A Short History of the Middle Ages Fourth Edition

Plate 2.3: Damascus Great Mosque Mosaic (706). It is likely that Byzantine artisans were hired to cover the
mosque at Damascus with mosaics both inside and out. Even if not from Byzantium, the mosaicists drew on
Byzantine artistic traditions that were still recognizably based on classical Roman motifs. Compare this detail
of the western portico of the Damascus mosque, which shows two cities separated by trees, with the
Boscoreale city scene in Plate 1.3. We see a similar jumble of buildings, one arrayed on top of the other as if
climbing a cliff. The way in which the trees work to divide the scene in the Damascus portico is also
Romano-Byzantine. But in another way, the mosaicists rejected that inheritance, imposing a different—an
Islamic—ideal: they depicted no human or animal. To be sure, we should not expect that Mars would seduce
Venus here (recall Plate 1.1)! But more remarkably, no living being whatsoever paraded on its walls
(compare with Plate 1.12, with mosaics of Emperor Justinian and his courtly entourage). In what ways
might this ideal have affected Byzantium itself?

Arabic, the language of the Qur’an, became the official tongue of the Islamic

world. As translators rendered important Greek and other texts into this newly

imperial language, it proved to be both flexible and capacious. Around this time,

Muslim scholars determined the definitive form of the Qur’an and began to compile

pious narratives about the Prophet’s sayings, or hadith. A new literate class—