A Short History of the Middle Ages Fourth Edition

force. In the mid-eighth century, Emperor Constantine V (r.741–775) had created new crack regiments, the tagmata (sing. tagma). ...

Map 3.1: The Byzantine and Bulgarian Empires, c.920 Another glance at the two maps reveals a second area of modest expansion, th ...

inglorious job of skirmish warfare—without the honor and (probably) extra pay. The tagmata were the professionals, gradually tak ...

intelligible tongue? /... Whoever accepts these letters, / To him Christ speaks wisdom,” reads the prologue to Constantine/Cyril ...

The creation of the Glagolitic alphabet in the mid-ninth century was one of many scholarly and educational initiatives taking pl ...

astronomy, music, and all the other “Hellenic” [i.e., pagan Greek] teachings.^4 The resurrection of “Hellenic” books helped insp ...

Plate 3.1: The Empress Eudocia and Her Sons, Homilies of Gregory Nazianzus (c.880). After the end of iconoclasm in 843, two dist ...

...

Plate 3.2: Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones, Homilies of Gregory Nazianzus (c.880). Although painted in the same manuscript as ...

Not surprisingly, the same period saw the revival of monumental architecture. Already Emperor Theophilus was known for the splen ...

support the Abbasid family. This was an extended kin group with deep-rooted claims to the caliphate, tracing its lineage back to ...

Baghdad, Caliph al-Mansur (r.754–775) allotted important tracts of real estate to his Khurasan military leaders. In the course o ...

crossroads of East and West, drew that trade into a wider network. All of Iraq participated in the commercial buoyancy. A treati ...

Plate 3.3: Water Pitcher in the Shape of an Eagle (796–797). At one time this brass eagle had a handle and was no doubt used as ...

NEW CULTURAL FORMS With revenues from commerce and (above all) taxes from agriculture in their coffers, the Abbasid caliphs paid ...

(All those who creep stealthily tremble [at the thought]!); Their trouser-bands stymied my pleasure [at first] But then, with su ...

anyone forgets and eats or drinks, let him complete his fast, for it was Allah who caused him thus to eat or drink.”^8 Here ‘Abd ...

into its regional constituents. Al-Andalus under the emirs was hardly Muslim and even less Arab. As the caliphs came to rely on ...

Map 3.3: Europe, c.814 Money allowed the emirs to pay salaries to their civil servants and to preside over a cultural effloresce ...

The Great Mosque in Córdoba is a good example. Begun under Abd al-Rahman I and expanded by his successors, it drew on the design ...