Left Behind: The Goats of Poitou
Chabichou is a delightful little French goat cheese, with a lovely wavelike texture and a shape reminiscent of a drooping cylindrical tower. Eaten fresh, its flavors are very floral and it has a nice creamy texture, but after a few months its aroma becomes spicier and more aggressive. It is exclusively made in the region around Poitiers, under a strict set of conditions defined within its appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC).* It also lends its name to the so-called Route du Chabichou, a delicious tour of the Poitou-Charentes region and its many varieties of goat cheese.
Legend says that its name comes from the Arabic word chebli, or goat. As it happens, Poitiers is famous not just for the lovely Chabichou, but as the site of an epic battle in the eighth century that has traditionally been seen as a turning point in European history, when the Frankish kingdom was invaded by a swiftly expanding Islamic empire. According to local legend, the armed forces of the Umayyad caliphate brought with them herds of goats, and this is the origin of the famous goat cheeses of the Poitou-Charentes region, which today accounts for about two-thirds of France’s goat cheese production.1
Very few details of the battle are known to us. Even though French schoolchildren learn that it took place in 732 in Poitiers, it may have taken place in 733 closer to Tours. In fact, in the English-speaking world it is often referred to as the Battle of Tours. (This geographical ambiguity is absent in the Arabic name for the battle, the Balat ash-Shuhada, or “pavement of martyrs.”)
Whatever the exact date, the battle took place at a time when the Islamic empire was barely a century into its existence and yet had already become a preeminent power in the Middle East and Mediterranean. Its roots lay in the nomadic tribes of the Arabian Peninsula, who were transformed by the revelations of the Prophet Muhammad and the emergence of Islam in the seventh century. In the following decades, the Arabs swept out of their homeland and conquered much of the Middle East and North Africa. In less than a hundred years, they established an empire—a “caliphate”—extending from modern-day Pakistan to Spain, in the process destroying the ancient Persian Empire and crippling the Byzantines.
The expansion of the Islamic empire across the Levant and North Africa had lasting consequences for Mediterranean cuisine. Over the preceding centuries of Roman rule, a certain continuity of diet had emerged around the Mediterranean, but now its southern shores were enveloped by an Islamic culture that brought new foods from Asia—including sugar, eggplants, and citrus fruits—and forbade pork and alcohol. As a result, pork and alcohol became mostly confined to the countries north of the Mediterranean, and thus associated with an emerging European identity (a dynamic that, as we shall see, persists to this day).2
After the first four Muslim caliphs, and Islam’s first civil war (which resulted in the schism between the Sunni and Shia sects), the Umayyad dynasty took the reins of the caliphate. Based in Damascus, the Umayyads oversaw the rapid expansion of the Islamic empire, including the conquest of Al-Andalus (the Iberian Peninsula) by an invading Arab-Berber force from North Africa in the early eighth century. The armies of the caliphate eventually crossed the Pyrenees and took several territories in western and southern Gaul, thus becoming a direct concern to the Frankish kingdom.
At this time, the Franks were still ruled by the Merovingian kings, but they had become so weak, powerless, and neglectful of their responsibilities that they were known as the “lazy kings.” Real political power lay with the mayor of the palace, which at that time was Charles, son of Pepin. He already had a well-trained and experienced army under his command, and was, in fact, king in all but name.
The Umayyad invaders were led by Abd al-Rahman, the emir of Cordoba. The large army, numbering in the tens of thousands, conquered the wealthy province of Aquitaine and then advanced slowly northward toward the Loire, hoping to sack rich cities such as Tours. The Franks may have been outnumbered, and forced to rely on infantry to fight the Umayyads’ heavy cavalry, but the slow advance of the Umayyad army gave Charles the opportunity to select a favorable site for the battle, on high wooded ground. In the end, this proved decisive. After a week of skirmishing, a hard-fought day of battle ended with the death of Abd al-Rahman and an Umayyad retreat. Some say it was this victory that gave the Frankish leader his enduring moniker, Charles Martel (Charles the Hammer). His decisive win was seen as a victory for Christianity itself, and he was later referred to as the “Hammer of the Infidels.”
There is some debate as to the historical legacy of the Battle of Poitiers. Because it marks the furthest boundary of the Umayyad conquest in Europe, the battle has often been presented as a pivotal moment in world history, a victory that prevented Europe from falling under Islamic rule. But more recently, historians have argued that the army of Abd al-Rahman only invaded France for plunder and had no intention of lasting conquest. At any rate, the Umayyad expansion lost its momentum later in the eighth century due to internal unrest, and the forces of Al-Andalus would not have been strong enough to continue to occupy France.
Nevertheless, the Battle of Poitiers caught the imagination of the French in the centuries to come. It was said that Joan of Arc heard voices telling her to go to Poitiers and unearth the sword of Charles to help drive another invader, the English, out of France. During World War II, both the Vichy regime and the French resistance drew upon the legend of the Frankish warrior; a resistance group based near Poitiers took the name of Brigade Charles Martel.
More recently, the French far right has drawn upon the Charles Martel legend in their xenophobic campaigns. In the 1970s and 1980s, anti-Arab terrorists in the Charles Martel Group bombed a series of Algerian targets in France. The Front National (FN), France’s most successful far-right political party, drew upon the symbolism of the Battle of Poitiers in the 2002 presidential elections, deploying the campaign slogan “Martel 732, Le Pen 2002.” The racist message was clear: “We will defeat the new Muslim invasion.” More recently, FN founder Jean-Marie Le Pen responded to the popular mantra “Je suis Charlie,” following the terrorist attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, by declaring, “Je suis Charlie Martel.” While most French people would see such comments as deplorable and in very poor taste, they unfortunately do appeal to a segment of the population that can no longer be called marginal. Le Pen’s daughter and FN party leader, Marine Le Pen, won more than 30 percent of the vote in the 2017 presidential election.
Of much better taste is our lovely goat cheese Chabichou. Whether its origins really do lie in the aftermath of the Umayyad invasion is debatable. Goats, also known as “the poor man’s cow,” would have been an ideal animal to nourish an army. Goats are very adaptable, can walk on harsh terrain, and can happily just eat the grass on the side of the road while on the move. In fact, a goat will eat nearly any plant. Its milk can be drunk fresh and it is relatively easy to make goat cheese from it. It is therefore not hard to imagine that the Umayyad forces brought goats, and a tradition of goat-cheese-making, into the Frankish lands, and left them behind as a remnant of their thwarted conquest.
Today, France produces more than one hundred thousand tons of goat cheese each year.3 Chabichou is a delicious reminder that the meeting of different cultures and civilizations should be a source of enrichment rather than conflict. If Chabichou could talk, it would perhaps whisper, “Make cheese, not war—it tastes so much better, especially with a glass of crisp sauvignon blanc.”
* The AOC framework was created in France in the 1920s and 1930s to identify and regulate geographically defined foods and wines, including many of France’s best and most popular products. Each AOC defines the territory in which a food or wine must be produced, as well as the sources and methods of production. The aim is to reduce fraud and maintain standards of quality. In 2010, the AOC system was renamed AOP (appellation d’origine protegée), but most people continue to use AOC. A less restrictive framework for regional products also exists, known as the IGP (indication géographique protegée).