Byzantine Appropriation of the Orient: notes on its ... · Byzantine Appropriation of the Orient 169 We can discern three major types of transfer of information from the original

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Byzantine Appropriation of the Orient: notes on its Principles and Patterns

rustam shukurov

Byzantium and the Muslim world coexisted for more than eight centuries as rivals and partners. The emergence and subsequent evolution of the Islamic world can hardly be correctly understood without taking account of the Byzantine legacy there, as well as subsequent constant flow of cultural information from Byzantium to the East. Likewise, it is impossible to imagine Byzantine culture after the 630s without the constant presence of the Muslim world on its political, cultural and economic horizons. Moreover, for most of its history, Byzantium stood facing the Persian and arab east, which retained and increased its high cultural potential, with its back to the poor and barbarised west. It is true that Byzantium adopted relatively little from the Muslim world, especially in comparison with the Byzantine contribution to Islamic cultures. Byzantium contributed more to other cultures than it took from them. nonetheless, some of the literary, scientific, occult, economic and technological achievements of the Muslim world were transferred to Byzantium, as will be discussed later in this chapter. Therefore we must consider whether we can define these eastern influences upon Byzantine culture as specifically Islamic ones; or, to put the question more provocatively, can we talk of a sort of latent ‘Islamisation of Byzantium’ in the course of Byzantine–Oriental interchange?

To address this question, we must firstly consider what we mean by the terms ‘Islamic’ and ‘Oriental’. Strictly speaking, in scholarly discourse ‘Islamic’ refers to the artefacts, practices or concepts directly pertaining to the faith of Islam with its specific dogmas and rituals. However, in practice we often use expressions such as ‘Islamic culture’, ‘Islamic art’, ‘Islamic manuscripts’, ‘Islamic metalwork’, even sometimes ‘Islamic literature’ and the like to refer to the intellectual and material production of the muslim peoples. such a usage risks being somewhat misleading. while such ideas, texts and artefacts were certainly produced by those who identified themselves as Muslim or lived under the rule of Muslim political power, they may have been shaped by secular and even pre-Islamic intellectual and artistic concepts.1 ‘Orient’, on the other hand, is meant here to refer more broadly to the world not just of Islam but more generally to the Near and Middle

1 Following a similar logic, Marshall G.S. Hodgson has suggested the term ‘Islamicate’, which ‘… would refer not directly to the religion, Islam, itself, but to the social and cultural complex historically associated with Islam and the muslims, both among muslims themselves and non-Muslims living in the Islamic world’ (Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, vol. 1 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 57–60 and especially 59).

From A.C.S. Peacock, Bruno De Nicola and Sara Nur Yıldız (eds), Islam and Christianity in Medieval Anatolia, published by Ashgate Publishing. See: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781472448637

© Rustam Shukurov (2015)



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Islam and Christianity in Medieval Anatolia168

East, to India – to the territories broadly designated by Byzantines as ‘Asia’. We will have more to say about this definition in due course.

This chapter will attempt to examine whether the Byzantines were able to discern what was specifically Islamic in textual and material objects originating from the Orient. To what extent were the Byzantines sensitive to the Islamic meanings of such texts and artefacts? The recent flourishing of theories of cultural interaction and, in particular, the idea of ‘transferts culturels’ (Michel Espagne) with its subsequent elaboration and emendation and the concept of ‘cultural translation’ (Peter Burke),2 provides an effective analytical instrument. There is no doubt now that information, in all its possible forms, is not simply transferred into a new environment, but undergoes an inevitable process of adaptation and domestication. the information, leaving its native cultural environment, when transplanted from one socio-political environment into another, must also be subjected to a process of decontextualisation and dissimilation in order to be recontextualised and assimilated in the target culture. Thus, firstly, the reception of new cultural practices or textual and material objects is always an active process; secondly, the recipient culture predefines the range of desirable and acceptable external borrowings and screens and blocks undesirable and unacceptable elements. the present piece represents an initial attempt to assess the Byzantine reception of foreign information from the East. Conclusions here, of course, are of a preliminary character and deserve further elaboration, revision or supplementation.

Modes of Transfer

My starting point is the eloquent example of the Oneirocriticon, the famous Byzantine dreambook traditionally ascribed to a certain Achmet. The work has been comprehensively studied over the last decades, in particular by steven a. oberhelman and maria mavroudi.3 the Oneirocriticon was compiled by an anonymous Byzantine author at the end of the ninth or in the tenth century on the basis of several contemporary arabic dreambooks. It is unclear whether the author of the Oneirocriticon was the actual translator of the arabic texts used as its sources or only made use of the existing Greek translations. the Oneirocriticon is a paradigmatic text for my purposes: it covers a vast spectrum of themes and subjects from everyday life to theological issues which originated in the muslim orient.

2 see for instance michel espagne, Les transferts culturels franco-allemands (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1999); Peter Burke, ‘Translating Knowledge, Translating Cultures’, in Kultureller Austausch in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. M. North (Köln: Böhlau, 2009), 69–77.

3 Franciscus Drexl (ed.), Achmetis Oneirocriticon (Leipzig: Teubner, 1925), hereafter cited as Achmetis Oneirocriticon, ed. Drexl; Steven M. Oberhelman (ed.), The Oneirocriticon of Achmet: A Medieval Greek and Arabic Treatise on the Interpretation of Dreams (Lubbock, TX: Texas Technical University Press, 1991); Maria V. Mavroudi, A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation: The Oneirocriticon of Achmet and Its Arabic Sources (Leiden: Brill, 2002).

Copyright material: You are not permitted to transmit this file in any format or media; it may not be resold or reused without prior agreement with Ashgate Publishing and

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Byzantine Appropriation of the Orient 169

We can discern three major types of transfer of information from the original Arabic source(s) by the Byzantine author(s) of the Oneirocriticon. The first and most complex type, which I refer to as ‘dissimilating transfer’, concerns specifically Islamic topics and notions which are absent in Christianity, such as the Prophet Muḥammad, the Muslim conception of Jesus, mosque, the minbar, and Islamic taboos such as pork-eating, alcohol consumption, and the like. Curiously, in these cases, the Greek translator substitutes specifically Islamic subjects of dreams with the closest Christian equivalents. For instance, in the Greek, the interpretation of dreams involving Christ is based on the arabic interpretations of Muḥammad, the interpretation of churches is modelled on the interpretations of mosques, and the interpretation of pork and alcohol consumption is cleansed of the negative connotations found in the arabic original.4 this conscious de-Islamisation of the original arabic contents incorporated into the Oneiricriticon was further emphasised by removing all references to the Qurʾan, ḥadīth and sayings of other muslim religious authorities, and replacing them with quotations of appropriate passages from the Christian Bible. Thus, these texts were incorporated into Byzantine literary culture only after the process of dissimilating them from their original cultural context, and their re-sacralisation in the traditions of the recipient culture. some religious topics such as resurrection of the dead, Paradise and hell, biblical prophets, and angels, which were common to both Christianity and Islam, remained in the same form in the Greek dreambook as in the arabic primary source, although they too were first dissimilated from their original Islamic contexts (or decontextualised) and re-sacralised in a new Christian context (or recontextualised).

This deliberate screening of Islamic-specific material is also reflected in other types of transfer. the second type of transfer is the ‘transplanting transfer’ of foreign information. all the entries in the Oneirocreiton concerning dreams relating to common non-religious items and situations (for instance, natural objects, animals, household items, clothes, and parts of the human body) were transferred into the Greek recipient text without serious alteration.5 this sort of foreign information was simply transplanted in Byzantine soil. No new or foreign themes were introduced into the Byzantine cultural space thereby, since all of them were similar to existing ones and needed no special procedure of adaptation beyond its translation from arabic to Greek. much of the Oneirocriticon’s content is common to both the muslim and Christian worlds.

the third type of transfer, ‘complementing transfer’ involves the almost unaltered inclusion of alien themes, motifs, ideas and notions in the Greek text. for instance, the Oneirocriticon contains 13 short anecdotes to illustrate some dream interpretations. Mavroudi has uncovered the Arabic equivalents for seven of these anecdotes. four of them are historical events in muslim history relating to the caliph al-Ma'mūn predicted by the dream interpreter Ibn Sīrīn.6

4 mavroudi, Byzantine Book, 256–374 (chapters 7 and 8).5 Ibid., 168–236, 385–91.6 Ibid., 376–85. However, in the passage of Ibn Sa‘ad, under ‘Muḥammad’s mosque’ (masjid

al-nabī) the mosque of Muḥammad in Medina is meant, not Mecca as Mavroudi assumes





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For instance, in one story the caliph al-Ma'mūn dreamt that he had urinated in the two corners outside the Kaʿaba (or ‘the temple of Mecca’ as the Greek text calls it). The dream interpreter explains that this signifies that the caliph’s two children would become successors to his throne and empire.7 although the Kaʿaba is not directly named, it is accurately described as the Meccan temple and, significantly, designated as ‘the Tabernacle of Abraham’ (σκηνῇ τοῦ Ἀβραάμ).8 It is unlikely that the original arabic source of the Oneirocriticon would have provided such a clarification since the association of the Kaʿaba and Abraham’s temple to the one God would have been universally understood by a muslim audience.9 It seems that the Byzantine translator, in a display of a rather subtle knowledge of Islamic belief added this clarification for his Byzantine audience. In any case, it is understandable why this and similar ‘historical’ stories were adopted unchanged: although they mention alien religious objects such as Mecca, the Kaʿaba and caliph, they were thematically secular subjects and regarded as amusing and didactic historical anecdotes from the exotic orient and, therefore, acceptable for incorporating in the Byzantine cultural space. Thus the complementary transfer of thematic and factual material introduces entirely new information which complements an already existing subset of cultural knowledge, often imparting to the Byzantine cultural space exotic themes and motifs in literature, art and architecture.

the three types of transfer and reception of new information as outlined above may be applied to most cases of Byzantine ‘borrowing’ from the Orient. however, one should keep in mind that these modes of absorption are ideal types and are often displayed in particular textual and material objects in a mixed form: different pieces of information in the same text or even passage may be treated differently.

It is worth noting, however, that Byzantine literature adopted surprisingly little from the orient. In fact, we know of only three literary texts to have been thematically influenced by Persian and Arabic literature: the Byzantine moralistic and hagiographic tale, Barlaam and Ioasaph, which goes back to the story of Gautama Buddha; the moralistic collection of tales The Book of Syntipas, which is based on the Arabic motif of ‘The Seven Viziers’ (also known as ‘Seven Wise Masters’ and Sinbād-nāma in the West and the Orient); and, finally, the collection of stories called Stephanites and Ichnelates, which ultimately is a rendition of the arabic Kalīla wa Dimna. of these three, two of the works reached Byzantium through the mediation of the eastern Christian texts and not directly from any arabic, Persian or Indian source. Barlaam and Ioasaph was translated into Greek from the Georgian text known as Balavariani by euthymios

(Mavroudi, Byzantine Book, 377).7 mavroudi, Byzantine Book, 376.8 Achmetis Oneirocriticon, ed. Drexl, 46, 3–4.9 On the association between the Kaʿaba and Abraham, the Kaʿaba and the Tabernacle

in Muslim temenology (i.e., Henry Corbin’s term ‘téménologie’, or the ‘science of studying temples’), see Sharif Shukurov, Obraz Khrama. Imago Templi (Moscow: Progress-Traditsiya, 2002), 122–4, 138–42, 241.





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Hagioreites (c.955–1028), and The Book of Syntipas was rendered from syriac by Michael Andreopoulos from Melitene (end of the 11th c.). Only Stephanites and Ichnelates was in all probability translated into Greek directly from arabic by the famous Symeon Seth at the request of Alexios I Komnenos (1081–1118).10

Stephanites and Ichnelates and Syntipas share many common features in their handling of oriental literary material.11 Both novels closely follow the main plot of the original. In both, the Oriental flavour is consciously preserved in the key characters of the narration, in the plot structure and in the spatial localisation. the key characters of Syntipas are the king Cyrus and his chief philosopher and his son’s tutor, Syntipas; the action takes place in Persia. In the same way, the main storyline of Stephanites and Ichnelates is built around the Indian king abesalom and his unnamed philosopher. these cases demonstrate a typical instance of ‘exotic complementation’: the plot and its key characters are new and foreign to the Byzantine cultural space and confer a manifestly exotic flavour to the narration. However, unlike the al-Ma'mūn anecdotes, these foreign plots have undergone a considerable formal revision, being cleansed of many everyday details, proper and geographical names, occasional muslim religious formulas which are found in arabic original, thus undergoing a certain measure of dissimilating adaptation. however, the dissimilating components here can be explained not only by the screening of the undesirable Islamic flavour, but also by the attempt to adjust literary style to the Byzantine reader’s taste and conventions. In this sense, the case of Barlaam and Ioasaph, is remarkable: though preserving the original plot, it underwent a strong dissimilating elaboration and de-contextualisation of its original moralistic and didactic message. It is the combination of dissimilating and complementing procedures that transformed the oriental moralistic tale into a specifically Christian hagiographical text.12

In the same way, the Islamic themes also represent a combination of dissimilating and complementary types of transfer in the epic Digenes Akrites, especially in its second and third books. for instance, in Book two, in the form of a letter sent by the amīr’s Muslim mother to her son, the Digenes’ father who converted to Christianity, the epic poem imitates a muslim discourse on virtue mentioning the Muslim law embedding in ‘Prophet’s words’ (λόγους/νόμους τοῦ Προφήτου) and the devastating Muslim raids on Byzantine lands.13 Book Three contains a rather curious description of the Prophet’s grave, uttered by the same amīr’s mother, as she attempts to convince her son to return home and re-embrace Islam.14 Put into the mouth of a muslim, these words suggest

10 h.-G. Beck, Geschichte der byzantinischen Volksliteratur (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1971), 35–48.11 L.-O. Sjöberg, Stephanites und Ichnelates. Überlieferungsgeschichte und Text (Stockholm:

Almqvist & Wiksell, 1962); Michaeli Andreopuli Liber Syntipae, ed. V. Jernstedt (St. Petersburg: Tip. Imperatorskoĭ akademīi nauk, 1912).

12 Historia animae utilis de Barlaam et Ioasaph, ed. R. Volk, parts 1–2 (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2006–2009).

13 Digenis Akritis: The Grottaferrata and Escorial Versions, ed. and trans. Elizabeth Jeffreys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), vol. 2, 53–98 and especially 68, 108.

14 Jeffreys, The Grottaferrata, part 3, 132–57; Trapp, Synoptische Ausgabe, 110–11. For an examination of the possible Arabic influences on Digenes Akrites see also v. Christides, ‘arabic





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a surprisingly neutral attitude towards the muslim faith, as do some other descriptions in which Muslims are mentioned. However, despite the narrator’s seeming tolerance (or indifference) with its references to Muslim beliefs, customs and sanctuaries, they are nevertheless presented in a desacralised form as adopted by the Greek rhapsodist, most likely, through oral transmission. thus, while the inclusion of Islamic motifs and the incorporation of arabic vocabulary15 imparts a sense of exoticism in the Greek epic, it does not reduce its essentially Christian message.16

We may cite other examples of other Byzantine works characterised by variations and combinations of the modes of transfer described above. the phenomenon of transplanting transfer in particular played an important role in shaping the massive corpus of Byzantine scientific and occult works which, from the late tenth century onwards, made more and more extensive use of information originating from the Orient. Byzantine treatises on mathematical astrology, medicine, and mathematics include original compilations drawing on Islamic scientific knowledge through the intermediary of Syriac or Latin, or directly from arabic or Persian works. works on the occult sciences, such as dream interpretation, predictive astrology, and geomancy likewise drew on Arabic or Persian works. As a rule, such material transferred to the Byzantine cultural space remained unchanged from its original form apart from the exclusion of specifically Islamic formulas such as the basmalla at the beginning of the text.17

Transplanting transfer likewise characterises the inclusion of factual information on Muslim adversaries in Byzantine historiography, political geography, hagiography, epistolography and similar genres, beginning with Theophanes’s Chronography. accumulated knowledge about the muslim world is reflected in the considerable number of technical terms from the social and political life of the Muslim world, such as σουλτάν (sulṭān), ἀμηρᾶς (amīr) and ἀμηρεύω (‘to rule as amīr’), μασγήδιον (masjid, mosque), μουσούριον (manshūr, royal diploma), χαράτζιον (kharāj, land-tax), χότζιας (khwāja/hoca, lord, teacher), χαζηνᾶς (khazīna, treasury), γιανίτζαρος (Janissary) and the like, as well as hundreds of names of Muslim historical figures (rulers, commanders, administrators, etc.).18 The Byzantines knew much about their Muslim

Influence on the Akritic Cycle’, Byzantion 49 (1979): 100–107.15 In the passages narrating on the arabs or if the events taking place in arab territory, the

poem stregthens its exotic flavour in particular, by using the words of Oriental origin (Arabic, Persian, Turkic) (R. Dietrich, ‘Style-Switching in the Grottaferrata Text of Digenes Akrites’, Revue des études byzantines 64–5 (2006–2007): 366–8).

16 P. Magdalino, ‘Digenes Akrites and Byzantine Literature: The Twelfth-century Background to the Grottaferrata Version’, in Digenes Akrites: New Approaches to Byzantine Heroic Poetry, ed. R. Beaton and D. Ricks (London: Centre for Hellenic Studies, King’s College, 1993), 7–8.

17 K. Vogel, ‘Byzantine Science’, in Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 4 Part 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 265–305; Mavroudi, Byzantine Book, 392–428; Anne Tihon, ‘Science in the Byzantine Empire’, in The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 190–206.

18 see Gyula moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1983), 359–65.





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neighbours, but this historical and geographical knowledge, being akin to ‘technical’ scientific knowledge, can hardly be considered as the result of any specific ‘Islamic influence.’ Knowledge changes one by broadening one’s mental horizons and rendering one’s experiences more sophisticated, but it does not necessarily assimilate its holder with the object of cognition.

Moving from texts and language to the world of material objects, similar types of appropriation can be noted. the late oleg Grabar, in his very informative and conceptually packed (albeit rather succinct) article on the ‘Islamic’ impact on Byzantine art notes: ‘Islamic influences hardly ever occur in religious art and never affect style and expression, the formal means by which Byzantine art differentiates itself from other medieval traditions. In other words, Islamic forms played almost no role in the Byzantine visual expression of Christianity. Islamic themes are most apparent in the secular art of emperors and in many aspects of material culture …’. Grabar further comments: ‘Thus, the Islamic impact was first thematic, then functional or technical, and more rarely formal.’19 Grabar’s points resonate with the terminological framework I propose in this piece. Grabar observes that specifically Islamic motifs do not appear to have affected the core of Byzantine artistic self-representation; rather, Oriental transfers mostly represented a sort of complementary exoticism. In art and material culture as well, religiously oriented themes and forms underwent the process of dissimilating, and as a result lost all traces of their original specifically Islamic tint. Grabar’s remarks may be applied, in particular, to Middle and Late Byzantine vocabulary which contains dozens of Oriental borrowings for clothes, tissues, household items, and luxury goods. the oriental lexical borrowings of this sort entered the Byzantine empire along with the borrowed objects of everyday life through international trade. As I have shown elsewhere, the objects adopted, along with their foreign names, related to practical science (medicine, botany, zoology, geography etc.), fabrics and clothes (often of a luxurious quality), accessories, and trade techniques.20 Most of these adopted objects were of ‘thematic’, ‘functional or technical’ nature or, in other words, represented the ‘transplanting’ and ‘complementary’ types of transfers.

Islamic or Oriental?

The Byzantines were sensitive to the difference between ‘Islamic’ and ‘Oriental’, that is, between religiously centred confessional discourses and religiously neutral cultural discourses, between theology on the one hand, and general human wisdom and craftsmanship on the other. If so, how did they define the

19 O. Grabar, ‘Islamic Influence on Byzantine Art’, in Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. A. Kazhdan et al., vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 1019. On Oriental impact on Byzantine visual culture see Walker, The Emperor and the World.

20 r. Shukurov, ‘On Some Oriental Borrowings in Middle Greek (11th–15th Centuries)’, in Change in the Byzantine World in the 12th–13th Centuries: First International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Studies Symposium (Istanbul: Vehbi Koç Vakfı, 2010), 151–6.





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information – that is ideas, concepts, techniques, words, forms and material objects, – adopted from the Muslim Orient?

As is well known, geographically, the Byzantines inherited from the classical tradition the notion of the partition of the inhabited oikoumene into three major parts: Europe, Asia and Libya (Εὐρώπη, Ἀσία, Λιβύη), of which the division into europe and asia was primary and more ancient; modern conventions of imaginary borders between europe and asia are similar to the classic and Byzantine ones.21 Asia was usually designated also as the ‘East’ or the ‘Orient’ (ἀνατολή or in plural ἀνατολαί, or ἕως).22 however, as opposed to modern usage, the Byzantines normally did not generally use ‘Orient’ and ‘Oriental’ (ἀνατολικός, ἀνατόλιος, ἑῷος) as an abstract term for the origin of material and intellectual objects, in particular, due to the role of the ‘south-north’ axis in their ethno-cultural systematisation.23 ‘Eastern’ was normally used as a spatial definition. the information taken from the Islamic orient was, as a rule, almost exclusively qualified through ethno-geographical terms and never, I would emphasise, through religious ones. foreign wisdom was attributed as Persian, Indian, egyptian, Chaldean, or Babylonian. A late Byzantine astrological treatise, copied in the seventeenth century, describes its source as the production of the ‘Babylonians, Persians, Chaldaeans and Arabs’ (οἱ Βαβυλωνῖται, οἱ Πέρσαι, οἱ Χαλδαῖοι, οἱ Ἀράπηδαις).24 Medical works are referred to as ἰατρικὴ τέχνη τῶν Πέρσων (‘medical craft of the Persians’).25 In the same way, the author of Oneirocriticon chooses to categorise diverse and sometimes contradictory interpretational material through its ethno-geographical provenance, such as ‘from the Indians’, ‘from the Persians’ and ‘from the Egyptians’.26 as we can see, ethno-geographical identity here plays the important role of a systematisation tool. many other such examples may be cited. The translated Oriental authorities are most frequently identified as Persian in the Greek texts, which is generally accurate. Sometimes, however, Byzantine authors were not accurate in the geographical and ethnic identifications of their sources. For example, one such author attributes a translated medical treatise to ‘the wisest who is called by the Indians alle ebni

21 J.B. Harley and D. Woodward (eds), The History of Cartography, vol. 1 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 266–7.

22 See, for instance, entries ανατολή and ἀνατολικός in Kriaras, Dictionary (online version at http://www.greek-language.gr/greekLang/medieval_greek/kriaras/index.html).

23 For the classical interpretations of south–north axis in cultural differences see, for instance M. Riley, ‘Science and Tradition in the “Tetrabiblos”’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 132, no. 1 (1988): 76; Y.A. Dauge, Le barbare: Recherches sur la conception romaine de la barbarie et de la civilisation (Brussels: Latomus, 1981), 806–10; for its Byzantine implementation see eustathius thessalonicensis, ‘Commentarium in dionysii periegetae orbis descriptionem’, in Geographi Graeci Minores, ed. K. Müller, vol. 2 (Paris: A. Firmin Didot, 1861), 258, 265, 339; Georges Pachymérès, Relations Historiques, ed. A. Failler, vol. 1 (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1984–2000), III, 3, 236–7, esp. 237. 3–7).

24 Catalogus codicum astrologorum graecorum, vol. 10 (Brussels: Lamertin, 1910), 201.25 J.l. Ideler, Physici et medici Graeci minores, vol. 1 (Berlin: Reimer, 1841–1842), 293; vol. 2,

305.26 Achmetis Oneirocriticon, ed. Drexl, 1, 6 and passim: ἐκ (τοῦ λόγου) τῶν Ἰνδῶν, ἐκ τῶν

Περσῶν, ἐκ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων.





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Sina, that is Alle the Son of Sina, or Auicene by the Italians’,27 implying Abū ʿAlī Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) who was eastern Iranian (Tājīk)28 and wrote in arabic and Persian. Plausibly, Ibn Sīnā is given this ‘Indian’ identity here because he lived in Central asia, on the extreme east of the Iranian world on the borders of the Indian cultural space. rarer in occurrence were the references to arab identity (or its synonym, Saracen).29 the confessional designation, hagarene, is extremely rare in Byzantine texts and seems to be just an author’s slip of pen or a substitute for the terms arabian or Persian.30 It is evident that the translators and users of such practical, information saw it as a product of oriental wisdom and skill but not of the Islamic theology and practice. Byzantine references to the provenance of wisdom – Egypt, Baghdad (Βαβυλών), Iraq (Χαλδαία), Persia, India – cover the major regions and nations of the civilised East regardless of their actual religious affiliation. It was ἔθνη / ‘nations’ (Persians, Egyptians, Arabs, Indians), but not ἄπιστοι / ‘unbelievers’ (Ἰσμαηλῖται, Ἁγαρηνοί, Μουσουλμάνοι), who were the true creators of Oriental wisdom. The Byzantines thus distinguished between the oriental and the Islamic. Islamic connotations were always undesirable and unambiguously negative in the Byzantine cultural space. Here I confine myself to just one eloquent historical anecdote showing how effective this deliberate cultural screening against specifically Islamic meanings was.

michael vIII Palaiologos had a very complex and ambiguous relationship with the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate due to many reasons. In particular, the emperor’s relations with the Patriarch John XI Bekkos (1275–1282) suddenly deteriorated. During the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, on 2 February 1279, according to custom, the patriarch presented the emperor with an exquisite plate with traditional κόλλυβον (sweet wheat kernels). However, his rivals reported to the emperor that the plate was covered with ‘Egyptian’ – that is Arabic – inscriptions (γράμμασιν Αἰγυπτίοις) glorifying Muḥammad’s name (ὄνομα φέρειν εἰς ἔπαινον). Evidently the plate was an imported piece of the

27 Ideler, Physici et medici, vol. 2, 286: σοφωτάτου παρὰ μὲν Ἰνδοῖς Ἄλλη Ἔμπνι τοῦ Σινᾶ ἤτοι Ἄλλη υἱοῦ τοῦ Σινᾶ, παρὰ δὲ Ἰταλοῖς Ἀβιτζιανοῦ.

28 On Ibn Sīnā’s life and role for shaping Eastern Iranian scientific tradition see Richard frye, ed., The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), especially 143, 154, 431–4; D. Gutas, ‘Avicenna II. Biography’, EIr (with further bibliography). In applying the ethno-cultural term ‘Tājīk’ to East Iranian intellectuals of the Middle Ages I follow, in particular, Maria Eva Subtelny, ‘The Symbiosis of Turk and Tajik’, in Central Asia in Historical Perspective ed. B.F. Manz (San Francisco and Oxford: Westview Press,1994), 45–61; m.e. subtelny, Timurids in Transition: Turko-Persian Politics and Acculturation in Medieval Iran (Leiden: Brill, 2007), passim.

29 d. Pingree, The Astronomical Works of Gregory Chioniades [Corpus des Astronomes Byzantins] (Amsterdam: Gieben, 1985), 36.19–20: οἱ τῶν Ἀράβων καὶ Περσῶν ἐπιστήμονες; A. Tihon, ‘Tables islamiques à Byzance’, in Études d’astronomie byzantine, ed. A. Tihon (Aldershot: Variorum, 1994), 406: ‘a book of the Saracens’.

30 simeonis sethi, Syntagma de alimentorum facultatibus, ed. B. Langkavel (Leipzig: Teubner: 1868), 1. 2–3: Symeon Seth starts his ‘Syntagma’ with a reference to the writing on the subject of ‘Persians, Hagarenes, and Indians’ (οὐχ Ἑλλήνων μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ Περσῶν καὶ Ἀγαρηνῶν καὶ Ἰνδῶν περὶ τροφῶν δυνάμεων συγγραψαμένων). Here evidently ‘Hagarenes’ stands for more correct ‘Arabs’ or ‘Saracens’.





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Mamluk metalwork. The patriarch’s enemies pointed out that that plate ‘because of the abominable character of the inscription, was not only inappropriate for blessing, but inflicted the extreme measure of defilement.’ To confirm that the inscription contained Muḥammad’s name, the parakoimomenos of the chamber, Basileios Basilikos, was summoned because of his knowledge of the ‘muslim script’ (γραμμάτων Ἀγαρηνῶν). Basilikos, who had spent much time at the Seljuq court in Anatolia, read the inscription and confirmed the presence of the praises to Muḥammad in it. The patriarch thus was accused of a lack of piety and even intentionally insulting the emperor.31 as we see, the crucial semantic opposition here is that between the acceptable ethno-geographic designation ‘Egyptian’ and the unacceptable religious ‘Hagarene.’

one may doubt the abilities of Basilikos to read correctly the inscription: as any museum curator in Islamic art knows, the reading of such inscriptions requires a special training in epigraphy, language and culture, since often a medieval decorative inscription is not so much to be ‘read’ but can only be grasped integrally as a sort of hieroglyph. we can only guess how well Basilikos knew arabic and the mamluk calligraphy and whether he had any systematic training in arabic and Persian textual culture, as would be necessary to read decorative inscriptions correctly. It is not impossible that Basilikos, relying on his authority as an expert in the ‘Muslim script’, just pretended to read the inscription in order to give the accusers the verdict they desired.

This incident suggests that the Byzantines were not indifferent to the meaning of decorative calligraphy on Oriental objects. The Patriarch Bekkos regarded the exquisite Mamluk plate as an instance of ‘exotic complementation’ of ethnic ‘Egyptian’ origin, while the ‘professional’ expertise, on the contrary, proved that it contained a specific ‘Hagarene’ meaning. The latter was an unquestionable obstacle for free circulation in Byzantine space, since the piece of Oriental metalwork, naturally, could not have been subjected to dissimilating adaptation.

Judging by this passage from Pachymeres’s History, it is clear that the Byzantines avoided using Oriental objects that bore Islamic sacred names and formulas. however, medieval oriental metalwork, arms and armoury, pottery and textiles often were decorated with non-religious inscriptions including poetry, good wishes, and proverbs.32 seemingly, it was these types of artefacts with ‘secular’ epigraphy that predominantly circulated in Byzantium – or at least were the most desirable and acceptable. Digenes Akrites refers to an exquisite ‘Arab’ spear decorated with gold inscriptions, as well as to turbans with golden writing, although the meaning of inscriptions is not specified.33 It is unclear

31 Pachymérès, Relations Historiques, VI, 12 (vol. 2, 573–5).32 see for instance a.s. melikian-Chirvani, Islamic Metalwork from the Iranian World, 8th–18th

Centuries (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1982); O. Pancaroğlu, ‘The Contents of Samanid Epigraphic Pottery’, in Studies in Islamic and Later Indian Art from the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 2002).

33 Jeffreys, The Grottaferrata, part 4, line 922: τέσσαρα χρυσογράμματα φακεώλια ἄσπρα (about wedding gifts to Digenes); Trapp, Synoptische Ausgabe, IV, line 1535–1536: τὸ δόρυ ἐδοκίμαζεν τῇ δεξιᾷ χειρί του | πράσινον, ἀραβίτικον, μετὰ χρυσῶν γραμμάτων (Digenes’s spear); VII, line 3446: φακιόλι ἐφόρει πράσινον μετὰ χρυσῶν γραμμάτων (Maximo’s headgear).





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also whether the turbans were made in Byzantium or imported from the East; if they were of Byzantine origin, the inscription could have been either Greek or some meaningless pseudo-arabic script. this is the case with another eleventh-century turban with gold inscriptions, which was mentioned in the testament of the nun Maria (Kale Pakouriane) to the monastery of Iviron (1098).34

of course, the example of the Patriarch Bekkos also clearly indicates that the Byzantines may have used Oriental objects without paying attention to the semantic meanings of their calligraphic decoration. however, only ignorance in foreign languages may have made these objects acceptable. In any case, as far as I am aware, we have no direct contrary evidence of the conscious use by the Byzantines of objects bearing sacred Islamic inscriptions.

Similar instances of the unreserved rejection of anything Islamic are well known from Byzantine sources. Muslim presence in Christian sacred ritual space was regarded with particular antipathy, as the well-known story of the 1162 earthquake of Constantinople indicates. The Constantinopolitan clergy and the emperor Manuel I Komnenos attributed this natural disaster to God’s unwillingness to allow the visiting Seljuq sultan Kılıç Arslan to take part in the Byzantine triumphal procession (θρίαμβος), which, according to the tradition, involved the presence of Christian sacred objects such as icons of saints and Christ.35 In the late 1260s, the Patriarch Arsenios was accused by Michael VIII of canonically inadmissible conduct towards the infidel Seljuq sultan Kaykāʾūs II and his sons: the patriarch allowed them to attend a Christian liturgy and church bath, as well as receive communion.36 In the same way, the Patriarch athanasios I was outraged by the muslim foreigners in Constantinople who ‘openly climb up on high, as is the custom in their land, and shout forth their abominable mysteries’, that is, openly recited the Islamic call to prayer (adhān).37 these cases demonstrate how important it was to the Byzantines to preserve the religious purity of their cultural space from even occasional intrusions of Islam.

34 Actes d’Iviron, ed. J. Lefort, N. Oikonomidès, D. Papachryssanthou and H. Métrévéli, vol. 2 (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1985–1995), 179.23: φακιόλιόν μου τὸ ἔχον χρυσὰ γράμματα. On Oriental objects mentioned in Byzantine documents see also: M.G. Parani, ‘Intercultural Exchange in the Field of Material Culture in the Eastern Mediterranean: The Evidence of Byzantine Legal Documents (11th to 15th Centuries)’, in Diplomatics in the Eastern Mediterranean 1000–1500: Aspects of Cross-Cultural Communication, ed. A.D. Beihammer, M.G. Parani and Chr.D. Schabel (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 349–71.

35 Nicetas Choniates, Historia, ed. J.A. van Dieten, vol. 1. (Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 1975), 119.49–52; Kinnamos, Ioannis Cinnami Epitome rerum ab Ioanne et Alexio Comnenis gestarum / ad fidem codicis vaticani recensuit Augustus Meineke (Bonnae: Impensi ed Weberi, 1836), 206–207.

36 Pachymérès, Relations Historiques, vol. 2, 339.9–12, 349. 10–12; L. Schopen and I. Bekker (eds), Nicephori Gregorae Byzantina historia, vol. 1 (Bonn: Impensis B. Weberi, 1829–1855), 94, 13–14.

37 The Correspondance of Athanasius I, Patriarch of Constantinople: Letters to the Emperor Andronicus II, Members of the Imperial Family, and Officials, ed. A-M. Talbot, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1975), 84.23–6, n. 41.





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Islam on the Inside (Some Exceptions)

An impressive corpus of Byzantine polemical literature concerning Islam developed over the centuries.38 Starting with John of Damascus (d. 749) or even earlier, Byzantines expounded on the Islamic conceptions of God, the Holy scripture, Christology, mariology, Islamic attitudes toward Christian doctrine of trinity, as well as Islamic notions of prophetology and eschatology, and Islamic ritual and habits. Byzantine polemical works dealing with Islamic dogma, including the alleged Greek translation of Qurʾan,39 were subjected to dissimilating transfer. Rather than assert any influence over Christian conceptions, Islamic dogma, concepts and themes rather were decontextualised and desacralised in a Christian religious space via this polemical reception. Indeed, Islamic knowledge acquired by Byzantine theologians had a defensive purpose, serving as a theoretical basis for the prevention of Islamic infiltration into Byzantine religious and cultural spaces. The cleansing of the Byzantine Greek texts of specifically Islamic content as seen in the above examples was an immediate result of the practical implementation of the Byzantine knowledge of Islam.

It would be tempting to suggest that muslim religious practice could have prompted the adoption of the Iconoclastic dogma by Byzantine theological thought in the seventh and eighth centuries. however, so far such a transfer of Iconoclasm from the Islamic to Christian milieu has yet to be proven. one may suspect the presence of Islamic mystico-theological motifs in niketas Stethatos’ conception of Paradise, as well as in the mystical writings of his master, symeon the new theologian; this, however, remains unproved and not properly investigated.40

Byzantine subjects were barred from claiming affiliation to Islam, which was considered to be paganism in the eyes of the Church and state.41 the mosques built in Constantinople, and possibly in other parts of the empire, from the eighth and possibly through the beginning of the fifteenth century, were intended exclusively for foreign subjects, who were variously prisoners of war, refugees, hostages, diplomats, mercenaries and merchants granted

38 The number of studies dealing with anti-Islamic polemics in Byzantium and Eastern Christianity is no less impressive. I mention here only general studies and some recent scholarship: a. th. khoury, Polémique byzantine contre l’Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1972); H.-G. Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich (Munich: Beck, 1959); J.V. Tolan (ed.), Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam (London and New York: Routledge, 1996) (especially chapter 1 with the contributions of J.C. Lamoreaux and C.L. Hanson).

39 e. trapp, ‘Gab es eine byzantinische Koranübersetzung?’ Diptycha 2 (1980–81): 7-17 see also M. Ulbricht, ‘La première traduction du Coran du VIIIe/IXe siècle et son utilisation dans la polémique de Nicétas de Byzance (IXe siècle) avec le titre “Réfutation du Coran”’, in Chronos – Révue d’histoire de l’Université de Balamand 25 (2012): 33–58.

40 Nicétas Stéthatos, Opuscules et lettres (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1961), 154–226 (Oratio 2: De paradiso).

41 nonetheless some intellectuals, like manuel I komnenos, may have had doubts about this, proclaiming that Christians and muslims worshipped the same God. see C.l. hanson, ‘Manuel I Comnenus and the “God of Muhammad”: A Study in Byzantine Ecclesiastical Politics’, in Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam, ed. J.V. Tolan (New York: Garland, 1996), 55–82.





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the status of temporary foreign resident.42 these foreign residents thus fell outside Byzantine juridical space and, for this reason only, were allowed to practice Islam. It should be emphasised that an indigenous Islamic community did not, and could not exist in Byzantium; neither could Islamic juridical, administrative or educational, institutions function in Byzantine territory. All Muslim newcomers who were incorporated into Byzantine society, whether they were prisoners of war, mercenaries, refugees, or hostages, underwent a process of ‘naturalisation’ through conversion into Christianity.43 thus, there were no compromises in the question of Islamic affiliation in any form for Byzantine subjects or institutions. The sources, however, give us curious and sometimes puzzling examples of the Muslim presence inside Byzantine cultural space, which require special attention.

The first example concerns a rather complex case of internal apostasy. Demetrios Chomatenos alludes to an individual who, while subject to Byzantine political and canonical jurisdiction, seems to have apostatised from Christianity to Islam.44 The former ‘Hagarene’ Turk ʿAlīshēr (Ἀλισέριος), who was baptised in his youth, for many years was a good Christian. on day he found himself in such need that his faith was shaken and he uttered blasphemy against God, and trampled on the honest and life-giving cross. In the end, however, he repented and appeared before the ecclesiastical authorities, which imposed on him a penance. It is difficult to imagine that Chomatenos meant any ‘atheist’

42 m. Balivet, Romanie byzantine et pays de Rûm turc: Histoire d’un espace d’imbrication gréco-turque (Istanbul: Éditions Isis, 1994), 35–6; S.W. Reinert, ‘The Muslim Presence in Constantinople, 9th–15th Centuries: Some Preliminary Observations’, in Studies on the Internal Diaspora of the Byzantine Empire, ed. by H. Ahrweiler, A.E. Laiou (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1998), 125–50; Nevra Necipoğlu, ‘Ottoman Merchants in Constantinople During the First Half of the Fifteenth Century’, in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 16 (1992), 158–69; G.D. Anderson, ‘Islamic Spaces and Diplomacy in Constantinople (Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries C.E.)’, in Medieval Encounters 15 (2009): 86–113; O.R. Constable, Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging, Trade, and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 147–50.

43 some temporary exceptions could be made for newly annexed muslim territories in Syria and elsewhere. Although the majority of Muslims were forced to immigrate outside the empire, some of them chose to remain under Byzantine rule (C.E. Bosworth, ‘The City of Tarsus and the Arab-Byzantine Frontiers in Early and Middle ‘Abbāsid Times’, Oriens 33 (1992): 278–9). Byzantine authorities made considerable efforts to assimilate the Muslims falling under their jurisdiction and offered substantial benefits to those who accepted baptism. According to Constantine Pophyrogennetos, the thematic protonotarioi were ordered to pay newly christianised saracens, who were allotted lands by the authorities, considerable funds in gold for food and purchase of inventory. saracen settlers were released from taxes for three years. temporary tax immunity was also granted to locals who admitted baptised saracen sons-in-law to their households (Constantini Porphyrogeniti imperatoris de cerimoniis aulae Byzantinae libri duo, ed. J.J. Reiske (Bonn: Impensis ed Weberi, 1829), vol. 1, 694.22–696: Περὶ τῶν αἰχμαλώτων Σαρακηνῶν τῶν ἐπὶ θέματι βαπτιζομένων; Speros Vryonis, ‘Byzantine and Turkish Societies and their Sources of Manpower’, in idem, Studies on Byzantium, Seljuks, and Ottomans (Malibu, CA: Udena Publications, 1981), 130).

44 Demetrii Chomateni Ponemata diaphora, ed. G. Prinzing (Berlin and New York, 2002), 402–403; Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, vol. 2, 63.





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rebellion, which was hardly possible for a person of that time educated either in the Islamic or Christian or in both traditions. more likely, Chomatenos implied that ʿAlīshēr cursed the Christian conception of God and trampled on the cross as the key symbol of Christianity and, for some time, returned to the fold of Islam. Interestingly, it was not the case of some religious ‘duality’: ʿAlīshēr went through a spiritual crisis, reembraced Islam and then returned to Christianity.

this case indicates that, in the thirteenth century, return to Islam for a former Muslim (even if in secret) inside the Byzantine canonical jurisdiction was possible. a similar case of the secret apostasy of a group of former muslims is known from the Pontic region at the turn of the fifteenth century.45 the instances of crypto-Islam, albeit very rare, show that Byzantine cultural space was not so solidly anti-Islamic. Individuals and groups of newly naturalised immigrants from the orient might have been susceptible to re-embracing their former religion. however, these marginal groups, to my knowledge, had no resonance in Byzantine culture.

another example is suggested by the Islamic ritualistic practices which were openly performed inside the imperial palace and in which Christian visitors to and residents of the palace were involved. Gregoras’s History contains a story criticising the corruption of the Christian morality of John VI Kantakouzenos. This story was related to Gregoras in the end of 1352 or in the beginning of 1353 by his friend Agathangelos. The latter complained about the habits of the imperial court that some barbarians (that is, Anatolian Muslims), were constantly arranging noisy processions there whenever they wanted. during the palace church services, the barbarians ‘sing and dance in a ring in the palace halls, shouting down [the liturgy] by singing and dancing intricate dances, with unintelligible yells they cried out odes and hymns to Muḥammad thus attracting more listeners than the reading of the Holy Gospel, sometimes everybody and sometimes only some are gathered there [at these dances]’. Moreover, the barbarians do the same ‘at the emperor’s table, often with cymbals and stage musical instruments and songs’.46

Agathangelos identifies the ‘barbarians’ engaged in such disruptive practices as ‘spiritual leaders and chiefs (μυσταγωγοὶ καὶ πρόεδροι) of the impious religion’, who lead a ‘simple and celibate’ life, but indulge themselves in gluttony and consumption of undiluted wine. No doubt Anatolian Sufi mystics or dervishes are implied here. The reference to ‘ring-dances’ (χορούς) and ‘intricate dances’ (γυμνικὴν ὄρχησιν) most likely points to the adepts of the mevlevi order of whirling dervishes. the singing of religious ‘odes and hymns’ and the use of musical instruments may indicate the Mevlevi samāʿ. The presence of the Mevlevi Sufis at the imperial palace may have been somehow connected with the ‘pro-Hesychast’ mystical preferences of

45 r. Shukurov, ‘The Crypto-Muslims of Anatolia’, in Anthropology, Archaeology and Heritage in the Balkans and Anatolia or the Life and Times of F.W. Hasluck (1878–1920), ed. david shankland, vol. 2 (Istanbul: Isis, 2004), 135–57.

46 Nicephori Gregorae Byzantina Historia, vol. 3, 202.12–203.4.





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John Kantakouzenos.47 Intercourse between the Mevlevi Sufis and mystically oriented orthodox Christians and monks in anatolia are well known.48 It nevertheless remains a mystery as to why the dervishes were present at the Byzantine emperor’s palace in the first place.

the important point is that inside Constantinople and even inside the palace religiously active groups of unassimilated muslims were present. what had changed in Byzantine society and identity in the fourteenth century that Christians could openly ignore the sacred liturgy in preference to the dervishes’ rituals at the palace of the Christian emperor, in clear violation of Byzantine custom? what had to happen in the minds of those Greeks who, without fear of one other, inside the palace of the world’s most Christian emperor, openly violated generally accepted customs?

The case of the dervishes at John Kantakouzenos’s court suggests a broader trend. By the fourteenth century, Byzantine culture had undergone a sea change in its attitude to Islam as a religious system, although the nature of this transformation is still elusive. these latent changes must have been the result of more frequent, intimate and intense contacts with the Anatolian Muslims, which naturally would have resulted in the accumulation of more detailed and precise information about Islam. however, this change of attitude at the imperial court does not seem to have resulted in any tangible transformation in the textual and material products of Byzantine culture.

In conclusion, the Byzantines were consistently selective in adopting new objects from the Orient. Far from being indifferent to the specifically Islamic content of imports, Byzantines were meticulous in purifying the adopted texts of religiously based information and avoided material objects decorated with Islamic-specific messages. The Byzantines defined the information and objects which they acquired from their eastern neighbours exclusively according to the ethno-geographical terms of ‘Persian’, ‘Arab’, ‘Indian’, and ‘Egyptian’. taking this into account, one must to be very cautious in modern scholarly discourse in classifying the Oriental (Arabic, Persian, Turkic etc.) contribution in Byzantine culture as ‘Islamic.’ In general, Byzantium was open to the non-religiously marked Orient as a source of wisdom, skill and exquisite material goods and not receptive to any form of alien religious penetration, or, as one may put it, for any kind of ‘latent Islamisation.’ However, in the fourteenth

47 see, for instance, donald m. nicol, The Reluctant Emperor: A Biography of John Cantacuzene, Byzantine Emperor and Monk, c.1295–1383 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), especially 134–60 (chapter 7: ‘Monk, historian and theologian’) and the more recent article with further references, Ivan Drpić, ‘Art, Hesychasm, and Visual Exegesis: Parisinus Graecus 1242 Revisited’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 62 (2008): 217–47.

48 frederick w. hasluck, Christianity and Islam under the Sultans, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1929), 370–8; Michel Balivet, ‘Miracles christiques et islamisation en chrétienté seldjoukide et ottomane entre le XIe et le XVe siècle’, in idem, Byzantins et Ottomans: Relations, interaction, succession (Istanbul: Éditions Isis, 1999) 217–23; Michel Balivet, ‘Chrétiens secrets et martyrs christiques en Islam turc: Quelques cas à travers les textes (XIIIe–XVIIe siècles)’, in idem, Byzantins et Ottomans: Relations, interaction, succession (Istanbul: Isis, 1999), 231–54.





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century, some vague traces of change in the traditionally rigorous anti-Islamic stance in Byzantium become apparent. This phenomenon deserves to be the object of a separate study.

