Download PDF | ( Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs, 36) Nadia Maria El Cheikh, Byzantium Viewed By The Arabs Harvard University Press ( 2004)
253 Pages
Introduction
The history of Muslim-Byzantine relations begins with the inception of Islam in the first/seventh century and continues to the fall of the Byzantine empire in A.D. 1453. From the early days of Islamic expansion, which came only decades after the revelation of the new faith, the Islamic community was in a state of enmity with Byzantium. After the collapse of the Persian empire in the first/seventh century, the Byzantine state remained the primary power that was capable of opposing the nascent Islamic community. Muslim expeditions against Byzantine territory were undertaken on a regular basis, and the early skirmishes between IsJam and Byzantium, the unsuccessful Muslim attempts to capture Constantinople, and the establishment of defined frontiers between the two powers all served to fix Byzantium as Islam’s principal enemy. Hence, although the early caliphate expanded to the east, west, and north, the Byzantine frontier became the constant focus of Arab attention. This conflict necessarily directed the orientation of the medieval Arabic-Islamic sources, and in many instances, military and political affairs dominated the major chronicles and historical works. For instance, the Muslim chronicler al-Tabari (d. 310/923) lists at the end of each year’s annals the raids on Byzantine territory that were carried out by the Muslims.
This preoccupation with warfare between the two empires ultimately led to a distorted overview of Muslim-Byzantine relations, for there was also a less adversarial side to the relations between Byzantium and the Muslims. Treaties were frequently signed, the frontiers were more or less stable for long periods, and campaigning across the frontier eventually attained a ritual quality. Paradoxically, the permanent state of war did not discourage peaceful contacts, which arose in a variety of contexts—through continuous commercial relations, the exchange of embassies, the internment and ransom of prisoners of war, the deportation of conquered urban populations, the movements of traitors and exiles, the Byzantine women kept as harem slaves, the conclusion of truces, the relations between the eastern patriarchates and the patriarch of Constantinople, and pilgrimages to the Holy Land. In addition, a few Byzantine emperors, such as Leo VI (r. A.D. 886-912) and Alexander (tr A.D. 912-913), had Muslim advisers, just as Muslim caliphs used Christian and sometimes Byzantine civil servants and counselors.!_
The frontier was a barrier but also a point of contact. If according to Islamic legal theory a state of war exists between dar al-islam (territory of Islam) and dar al-harb (territory of war), brief spans of peace are possible whether by a peace treaty or by an aman (safe-conduct), which helps to explain the ease with which Muslims and non-Muslims crossed frontiers.? Thus, a citizen of Byzantium might obtain permission to take up residence in Muslim territory to engage in commerce. Similarly, by the fourth/tenth century, Muslim merchants were established in Trebizond, in some towns in Bithynia, and even in the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. Cultural and political frontiers seldom, if ever, coincided; indeed, residents at the peripheries of both empires developed a common frontier culture that included a shared tradition of epic poetry. Thus, a semiporous border permitted the exchange of ideas and standards, manners and customs, languages and literatures.
The result of this interpenetration was the diffusion of culture, political ideas and insti-tutions, military techniques, material goods, and methods of economic production.’ Byzantium was not, therefore, a strange and wonderful land. It was relatively well known, leaving limited room for fantastic speculation. Moreover, as heirs to the Abrahamic tradition, the Byzantines and the Muslims shared a common linear historical outlook that led from the first day of creation to the certainty of God’s final judgment. This similarity in religious perspectives and ethical standards meant that each was able to understand the slogans and reasoning of the other. Indeed, the Muslims felt closer to the Byzantine empire, both religiously and culturally, than it did to any other power. In fact, Islamic civilization adopted substantial features from Byzantium, such as concepts of state and administration and elements of its material and intellectual culture. Consequently, any analysis of the various aspects of the Arab Muslim image of the Byzantine empire must acknowledge the effect that Byzantium had on the developing Islamic civilization and also the state of perpetual warfare between them.
Islam and Byzantium were in a changing and dialectically constituted historical relationship with one another. By adopting a literary critical approach, the present work is able to trace the Arabic-Islamic view of Byzantium as it evolved through centuries of warfare, contact, and exchanges in the context of regional historical developments. The literature on this subject is limited, although studies are increasingly being published on various aspects of East-West interactions and perceptions during medieval times. Works instigated by the recent debate on Orientalism and by the renewed Christian-Muslim dialogue have tackled the issue of perception and representation, but only a few scholars have handled the issue from the specific perspective of Arab-Byzantine relations. Instead, most such works have focused on the relations between the Muslim East and the Latin West. These studies are, moreover, rooted in an ideological project that seeks to understand the antecedents of the current problematic relationship between Islam and the West. For example, Muhammad Nir al-Din Afaya concludes the introduction to his recent Arabic work—entitled, in English, The Imagined West— by saying that he will “try to uncover the stereotypes embedded in the medieval Islamic discourse since some of its expressions continue to be relevant to the crux of the current ‘Arab’ question about the self and ‘other’, about Islam and the West.”4
Several studies on Byzantine perceptions of Arabic-Islamic people, culture, and history are currently available.5 Arab perceptions of Byzantium have similarly witnessed a cumulative increase in recent years. Marius Canard’s work constitutes a fundamental contribution to both Arab-Byzantine relations and mutual perceptions. André Miquel includes an important chapter on the Byzantine empire in his seminal work La géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu’au milieu du XIéme siecle, focusing on material written by Arab Muslim geographers of the third/ninth, fourth/tenth, and fifth/eleventh centuries. Ahmad Shboul’s Al-Mas ‘di and His World also devotes a chapter to the treatment of the Byzantines that is found in the works of alMas‘idi. An important addition to this scholarship is Mohamed Tahar Mansouri’s Recherches sur les relations entre Byzance et Egypte (1259-1453) (d’aprés les sources arabes). Finally, various articles published in a large variety of journals and collected works have contributed to enhancing our understanding of the Arab’s image of Byzantium.$
Byzantium played an inestimable role in the collective imagination of Arabic-Islamic societies. Knowledge of the Byzantine empire was not marginalized and confined to isolated Muslim scholars: Byzantium was a topic of unlimited concern, and information about it was vital to the military and political decisions taken by the caliphate, to commercial interests, and even to the every day concerns of ordinary Muslims. Hence, Muslim reports on Byzantium are never completely dissociated from references, either explicit or implicit, to the Arabic-Islamic world, and in a number of profound and unspoken ways, the Muslims’ own self-definition was connected with the way in which they related to the Byzantines. This book yields relatively little new empirical knowledge about Byzantium, but its investigations into the significance of Byzantium to the Arab Muslim establisha nt and Muslim appreciation of Byzantine culture and civilizaae contribute to efforts to find the foundational discourses that underlie Arab Muslim formulations of alterity. By examining the ‘Arab Muslim view of the world, of morality, and of ideal behavior, this book contends that the Arabic-Islamic texts and the representations found within them have helped shape reality and that the emerging civilization’s attempt to construct and produce a distinctive identity defined Islam’s view of Byzantium to a con-
siderable extent.
ARABIC-ISLAMIC SOURCES
The historical framework of this study stretches from the first/ seventh century to the mid-ninth/fifteenth century—from the first reference to Byzantium in the Qur’an up until the fall of Constantinople in a.p. 1453. Widely varying Arabic-Islamic sources, particularly religious and secular prose texts, were consulted in an attempt to formulate a Muslim image of Byzantium and answer the question of how Muslim society marked its internal and external boundaries and defined “otherness.”
One major challenge to examining initial contacts between Byzantium and the early Muslim uma arises from the controversy surrounding the traditional Islamic account of Islamic origins. Indeed, the traditional Arabic-Islamic sources are not contemporaneous with the events they purport to relate and sometimes were written many centuries later. These sources contain internal complexities, anachronisms, discrepancies, and contradictions. Moreover, many of them provide evidence of embellishment and invention that were introduced to serve the purposes of political or religious apologetic.” A number of critics have turned to contemporary evidence from outside the Muslim community to construct what they felt might be a more historically accurate vision of Islam’s origins and early developments.® The object in the present endeavor, however, is not to confirm or refute a core of data about historical Byzantium and early Islam but to study the contribution of this Arabic-Islamic corpus to the discourse on Byzantium.
Texts interacts with one another and with contexts in complex ways. In rejecting an opposition between text and reality, critics have noted that texts do not simply exist as a prelinguistic reality that language faithfully describes. Rather, reality is “always already” situated in or shaped by textual processes.’ The Islamic texts in question partook in this complexity and had to conform to the conventions of their respective genres. Since no writing took place in the abstract, the representations were dependent on traditions and orthodoxy. Writers came to assume that their audience possessed some previous knowledge of Byzantium to which they referred and on which they relied. Thus, a work that included material on Byzantium affiliated itself with other works containing similar material.
Some of these texts are compilations, such as the canonical collections of prophetic traditions. Hadith literature is a unique body of material. Compiled in the two centuries following the death of the Prophet in 11/632, it records the actions, words, and tacit approvals attributed to the Prophet. The material of early hadith was an undifferentiated mass of individual reports including legal injunctions, rituals, ethical conduct, eschatology, the virtues of individual tribes, biographical fragments, the Prophet’s expeditions, correct manners, admonitions, and homilies. Hadith rapidly asserted its authority as a repository of the community’s early religious and historical experiences.!° The alJami‘ al-sabih of al-Bukhari (d. 256/870) and the Sabih of Muslim (d. 261/874) brought together everything that was recognized as genuine in the orthodox circles in the third/ninth century. The material included in the books of tradition is comprehensive and deals with large domains of Muslim life. Collections of hadith include apocalyptic traditions that involve the city of Constantinople in addition to other Byzantine material.
Qur’anic exegesis (tafsir) is one of the most important branches of Qur’anic science. Qur’an commentaries have, in recent years, been exploited to “reconstruct trends and motiva- tions in exegesis as revealed by the use and invention of textual and orthographic variants to the Qur’an.” One of the functions of interpretation is to adapt the text to the present situation of the interpreter, making the text applicable to the faith and way of life of the believers and aligning it with established social custom, legal position, and doctrinal assertions."' Exegetical commentaries contain copious explanations on the opening verses of sirat al-Rum that refer to the Byzantine-Persian wars of the early first/seventh century.
Works more historical in nature, such as the Sira (biography of the Prophet) of Ibn Hisham (d. 213/828), which holds pride of place in the Islamic tradition, contain several references to the Byzantines in various contexts, including warfare, justice, trade, and diplomatic relations with Emperor Heraclius. The conquest literature, which chronicles the early conflict between Byzantium and the Arab-Muslim forces, digresses to include a substantial amount of information on Byzantine leaders. The most directly relevant titles are Kitab futith al-Sham by Abi Isma‘il alAzdi, and Kitab al-futih by Ibn A‘tham al-Kafi."? This literature is especially important for its depiction of the first encounters between Arab Muslims and Byzantines.
The best-known historical digests are al-Akhbar al-tiwal of Abi Hanifa al-Dinawari (d. 282/895) and the Tarikh of alYa‘qibi (d. 283/897), which provide quick and rather synthetical exposés. Al-Dinawari’s work is characterized by a quasiexclusive interest in Iranian pre-Islamic and Islamic history. AlYa‘qibi reflects in his work an ecumenical mind dealing in the first part with pre-Islamic history and enumerating the Israelites, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Indians, the Greeks, the Rim, the Chinese, and others. The second part of the work gives the history of the caliphate up to the year 259/872. It is arranged according to the reigns of caliphs.
The culminating point of Arab annalistic historiography was achieved in the work of Abii Ja‘far b. Jarir al-Tabari (d. 310/ 923), Tarikh al-rusul wa al-mulik. Al-Tabari’s Tarikh is a monumental corpus that represents the ancient historical tradition and preserves the broadest cross-section of earlier historical writing. It is an ambitious narrative that begins with creation and ends with the year 302/915. Al-Tabari combined the history of creation and prophecy with the history of ancient nations, adding to them a biography of Muhammad, a retelling of the conquests, and the history of the community down to his own time.
His history became the preeminent example of the annalistic tradition. In the later period, the compilation of universal chronicles continued, notably, al-Kamil fi al-tarikh of Ibn alAthir (d. 630/1232). Al-Kamil is wide in its geographical range and covers events from creation to 628/1230-1231. It is particularly valuable for Muslim representation of Byzantium in the fourth/tenth, fifth/eleventh, and sixth/twelfth centuries. Ibn Khaldiin (d. 784/1382) wrote a universal history, the ‘Ibar, which is particularly useful for the seventh/thirteenth and eighth/fourteenth centuries. The most notable historians of late Mamluk period are al-Maqrizi (d. 845/1442), Ibn Taghribirdi (d. 874/1470), and Ibn Iyas (d. 930/1524).
Material on Byzantium is also found in biographical dictionaries. Biographical notices began at a very early period in Arabic historiography. The genre is exemplified in the Tabaqat of Ibn Sa‘d (d. 230/845), which lists distinguished companions and successors in order of seniority in Islam. Al-Khatib alBaghdadi (663/1071) includes in his Tarikh Baghdad anyone of importance who has spent time in the city of Baghdad. Most important for our purposes is the topographical introduction that he provides of the Abbasid capital. The genre witnessed prolific periods, especially under the Mamluks. Ibn Khallikan (d. 681/ 1282) produced a comprehensive dictionary of notables in all fields and ages, while the importance of Tabaqat al-shafi‘iyya alkubra of al-Subki (d. 769/1368) lies in having preserved an exchange of poems involving the Byzantine emperor Nicephorus Phocas.'3
One of the most important bodies of sources in relation to the image of Byzantium and the Byzantines is the geographical literature. The geographers of the early “Iraqi” school included in tment of the world a chapter on the Byzantines. Ibn dhbeh (d. 300/911) composed al-Masdlik wa alin which he furnishes itineraries that describe routes connecting provinces and towns. His work obtained wide circulation and was utilized by many scholars. Ibn Rusteh’s al-A ‘aq ql-nafisa, written between 290 and 300/903-913, includes the most detailed description of Constantinople written in Arabic up to his own days. Ibn al-Fagih al-Hamadhani’s Kitab albuldan was written around 290/903 and contains traditions and information of legendary character. Among the geographers of the “Balkhi” or classical school, Ibn Hawaal, in his Sitrat al-ard completed in c. 378/988, provides a full-length chapter on the lands of al-Riim.
The one Arab-Muslim author to deal systematically with Byzantine history after the rise of Islam and until his own day was al-Mas‘idi (d. 345/956), at once a historian, a geographer, a traveler, and a man of letters."4 In Muriij al-dhahab wa ma‘adin al-jawhar, the discussion of all nations known to the Muslims of the fourth/tenth century comprises almost one-half of the whole work. His al-Tanbih wa al-ishraf is a condensed and comprehensive account embracing different aspects of geographical and universal history. The political history is updated to the time of writing, which is 345/956.
Among the later important world geographies is the work of al-Idrisi (d. 556/1166), completed at Palermo, under the patronage of the Norman king Roger II. The work was an important contribution to physical and descriptive geography. Yaqit alHamwi (d. 626/1229) produced one of the most useful works in their trea _ Arabic geographical literature—Mu fam al-buldan, in which he collected, arranged, and systematized the topography of the world known to him. These works included information on the Byzantine empire, particularly physical descriptions of its capital, Constantinople. Among the most outstanding travel accounts of the later period are the riblas of Ibn Jubayr (d. 614/ 1217) and Ibn Battiita (d. 779/1377). Both travelers came from the Muslim West, a century and a half apart, and have left ac-counts of their experiences in the lands of the Eastern Mediterranean, including Byzantium.
My sources also include works that, although they display a great deal of variety, all belong to the genre of adab. The term adab is hard to define, encompassing, as it does, various literal and metaphorical meanings. Traditionally adab has been used to refer to the profane literature as distinct from ‘im, which sums up the religious sciences. It has been defined to include the “best” of what had been said in the form of verse, prose, aphorism, and anecdotes on every conceivable subject that an educated man, an adib, is supposed to know. Adab also purports to deal with a wide range of problems of language, literature, and ethical and practical behavior.'5 One of the most famous prose writers, author of works of adab and politico-religious polemics, was al-Jahiz (d. 255/868-869). Several of his works include references to the Byzantines—notably, Kitab al-hayawan, which is the first comprehensive study of animals in Arabic; alBukhala’, which is an attack on avarice; and Risdla fi al-radd ‘ala al-nasara (Letter on Refuting the Christians], which he wrote at the order of Caliph al-Mutawakkil (r, 232-247/833842).
Because anecdotes about the Byzantines are scattered in adab texts and are encountered in a fortuitous, almost accidental manner, the reader must consult a large number of adab texts and compilations. References to Byzantium are found, for instance, in the compilation of Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), ‘Uytin al-akbbar, an anthology of literary reports drawn from many quarters; in Kitab al-Aghani of Abi al-Faraj al-Isfahani (d. 365/ 975), a work about poets and singers of the pre-Islamic Umayyad and Abbasid periods; and in the anthologies of alMuhassin b.‘Ali al-Tanikhi (d. 384/994), which contain material for the social history of the third/ninth and fouth/tenth centuries—namely, Nishwar al-mubadara wa akhbar al-mudhakara and al-Faraj ba‘da al-shidda. Abi Hayyan al-Tawhidi (d. 414/ 1023) wrote his Kitab al-imta‘ wa al-mu’anasa while he was a courtier at the Buyid court. He divided it into forty nights or ses- f which, the sixth and fourteenth, allude to ByzanIn later times, al-Nuwayri (d. 733/1333) compiledine zal-arab fi funn al-adab, an encyclopaedia covering the Nd f the years from the later Ayyubids through 700/1300. ae et monumental of chancery guides, an encyclopaedia at ie on the works of preceding writers, is the Subb alisha fi sind‘at al-insha of al-Qalqashandi (d. 821/1418). His Ok covers the whole range of information needed by chancery clerks in the Mamluk sultanate. The texts to be examined represent a broad spectrum of gen-ti‘res and styles developed over a long period of time.
Considering the extent and variety of the sources consulted, a certain unevenness of coverage is virtually guaranteed. The danger of overlooking some bit of information or of attaching too much importance to some other is ever-present; some texts, authors, ideas, and images are bound to be omitted from this analysis. The sources are disparate and unfold to reveal multiple images. Information about Byzantium is not immediately assimilated; first the layer of previous information already fixed in tradition needs to be pierced. Our authors and compilers depended on earlier “pretexts,” and these intertextual references created a dynamic relationship between present and prior texts.'6 Each text bears a whole network of articulated themes and assumptions whose meaning links up with other texts, genres, or topics of discourse. This is at the heart of the semiotic perspective that has disturbed traditional notions of authors as centered subjects in conscious control of their utterances.
One important shift in medieval historiography has been the transformation of history from narration to representation, “a recognition that the past occurs only through the mediatory and mediating texts that it bequeaths and that, therefore, what is recovered is not as much the truth of the past as the images of itself that it produces, images conditioned, indeed determined, by its ambient and historically determinate, discourses.”!” Critics have pointed to the complicated relationship between the claim to be telling the truth about the past and the conventional representations in which such truths were expressed.'® History’s postmodern anxjety over the status and meaning of reality is here circumvented by an awareness that this effort is directed toward disclosing a discourse—that we are trying to uncover a representation, not reality. Yet another important issue concerns the audience, for the texts examined in this book belonged to the literature of the elite. The geographer al-Muqaddasi_ (d. 390/1000) makes the status of his readership clear when he declares: “Iam writing for the administrator, the great merchant, and whomever is keen on learning.” ? Since this literature maintained itself in the domain of the educated, its physical accessibility to general audiences was limited.®
As a result, although some of its content must have filtered down to the masses, differences undoubtedly existed between the attitudes of the educated and the uneducated. The sole genre that might potentially furnish a record of the utterances and articulated attitudes of the illiterate masses toward Byzantium is the hero cycle. Such epics can be a valuable reflection of the ideals, aspirations, and concerns of ordinary people in Muslim societies. However, scholars agree that these texts are difficult to use because of uncertainties concerning the identities of the authors, the dates of composition, and the manuscript tradition itself. For instance, H. T. Norris states that the sira of ‘Antar was drafted between 1080 and 1400 but includes both early and late material. Bridget Connelly similarly remarks that “the authorship and the date of these works are generally obscure.” Marius Canard, in a series of articles on Sirat Dhat al-Himma, concludes that the epic is formed of two distinct cycles differing in period and origin and that “it is impossible to give an exact date for the composition of the romance.”?!
Not only are these texts filled with additions and interpolations; they also do not exist in critical editions. There is no reason to doubt that as soon as these obstacles are surmounted, the epics will provide a great amount of material relevant to the popular mentality in the medieval Arab Muslim world. In the meantime, we must rely on the traces of certain c ee : vent, all of our authors wrote with an excluis i Bic nce in mind, and for most Muslims, reading ely Muslim audie lar text or story was as close as they ever flim. The texts had the effect not of challenging ntium. ni i ce Hee and consolidating the prevailing conception of of conThere was a complex dialectic of reinforcement “by Wel ihe. eriences of readers in reality are determined by ied ny read, and this, in turn influences writers to take vi defined i advance by readers’ experience.” up subjects d
A HISTORY OF ALTERITY
This book approaches Homo Islamicus® from oo on tions to study his mentality, his beliefs, and Hitt Beayal. Indeed, by studying the Muslim image 0 yaa i ae e about differences in cultural and social structures and He ychological systems. Although the a senedd that influenced the construction of the image aay a ie. moved from reality, the points that clearly surprise ete na and therefore show fundamental differences between the twire of particular interest. Sh chien of representation is complex. ogre aay difference and the analysis-of-power hierarchies implici : constructions of the “other” have been central to ah eee “Orientalism” initiated by Edward Said. Said eenpanizes 8 a “cultures have always been inclined to impose ee formations on other cultures, receiving ys gobs io as they are but as, for the benefit of the receiver, they oug : be.” Moreover, the what and the how in the pein a things, while allowing for considerable individual — — circumscribed and socially regulated. E. Sivan similarly et e whether an image represents the expression of profound an dividual attitudes or whether it adheres to stereotypes ape by social consensus. The Byzantinist Heléne sipviuien : also stresses that the theme of the “image of the Other” touches on the history of “mentalités” above all else.
As alterity Presupposes identity, the two are fixed realities since they coexist and are subject to mutual interactions. It is an alterity of dialogue, even if it is simultaneously hostile. Alterity implicitly recognizes the other and the existence of a “terrain d’entente” between them. Yves Albert Dauge also talks about “altérité,” which js positive, and “aliéneté,” which is negative. There is a distinction between the other considered as similar, accepted, and integrated—once modified—and the other rejected as inferior and incompatible. Frangois Hartog describes this inherent complexity in the following way: to posit the other is to posit him as different, to posit that there are two terms a and b and that a is not b. However, this difference becomes interesting at the moment when a and b enter the same system: “Commence alors ce travail incéssant et indéfini qui consiste a ramener Pautre au méme.” In the end, the other represents viable but alternative ways of thinking and acting,”4
From the very beginning of Arabic-Islamic historical consciousness, Byzantium served as one of the primary sites of otherness in contrast to which it constituted itself. In other words, Islam defined itself partly in relation to Byzantium’s otherness, The Muslim image of Byzantium was frequently informed by the ideas, doctrines, and trends that ruled the culture at specific historical moments. Similarly, the attitudes of the Byzantines themselves also informed Muslim responses, including their creation of a certain image of Byzantium. A dependent correlation existed between the self-image of the Byzantines and that of the Muslims: one was in reciprocal contrast to the other. A kind of mirror image gave rise to the need to postulate the other to define and legitimate what one is to oneself, In many ways, the self-definition of the Arabs was implicitly connected to their way of relating to the Byzantines and the Byzantines’ own selfdefinition.
Quite often, the Byzantines are a foil for the emotional or psychological trials of the Arabs. Such a delineation, through a set of contrasts, was dependent on the Muslim selfimage. This meant that all perception occurred through the two terms, Byzantium their own system of values and beliefs. Consequently, be. f he Byzantines cannot be dissociated from the imIa Be a lims constructed by Arab Muslim authors. The ones ine and Muslim, are often found in a relation«5 of opposition. A culture that differs is perceived as a negame, ve? et of values rather than as an expression of another stion gh ie means that the literature is bound to be unrealistic Fe binissions and representations.
THE TEMPORAL EVOLUTION OF PERCEPTION
The image of Byzantium in the Arabic-Islamic sources was a monolithic across the centuries. Images seem to have na to changing internal, regional, and international political =e ties and may be narrated only by acknowledging and referring to the historical development of the Byzantine and Islamic states. In particular, we must take into account the persistent fluctuation of power between the two rivals if we are to understand the evolution of certain images, topoi, rhetorical figures, and other similar structures. The Muslims were themselves aware of the continuous changes that befall societies. AlTawhidi, after dealing with this subject at length, concludes: «With each century, people acquire new habits and a new mentality that they did not possess before.”?5 Images developed in conjunction with these new historical realities. Words, phrases, and formulas acquired new meanings in relation to the prevailing historical and cultural contexts.
This book traces the image of Byzantium as a contextually construed evolution, responding to developments in the medieval Islamic milieu and reflected ina complex intertextuality. The image, shaped within the text, was used to enhance the image of its Muslim counterpart. Therefore, we witness the growth of a textual tradition on Byzantium that reflects purely internal concerns and that is independent of actual historical phenomena.
The corpus of written material containing references to the Byzantines continues in works in the ninth/fifteenth century. But as early as the sixth/twelfth century, a certain traditional depic. tion of Byzantium and the Byzantines had been elaborated in the Arabic-Islamic sources. This literary tradition remained vibrant, with later writers freely adopting and adapting material from their predecessors. Later sources juxtaposed contemporary perceptions with earlier views, adapting their arguments, to a certain extent, to the established framework of set patterns, motifs, and polemical programs. A major characteristic of the later Arabic-Islamic sources is an approach that favored compilation and systematization. As a result, in a wide variety of sources, there is often duplication and reproduction from earlier works, An anecdote that first appeared in a third/ninth-century text will reappear, unchanged, in subsequent collections.
Thus, while the gradual accumulation of new material provides evidence for historical change and an evolution in perception, continuity predominates in the later sources. One significant consequence of this is that individual contemporary authors might emphasize a particular aspect of Byzantium or bring out a new facet but still convey entrenched images culled from their own various sources. The upshot of all this is that the last centuries reveal slight modifications and alterations of the Muslim tradition on Byzantium as it had principally been elaborated by the Abbasid authors.
In what follows, the Arabic-Islamic representations of the Byzantine empire are considered in terms of a few salient configurations. The texts tended to emphasize, in a disproportionate way, certain discussions, themes, and topics. For each period in the relations between the two rival states, certain factors helped determine the content of the image presented. These factors include the nature of Muslim-Byzantine relations, the particular political and ideological concerns of the time, and the textual tradition located within a particular literary genre. Although this book examines eras during which particular traditions and views of the Byzantines seemingly prevailed, this does not mean that these same traditions and views were absent from earlier or later periods. Furthermore, this study is by no means angles remain unexplored. Instead, I have stive, for many mo focus on a few themes and a few aspects yerately chosen to hly complex image.
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