New Open-Access Book: Ambassadors, Artists, Theologians: Byzantine Relations with the Near East from the 9th to the 13th Centuries

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Ambassadors, Artists, Theologians

Byzantine Relations with the Near East from the Ninth to the Thirteenth Centuries

edited by Zachary Chitwood and Johannes Pahlitzsch

The authors of the collective volume Ambassadors, Artists, Theologians: Byzantine Relations with the Near East from the Ninth to the Thirteenth Centuries examine the complex dynamic between the Byzantine Empire and the Near East. The contributions gathered here go beyond the tradition of histoire événementielle and clarify the transmission of artistic practices, ideas and interlocutors between Byzantium and the Islamic world. In this way, this volume attempts to nuance and contextualize our understanding of the relationship between these two medieval cultural zones.

Table of Contents: 

Zachary Chitwood, Johannes Pahlitzsch: Introduction

Asa Eger: The Agricultural Landscape of the Umayyad North and the Islamic-Byzantine Frontier

Ute Versteegen: How to Share a Sacred Place – The Parallel Christian and Muslim Use of the Major Christian Holy Sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem

Robert Schick: The Christian Presence in Jordan in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries

Nicolas Drocourt: Arabic-speaking Ambassadors in the Byzantine Empire (from the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries)

Bettina Krönung: The Employment of Christian Mediators by Muslim Rulers in Arab-Byzantine Diplomatic Relations in the Tenth and Early Eleventh Centuries

Alexander Beihammer: Changing Strategies and Ideological Concepts in Byzantine-Arab Relations in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries

Mat Immerzeel: Painters, Patrons, and Patriarchs Byzantine Artists in the Latin and Islamic Middle East of the Thirteenth Century

Lucy-Anne Hunt: The Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII (1261-1282) and Greek Orthodox / Melkite-Genoese Cultural Agency in a Globalised World: Art at Sinai, Behdaidat, of the pallio of San Lorenzo in Genoa, and in Mamluk Egypt

Elizabeth Dospěl Williams: Dressing the Part: Jewelry as Fashion in the Medieval Middle East

Alicia Walker: Pseudo-Arabic as a Christian Sign: Monks, Manuscripts, and the Iconographic Program of Hosios Loukas

Robert Hillenbrand: The Lure of the Exotic: The Byzantine Heritage in Islamic Book Painting

Benjamin de Lee: Niketas Byzantios, Islam, and the Aristotelian Shift in Ninth-century Byzantium

Alexander Treiger: Greek into Arabic in Byzantine Antioch: ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Faḍl’s »Book of the Garden« (Kitāb ar-rawḍa)

Sidney Griffith: Islam and Orthodox Theology in Arabic: The »Melkite« Tradition from the Ninth to the Thirteenth Centuries