Download PDF | Rustam Shukurov - Byzantine Ideas of Persia, 650–1461-Routledge (2024).
289 Pages
This book offers a comprehensive study of the perceptions of ancient and medieval Iran in the Byzantine empire, exploring the effects of Persian culture upon Byzantine intellectualism, society and culture. Byzantine Ideas of Persia, 650–1461 focusses on the enduring position of ancient Persia in Byzantine cultural memory, encompassing both in the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’ significance. By analysing a wide range of historical sources – from church literature to belles-lettres – this book examines the intricate relationship between ancient Persia and Byzantine cultural memory, as well as the integration and function of Persian motifs in the Byzantine mentality.
Additionally, the author uses these sources to analyse thoroughly the knowledge Byzantines had about contemporary Iranian culture, the presence of ethnic Iranians, and the circulation and usage of the Persian language in Byzantium. Finally, this book concludes with an insightful exploration of the importance and influence of Iranian science on Byzantine scholars. This book will appeal to scholars and students in the fields of Byzantine and Iranian history, particularly to those studying the cross-cultural and social influence between the two societies during the Middle Ages.
Rustam Shukurov, PhD, D.Sc. in History (2012), is a Visiting Scholar at the University of St Andrews. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1984 and worked there for more than 30 years as a lecturer in Byzantine and Medieval studies. He has published several monographs, translations and articles on Byzantium, Iranian and Turkic History, including The Grand Komnenoi and the Orient, 1204–1461 (Moscow, 2001) and The Byzantine Turks, 1204–1461 (Leiden; Boston, 2016).
Global Histories before Globalisation Series Editors: Nicholas Morton (Nottingham Trent University, UK) and Kristin Skottki (University of Bayreuth, Germany)
This series opens a major new forum of debate for scholars working on Global History in the millennium between ca. 500 and 1500 AD. It seeks to connect previously disconnected historiographies and profoundly change our understanding of the so-called ‘medieval’ period. Exploring this millennium of history at a global level creates an opportunity to revisit nationalistic and Eurocentric master narratives, not only of the ‘medieval’ millennium, but also of the origins of the modern world. We welcome discussion on both alternative models of periodisation and alternative approaches to traditional constructions of spaces and identities.
This unprecedented series seeks to initiate a global conversation in which scholars can share and debate their ideas on these topics through research monographs, translated sources and works of synthesis. Studies may include those on the cross-cultural transmission of ideas, global trade, warfare or macro theories/narratives concerning the development of human societies during this era. We are especially interested in microhistories with transcultural and transcontinental implications. Thus it is to be hoped that contributing studies will help to re-write the history of events as well as processes whose global implications have yet to be explored. Byzantine Ideas of Persia, 650–1461 Rustam Shukurov
Acknowledgements In a sense, this book, the initial draft of which was compiled during 2020– 2021, owes its existence to the global pandemic that swept the world in 2020. The pandemic, which played out in March that year, caught me when I was in Vienna. I had to move back to Moscow from Vienna during a surge in infections in late February 2021. Both in Vienna and in Moscow, the pandemic necessitated a series of full lockdowns, as well as less severe restrictions that dictated periods of long seclusion and ended normal social activities. I had a lot of time to myself, more than usual, and, willingly or not, had to concentrate completely on writing. When the first draft was sent to the publisher for peer review in October 2021, I could not have anticipated that the external circumstances during the book’s completion would turn even more unfortunate and dreadful. The revision of this book coincided with the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The traumatic experience of this humanitarian tragedy, which unfolded in real time before our eyes through the media, hindered proper concentration on the planned text revision. This was exacerbated by a sharp deterioration in the domestic political atmosphere in Moscow.
I left Moscow, first for my hometown Dushanbe (Tajikistan), and from there, I travelled again to Vienna before finally arriving in St Andrews a few months later. There is another side to this story, one that is much more joyous and productive. From January 2020 to January 2021, I had the honour of being a team member of the Mobility, Microstructures and Personal Agency in Byzantium project, initiated and led by Professor Claudia Rapp, who received the 2015 Wittgenstein Award of the Austrian National Research Foundation (FWF) to fund the project.1 During this period, I worked in the Department of Byzantine Studies at the Institute for Medieval Research (Austrian Academy of Sciences) for over a year. Claudia Rapp graciously supported the idea of this study being a significant part of my contribution to the project. Thus, this book was compiled within the framework of the project, which also made possible its Open Access publication.
I am profoundly grateful to Claudia Rapp, the patron angel of this book, whose consistent and varied support played a decisive role in its completion. She generously provided additional funding for my work on the book in May 2022, ultimately making possible my four-month research fellowship from June to September 2022, shared between the Institute of Iranian Studies and the Institute for Medieval Research (both under the Austrian Academy of Sciences). I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to Professor Florian Schwarz, Director of the Institute for Iranian Studies, for offering me a position within his institute and for his considerate attention.
The culmination of the book’s completion took place at the University of St Andrews, where I was hosted as a visiting fellow due to the generous support of the Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA), and the invaluable assistance of Professor Andrew Peacock, to whom I extend my heartfelt gratitude. I owe my gratitude to many who, in various ways, have influenced this book: the late Gherardo Gnoli, the late Michel Balivet, Günter Prinzing, Scott Redford, my elder brothers Sharif Shukurov and Anvar Shukurov, Neslihan Asutay-Effenberger, Arne Effenberger, Anuscha Monchizadeh, James Robert Russell, Azat Bozoyan, Grigory Kessel, Andreas Rhoby, Arkady Kovelman, Timothy Greenwood, Jaimee Comstock-Skipp, Dirk Krausmüller, Alberto Bernard, Rudolf Stefec, Maria Pantelia, Teresa Shawcross, Pamela A. Patton, Arkadiy Demidchik, Grigori Simeonov, Andrey Vinogradov, as well as to the members of my seminar ‘Sol Invictus’,2 with a special acknowledgement to Evgeny Zabolotnyi and Artemy Streletsky. I express my appreciation to András Kraft, who meticulously reviewed the draft version of the book and offered valuable corrections and additions.
I am grateful to Ivana Jevtić and Koray Durak for their thorough editing of my earlier piece on the subject, which has been incorporated into this book. In a similar vein, I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers of the Press and the series editors, Kristin Skottki and Nicholas Morton, whose constructive comments influenced the present form of this book. I also want to express my gratitude to my Tajik friends, Abdukhalil Kholiqzoda and Dr. Shodi-Muhammad Sufizoda, who extended their help to my family and me during our stay in Dushanbe in the spring of 2022. I thank my son, Oyat Shukurov, for providing this book with professional drawings and maps. My special thanks are owed to my wife, Irina Variash, who has taken the time to review the draft versions of this book multiple times and has provided significant comments, both conceptual and factual. The support and cooperation of people of free will, intellect and culture have enabled this book to overcome the tragic circumstances in which it was conceived and brought to life. Moscow–Dushanbe–Vienna–St Andrews. February–December 2022.
Introduction
For a modern scholar exploring the research topic ‘Byzantium and Iran’, the initial focus would be on the relations between Byzantium and Sasanian Iran, from the third century until the reign of Emperor Herakleios in 610–641. At the same time, in modern scholarship, the period following the Muslim invasion and the establishment of the caliphate in the Sasanian territories is described as the interrelations of Byzantium with the Arabs and later with various Turkic nations. Iran has, therefore, completely disappeared from Byzantine history.
This point presents a certain paradox: Iranian culture continued to thrive and underwent further development in the ninth century, raising questions about the apparent neglect of Iran and Neo-Persian civilisation under Islam in the middle and late Byzantine culture. Meanwhile, Byzantine sources, both ecclesiastical and secular, contain abundant references to Persia and the Persians. Persia finds frequent mention in both religious and secular textual productions, encompassing various literary genres and specialised narratives. Despite this huge wealth of information, the topic of Persia in the middle and late Byzantine tradition has never been the focus of research interest, and it remains invisible to modern analytical optics. The elusive nature of the subject stems from the challenge of comprehending the Byzantine understanding of Persia so far, which was formed by multiple perspectives on Persia.
This includes a Christian-based interpretation, a perception shaped by Hellenic knowledge inherited from antiquity, and finally an image of Persia shaped by Byzantine contemporary experience. Each perspective comprises a distinct theme requiring specific research tools and approaches. Nonetheless, as we shall see, all the three aspects of the Byzantine vision of Persia have to be addressed in their inseparable connection with each other, since they co-existed within the Byzantine mindset simultaneously. In this study, my aim is to develop a holistic description of the Byzantine perceptions of Persia from the seventh century down to the late Byzantine period in all their complexity and diversity. Indeed, the images of Persia in the Byzantine cultural milieu were distinctly heterogeneous, being formed in different times and under the influence of typologically differing factors.
Therefore, this book aims to achieve two objectives. First, it seeks to reconstruct the image of ancient Persia in a religious and secular context. Second, it represents an effort to analyse and organise information about the contemporary Persian world, which the Byzantines accumulated from the seventh to fifteenth centuries. In other words, the focus will not be so much on the real Iran but on Byzantine’s perception of Iran. Therefore, to differentiate between the real and imaginary aspects, I distinguish Persian from Iranian, using Persian mostly to refer to the Byzantine imaginary Persia and using Iranian when addressing ancient and mediaeval Iranian phenomena. However, there will be exceptions to this terminology, particularly in cases where widely accepted terms such as the old Persian language or New Persian culture are used.
I.1 Clearing Up the Field
To develop my own research approaches, it is essential to establish a clear conceptual framework of the study. One of the objectives of this study, as noted earlier, is to provide a systematic description of the impact of mediaeval Iran on the life and culture of middle and late Byzantium. Although modern scholarship has studied certain aspects of the New Persian influences (which will be discussed later), the topic has not been problematised as an essential standalone subject and, therefore, not been comprehensively investigated. However, analysing Byzantine knowledge of contemporary Persian culture does not cause methodological difficulties. As we will discover, the use of traditional, well-tested analytical methods of the historical sciences is quite sufficient in most cases.
However, it is important to note that the majority of references to Persian motifs in the Byzantine sources are not related to contemporary events, but they are references to the characters and events of ancient history – Median, Achaemenid, Sasanian and occasionally Parthian periods. Explaining the extensive amount of data concerning ancient Persia requires the adoption of special approaches that are not yet widely used in Byzantine studies. Modern Byzantine scholarship has developed a certain tradition of interpreting such information, which revolves around two most influential approaches: the concept of archaising trends and the concept of orientalising tendencies in Byzantine textual and visual culture. The concept of archaising or classicising, originally introduced by scholars of Byzantine literature, refers to the use of artificial forms of the Greek language, and the incorporation of literary, historical, geographical, scientific and other elements that are based on the ‘imitation’ (mimesis) of the ancient Greek textual culture.
The ‘imitation’, according to modern scholarship, serves many purposes. It may aim to confer an ancient stylistic flavour to a text, to perform an intrinsically valuable imitative play with the language and imagery of the text, or to differentiate the intellectualism and sophistication of a particular author from the less educated individuals.1 Ancient Persian themes in Byzantine literature, along with other antique references and allusions, are commonly classified as an effect of archaising, which was a characteristic of Byzantine way of self-expression in texts and visual arts. The other prevalent approach, orientalism or exoticism, interprets Asian motifs, and in particular Persian ones, as a literary, artistic and cultural trend that emerged during the Hellenistic era. This interpretation was most frequent after the publication of the seminal book by Edward Said.2
The anticolonial discourse of Edward Said, properly speaking, cannot be applied to premodern intellectualism. However, the influential ideas presented in Said’s Orientalism have had a persuasive impact, and as a result, they have been used to explain certain aspects of premodern studies, without requiring any special proof. With regard to Byzantine material, modern scholarship sometimes combines the concepts of orientalism and archaisation, resulting in the interpretation of Asian motifs in Byzantine culture as ‘an archaising reference to ancient Greco-Roman craving for exoticism’.
While these interpretational strategies served well for conceptual categorisation in the past and are sometimes still instrumental in literary and art criticism, they seem to be insufficient for the purpose of this present study. They do not adequately explain the frequent and persistent references to ancient Persia in the Byzantine tradition, nor do they fully understand their function in the thought models of the Byzantines. In most cases, as I argue, ‘archaising’ and ‘orientalising’ attitudes were not independent and self-sufficient principles, but rather a reflection of actual consciousness that dealt with explicit (or sometimes implicit) cultural memory.
I.2 Cultural Memory
As Plato captured in Timaeus (23b-c), in deep antiquity, the Greeks lived without remembering the past, as if silent and devoid of the power to express themselves in writing. Having no knowledge of what happened in old times, they had to begin all over again like children. However, as history reveals, the Greeks later learned to memorise and, through this, created a great culture, capable of remembering and creative imitation of the past.
The concept of cultural memory is central to human culture in general, and Hellenic civilisation in particular. Cultural memory is key to the survival of a civilisation and to its success in the future. It is memory that mitigates cultural entropy and allows to accumulate and then systematise the outcomes of the past and present experience. The concept of cultural memory is focal for the subsequent discussion of the image of Persia in the Byzantine mind. Since the 1990s, the subject of cultural memory has become increasingly popular in all branches of humanities, generating a vast bibliography. Especially relevant for this book are the conceptual studies of Pierre Nora and Jan Assmann, who have provided a firm theoretical basis for applying the concept of cultural memory to the study of historical mentality.
In this book, cultural memory is understood as an ever-living past or a system of ideas (or ‘stories’) about the past, which forms semantic contexts for actual consciousness and endows cultural meaning to new objects gained in experience. Cultural memory predefines contextual consciousness and, therefore, the self-identity and axiological patterns and hierarchy of cultural values. In this sense, my understanding of cultural memory parallels Michel Foucault’s concept of epistemic networks, which impart the principles of the description of the world and preconfigure the accommodation and systematisation of a new, previously unknown phenomenon.
Cultural memory is institutionalised through language, education, rituals, customs and other collectively shared ideas and practices. Written and oral traditions, visual art, monuments and artefacts are media preserving culturally significant memories and stories about the past, transmitting them from generation to generation. Information gleaned from ancient texts (written, oral, visual and performative), in the actual consciousness of a living person, turns into a kind of ‘stories’ about the timeless past. Remembered stories about notable personalities, notions and precedents of old perform as commonly known paradigmatic references to moral ideals and common-sense wisdom. In this sense, cultural memory is ‘irrational’ or rather intuitive inasmuch as it is opposed to the ‘rational’ professional systematisation of the past by a learned historian. Specific mnemonic mechanisms for transmitting memory were embedded in the education system and in a wide range of textual and practical activities.
These mechanisms played a vital role in shaping individual memory, primarily through the collective memory of a group that shares a common culture. Therefore, I understand collective and individual memories as facets of the broader concept of cultural memory, which is multilayered: one layer comprises basic memorial information shared by all members of society, while the other layers represent multiple variations that exist among different groups within the society. However, the presence of a particular element in cultural memory does not necessarily imply that it will be reproduced at every opportunity by all members of the group who share this cultural memory.
Despite the fact that certain elements of cultural memory may be comprehensible to everyone or the majority, this does not mean that it guarantees an obligatory explanatory model for each individual within the group. Each individual has his own specific experience, taste and preferences that give him freedom of choice in the application of explanatory models. In order to underscore the specificity of memory’s dimension in its interrelation with actual consciousness, I quote Pierre Nora’s comprehensive, accurate and, what is equally important, artistically beautiful definition: ‘Memory is life, borne by living societies founded in its name. It remains in permanent evolution, open to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting, unconscious of its successive deformations, vulnerable to manipulation and appropriation, susceptible to being long dormant and periodically revived <…> Memory is a perpetually actual phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present’.
The concept of cultural memory is currently gaining popularity in Byzantine studies, although it is still relatively uncommon to consciously employ it as a specific analytical device. However, it would be unfair to assume that the study relating to memory has not attracted modern analysis and assessment. Mark Bartusis took a comprehensive step towards memory studies as early as 1995. Bartusis, discussing the meaning and concept of archaising, has comprehensively expanded the understanding of the term and brought it beyond the narrow framework of philology.
Showing the effect of archaisation in almost all spheres of Byzantine reality—‘in imperial ceremony, administration, coinage, seals and ideology, on the one hand, and in saints’ lives, liturgy, church administration, religious art and architecture, and theology, on the other’—he in fact has described major parameters of Byzantine cultural memory without referring explicitly to it.5 Previous scholarship has provided some direct references to Byzantine memory. Gilbert Dagron describes Byzantine court ceremonies as a manifestation of historical memory.6 Anthony Cutler investigates the roles of late antique literary and visual exemplars in ninth- and tenth-century Byzantium and offers his original typology of memory ‘modes’.7
Nathan Leidholm has published a study directly related to the topic of this book: he discusses Byzantine memory of the Achaemenids and its role in the formation of the ‘Macedonian dynastical legend’.8 In the same vein, many modern scholars of Byzantium have de facto made a considerable contribution to memory studies, albeit not mentioning the concept itself. I will refer to a few scholars only, whose conceptual and innovative works deal with Byzantine cultural memory: Gilbert Dagron, Paul Magdalino, Henry Maguire, Albrecht Berger, Anthony Kaldellis, Ruth Macrides, Claudia Rapp, Dimiter Angelov, Corinne Jouanno and others, in many cases, have been reconstructing memory dimensions of the Byzantine mentality.9 New generation scholarship increasingly addresses the concept of memory to analyse various aspects of Byzantine culture.10
I.3 Byzantine Cultural Memory
The specific feature of Byzantine cultural memory consisted in its unprecedentedly remote temporal horizon, which differentiated the Byzantines from most neighbouring nations in the mediaeval Mediterranean, with the exception of Jewish culture. The boundaries of Byzantine memory extended to the utmost limits of Homer’s epic timelessness and the biblical quasi-historical past, while the historical past starts from the time of Greco-Persian wars and ab urbe condita. Byzantine cultural memory included a vast range of diverse information coming from the past and was embodied in language, written texts, liturgy, civic rituals, visual tradition, practical techniques, oral tradition, habits and customs.
Byzantine cultural memory preserved only a part of information on what had been produced by previous generations, and considerably reworked and revisited it. It was a dynamic and, therefore, ever-changing phenomenon. The set of elements pertaining to Byzantine cultural memory was by no means static. On the one hand, there existed an invariant core of cultural memory that persisted unaltered throughout Byzantine history. On the other hand, the content of cultural memory changed in the course of time, which, in turn, altered the contextual meaning of its constituent elements.
It would be worthwhile analysing the reasons for and impact of including and excluding specific elements over time, and their inherent meaning and function in the wider context of the imaginary self. Such a deconstruction of cultural memory would allow us to deepen our knowledge of the basic pattern of Byzantine identity: which elements of memory were invariable and which were prone to change? Another set of problems pertains to the regularities and mechanisms inherent in reproducing cultural memory. In this context, the Byzantine education system, rituals (in religion and magic, social and political life, etc.) and a number of textual activities (encyclopaedic compilation, lexicography, etc.) may be studied as mnemonic devices to uphold and sustain cultural memory. At the same time, it would be pertinent to understand the motivations of an individual to activate memory, as well as the mechanisms of the activation: when and why did a Byzantine draw upon his cultural memory and how might this have influenced a person’s decision-making?
Every direct reference or indirect allusion to an element of cultural memory in Byzantine textual and visual culture, in every single case, reveals a specific type of interaction between individual consciousness and cultural memory. Different elements of memory catered to different needs of and demands on the living culture. This is why the modern archaising and orientalising interpretational strategies are often a result of mere misinterpretation of the interaction between an individual’s actual consciousness and cultural memory. Regarding archaising, if a twelfth-century Byzantine author employs some ancient allusion or association, it was not a simple and arbitrary transfer of an ‘antique’ and alien linguistic, textual or thematic element into a ‘new’ twelfth-century discourse.
The author of the twelfth century could employ only those ‘antique’ objects that were at hand in his cultural memory, and only in those cases when ancient allusions helped to better understand the present reality. In this sense, Cyrus, Xerxes, Moses, Solomon, Aristotle, Jesus, Constantine the Great and the like belonged not so much to the historical past but rather, as elements of memory, to the time of a twelfth-century author, to the memorial reality of the author’s time. To explain such instances of activating cultural memory as archaising without trying to understand the reasons and functions of a particular antique reference in the context of actual consciousness is next to saying nothing. In particular, one should clearly differentiate between the mimesis of ancient literary and language models, which could be practised by Byzantine intellectuals, and the operation of their cultural memory. Sometimes, these two may have appeared very close to each other, interwoven and even almost indistinguishable.
However, the deep motivation of each of these two differs: in the case of mimesis, we are dealing with a manipulation of the outer form of a written or oral discourse, while the activity of cultural memory relates rather to epistemic layers of culture, being a means used by an individual to comprehend and systematise the present reality. It goes without saying that the problem of cultural memory should not be confused with the Byzantine ‘attitudes towards ancient history’: cultural memory, albeit drawing its strength from the past, deals with the everlasting present.
In the same vein, modern researchers are free to define Persian motifs in Byzantine culture as a manifestation of the ancient and mediaeval ‘orientalism’. However, in most cases it was not a matter of superficial, situational and temporary attractiveness of Asian exoticism, but rather lay in deeper layers of the Greco-Roman civilisation, which retained a sense of its affinity with the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean. If orientalism is definitely characteristic of modern Europe, Asian motifs for Byzantium seem to have been a more complex and deeper phenomenon, a structure-forming element that participated in the shaping of the Hellenic self.11 Most of the cases, addressed in this study, can hardly be explained by exoticism or orientalising taste. At the same time, however, it would be unreasonable to wave away the presence of orientalism in Byzantine culture. There exist enough references to exotic orientalism in Byzantine art, such as Theophilos’s Bryas palace in the Baghdad style in the ninth century or the famous Mouchroutas pavilion in the Persian style in the twelfth century.12 In each case of Byzantine referring to the Oriental, one should consider the contextual motives and function of the reference.
I.4 Memory in Byzantium
Cultural memory is a modern socio-anthropological concept that brings about methodological consequences. However, it would be a mistake to assume that applying the concept of cultural memory and the accompanying analytical procedures to Byzantine material implies posing foreign questions against Byzantine culture to which it cannot answer. The Byzantines were quite attentive to the issue of memory.
They demonstrated a remarkable concern for the preservation and constant re-actualisation of memory, and not only in practical terms such as maintaining knowledge of the classical language and rewriting and commenting on ancient manuscripts. Byzantine intellectual reflection is quite rich in thoughts on the topic of memory. Here are just a few examples. The first instance characterises the meaning of the tenth-century revision and re-systematisation of classical textual tradition under Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (913–959).
It was clearly perceived as an act of manipulating memory as expressed in the proem to the Geoponika: ‘you have skilfully and wisely brought back to life philosophy and rhetoric, which had heretofore fallen into neglect and immersed in the mute depths of Lethe (ἀχανῆ βυθὸν τῆς λήθης)…’ – writes the author addressing to the emperor.13 András Németh, in his conceptual and ground-breaking study, has duly defined the large-scale activity at Constantine VII’s court as an ‘appropriation’ of past experience and re-systematising it for the sake of contemporary needs,14 or, in other words, as refreshing and re-actualising cultural memory. The second example represents an intriguing theoretical exploration of the role of memory in individual experience and social life.
Theodore Metochites (1270–1332) took a keen interest in the concept of memory, engaging in its discussion more than once.15 In a number of his essays, Metochites addresses both individual memory and what we call now cultural memory, which is embedded in the ancient writings. [Individual] memory and memorising are crucial for a person’s education.16 [Cultural] memory, considered as past experience recorded in ancient books and now preserved in the mind’s treasuries (τοῦ νοῦ ταμεῖα), is indispensable for both personal success and effective political and social practice.17 The Byzantines extensively studied ‘Everything done by the Greeks and said about the Greeks’, or as one may reformulate, non-material cultural traces of antiquity.
They modelled their intellectual and practical activities according to these ‘examples and recollections’ (ἐξ ὑποδειγμάτων τινῶν καὶ μνήμης).18 Significant examples from the ancient experience of Greeks and Romans are available to the Byzantines due to their ‘common tongue’ (φωνὴ συνήθης) with the ancients; the Byzantines, accordingly, show gratitude to them for this ‘noble and graceful language’.19 Finally, Metochites emphasises the importance of memory in shaping future creative endeavours, both on a personal and social level, as he states: ‘the beginning of all wisdom and knowledge is … memory which confirms, establishes and prepares the discoveries’.20 Metochites’s theory of memory is not limited to the outlined aspects and deserves special attention and study.21
In the present context, Metochites regarded the ancient textual tradition and, especially, historiography as an extension of individual memory, common for all Byzantines, providing paradigmatic models for any kind of social activity and behaviour in the present. In other words, ancient texts here play the role of a specific medium of cultural memory. This perspective aligns closely with the modern understanding of the sources and functioning of cultural memory. Further, examples of the Byzantine perception of memory as cultural memory can be found in Chapter 4.1 (Photios) and Chapter 6.4 (Plethon). As we can observe, the topics related to cultural memory, its content, sources, functioning, effects, preservation and re-actualisation, were not alien to Byzantine thought. Although they were approached and expressed differently, these matters were indeed a subject of concern and exploration in Byzantine discourse.
I.5 The Function of Language
The ‘classicised’ form of language was of crucial importance to Byzantine culture, which served as a binding agent ensuring continuity and integrity of memory. This language, although no longer spoken and being to an extent ‘artificial’, provided access to ancient depositories of knowledge. Byzantines realised that abandoning the ‘classicised’ language would result in the loss of cultural memory. As demonstrated by Metochites’s reasoning mentioned earlier, the Byzantines realised the link between their literary language and their memory of the past.
In addition, their practical dedication to preserving the ancient language, which was persistently reinforced through education and practising high culture, asserts their awareness of the risks of losing the accumulated experience in antiquity and reverting to the state of ‘silence’ and ignorance. In this sense, ‘archaic’ grammar and vocabulary were not considered by the Byzantines as such, but rather as a kind of meta-language that was indispensable for comprehending and systematising the chaotic particles of the present reality (species) through abstract models of the past (genera).
The Byzantines used the ancient language not because of a lack of originality and incapability to say a new word (as some scholars may be prone to believe), but because they endeavoured, consciously and with intent, not to forget anything. The described phenomenon is quite common for cultures striving to preserve cultural memory. For instance, in the mediaeval West, such a function of sustaining cultural continuity and integrity was performed by the Latin language, first, solely in the ecclesiastical sphere and later absorbing other, newly appeared forms of ‘lay’ intellectualism. The same can be said about the role of the Quranic Arabic language in the mediaeval Muslim world and of the New Persian language in the mediaeval and early modern Turkic and Indian cultural milieus.
I.6 An Outline of Research Logic
The first approach to problematising the topic of Persian motifs was undertaken in my article published in 2019.22 However, subsequent research revealed that the problem involves much more extensive and varied source materials than anticipated. As a result, in this book I have chosen to pose research questions in certain instances, acknowledging that exhaustive answers to these queries will require future investigations. This study is structured in seven chapters, which differ not only thematically, but also in the way the material is presented.
The first six chapters address the issue of Persia and Persian motifs as elements of cultural memory in the ‘religious’ (Chapters 1–3) and ‘secular’ (Chapters 4–6) traditions. It was a challenge to decide which of these two major themes should be put first, since both traditions are equivalent in significance and deeply interwoven from a Byzantine perspective. Finally, I decided to begin this book with a discussion of religious culture for the following reason: some deformations in the ‘lay’ Hellenic image of Persia can only be understood when taking into account the religious thematic and semantic background of the Byzantine mind.
I would like to, however, make an important reservation concerning the typological division of the material into ‘religious’ and ‘secular’. The term ‘secular’ or ‘lay’ tradition is used rather figuratively in my study, exclusively for facilitating analytical systematisation, in order to distinguish two generically diverse lines in Byzantine culture: the new ‘religious’ one, originally mostly Semitic (Christian), and the old ‘lay’ one, originally mostly IndoEuropean (Greek and Roman).
It must be kept in mind that the Byzantine mentality hardly drew such a distinction. Indeed, what one may imply under ‘lay tradition’ sometimes coincides with what the Byzantines called ‘Hellenic’ (Ἕλλην, Ἑλληνικός), in the sense ‘pagan’ (εἰδωλολάτρης, ἐθνικός). However, the Byzantine perception of ‘pagan’ or ‘Hellenic’ was much narrower concerning specifically religion-centred phenomena and discourses. The Byzantines considered most phenomena, which we now call ‘lay’ and ‘secular’, as religiously neutral constituents of culture in a broader sense, as natural outcomes of technical wisdom and common-sense practices (such as laws and political system, sciences, belles-lettres, customs, habits and the like).
At the same time, however, a Byzantine considered these common-sense phenomena as tightly connected with the divine wisdom and divine cosmic order (i.e., ultimately with ‘religious’ aspect), thus merging together two dimensions of human culture, which we conditionally separate for analytical purposes. Since Persian elements in the Greek Orthodox religious thought have not been problematised and systematically studied in modern scholarship, Chapters 1–3 devote much attention to empirical matters, identifying and systematising data related to the Christian Old and New Testament heritage, Christianisation of Iran and the Sasanian persecutions of Christians. In this exploration, my focus lies in not only how Persia was perceived by church intellectuals, but also in the adaptation of this knowledge in the everyday activity of an average believer. I will delve into the incorporation of Persian motifs in liturgical practices and private piety.
It is also important to find mnemonic devices, intrinsic to ecclesiastical tradition, that transmitted religiously significant knowledge about Persia from generation to generation. Chapters 4–6 discuss the manifestation of the Persian elements of cultural memory in the secular tradition, which is greatly aided by numerous studies in Greco-Roman antiquity that have thoroughly investigated the knowledge about Persia. My focus is on the thematic content of Persian motifs in the middle and late Byzantine tradition and the devices of accumulating and transmitting this knowledge. The chapters specifically analyse numerous instances of re-activating cultural memory in thought and practice. I present the argument that it was cultural memory, including its Persian constituents, that modelled intellectual, social and personal activity in many cases.
The Byzantine lay tradition gives ample material for understanding micro-level interactions between cultural memory and individual consciousness. Finally, Chapter 7 concerns not so much Byzantine memory of ancient events, but rather explores the Persian actualities in the middle and late Byzantine social life and thought, including New Persians settled in the empire, geographical knowledge about contemporaneous Persia, the use of the New Persian language and, finally, the appropriation of Persian science. In modern Byzantine scholarship, the Persian has hardly been differentiated from the Arabic, Turkic or generalised Muslim. Meanwhile, the Byzantines themselves made this kind of distinction.
I will present the argument that the Persian presence in the Byzantine intellectual milieu grew significantly in the last centuries of the empire’s existence. Regarding the spelling of Greek historical names, I primarily follow the conventions adopted by the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (ODB), which reflect the consensus among leading specialists in Byzantine studies of the time. The Old and Middle Persian names and terms are transliterated with scholarly diacritics only when absolutely necessary. For the Roman transliteration of Arabic and New Persian words, I generally follow the rules of EI2 , with the following exceptions: the letter ج is transmitted as ‘j’ and not ‘dj’, and the letter ق is transmitted as ‘q’ and not ‘ḳ’. In most cases, for originally Turkic words I follow the conventions of Republican Turkish.
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