Byzantium was one among several imperial polities in Eurasia from circa 300–1500. While researchers have long investigated interregional exchange along the so-called “Silk Roads” (which began much earlier), only recently has the utility of viewing Late Antiquity as a Eurasian-wide phenomenon been recognized (Di Cosmo and Maas 2018), as empires from Byzantium to Sasanian Persia to Tang China defined themselves in relation to a “classical” past, and, increasingly, in relation to their Eurasian neighbors. Old assumptions of “influence” across cultures have given way to more methodologically sophisticated investigations of “global Byzantium” (Brubaker, Darley, and Reynolds 2023). As Peter Brown (2014) has argued, the pull of the exotic was a powerful force at courts across the continent, even as new religious ideas, whether Christian, Manichaean, or Buddhist, created alternative long-distance communities. This Thematic Session will explore “Byzantium beyond Byzantium”: the movements of goods, people, skills, technologies, and ideas from Byzantium towards the east. Two speakers are Byzantinists and two are specialists of Persia and China, respectively, in order to provide a richer overview of the evidence than could be gained only by engaging with other Byzantinists. Placing Byzantium within the wider context of Eurasia, Jessica Rawson (an expert in Chinese archaeology) will first examine the material evidence for contact between Byzantium and China via intermediaries. Johannes Preiser-Kapeller will next consider Byzantium’s connectivity with inner Asia via the northern route, through the Caucasus. Turning towards the south, Thomas Benfey, a specialist of the early Islamic Middle East, will present evidence for the translation of a medical text from Syriac into Greek. Finally, Anna Sitz will chart the spread of inscriptions on luxury objects in the wider medieval world. Taken as a whole, this session will show that Byzantium cannot be understood in isolation but only as part of a larger whole.
Major political and military changes in the Mediterranean and Western Asia reverberated as far as China. The routes of contact were no longer primarily along the ancient steppe routes. The changing powers of the steppe had forced China to look west along the deserts and oases that are often called the Silk Roads. These contacts…
Connections between the Byzantine Empire and the wider world of AfroEurAsia are still predominantly examined through the lens of the “Silk Road”, focusing on some main axes of terrestrial or maritime trade between the megacities of the medieval Middle East and East Asia. Routes from the Black Sea and Northwestern Caucasia, however, always provided alternative…
Medieval silver, gold, and bronze vessels from across Eurasia (places as far afield as the British Isles and Islamic Central Asia) share a curious common feature: the presence of prominent decorative writing. For example, a liturgical silver lamp from the sixth-century Sion Treasure in southern Türkiye includes the name and prayer of a donor in…