The Emperors, the Caliph(s) and the Doctor: Cross-Cultural Encounters and Interactions on the "Periphery" of Byzantium (ca. 650-950) (original) (raw)
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The period between the two falls of Constantinople, namely the Crusader conquest of 1204 and the Ottoman conquest of 1453, witnessed the radical transformation of Byzantium from empire into a mosaic of autonomous and semi-autonomous polities. The fascinating survival and transformation of Byzantine identities in a world dominated by Latin Christian and Muslim powers was the result of complex dynamics, with Constantinople functioning, more or less, as a magnet for the Orthodox populations beyond its narrow political borders. Theodoros Metochites’ (d. 1332) rhetoric eloquently captures the ideological, spiritual and cultural radiance of the “Queen City”. In his laudatory oration on the Byzantine capital, Metochites describes Constantinople as “the citadel of the whole world” (ἀκρόπολιν τινὰ τῶν ὅλων) and the “shared homeland of all people” (κοινοπολιτεία πάντων ἀνθρώπων), stressing the city’s role as a centre, in both geographic and symbolic terms. Over the past two decades, there has been a remarkable progress in the way scholars approach the history and culture of former Byzantine areas under Latin Christian and Muslim rule in the period between 1200 and 1400. The picture emerging from these studies embraces unity and diversity, interaction and contention, synthesis and conservativism, new identities and old. Research on the history of Mediterranean has also shown that the political, religious and cultural fragmentation of the Eastern Mediterranean increased, rather than restrained, the development of multiple connectivities, among the peoples inhabiting this vast liquid area. Yet, the nature and degree of bonds of unity between Late Byzantium and the former Byzantine lands —encompassing the physical mobility of humans and objects, as well as institutional, ideological, religious and cultural links— requires a more systematic and in-depth exploration. The aim of this Colloquium is to re-address questions related to Byzantine connectivities, experiences and identities in Latin- and Muslim-ruled Mediterranean areas once belonging to the Byzantine Empire. Borrowed from graph theory, the term connectivities has been employed by Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell to describe the networks connecting microecologies with similar structures in Mediterranean landscapes and seascapes, society and religion, politics and culture. Focusing on religion and culture as the main strands of identity preservation, negotiation and adaptation, our Colloquium wishes to examine the threads waving the tapestry of a “Late Byzantine Mediterranean”: a fluidly-defined κοινοπολιτεία under the enduring influence of Constantinople, but in constant communication and exchange with the religious and ethnic Other. The main themes of the Colloquium include, but are not necessarily restricted to, the following: • Byzantine legacies in the Eastern Mediterranean after 1200 • Worlds of interaction and conflict (e.g., Asia Minor, the Holy Land, Cyprus and the Aegean) • The role of Byzantine culture as a transcultural language of communication • The impact of intra-Byzantine conflicts in the Eastern Mediterranean • Experiences of colonisation and foreign rule • Instrumentalisation of identities in historiography (inclusions and exclusions) Our speakers represent a variety of scholarly fields and methodological approaches, navigating the sea of Byzantine encounters in the Latin and Muslim worlds from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. By paying close attention to the continuities and discontinuities that (re-)shaped Byzantine identities in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Colloquium aims at providing fresh and stimulating perspectives on the sense of belonging to Byzantium and its broader significance. The Colloquium is dedicated to the loving memory of two great scholars, Speros Vryonis, Jr. and Elizabeth A. Zachariadou, who transformed our perception of the Byzantine legacy in the Eastern Mediterranean. Registration necessary at: https://ics.sas.ac.uk/events/late-byzantine-mediterranean-byzantine-connectivities-experiences-and-identities-a
Collection of Papers of the Faculty of Philosophy, LIV (3), 2024
This paper aims to show how 11th-century Byzantine historians viewed Italy and Sicily during a specific period when the Empire lost all its possessions in these provinces. By analysing the histories of Michael Psellus, Cecaumenus, Michael Attaliates, John Scylitzes, and Scylitzes Continuatus, we explore their portrayal of the loss of these provinces, which were historically closely linked to Ancient Roman history. After presenting Byzantine Italy and Sicily in the 11th century, the paper discusses the image of Italy as the birthplace of Ancient Rome and references to the distant past of Italy and Sicily found in the texts under review. Special emphasis is placed on the importance of Italy and Sicily for these historians, examining possible differences in their presentation of the provinces and the reasons behind them. In the final part, the paper analyses how anecdotes in the histories can offer valuable information on the understanding of these regions and their place in Byzantine collective memory.
“No Island is an Island”: The Byzantine Mediterranean in The Early Middle Ages (600s-850s)
The Legends Avrupa Tarihi Çalışmaları Dergisi
Large islands of the western and eastern Byzantine Mediterranean are often caught in a historiographical vacuum because they are regarded as isolated and marginal places at the peripheries of Constantinopolitan empire. In fact, although literary and sources dismiss them simply as places of exile or distant military outposts along maritime frontiers, archaeology and material culture have recently shed light on the role they played as "spaces of connectivity". This is due not only to their strategic locations along the commercial shipping routes crisscrossing the Mediterranean but also because islands often presented peculiar adaptive administrative strategies molded by the military and political exigencies of the hour. In fact, this paper will argue that archaeology and material evidence (like coins, lead-seals and above all ceramics) as paired with the rather scarce literary and documentary sources give us enough evidence pointing to a certain degree of economic prosperity on the abovementioned islands during the period under scrutiny as they continued to play an important role in the political, fiscal, administrative and religious structures of the Byzantine empire. Indeed, this paper will also try to show that a resilient insular economy paired with the continuity on local production of artefacts entailed by the persistence of levels of demand on the part of the local secular and religious elites and regular if not frequent regional and sub-regional contacts with other areas of the Mediterranean (Carolingian or Muslim) as well as remaining part and parcel of the a Byzantine political, sociocultural and economic "coastal" koiné.
Mediterranean Historical Review
Byzantine historiography has often regarded the large Mediterranean islands (Cyprus, Crete, Sardinia, Malta and the Balearics) as mere peripheral additions to the Byzantine heartlanddefined as the coupling of two different geographical zones: the Anatolian plateau and the Aegean. As a result, Byzantinists seem not to have fully moved away from an interpretative framework which regards islands as either strategic military bulwarks along the Arab-Byzantine Mediterranean frontier, or as neglected marginal outposts soon to be lost forever. A partial exception to this historiographical periphericity of large islands is represented by Sicily, because of its relevance as a secure source for grain after the disruption of the Egyptian tax-spine in the 640s. In fact, by comparing material and archaeological evidence with literary and documentary sources, an alternative interpretation of the political, economic and cultural role played by large islands will be proposed, this by pairing two main themes: the first revolving around the economics of insular societies; and the second stressing the importance of islands as connective hubs with peculiar local political, social and cultural structures which remained within the Byzantine sphere of influence for longer than previously thought. This approach allows us to tip the unbalanced dialogue between margins and metropolis by pointing to a relatively higher welfare of the insular world as stemming from the uninterrupted, although diminished, "connective" role the abovementioned islands played within the Mediterranean shipping routes linking the eastern and western basin of the Mediterranean. In this light, the adaptive strategies of insular administrative structures as influenced by the political or military difficulties of the hour, as well as the urban sociopolitical and economic structures on some of the abovementioned Byzantine islands, will also be documented. This is because the construction of urban models, settlement strategies and infrastructuresalthough often based on diverse political and administrative policiesnevertheless point to the presence of common, cross-cultural insular developments such as: the role of members of urban-oriented aristocracies as cultural brokers; the creation of commercial and artisanal facilities; the construction or restoration of religious buildings as foci of settlement and regional as well as interregional pilgrimage; the resilience of local elites as catalysts of patronage; and the persistence of levels of demand often based upon regular if not frequent regional and sub-regional trans-maritime contacts.
Imagined Geographies in Byzantium Before and After 1204 Yannis Stouraitis My modest aim in this chapter, to show how the lands of the community we call Byzantine were imagined in the writings of an educated elite, needs to start with a stereotypical 'decolonizing' statement. The so-called Byzantines were self-designated as Rhōmaíoi (that is, Romans) and their empire was the Empire of the Romans, whose unbroken continuity from the times of Caesar and Augustus they professed. 1 This means that exploring 'Byzantine' imageries of the Roman lands is actually about exploring the evolution of Roman imagery of an imperial geopolitical and cultural space in the Middle Ages. Based on this, my aim in what follows is twofold. In the first part of the chapter, I will attempt an overview of visions of territoriality before the late twelfth century in order to scrutinize the extent to which the Constantinopolitan ruling elite continued to adhere to the traditional Roman vision of a territorial empire in the High Middle Ages-an empire whose limits were constantly fluctuating and, therefore, remained indefinite in ideological terms. In the second part, I will focus on the transitional period from the late twelfth to the late thirteenth century, seeking to answer whether the centralized imperial order's disintegration in 1204 caused a major shift in the way the Roman lands were imagined. Imagining the Roman Lands in the Early and High Middle Ages Modern national communities and nation states are distinguished by the fact that they are imagined in a finite manner, both in political-cultural and territorial terms. In the famous 1 On the Oriental aspects of the term Byzantine, see Cameron 2003; Angelov 2003; Marciniak 2018; Stouraitis 2022. words of Benedict Anderson, no nation imagines itself as coterminous with mankind and, as a result of that, no national homeland can be imagined as infinite. 2 Contrary to this, in the Roman imperial worldview the notion of a finite homeland (patria) of the Romans was bound to the city-state of Rome and, after the empire's translation from the West to the East in the course of Late Antiquity, to Constantinople as the New Rome. 3 Beyond the walls of the Roman city-state lay the Roman lands, which were circumscribed by the-at any time-current limits of enforceable imperial authority and, therefore, could be imagined as infinite with regard to their potential extension. An insight into the Roman notion of a territorially fluctuating and infinite imperial political community in Late Antiquity is provided by the early fifth-century historical work of Eunapius: it was clear to all that if the Roman imperial power rejected luxury and embraced war, it would conquer and enslave all the world ... while they have all means with which to unite mankind and turn it into a single polity (politeia), our Emperors in their concern for the transient turn to pleasure without taking into account and showing interest in the immortality of glory. 4 Irrespective of the utopian character of a such a statement in the context of the contemporary geopolitical status quo, its connotations with regard to geopolitical imagery are clear: the territory of the politeia, the political community under centralized imperial rule could be imagined as encompassing the whole known world. Rhōmaíōn politeia is one of the terms Greek-speaking authors used to denote the imperial order as a politicalterritorial entity. Other terms were Rhōmaíōn/rhōmaikê archê, basileía, or hêgemonía, Rhōmaíōn horia, hórois, gê, Rhōmanía, and Rhōmaís. As will become evident in what follows, these terms were used interchangeably to denote a territorial empire, that is, a geographical space whose Roman identity in present or past times was determined by its present or past status of subordination to the Roman imperial authority of Rome or Constantinople, respectively.