Book contents
- Worlds of Byzantium
- Worlds of Byzantium
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- One Worlds of Byzantium
- I Patterns, Paradigms, Scholarship
- II Images, Objects, Archaeology
- Six Movement and Creation
- Seven Letters from the Edge
- Eight Antioch after Dark
- Nine Ars Sacra in the East and after Byzantium
- Ten The Church of the Virgin in Dayr al-Suryān (Wadi al-Natrun)
- Eleven Three Questions Concerning Armenian and Byzantine Art
- Twelve Makurian Visual Culture
- III Languages, Confessions, Empire
- Index
- References
Seven - Letters from the Edge
Mapping Pseudo-Arabic between Byzantium and the Near East
from II - Images, Objects, Archaeology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 October 2024
- Worlds of Byzantium
- Worlds of Byzantium
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- One Worlds of Byzantium
- I Patterns, Paradigms, Scholarship
- II Images, Objects, Archaeology
- Six Movement and Creation
- Seven Letters from the Edge
- Eight Antioch after Dark
- Nine Ars Sacra in the East and after Byzantium
- Ten The Church of the Virgin in Dayr al-Suryān (Wadi al-Natrun)
- Eleven Three Questions Concerning Armenian and Byzantine Art
- Twelve Makurian Visual Culture
- III Languages, Confessions, Empire
- Index
- References
Summary
The pseudo-Arabic motifs found in middle Byzantine religious structures in Greece, especially at the tenth- to eleventh-century monastery complex of Hosios Loukas, document an awareness of Arab-Christian communities in the “Near East,” especially religious foundations of the Holy Land that were among the most revered centers of early monasticism. A variety of Christian portable objects inscribed with Arabic and pseudo-Arabic – including manuscripts, icons, and liturgical vessels and furnishings – offer possible vehicles for the dissemination of Arabic as a Christian language and for Arabic and pseudo-Arabic inscriptions as signs of ancient monastic authority. Networks of communication between the Byzantine Empire and regions of the south-eastern Mediterranean (that were under Islamic political hegemony) facilitated the movement of people, things, and ideas. Tracing the dissemination of the visual culture of Arab-Christianity generates a revised map of middle Byzantine artistic and cultural connections, challenging Constantinople’s status as the dominant model for middle Byzantine art and central source of Orthodox Christian authority and identity.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Worlds of ByzantiumReligion, Culture, and Empire in the Medieval Near East, pp. 180 - 225Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024