Most of the rest of Christian Western Europe’s kingdoms, however, were fragmented. In the aftermath of the Abbasid Caliphate’s political collapse and the gradual weakening of Fatimid Egypt (see Chapter Eight), the eleventh-century Byzantine Empire was the strongest, most centralized state in the Eastern Mediterranean, and indeed, probably the strongest state west of Song China. Out of the chaos and mayhem of the tenth and eleventh centuries, East Francia-the eastern third of Charlemagne’s Empire that is in roughly the same place as modern Germany-and England had emerged as united and powerful states.
