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Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition

Evans, Helen C., ed., with Brandie Ratliff (2012)

This title is in print.

World Book Award, Winner (2014)

Read an interview with Helen C. Evans on Now at the Met.

Description

This groundbreaking volume explores the epochal transformations and unexpected continuities in the Byzantine Empire from the seventh to the ninth century. As the period opened, the empire's southern provinces—the vibrant, diverse areas of North Africa and eastern Mediterranean—were at the crossroads of trade routes reaching from Spain to China. These regions experienced historic upheavals when their Christian and Jewish communities encountered the emerging Islamic world, and by the ninth century an unprecedented cross-fertilization of cultures had taken place. This extraordinary age is brought vividly to life by leading international scholars, their writings accompanied by sumptuous illustrations of the period's most notable arts and artifacts. Resplendent images of authority, religion, and trade—embodied in precious metals, brilliant textiles, fine ivories, elaborate mosaics, manuscripts, and icons, many of them never before published—highlight the dynamic dialogue between the rich array of Byzantine styles and evolving Islamic aesthetic. With its masterful exploration of two centuries that would shape the medieval world, Byzantium and Islam provides a revelatory interpretation of a period with profound ramifications for the modern era.

Table of contents

Director's Foreword
Sponsors' Statements
Acknowledgments
Lenders to the Exhibition
Contributors to the Catalogue
Map: Byzantium and Islam 7th–9th Century
Note to the Reader

Byzantium

Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition (7th–9th Century)
Helen C. Evans

Gerasa
Lisa R. Brody
Catalogue Numbers 1–3

Heraclius
Helen C. Evans
Catalogue Numbers 4–7

Classical Survival
Helen C. Evans
Catalogue Numbers 8–15

Sasanian Expansion to the Mediterranean
Alexander Nagel
Catalogue Numbers 16–20

Christian Communities during the Early Islamic Centuries
Brandie Ratliff
Catalogue Numbers 21–24

Sinai from the Seventh to the Ninth Century: Continuity in the Midst of Change
Hieromonk Justin of Sinai
Catalogue Number 25

Icons from the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai
Kathleen Corrigan
Catalogue Numbers 26–31

Arab Christians
Sidney H. Griffith
Catalogue Numbers 32–38

The Syriac Church
Nancy Khalek
Catalogue Numbers 39–40

Coptic Christianity
Elizabeth S. Bolman
Catalogue Numbers 46–50

The Coptic Monastery of Bawit
Domonique Bénazeth
Catalogue Numbers 51–53

To Travel to the Holy
Brandie Ratliff
Catalogue Numbers 54–61

The Stylites of Syria
Brandie Ratliff
Catalogue Numbers 62–65

Mosaics during the Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods
Robert Schick
Catalogue Numbers 66–67

Jews and Judaism between Byzantium and Islam
Steven Fine
Catalogue Numbers 68–78

Christian Mosaics in Early Islamic Jordan and Palestine: A Case of Regional Iconoclasm
Finbarr B. Flood
Catalogue Numbers 79–81

Commerce

"Ornaments of excellence" from "the miserable gains of commerce": Luxury Art and Byzantine Culture
Thelma K. Thomas
Catalogue Numbers 82–83

Arab-Byzantine Coins: Money as Cultural Continuity
Clive Foss
Catalogue Numbers 84–92

Weights and Measures from Byzantium and Islam
Stefan Heidemann
Catalogue Numbers 93–97

Silks
Thelma K. Thomas
Catalogue Numbers 98–103

Dress Styles from Syria to Libya
Cècilia Fluck

Materials and Techniques of Late Antique and Early Islamic Textiles Found in Egypt
Kathrin Colburn
Catalogue Numbers 104–114

Animal Motifs
Mina Moraitou
Catalogue Numbers 115–118

Vine Rinceaux
Gabriele Mietke
Catalogue Numbers 119–123

Inscribed Textiles
Cècilia Fluck
Catalogue Numbers 124–125

Inscribed Objects
Robert Schick
Catalogue Numbers 126–129

Jewelry: Ideologies and Transformation
Stephen R. Zwirn
Catalogue Numbers 130–132

Women
Mina Moraitou
Catalogue Numbers 133–140

Islam

Country Estates, Material Culture, and the Celebration of Princely Life: Islamic Art and the Secular Domain
Anna Ballian
Catalogue Number 142

Qasr al-Mshatta
Anna Ballian
Catalogue Number 142

Al-Fudayn
Anna Ballian
Catalogue Numbers 143–148

Al-Qastal
Anna Ballian
Catalogue Numbers 149–152

An Abbasid Residence at al-Humayma
Rebecca M. Foote
Catalogue Numbers 153–154

Ornamental Motifs in Early Islamic Art
Mina Moraitou
Catalogue Numbers 155–162

Fustat
Iman R. Abdulfattah
Catalogue Numbers 163–172

Secular Inscriptions
Mina Moraitou
Catalogue Numbers 173–176

Faith, Religion, and the Material Culture of Early Islam
Finbarr B. Flood
Catalogue Number 177

Religious Inscriptions in Early Islamic Art
Linda Komaroff
Catalogue Numbers 178–187

The Qur'an
Finbarr B. Flood
Catalogue Numbers 188–139

Notes
Bibliography
Index
Photograph Credits

About the authors

Helen C. Evans is Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator for Byzantine Art in the Department of Medieval Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Brandie Ratliff is Research Associate for Byzantine Art in the Department of Medieval Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Press reviews

New Criterion

"... a beautiful and quite sumptuous work of original scholarship ..."

The New York Times

"... dense with scholarship ..."

The New York Review of Books

"Groundbreaking scholarship ... [it is] an outstanding introduction to the transition from late Antiquity to Islam."

International Herald Tribune

"... a remarkable essay on 'Jews and Judaism Between Byzantium and Islam,' included in the important exhibition book edited by Helen C. Evans and Brandie Ratliff."

Church Times

"... a sumptuous book that considers the upheavals in the Byzantine empire caused by the emerging Islamic world."

Dr. Sebastian Brock

"... "superbly illustrated ... There are just under 40 short but instructive essays by 25 different specialists ... the catalogue [...] serve[s] as an excellent introduction and guide for anyone interested in the material culture of this particularly momentous 'Age of Transition'."

Times Literary Supplement

"Evans and Ratliff have put together a volume that stands on its own as a contribution to scholarship. [...] Its excellence in scholarship and quality represents a lasting achievement and will have wider influence than the exhibition it records."

Speculum

"... how rich in intellectual content is the book! It offers something without parallel, a tour d'horizon not of scholarly thinking of the 1980s and earlier, when correlates were confused with causes, but of the state of research today on late antiquity and early Islamic culture ... The overriding virtue of the catalogue is its organization where the hand of Helen Evans as auteur is clearly in evidence ..."

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Authors

Brandie Ratliff | Helen C. Evans

Keywords

Titles by thematic category (137)

Byzantine Art

Islamic Art (General)

Titles by author (13)

Helen C. Evans

Brandie Ratliff

Exhibition

Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition

As the seventh century began, vast territories extending from Syria to Egypt and across North Africa were ruled by the Byzantine Empire from its capital, Constantinople (modern Istanbul). Critical to the wealth and power of the empire, these southern provinces, long influenced by Greco-Roman traditions, were home to Orthodox, Coptic, and Syriac Christians, Jewish communities, and others. Great pilgrimage centers attracted the faithful from as far away as Yemen in the east and Scandinavia in the west. Major trade routes reached eastward down the Red Sea past Jordan to India in the south, bringing silks and ivories to the imperial territories. Major cities made wealthy by commerce extended along inland trade routes north to Constantinople and along the Mediterranean coastline. Commerce carried images and ideas freely throughout the region.

In the same century, the newly established faith of Islam emerged from Mecca and Medina along the Red Sea trade route and reached westward into the empire's southern provinces. Political and religious authority was transferred from the long established Christian Byzantine Empire to the newly established Umayyad and later Abbasid Muslim dynasties. The new powers took advantage of existing traditions of the region in developing their compelling secular and religious visual identities. This exhibition follows the artistic traditions of the southern provinces of the Byzantine Empire from the seventh century to the ninth, as they were transformed from being central to the Byzantine tradition to being a critical part of the Islamic world.