The Byzantine Neighbourhood. Urban Space and Political Action. Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies 31 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2022). (original) (raw)
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The Byzantine Neighbourhood contributes to a new narrative regarding Byzantine cities through the adoption of a neighbourhood perspective. It offers a multidisciplinary investigation of the spatial and social practices that produced Byzantine concepts of neighbourhood and afforded dynamic interactions between different actors, elite and non-elite. Authors further consider neighbourhoods as political entities, examining how collectivities formed in Byzantine neighbourhoods translated into political action. By both acknowledging the unique position of Constantinople and giving serious attention to the varieties of provincial experience, the contributors consider regional factors (social, economic, and political) that formed the ties of local communities to the state and illuminate the mechanisms of empire. Beyond its Byzantine focus, this volume contributes to broader discussions of premodern urbanism by drawing attention to the spatial dimension of social life and highlighting the involvement of multiple agents in city-making.
Sixty Years of Research on the Byzantine City
The Byzantine city became identified as a discrete historical entity, worthy of dedicated research, in the 1950s. Since then it has generated a large and growing volume of scholarship. My task in this paper is to give a brief review of the material, pointing out its main landmarks and directions. The period under review will not correspond exactly to the chronological limits of this volume. It ends in the fifteenth century, with the fall of Constantinople, since I consider the Ottoman town to be a different phenomenon from its Byzantine predecessor, and there are virtually no studies seriously linking the two. On the other hand, I begin in the fourth century, with the foundation of Constantinople. Despite the deep discontinuities between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and the problems of periodizing Byzantium, few Byzantinists would wish to exclude the age of Justinian from their domain, and between the empire of Justinian and the empire of Constantine no clean division can be drawn. Two of the most important monographs in the field are titled "The Byzantine City in the Sixth Century" 1. The geographical limits of my survey are similarly defined by the existence of the Roman Empire of Constantinople: I consider mainly those towns and cities that came within the political orbit of the Byzantine imperial court and its splinter states. Research on the Byzantine city has sought to answer basically the same questions that have driven the study of urbanism in the medieval West: Was it a continuation of the ancient city? What was its relationship to political and religious authority? Did the town and is inhabitants have a distinct status with regard to the rest of society, and particularly the population of its surrounding countryside? How was urban society divided, both vertically and horizontally, and what was the relationship between private, public and sacred space? What administrative, social, cultural and economic functions did it fulfil, and which of all these was its raison d'être? In particular, was the economic function paramount, and within the urban economy, did consumption take precedence over production and exchange? How did towns relate to each other, both spatially and in terms of size and importance, and what differentiated towns, within the hierarchy of settlements, from other settlement units? In short, what defined a city, what characterised the quality of urban life, and what made some towns more urban than others? The range of answers to these questions is necessarily limited and predictable for any pre-industrial society. In a comparison between Byzantium and the West, however, the
Medieval Worlds, 2021
Chrysobulls issued »in common« to the inhabitants of cities, together with a large number of other surviving sources, shed light on the interplay in the Byzantine Empire during the long thirteenth century between, on the one hand, growing claims to civic autonomy advanced by communes and, on the other, efforts by imperial authority to control its territory. This chapter examines the emergence of a new kind of empire – based on commerce and trade – under the Palaiologoi. It analyses the changing circumstances of urban centres in the western provinces, and assesses the degree of fiscal, legal and political emancipation that these centres achieved. It discusses the creation of leagues and other types of alliances that successfully bound cities and towns together into regional associations. It also considers the mechanisms behind revolts and other forms of armed and unarmed protest that occurred against the central regime. Particular attention is paid to the region of northern Greece (Thrace and Macedonia) dominated by the city of Thessalonike, for which the evidence is most plentiful.
The Byzantine world contained many important cities throughout its empire. Although it was not 'urban' in the sense of the word today, its cities played a far more fundamental role than those of its European neighbors. This book, through a collection of twenty-four chapters, discusses aspects of, and different approaches to, Byzantine urbanism from the early to late Byzantine periods. It provides both a chronological and thematic perspective to the study of Byzantine cities, bringing together literary, documentary, and archival sources with archaeological results, material culture, art, and architecture, resulting in a rich synthesis of the variety of regional and sub-regional transformations of Byzantine urban landscapes. Organised into four sections, this book covers: Theory and Historiography, Geography and Economy, Architecture and the Built Environment, and Daily Life and Material Culture. It includes more specialised accounts that address the centripetal role of Constantinople and its broader influence across the empire. Such new perspectives help to challenge the historiographical balance between 'margins and metropolis,' and also to include geographical areas often regarded as peripheral, like the coastal urban centers of the Byzantine Mediterranean as well as cities on islands, such as Crete, Cyprus, and Sicily which have more recently yielded well-excavated and stratigraphically sound urban sites. The Routledge Handbook of the Byzantine City provides both an overview and detailed study of the Byzantine city to specialist scholars, students, and enthusiasts alike and, therefore, will appeal to all those interested in Byzantine urbanism and society, as well as those studying medieval society in general.
The Routledge Handbook of the Byzantine City
The Routledge Handbook of the Byzantine City From Justinian to Mehmet II (ca. 500 - ca.1500), 2024
The Byzantine world contained many important cities throughout its empire. Although it was not 'urban' in the sense of the word today, its cities played a far more fundamental role than those of its European neighbors. This book, through a collection of twenty-four chapters, discusses aspects of, and different approaches to, Byzantine urbanism from the early to late Byzantine periods. It provides both a chronological and thematic perspective to the study of Byzantine cities, bringing together literary, documentary, and archival sources with archaeological results, material culture, art, and architecture, resulting in a rich synthesis of the variety of regional and sub-regional transformations of Byzantine urban landscapes. Organised into four sections, this book covers: Theory and Historiography, Geography and Economy, Architecture and the Built Environment, and Daily Life and Material Culture. It includes more specialised accounts that address the centripetal role of Constantinople and its broader influence across the empire. Such new perspectives help to challenge the historiographical balance between 'margins and metropolis,' and also to include geographical areas often regarded as peripheral, like the coastal urban centers of the Byzantine Mediterranean as well as cities on islands, such as Crete, Cyprus, and Sicily which have more recently yielded well-excavated and stratigraphically sound urban sites. The Routledge Handbook of the Byzantine City provides both an overview and detailed study of the Byzantine city to specialist scholars, students, and enthusiasts alike and, therefore, will appeal to all those interested in Byzantine urbanism and society, as well as those studying medieval society in general.
The Byzantine Neighbourhood. Urban Space and Political Action, F. Kondlyli, B. Anderson (eds), Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Studies 31, Routledge, 175-213, 2022
The Byzantine Neighbourhood contributes to a new narrative regarding Byzantine cities through the adoption of a neighbourhood perspective. It offers a multidisciplinary investigation of the spatial and social practices that produced Byzantine concepts of neighbourhood and afforded dynamic interactions between different actors, elite and non-elite. Authors further consider neighbourhoods as political entities, examining how collectivities formed in Byzantine neighbourhoods translated into political action. By both acknowledging the unique position of Constantinople and giving serious attention to the varieties of provincial experience, the contributors consider regional factors (social, economic, and political) that formed the ties of local communities to the state and illuminate the mechanisms of empire. Beyond its Byzantine focus, this volume contributes to broader discussions of premodern urbanism by drawing attention to the spatial dimension of social life and highlighting the involvement of multiple agents in city-making.
Byzanz zwischen Orient und Okzident 22, 2020
The concept of »transformation« or simply »reshaping« contains the elements of what remains, the conservative, the kernel of what continues, as well as the elements of what changes, the innovative. In the framework of this publication of articles from a conference in 2016 on »Transformations of City and Countryside in the Byzantine Period«, we draw attention to this dichotomy and investigate the social dynamics behind changes in urban and rural life in the Byzantine period that can be detected by archaeology, history and art history. The Byzantine Empire is an ideal subject for studying how social transformation proceeds, what triggers transformation, what factors underlie it and what the processes involved are. Who were the agents of transformation and how did they and their environment change? How flexible were the state or its citizens in handling external and internal pressures of innovation? In what manner and to what extent were the Byzantines able to preserve their identity and the internal cohesion of their empire in the course of these processes of adaptation?