Arabo-Byzantine Studies

Legends and myths seem lacking a solid historicity, but they often, if not always, reflect the imagination, culture and ideas of the peoples who created them. As the recent study demonstrates, aside from the political rivalry, military confrontation and religious difference that were arose between the Byzantines and the Arabs; they shared a similar popular belief in the supernaturalism of the divine powers.

Slavery may no longer exist as a legal institution, but we still find many forms of enslavement in contemporary societies. It is a troubling paradox, and one this book addresses by considering a period in which the definition of slavery and freedom proved considerably flexible. Between more familiar forms of slavery, those of antiquity and of the Americas, the institution as it was practiced and theorized in the Byzantine Mediterranean was of a different nature.

Looking at the Byzantine concept of slavery within the context of law, the labor market, medieval politics, and religion, Youval Rotman illustrates how these contexts both reshaped and sustained the slave market. By focusing on a period of great change, his historical analysis brings a new perspective to concepts of slavery and freedom. In this period, when Byzantium had to come to terms with the rising power of the Islamic state, and to fight numerous wars over territory and economic interests, Rotman traces a shift in the cultural perception of slaves as individuals: they began to be seen as human beings instead of private property. His book analyzes slavery as a historical process against the background of the political, social, and religious transformation of the Mediterranean world, and demonstrates the flexible and adaptable character of this institution.

Arguing against the use of the term slavery for any extreme form of social dependency, Rotman shows instead that slavery and freedom are unrelated concepts. His work offers a radical new understanding of the geopolitical and religious dynamics that have defined and redefined slavery and freedom, in the past and in our own time.

Ce livre apporte une contribution neuve au débat sur le devenir de l’esclavage antique. Et il éclaire en conséquence la définition de la liberté dans le monde de la Méditerranée médiévale. Entre VIe et XIe siècle les sociétés de la Méditerranée orientale montrent une évolution des catégories de personne libre et d’esclave. Byzance est au cœur de l’étude à la fois parce qu’elle continue Rome et parce qu’elle rencontre des changements historiques majeurs, dont l’entré en scène de l’islam. À Byzance l’esclavage antique ne décline pas, il n’est pas non plus remplacé. Mais, il se modifie en fonction du contexte politique, social, culturel et religieux. L’auteur récuse la définition prioritairement économique de l’esclavage, et montre que non-liberté et liberté sont moins des statuts civils que des rapport sociaux, ce qui suggère également une réflexion sur notre temps.

This paper sheds light on one aspect of the large-scale influx of Arabic scientific knowledge into Byzantium through an analysis of three Byzantine astrological compendia that contain texts originally written in Greek as well as those translated from Arabic to Greek. While written c. 1200–1400, each manuscript contains a compilation that was assembled in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The paper first considers the dating of each of the three compilations and shows the utility in using these late Byzantine manuscripts to study Middle Byzantine astrology. Second, it analyzes the Arabic texts translated in these compilations and uses them to explain the chronology and the scale of the translation of astrological material from Arabic to Greek. Third, it considers how the Arabic and Greek material is combined within these manuscripts, and what the resulting synthesis says about Middle Byzantine astrology writ large.

Considerable scholarly research has been devoted to moral, ceremonial and legal aspects
of the betrothal and marriage in Byzantine Empire. Different chroniclers preserve
valuable records of marriage in Byzantium according to which, we can imagine how this
event was celebrated. However, little is known about the special rites of the Imperial
marriages, rather our extant sources have tended to focus on ritual surrounding the
solemn procession of the Imperial couple toward the nuptial chamber. Limited number of
Greek accounts regarding the wedding ceremonies of Royal Persons fail to give detailed
information on liturgical and ceremonial aspects of this event such as the ceremony’s
participants, decoration of the palaces in which the ceremonies took place, etc. There is,
however, an Arabic account reported by some of the earliest Shī’ī scholars that casts new
light on the rites and rituals of Byzantine Imperial marriage. Ibn al-Babawayh (d.
381/991), Shī’ī al-Ṭabarī (d. fifth/eleventh century) and al-Ṭūsī (d. 460/1067) on the
authority of Bishr Ibn al-Sulaymān report an interesting autobiography of a Byzantine
princess named Narjis, describing herself as the granddaughter of a Great Caesar and
descendant of Jesus’s disciples. She narrates her story about the years she lived in the
Caesar’s court and tells that for some complicated reasons runs away, gets captured and
ends up in Arab lands. She is then bought by the Tenth Imām of Shī’ī Muslims, al-Hādī,
for his son the Eleventh Imām, Hasan al-Askarī and then becomes the mother of the
Twelfth Imām. In his autobiography, Lady Narjis tells that the Caesar performs a
ceremony in his own palace to marry her to his nephew. But all of a sudden, strong
tremors shake the palace, the groom fall unconscious and the ceremony terminates. Some
of the historical hints drawn from this Arabic account about the imperial or liturgical rites
in Byzantium are scarcely distinguishable from what is already known to us through
Byzantine sources. This manifestly attests to the authenticity of this account. Besides, this
autobiography contains supplementary material for Byzantine account and provides us
with the information the like of which nowhere is found in Greek Chronicles.

This paper analyzes the effects that the international politics in the central Middle Ages had on the slave trade, and the Byzantine slave trade in particular. The geopolitical changes of the seventh and eighth centuries, which transformed the late Roman Empire into a medieval world composed of different civilizations, radically changed the economic dynamics of these regions and the Byzantine slave market as a consequence. However, the paper examines the Byzantine slave trade not only as a consequence of these dynamics, but also as one of their causes. In other words, it focuses on the way in which international politics and economy, especially the economy of slavery, intertwined, and in fact became one.

In:  Greenberg, R., Tal, O. and Daᶜadli, T. 2017. Bet Yeraḥ, Vol. III: Hellenistic Philoteria and Islamic al-Ṣinnabra. IAA Reports 61. Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority. [VI + 226 pages; ISBN 9789654066464; 27  21 cm format; paperback]

The purpose of this article is to retrieve the available evidence, whatever vague, of the justifications that led some Arabs to conversion, the position of Byzantine authorities towards this, and the mechanisms adopted for their integration into society, the extent of integration achieved by these apostates, and finally the attitude of Byzantine society towards them. I seek as much as possible to avoid dealing with captives since, as  recent studies have shown in detail,  they lacked free will, as well as their conversion, and of course their stay in Byzantium, has often been linked to coercion and/or physical and moral pressures.

TITLE: Greek and Arabic studies in the twentieth century: the cultural implementation of political choices

SUMMARY: The article outlines how the study of Byzantium and the Arabs developed during the twentieth century. It emphasizes the importance of a deep commitment to language and philology in order for broader historical conclusions to emerge and how these conclusions are, for each generation of Graeco-Arabists since the nineteenth century, subject to the political realities of their time and place. It also explains why interest in the Byzantine-Arabic intellectual interaction emerged only in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Overall, modern scholars have perceived Byzantium as culturally introverted and unable to interact at the intellectual level with any of its neighbors. It was presumably consumed by its own ancient heritage, which it endlessly reproduced without creative elaboration. Most research on Byzantium’s relations with its neighbors focused on the Latin West (presented as a positive influence on Byzantium) and the Slavic world (conceived as retrograde under the negative influence of Byzantium). Byzantium’s interaction with the Arabs received considerably less attention. This contrasts sharply with the volume of modern studies on the reception of ancient Greek literature into Arabic. The reason for the disparity has to do with modern perceptions of different cultural spheres: Byzantino-Arabica is presumably an “oriental” phenomenon that did not contribute anything to the development of modern Western culture. In contrast, Graeco-Arabica supposedly investigates how ancient Greek philosophy and science (a cornerstone of Western modernity) passed from antiquity to the Middle Ages.

The first effort to charter the territory of Byzantino-Arabica was Alexander Vasiliev’s Byzantium and the Arabs, originally published in Russian in 1900–1902. It covers the 9th–11th centuries, a period marked by the greatest military antagonism between the two powers. It heavily concentrates on military and political history and translates extensive excerpts from Arabic narrative sources that can help chronicle the phases of this history. It is conceived as a “history of events.”

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the study of Byzantium and the Arabs adopted different methodologies: the emerging “history of alterity” or cultural history enabled by philological tools. Further nuance to the study of Byzantino-Arabica is possible with the help of other disciplines: Greek, Arabic and Coptic papyrology; Christian Arabic, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Georgian literature; the study of Christian Nubia.

The final section of the paper asks whether, and under what conditions, highly specialized research tools dedicated to the retrieval of the past may lead to insight that modern societies can recognize as valuable.

Publ. illustrée d’un lot provenant peut-être de Syrie du Nord et reflétant la circulation de monnaies impériales, de Justinien, Maurice, Phocas, Héraclius et Constant II (641-657) associées aux premières monnaies d’imitation arabo-byzantines (« imitative coins » ou « pseudo-Byzantine »), certaines de types inédits. Ce lot datant de 660 env. peu de temps après l’arrêt de l’arrivée des émissions de bronzes byzantins en Syrie est comparable au « trésor syrien » dit de Hama, publié par Philipps et Goodwin dans la Num Chron (1977, 61-87)

Comnènes L'Orient néo-romain intégré (1159-1183) L'empire de Constantinople, celui que la langue courante de l'époque appelait la Romanie et la langue moderne Byzance, donnait une définition de lui-même, au moins jusqu'au XIII e siècle. Il était l'Empire romain, le premier si ce n'est seul Etat du monde au plein sens du terme, Res publica en latin puis politeia en grec. Il reposait sur un triptyque institutionnel. En premier lieu l'empereur, représentant de Dieu sur terre, loi vivante et juge suprême assurait la direction du monde y compris par l'usage légitime de la force armée. A la fois au-dessus à côté et en-dessous de lui, se trouvait l'Eglise, responsable, à travers ses institutions du salut des hommes, empereurs inclus. Enfin, sous ces deux structures, se trouvait l'institution assurant le fonctionnement effectif de l'Etat, son système fiscal, central dans la vie matérielle de l'Empire, le dèmosion. Pendant les deux siècles des Croisades, la présence en Orient de rivaux politiques et idéologiques, les Francs, fidèles de l'Eglise latine, fut un défi lancé aux capacités d'intégration et de direction de Constantinople sur un espace où elle avait exercé, si ce n'est le monopole du pouvoir politique suite aux invasions arabes et turques, du moins le monopole du pouvoir politique Chrétien.

This study offers a brief presentation of the life and academic career of Irfan Arif Shahîd, Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University and Honorary Affiliate Fellow of Dumbarton Oaks, Center for Byzantine Studies. Shahîd’s scholarly interests gravitated around the history of the relations between Byzantium and the Arabs before the era of the Prophet Muḥammad, and also on the entangled religious and cultural histories of the Arab Christians in the pre-Islamic Orient. This study also provides a complete list of the academic publications of this American Orientalist.

The 9th and 10th centuries saw the parallel appearance in different corners of the Mediterranean of movements that shared common characteristic: unprecedented interest in ancient culture. Escalations of literary interest in ancient Greek culture, in Byzantium and in the Abbasid caliphate, took place almost simultaneously. Interestingly, there is almost a perfect correlation between the list of works translated into Arabic at that time and the list of the very first manuscripts that have undergone the process of transcription into minuscule in Byzantine scriptoria. In this paper I am developing a theory of Dimitri Gutas who maintained that these two processes were connected and that the manuscripts in Byzantium could have been copied because of the specific Arabic demand for these works. As the Arabs were highly interested in the Greek philosophical and scientific literature and as they needed the manuscript, the Byzantines possibly became aware of this matter and according and they may have provided the Arabs with fresh copies of the Greek manuscripts that were in their possession.

Ce travail de recherche a pour objectif d’étudier le regard que portaient les auteurs byzantins sur leurs voisins musulmans, en essayant d’en comprendre les raisons. Parmi les sources étudiées, trois sont des ouvrages à vocation historique. La quatrième est un traité militaire attribué à l’empereur byzantin Nicéphore Phocas. Les sources de nature historique sont hétérogènes dans le temps et dans l’espace : Léon le Diacre et Jean Skylitzès sont des auteurs byzantins du Xe et du XIe siècle tandis que Yahya d’Antioche est un auteur arabe chrétien du XIe siècle. Cette hétérogénéité permet de comparer les sources entre elles et d’évaluer les différentes visions, puis d’en fournir une synthèse.

Eastern Christian texts deal with the early Arab-Byzantine wars with clear ideological motives. They often attribute to the Arabs extreme violence directed not against their warrior enemies but against civilians and sometimes monks. The accusation of Arabs of extreme violence is increasing in the texts of writers with a religious background. Some scholars have relied on these texts as an evidence for the violence of the Arab conquests without taking into account the influence of the religious background on those writers who saw Islam as a threat to Christianity, and then on their influence and positions as clerics. Some of them expressed their strong dissatisfaction with the conversion of the people of their churches to Islam and considered this a divine punishment for the moral sins of Christians. Thus, it seems that some of them exaggerated the bloody and brutal punishment in preparation for forgiveness and the final victory of true Christians over Muslims. This approach may be supported by a comparison of what they wrote with other non-fanatic clerics who were more inclined to the pacifism of the Arab conquests.
On the other hand, the position of the Byzantine writers seems closer to the Arab position. They do not limit the violence to the Arabs only, but refer to the violence of the two opponents, the Arabs and the Byzantines. At times, they justified the violence of Arab fighters against rebels or enemy collaborators. This is largely in agreement with Arabic sources, and although related Arabic accounts are scarce, what is available of them indicate a common violence between the two rivals. Al-Wāqidī is a unique source in his reference to incidents of mutual violence. However, although he mentioned a number of violent incidents perpetrated by the Arab side, he often justified this by the necessity of the strategy required by the wars against the unbelievers He frequently considered it an act of heroism and courage that was necessary to terrify them.

Ninth century is conceived a period of important cultural changes in Byz- antium. At that time, written culture of the empire emerges from the “Dark Age” in which literary production was in decline. The most important participants of these changes are few larger-than-life and easy to pick out figures. Interestingly, all of the most important Byzantine 9th-century men of letters were sent as emissaries to the Abbasid capital: John the Grammarian, Photius, Constantine/st. Cyril, Leon Choirosphaktes. The only one who was not – Leon the mathematician, was actually said to have been invited avidly to Baghdad by the caliph. It cannot be just a coinci- dence. In my opinion it is connected with the growing consciousness in Byzantium of the cultural prowess of the Arabs. In 9th century the Byzantines were starting to consider the caliphate as not only a temporary phenomenon at its eastern bor- der, but as a permanent rival. This recognition was not only political. The Byzan- tines seemingly became aware of the cultural excellence of the caliphate, in which the impressive, large-scale Graeco-Arabic translation movement was taking place at that time. At the same point, the Byzantines constituted the main axis of ideo- logical rhetoric of the Abbasids of the Graeco-Arabic translation movement. They were presented in the sources of the period as not worthy the ancient Greek culture which they accidentally fell heirs to, and the Arabs as the true, worthy inheritors. The big embassies provided an opportunity to this kind of interaction. That being the case, they gained particular cultural character. They appear to have been re- garded by both parties as a way to get political affairs resolved, but furthermore as an occasion to display the supremacy over the rival empire. Consequently, the lead- ers of the embassies between Byzantium and the Abbasids seem to be on a centre stage of the supposedly conscious cultural rivalry

The purpose of this article is to study whether the conflicts between Byzantines and Arabs at the time of Nikephoros II Phokas (963-969) can be determined and considered as a part of the Byzantine holy war. More specifically, this article will examine all information – evidences of the Byzantine and Arab sources – revealing the strong presence of the religious
fanaticism contained in these conflicts

Antonino Salinas, a well-known Sicilian archaeologist, was also a protagonist in the history of the restoration of monuments, and in particular of "Arab-Norman" architecture. He held various positions, including that of Director of the National Museum of Palermo and of Superintendent. The essay traces, through the analysis of his writings, the stages of his contribution to the restoration of monuments in Sicily between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The historical development and modern transformations of the attitudes of Eastern Orthodox cultures and ecclesiastical elites to the problems and ethics of war display both significant analogies and dissimilarities to the respective Western Christian stances  They have received much less in-depth and comprehensive treatment than their Western Christian counterparts and their study is still being affected by the fact that a good of deal of the relevant late antique, medieval, and early modern material (Greek, Old Church Slavonic, Georgian, etc.) has been neither edited and published nor translated into modern Western European languages.
This state of evidence and research in the field of Eastern Orthodox ideology and theology of warfare makes the further historical and theological investigation of these extant sources an important and high-priority objective. One of the principal problems arising from the primary source criticism and analysis concerns the notions of a Christian just war theory and Christian military martyrdom in the Vita to St. Constantine–Cyril the Philosopher (826/7–869), the celebrated missionary to the Slavs. The legitimization of Christian just war theory and the potential martyr status of the Christian warrior ascribed to St. Constantine–Cyril can perhaps be best understood within the religio-political framework of his mission to the court of the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil. The substantial impact and enduring after-life of these statements of St. Constantine–Cyril (venerated, along with his brother, St Methodius, in the Orthodox  Church as saints carrying the title “equal to the apostles” and declared by Pope John Paul II co-patron-saints of Europe) in the Orthodox Slavonic  world (and hence in European Christendom)  deserve a close and balanced assessment.

Acest studiu oferă o scurtă prezentare a vieții și carierei academice a lui Irfan Arif Shahîd, profesor de studii bizantine la Georgetown University și membru onorific al Dumbarton Oaks. Interesele științifice ale lui Shahîd au gravitat în jurul istoriei relațiilor dintre Bizanț și arabi înainte de epoca lui Muhammad, dar și în jurul istoriei culturale și religioase a arabilor creștini. Acest studiu oferă o traducere în limba română a articolului lui Shahid intitulat Creștinătatea arabă în Palestina bizantină, publicat în ARAM, 15 (2003), dar și o listă completă a publicațiilor științifice ale bizantinistului american.

Nell’estate del 647 il generale araboʿAbd Allāh ibn Saʿd ibn Abī l-Sarḥ invase la Byzacena alla testa di circa ventimila uomini. Nei pressi di Sufetula, il suo esercito affrontò e sconfisse le truppe del patrizio Gregorio, spezzando la resistenza romana alla prima penetrazione araba nella provincia. Questo famigerato evento segnò l’inizio del lungo conflitto che oppose impero e califfato per il controllo delle province africane. La storiografia sull’Africa bizantina, sempre più copiosa a partire dagli anni ’80 del XX secolo, si è però occupata solo in maniera marginale della questione. Di conseguenza, la ricostruzione di questi avvenimenti dipende ancora largamente da quanto scritto da Charles Diehl nel 1896. In sintesi, secondo l’eminente studioso francese successivamente alla disfatta di Sufetula l’impero non sarebbe stato più in grado di attuare una strategia difensiva efficace. La protezione della provincia sarebbe quindi stata affidata alle confederazioni tribali maure, solo occasionalmente rinforzate da sparuti contingenti romani. La conclusione dell’esperienza bizantina in Africa appariva quindi già delineata alla metà del secolo VII. Tuttavia, grazie principalmente all’allargamento del corpus relativo alle fonti sul tema, è possibile argomentare che la teoria di Diehl vada rivista. L’intenzione di questo contributo, quindi, è quella di analizzare i quasi cinquanta anni di guerra che opposero Arabi e Romani prestando la dovuta attenzione al ruolo svolto dall’impero nel coordinare l’attività bellica nel nord Africa. Sarà interessante notare come gli Arabi non si trovarono davanti una provincia completamente sguarnita, ma un territorio presidiato sotto il profilo militare che fino alla definitiva caduta di Cartagine (699) Bisanzio tentò di difendere.

Gli incontri mirano
• ad accrescere la conoscenza del Sito UNESCO
‘Palermo arabo-normanna e le Cattedrali di
Cefalù e Monreale’ attraverso una fruizione larga, profonda, gioiosa dei monumenti che lo costituiscono
• a rafforzare in noi la consapevolezza del valore etico-culturale di questo Sito e l’orgoglio di
esserne i custodi