Arabo-Byzantine relations in the 9th and 10th centuries as an area of cultural rivalry

Abstract

At first glance, one might think that the cultural splendour of the Abba-sids, as much as anything else that happened in the caliphate, was completely in-different to the Byzantines. The sources which they left hardly ever commented on muslim cultural exploits. But the verbal frankness or deep introspection are not the characteristics of Byzantine culture and the selective and self-interested nature of Byzantine documents when they refer to foreign cultures is notorious. Bearing this in mind we can approach the theory of impact of the Graeco-Arabic transla-tion movement on the so-called “macedonian ” Renaissance. This hypothesis has been advanced by Dimitri Gutas1, who suggested that the Arabs could have devel-oped in the Byzantines a kind of inferiority complex and a desire to compete with the muslim intellectual achievements. Consequently, these attitudes would have be-come one of the reasons of the literary revival in Byzantium. I believe that in order to better analyse this concept we must take into account the particularities of the diplomatic relations between Byzantium and the Caliph-ate in the 9th century. It seems that the embassies between Byzantium and the Arab world, intense and regular at that time2, were used by the two parties not only to re-solve practical issues. The sources from both sides describe every diplomatic mis-sion as a major opportunity to demonstrate superiority of the Byzantine or Arabic civilisation. As a result we have many examples of the deliberate shows performed by the ambassadors and their hosts. It happens so that some of them have been al-ready described at this conference by Koray Durak3 who presented Arabo-Byzan-tine prisoner exchanges on river Lamis as a deliberate performance exerted by both

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