The Seljuk Sultanate of Rūm and the Turkmen of the Byzantine frontier, 1206–1279*

This article examines the frontier between the Seljuk Sultanate of Rūm and its Byzantine neighbours in the thirteenth century, concentrating on the place of these frontier districts within the Seljuk state. Scholarship on the frontier, influenced by the ideas of Paul Wittek, has seen it as something of a “no man's land”, politically, economically, culturally and religiously distinct from the urban heartland of the Seljuk sultanate in central Anatolia, dominated by the nomadic Turks, the Turkmen, who operated largely beyond sultanic control. It is often thought that the Seljuk and Greek sides of the border shared more in common with each other than they did with the states of which they formed a part. In contrast, this article argues that in fact the western frontier regions were closely integrated into the Seljuk sultanate. Furthermore, with the Mongol domination of the Seljuk sultanate in the second half of the thirteenth century, the Seljuk and Mongol elites became increasingly involved in this frontier region, where some of the leading figures of the sultanate had estates and endowments.     

An interview with Marie-José Mondzain: what is an image?

ABSTRACT

Marie-Jose Mondzain is one of the major philosophers writing about image, iconography, and representation today. In this interview, she discusses a few of the central ideas in her approach to and thinking about the nature of image and image-making as they bear upon the emergence of subjectivity and visibility in general. According to Mondzain, images are not visual objects we may or may not see; rather they are the site where the visible and its invisibility crisscross each other in opening the field of presence. Images, as Mondzain says in the interview, are cracks or leaks in being. They are where lights first come in and where man and beings are born to each other in their being-in-the world, that is, in their truth. Moving beyond historical and theoretical reflections, Mondzain turns to discuss things and scenes of mass media of late, addressing issues of pleasure, anxiety, desire, and the like, wherein ideologies, power, and the lure of images can be seen to intersect with our everyday life that has become irrevocably one of passive mobility. To the point at every turn, her answers to questions in this interview provide a glimpse to her forceful thinking and insights.     

Passing on Political Information between Major Powers: The Key Role of Ambassadors between Byzantium and some of its Neighbours

Ambassadors and embassies were numerous between Byzantium and its Muslim and Western Christian neighbours during the Middle Byzantine Period. This article seeks to demonstrate that these official envoys constituted major players involved in the transfer of political information between the courts considered. Ambassadors were those who travelled the most in the Mediterranean area during our period – at least between 700 and 900. Furthermore, as official envoys acting for sovereigns, they were carefully listened to by those sovereigns when they returned. Information coming from ambassadors is found in various sources and concerned military matters and foreign policy. But we also find precise data on domestic affairs and internal political information. Furthermore, news of usurpations and troubles in Byzantium may have constituted an important part of the information transferred beyond the Empire. Foreign ambassadors witnessed usurpations and palace revolutions. Their testimonies could have nourished the idea of a Byzantine government weakened by political instability and this theme became prominent during the twelfth century in some Western Christian courts.     

Surveying the Aspect of the Medieval West Anatolian Town

The aim of this short article is modest: it means to fill a lacuna in scholarly output by offering a concise and accessible survey of the physical structure of the typical west Anatolian town in the High Middle Ages. Attempts to locate such a study meet with disappointment. If one wishes to look through the eyes of medieval travellers in Anatolia, whether they be merchants, pilgrims or soldiers, and discover what type of construction they witnessed when approaching and entering a typical town, one is compelled to trawl through a great number of specialist articles and monographs dealing with specific archaeological sites or particular narrow periods of history. This laborious exercise will be made somewhat redundant by a brief synthesis of the appropriate evidence which historians and archaeologists have addressed and compiled since the late 1950s when attempting to reconstruct the development of the Byzantine city. The article traces the slow development of the typical Anatolian urban form and aspect from the late fourth century, through the mid-seventh to mid-eighth centuries, and then through to a period of urban recovery until the latter part of the twelfth century. The choice of periods separated by some 800 years is not arbitrary: the physical character (and function) of the typical town began to change in the late fourth century, and the form it obtained during the seventh and eighth centuries continued to be the one retained (with inconsequential variations to the general pattern) during the intermediate periods of Byzantine recovery     

“To Disdain the Truth and Look at Others with Contempt:” Byzantines and Muslims on Latin Pride and Arrogance,ca. 1100–1300

This essay examines the fundamentals of the Byzantine and Muslim political discourses during the period of the Crusades by analyzing a common political trope, the concept of Western pride and arrogance. The principal argument is that the seemingly stable categories of Eastern political propaganda obscure a massive discursive shift. At the beginning of their encounter with the Latin Christians both Byzantines’ and Levantine Muslims’ discourses on power and their place on the international stage were hegemonical, exclusive and self-referential. Towards the end of the Crusading period and under the steady pressures of Western practices, both societies’ political discourses came to accept as legitimate principles of international politics—such as power as a claim rather than a right, relations based on contract, territoriality and legitimacy of secular rule—that have long been the staple of Western conceptualization of politics, but were initially seen as utterly alien by Byzantines and Levantine Muslims.     

11-12世纪拜占廷与基辅罗斯关系研究

11-12世纪,拜占廷国内外危机加剧,为应付本国危机,加强了对基辅罗斯外交和宗教控制,尤其在宗教方面,基辅罗斯成为拜占廷直接管辖下的一个省级都主教区,与拜占廷国内其它省级都主教区并列。基辅罗斯分裂成若干小公国,也给拜占廷插手本国内政提供机会。两国传统的商业贸易因商路被切断而日益衰落。     

近年来俄罗斯的拜占廷与古罗斯关系研究综述

苏联解体以来，俄罗斯人一直梦想重建昔日的辉煌。在为国家、民族重新定位与“寻根”的探索中，重振“第三罗马”雄风的思潮逐渐兴起，俄罗斯史学界也因此加大了对拜占廷与古罗斯关系研究的力度。综观俄罗斯学者对拜占廷与古罗斯关系的研究，不难发现这一课题涵盖了众多领域、一系列问题。     

“Going to the Extremes”: The Balearics and Cyprus in the Early Medieval Byzantine Insular System

ABSTRACT

This contribution mainly focuses on Cyprus and the Balearics, islands located at opposite geographical extremes of the Byzantine Mediterranean, during the passage from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages. Historians have often regarded these islands as peripheral additions to the Byzantine heartland of the Aegean and the Anatolian plateau; this article argues that, in fact, archaeological and material indicators (such as ceramics, lead seals and coins), paired with the scarce textual sources, point to a certain degree of economic prosperity in the abovementioned islands during the period under scrutiny, suggesting that they continued to play an important role in the political, administrative and religious structures of the Byzantine Empire. A resilient insular economy and continuity of local production of artefacts was ensured by the persistence of demand from local secular and religious elites and regular, if infrequent, contacts with other areas of the Byzantine heartland or the Muslim Mediterranean.     

试析曼兹柯特战役的背景与影响

小亚细亚半岛和巴尔干半岛是拜占庭帝国的基本领土,位于亚洲西部的小亚对拜占庭帝国的财政、国防等曾经起到很大作用。公元11世纪起,随着拜占庭内部矛盾的加剧和突厥民族的兴起,双方在小亚地区爆发了冲突。随着拜占庭在曼兹柯特战役的失利与其内部军区制的瓦解、中央和地方矛盾的激化,拜占庭的国力日趋衰落,小亚地区被突厥人逐渐占领。突厥人在小亚采取了一系列得当的占领、统治措施,使其在小亚的统治地位得到巩固,并使小亚逐渐被突厥化。本文试图通过对曼兹柯特战役背景的介绍来分析此次战役对双方的影响。     

Nests of Pirates? “Islandness” in the Balearic Islands and La Garde-Freinet

ABSTRACT

The “World of Medieval Islands” project invites the questioning of the category of island from medieval evidence, and coincided with another project of the author’s that was undertaking a similar exercise with medieval frontiers. Combining these two research areas, this article investigates two island, or island-like, zones that were situated at the edges of early medieval polities, primarily (though variably) of Umayyad al-Andalus, and compares their situation so as to elucidate what about their geopolitical situation made them island-like and how steady that likeness was. Working through the historiographies of the Balearic Islands, which shifted from Byzantine to Islamic control through a variably evaluated transition period, and of the Muslim settlement at La Garde-Freinet, Provence, from inception to extermination, the article concludes that what was island-like or indeed frontier-like about both areas was not continuous, and that the category “island” is historically contingent and subjective, despite its apparent geographic concreteness.