Download PDF | Siege Warfare And Military Organization In The Successor States ( 400 - 800 AD) Byzantium, The West And Islam Brill Academic Publishers ( 2013)
819 Pages
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In 2004, a year before embarking on the project that became this book, I joined my prospective advisor on a research trip to the Byzantine rite monastery Grottaferrata, an hour from Rome. It has a very large collection of Byzantine palimpsests, manuscripts whose original text is mostly illegible to the naked eye. However, the chemical residue of medieval ink still remains in the parchment, and can be examined in ultraviolet or infrared light.
The library had acquired the technological apparatus that allowed us to see a fragment of the Chronicle of Symeon the Logothete that had not been read in centuries. As we (mostly Staffan) were making out the individual letters on a computer screen, the monastery librarian, the ancient and most venerable-looking Padre Marco passed by. We had seen him several times, but he never said a word until now, as he stopped and peered over our shoulders at the Greek letters in fluorescent purple on the screen, and said in Greek, ipomoni, ipomoni (patience, patience). Although I made light of it then, his brief statement has reverberated in the back of my mind ever since.
I owe a considerable debt to my teachers at the University of Minnesota, especially Bernard Bachrach, who inspired my early research interests and taught me to get work done under pressure, an essential element of ipomoni as I have since discovered. At the Department of History and Classical Studies at NINU, where I am now happily ensconced thanks to a very generous grant from the Norwegian Research Council, I have been helped and encouraged by many of my teachers and colleagues throughout my career (which has also involved a brief, but treasured foray into teacher education at HiST).
Since these debts have been accumulated over so many years and in so many ways, it would be impossible to mention some and leave out others, but I must thank my former advisor, Staffan Wahlgren, who taught me Greek thirteen years ago, Tore Iversen, who first introduced me to late antique and early medieval history, and my students, who have learnt the Roman battle cry Deus adiuta Romanis with great enthusiasm. At the Faculty of Humanities as well as the NINU and HisT libraries I owe a great “thank you” to the whole staff; as well as to the IT experts at NTNU, who have rescued me many a time from many a difficulty, ranging from silly mistakes pushing buttons with unreasonable consequences, to catastrophic meltdowns on the part of both laptop and operator.
I would further like to thank the members of my committee, Judith Herrin, Jan Rets6 and Marek Thue Kretschmer, who provided excellent suggestions for revising the dissertation from which this book derives. I must also thank Claudia Sode and John France for valuable feedback, Sara Elin Roberts for effective copy-editing, and the anonymous reader for suggesting crucial improvements to the manuscript.
Brill has expedited the process with remarkable efficiency; for which my gratitude goes to Kelly DeVries, Julian Deahl, and not least Marcella Mulder who has been a most patient editor whenever I found myself outpaced by events; at the last moment I must also thank Tessel Jonquiére for seeing the book swiftly and safely through production, and finally Erik Goosmann for producing excellent maps.
I remain in debt to Albrecht Berger, Noel Lenski, David Bachrach and Wadad al-Qadi for sending me offprints of in-proof or hard-to-get articles; Michael Featherstone, Charlotte Roueché, Judith Josephson and Marek Jankowiak for excellent responses to my queries; the scholars at the Institut fiir Byzantinistik und Neogrizistik in Vienna, especially the director Johannes Koder for welcoming me and letting me try out some of my ideas on his students; Ernst Gamillscheg for a delightful example of scholarly generosity, and Mesrob Krikorian, the Armenian Archbishop of Vienna, who assisted by taking me through crucial parts of the Armenian text of Sebeos. The editors of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology gave me an opportunity to publish unused materials on Scandinavian warfare from “mark 1” of my original dissertation.
I would particularly like to thank the editor-in-chief, Clifford J. Rogers, for inviting me to the conference Medieval Frontiers at War in Caceres in November 2010, the host Manuel Rojas Gabriel, whose kindness and friendship has been a source of constant encouragement, and all the other scholars, especially Stephen Morillo, for (even more) encouragement and positive feedback. Others are probably not aware of the impact the have had upon me: after I heard James Howard-Johnston’s mesmerizing talk at the Late Antique Archaeology conference at Oxford in March 2007, my original dissertation project was completely derailed. Peter Sarris provided a wonderful forum to present my ideas at his seminar and has given much treasured, indeed indelible, feedback. John Haldon deserves a special mention not only for several of the points mentioned above, but also for encouraging this project many years ago, far more than he knows.
On research trips I have met a number of kind and generous villagers, museum curators, archaeologists and historians from Palermo and Bari to Adana and Amorion. I would like to single out Cemal Pulak for having his students guide me through the excavations of Byzantine ships at the Harbor of Theodosius in Constantinople, and Eric Ivison for giving me the tour of the Amorion excavations in the summer of 2007 and suggesting that I might want to focus on a single aspect of warfare.
The same thanks go to Roger Scott, who encouraged my ideas but rightly suggested I stop at Charlemagne. As a result, I decided to focus on siege warfare as a case for analyzing military organization in a comparative perspective in the late and postRoman world—not necessarily because I regard it as the “most important” form of warfare, but because it can be so effectively compared across a range of societies and not least be related to current fruitful debates on society, economy and culture in late antiquity and the early middle ages.
Those who have shown so much ipomonié to me also deserve my gratitude: my friends, who still remember me, and my family, from whom I have been far too absent. For many in my closest circle, these last few of years have unfortunately been truly harrowing times. I would therefore like to thank my parents for all their love, concern and support through it all; my father has on top of everything else provided the best role model an aspiring historian could have. While I am sorry that they both had to relive the struggles of their own youth through me, they have made the whole process more bearable because they understood so well.
My final word of gratitude goes to my very own vasilissa, Ozel, the only true Byzantine that I know. We have battled together against life’s hardships since the earliest stages of this project. But between all the difficulties, Ozel and I have also had many glorious moments: together we have gazed upon the dome and mosaics of Hagia Sophia, climbed Vesuvius and circled Etna, braved the mighty Taurus and looked down on the Cilician gates, mused over the ruins at the Forum, marveled at the golden domes of Norman churches in Sicily, poached figs in the heat of the Mezzogiorno, witnessed sunrise from high above the volcanic Cappadocian landscape and sunset over the Euphrates, wandered through the groves around the Areopagos in the shade of the Acropolis, explored the little villages, churches and cathedrals of Italy, cruised the blue Aegean and its islands and coasts in pursuit of Arab and Byzantine fleets, and ascended innumerable rocks and mountains to inspect forts and castles in the sweltering heat all over the Mediterranean.
No scholar could ever hope to have a better translator, secretary, photographer and driver, who can navigate through microscopic Italian village streets, rush-hour traffic in downtown Istanbul, and every impassable road from Greece to Anatolia with consummate skill. Indeed, no magnate, bishop or general ever had such a solacium or therapeia to support and protect them; no army ever had a better guide on the march through the wilderness; no soldier ever had a steadier comrade to cover his right side in battle; nor has any man ever had a better companion. This is dedicated to her.
Cesme, Chios, Athens and Trondheim Easter 2013
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