Image Making in Byzantium, Sasanian Persia and the Early Muslim World

Relations between Byzantium and its neighbours are the focus of this volume. The papers address questions of cultural exchange, with special attention to art historical relations as shown by technical, iconographic and diplomatic exchanges. While addressed to specialists, both their approach and the language make these papers accessible to students at all levels.

Anthony Cutler is the Evan Pugh Professor of Art History at Pennsylvania State University, USA.

Contents: Visual communities in Byzantium and medieval Islam; Silver across the Euphrates: forms of exchange between Sasanian Persia and the late Roman empire; Constantinople and Córdoba: cultural exchange and cultural differences in the 9th and 10th centuries; Ivory working in Umayyad Córdoba: techniques and implications; A Christian ewer with Islamic imagery and the question of Arab gastarbeiter in Byzantium; The image of the word in Byzantium and Islam: an essay in art historical geodesy; Gifts and gift exchange as aspects of the Byzantine, Arab, and related economies; Everywhere and nowhere: the invisible Muslim and Christian self-fashioning in the culture of Outremer; The emperor's old clothes; actual and virtual vesting and the transmission of power in Byzantium and Islam; The parallel universes of Arab and Byzantine art (with special reference to the Fatimid era); Tiles and tribulations: a community of clay across Byzantium and its adversaries; Imagination and documentation: eagle silks in Byzantium, the Latin West, and 'Abbasid Baghdad; Reuse or use? Theoretical and practical attitudes toward objects in the early Middle Ages; Addenda and corrigenda; Index.