Tag Archives: Byzantium and Islam

Religion governed Byzantine life from birth to death. The church governed marriage and family relations and filled leisure time. Religion also dominated the arts and literature, economics and politics, and intellectual life.

Byzantium was a great center of trade, to which vessels came from every quarter of the compass. From the countries around the Black Sea came furs and hides, grain, salt, wine, and slaves from the Caucasus. From India, Ceylon, Syria, and Arabia came spices, precious stones, and silk; from Africa, slaves and ivory; from the West, especially Italy, came merchants eager to buy the goods sold in Constantinople, including the products of the imperial industries.

The Byzantines, however, preferred negotiating to fighting, and they brought diplomacy to a high level. The subtlety of the instructions given their envoys has made “Byzantine” a lasting word for complexity and intrigue. First Persia and then to some extent the Muslim caliphate were the only states whose rulers the Byzantine emperors regarded as equals. All others were “barbarians.”

In their endless effort to protect their frontiers the

As defenders of the faith against hostile invaders, the Byzantine emperors fought one war after another for eleven hundred years. Sometimes the invaders were moving north and west from Asia: Persians in the seventh century; Arabs from the seventh century on; and Turks beginning in the eleventh century. Byzantium thus absorbed the heaviest shock of Eastern invasions and cushioned the West against them.

As the direct agent of God, the emperor was responsible for preserving the tradition of Roman law. Only the emperor could modify the laws already in effect or proclaim new ones. Thus he had on hand an immensely powerful instrument for preserving and enhancing power.

After Constantine, Byzantium called itself New Rome. Its emperors ruled in direct succession from Augustus. Yet many non-Roman elements became increasingly important in Byzantine society. A Roman of the time of Augustus would have been ill at ease in Byzantium. After Constantine had become a Christian, the emperor was no longer a god; but his power remained sacred.

At the far southeastern corner of Europe, on a little tongue of land still defended by a long line of massive walls and towers, there stands a splendid city, Istanbul. After 330, when the first Christian Roman emperor Constantine the Great made it his capital, it was often called Constantinople, but it also retained its ancient name Byzantium. For more than eleven hundred years thereafter it remained the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.