignorance of the Dark Ages for another 600 years or so.  But what if the Cordobans had won?

Might the Cordoban awakening have spread into Europe by 900 had those terrible "Moors" established some of their translation factories north, in Tours and Avignon and Bordeaux?  Might the Renaissance have come and lifted the curtains of the Dark Ages some 400 years sooner?  Might Jews, Christians and Muslims learned to live together in mutual respect, as peoples of the Book?   Or would the repressive forces of fundamentalist, purist Christianity and Islam have still risen up, driven by fear, suspician and paranoia to overwhelm the humanist, tolerant culture of the Cordobans? 

Perhaps their victory was a pitiful set-back for Europeans.  Idle speculation to re-imagine what might have been ....

* Not to be confused with Edward's 14thC defeat of John of France, the 2nd Battle of Poitiers.