Download PDF | (New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture) Luca Zavagno - The Byzantine City from Heraclius to the Fourth Crusade, 610–1204_ Urban Life after Antiquity-Palgrave Pivot (2021).
225 Pages
PREFACE
“The criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.” Indeed, this project represents a return to a topic I have explored on numerous occasions before and after my Ph.D. as I was preparing my first monograph, entitled Cities in Transition: Urbanism in Byzantium between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (AD 500-900) (BAR 2009). Since then, a score of contributions on the topic of Byzantine urbanism have appeared; however, no introductory survey of Byzantine urbanism and the changes its experience between 600 and 1204 has ever appeared. Three preliminary caveats should be set forth, though.
First, the main idea at the very basis of this book is to propose a regional and sub-regional overview of the transformations of urban contexts in a comparative perspective, taking into consideration the peculiar geomorphological and topographical varieties of each area under scrutiny; in other words, echoing the late Martin Harrison, the focus of this diachronic approach will also be the urban developments across the mountain, the plain, and the coastline as well as the islands. In other words, this book proposes a sort of examination of the blueprint of the Byzantine urban landscape rather than a simple map of the most important and betterexcavated sites.
Second, indeed, archaeology and material culture have pride of place in what remains a short and -of course- brief overview of the functional changes experienced by Byzantine urbanism.
The changes in urban functions, landscape, structure, and fabric, have been explored by bringing together the most recent results stemming from urban archaeological excavations, the results of analyses of material culture (ceramic, coins, seals), and a reassessment of the documentary and hagiographical sources. They have hopefully allowed me to propose an all-encompassing analytical approach that set the sails from the urban economy and addressed political, social, religious, and cultural issues, which all played a role in morphing the Byzantine city.
Indeed, I also remain convinced that the Byzantine urban landscape can afford us a better grasp of changes to the Byzantine central and provincial administrative apparatus: the fiscal machinery, military institutions, socio-economic structures, and religious organization. Cities are, therefore, a sort of looking glass: a way of checking the reality on the ground in a world too often interpreted through the Constantinopolitan perspective.
The Queen City was, of course, imitated and sought after as an architectural and urbanistic model; nevertheless, it was never reached; and as cities often remained central to the experience of many “Romans,” more often than not, it remained a distant thunder in the background noise of the actual flow of Byzantine city life.
The third and last point concerns the audience of the book. Indeed, it is meant and thought for a scholarly (and not) public as well as students. Therefore, it may be called a handbook. Personally, I would rather regard it as an attempt to paint a picture of the main historiographical trends, interpretative structures, and methodological questions concerning Byzantine urbanism with a broad brush.
In other words, it should ideally be regarded as a starting point for further delving into issues like economic functionality of cities, their religious and socio-political role, as well as their architectural, urbanistic, and structural manifestations along the six centuries under scrutiny here. I can only hope that when turning the last page of this book, the readers will feel that their intellectual curiosity has been stimulated enough to pursue their own journey following the trails of Byzantium and its city. After all, as Sophocles concludes: “a city that is just of one man only is no true city.”!
Ankara, Turkey Luca Zavagno
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are many people to whom my gratitude should be extended, but it is often hard to mention them in one breath. This book has been written during extraordinary times in which the Covid-19 pandemic had changed the world as we knew it. During this immense tragedy, the “usual” and traditional academic activities and encounters came to a complete stop.
Teaching turned into a bi-dimensional and virtual exercise with students perching from small windows on a screen. However, and without glossing over the difficulties instructors and students experienced, nobody turned into a solitary soliloquist. Technology helped to reach out to colleagues (most of whom I am proud to call friends) no matter how far they were. Some of them were terrific sources of inspiration and support.
They helped me with advice, suggestions, and references: sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly (as some even accepted to skim through the boring draft of the book). In particular, I would like to mention Nicholas Bakirtzis (who is like an elder and wiser brother to me), Owen Miller, Jonathan Jarrett, Rebecca Darley, and Maria Cristina Carile (it was a real privilege to put the last touches to my book while in Ravenna); to me, they are more than colleagues: they are invaluable mentors on top of being superb scholars.
I also had the good luck to discuss and debate some of the concepts and ideas included in this book with the students of some of the courses I held at Bilkent University. They also provided invaluable food for thoughts. I can name but a few of them (but to all goes my token of appreciation and gratitude): Harun Celik, Yunus Dogan, Aysenur Mulla, Humberto De Luigi, and Zeynep Olgun. To my “dottoranda” Fermude Gulseving goes a special praise for her patience with a supervisor like me and because she reviewed the manuscript and convinced me that Stravinsky’s was not too bad a metaphor after all.
Finally, I would like to mention my mum, my stepdad Mariangelo, my sister Marianna, Eddie Luca, my brother-in-law Antonio and -above allmy wife Federica, and my daughter Sofia, to whom this book is dedicated; cause without them, I would not have been able to write a single sentence of it or of anything I scribbled in the past fifteen years.
Praise for The Byzantine City from Heraclius to the Fourth Crusade, 610-1204
“This is a most welcome and important contribution in the study of Byzantine cities, a topic of growing scholarly interest. Drawing from a range of historical sources and archaeological results this book offers a compelling overview of the socioeconomic and cultural complexity of the Byzantine city and its significance for our understanding of the history of Byzantium.”
—Nikolas Bakirtzis, The Cyprus Institute
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